The Home Service Expert Podcast - He Walked Away From 2 Shark Tank Offers (Sales 40x'd After)

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

🎟️ Join us at Freedom 2026 → https://mellomedia.s.gy/promo2-freedom2026 Kent Yoshimura walked away from two Shark Tank offers because they came in under the number he set before entering the tank — then became the only founder in show history to come back and close a deal, with KIND founder Daniel Lubetzky. The NeuroGum CEO breaks down the Ring doorbell playbook for selling home services, the 4 Es of marketing, and why sleep is the most underrated CEO skill. Plus Tommy reveals the $400M number and the growth comp that stunned his banker. 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 0:00:00 Cold Open 0:00:32 Guest Intro 0:06:46 Art Meets Business 0:11:49 Sleep Tips 0:15:47 Cold Plunge Science 0:17:19 Influencer Marketing 0:18:24 The Ring Playbook 0:21:26 AI And Jobs 0:30:28 Rapid Fire Advice 0:32:49 The Ryan Story 0:34:49 Partnership Rules 0:37:42 Mental Discipline 0:47:43 Shark Tank Story 0:50:40 The $400M Reveal 0:57:43 The Rat Experiment 🎟️ Freedom 2026 → https://mellomedia.s.gy/promo2-freedom2026 TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/officialtommymello

I would pride myself in not sleeping. There was a period of time I did the Uberman cycle, as you know what that is? Yeah. Sleeping for 20 minutes every four hours. Like, I did that for like three months. It was psychotic. I was not a good person during that time, I don't think. And the more I sleep, the more rational and logical my decision-making process can be,

the more I could prioritize things versus impulsively reacting to things. If there's one thing, it's good sleep and building a rationality. DART process. All right, guys, welcome back today. I got Kent Yoshimuro with me. He's the co-founder and CEO of Nero, a Los Angeles-based brand best known for their energizing gums and mints, revolutionizing how people access their focus while on the go. Beyond Nero, Kent is a competitive martial artist, an investor, a large-scale muralist for the

city of Los Angeles. His art has been featured in Time, Forbes, and New York, NPR, and a lot of other places. Kent, it's a pleasure to have you on today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, I've really been looking forward to this. So, you know, let's just turn out a little bit. Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about you? We'll get you excited.

What you're focused on now and what brought you to this place. Gosh, I mean, you know, it all started because we wanted to make supplementation accessible. Like, when I was training, I was training at a fairly high level. I was traveling Thailand to fight more Thai in Thailand. Like, this was like 25 years ago, you know. It's a lot more popular. are built out now, all these places. But energy drinks really were the only option when I was training. And that is not what I wanted to put into my body. And it was very obvious that when Ryan and I

started the company, and Ryan was one of the fastest kids in California, absolutely incredible cross-country and track runner, who got injured in a snowboarding accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, we realized like for people like him who are trying to find the rhythm of life again for people like me who are training at a high level we are not trying to put compounds in our body that are doing us harm for the sake of short-term benefits we want something that gives us long-term benefits but also the energy and focus when we need it and the most obvious approach to that was creating a portable sustainable energy source that felt way better when you took it and that was the invention of neuro gum and neuromint i love it and what are you excited to

about right now in your career? You know, so much of the last decade was around education. We were building a category. There's no one really like us except for. I think the only player in the market was like an alert energy gum and military energy gum, both absolutely terrible. They basically took the energy drink model and put it into a gum format with the same bad ingredients and overloaded with sugar and not concerned about taste whatsoever.

For us, that education has come a long way, about one in six, one and seven Americans know about neurogum, and that's continuing to, the pots continue to grow. And as we expand into retail, which we're aggressively doing right now, that accessibility to our product is only going to get better. And, you know, we've consistently been a top player on Amazon, TikTok, where the fastest growing brand last year, or rather two years ago, we're the fastest growing brand. and we maintain that spot near the top all last year and this year as well. And as we enter into retail, we're seeing that same impact of our brand awareness translate into philosophies and people choosing us, not necessarily over energy drinks, but as a better option to the other energy products out in the marketplace. What about personally?

I mean, it sounds like you stay busy. What are you looking forward to? Man, fitness is always a big thing for me. I assume fitness is a big thing for you. Just looking at how you're built. But, you know, running's big for me. So, you know, I ran this morning. I'm running the four passes, 30-mile, 7,500-foot elevation again run later this year.

I was supposed to run rim-to-rim last year, but the Grand Canyon burned down. So I couldn't do it. So how do I continue to mentally push myself and physically push myself outside the business and maintain that discipline is pretty important to me? You know, also I got married last year, which is a big milestone for anyone's life. But it's how do I, business is very important to me. But obviously finding that space for your significant other, finding that space for yourself outside of the business.

All these things are, it makes. any ways, I feel like what we preach even at at neuro. It's like, how do I find more balance in myself and how do I continue to find more balance of myself and everything that I do? Yeah, I'm engaged. I'm going to be married January 1st of next year and it's been a long time coming. But I think I was married to work for about 20 years. And then I heard this quote, and I'm going to butcher it, but it's basically, you know,

people with busy schedules get a lot done. but once you really are at the top of the mountain, like your schedule actually isn't as busy. You start taking the time. I think that Jeff Bezos was probably the busiest in his career, probably a decade ago, and now he probably only makes decisions between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. And he's got his morning routine the last four hours,

his rituals at night, his time that he's committed to people. He's not out there. He's hiring the right people, but he's making a lot more time for himself, as family, and the things that are important in life. And I think you hustle and you run for a while and hopefully you learn how to make more the time, but still keep the success. Because now it's who not, how do you get the right people on the bus?

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think you need to go through the hustle. I think you need to go through the grind. All those things are, in my opinion, important to carve you into a decision of good decision-making leader at the end of the day. So, you know, for someone like Jeff Bezos, he was probably making, there, there's that quote where like he only makes three decisions a day, you know, because every, like, those three decisions are going to impact so much of the business that they need to be critical in what he does. And I agree with that. There's most days, you know, I shouldn't be making a million decisions. Like, the team should

be directionally dictated in a way where they can make those decisions without necessarily needing dependence on anyone else. I agree. you're kind of a jack of all trades an entrepreneurial martial artist a visual artist you kind of debunk the idea of having to be either left brain or right brain what made you realize

you could kind of master both I mean I grew up doing art art and martial arts both were super important to me and then you know just being in a capitalistic society I think creating a product that I wanted to take myself, that Ryan wanted to take himself, let us down this path of having to

learn more about the business side of things. But the exciting thing about entrepreneurship is it forces you to be super creative also. Every single day is different. Every single day, someone's trying to punch you in the face. You know, if we're trying to use like martial arts metaphor. And Mike Tyson has that great quote where everyone has a plan until you get punched in the So you have to be able to adapt in many ways. And at least for me, it's, I love that my, I'm grateful, I should say, that my skills in art, creatively thinking on the fly, the martial arts component, keeping a cool head, you know, and all those things eventually came together to be able to express itself in the business.

and you know as the business grows i obviously over index into the neurogum side of things more so than i only paint like a few murals a year because it takes it's so time intensive but i feel the creativity uh bug is fulfilled in other ways you know because of neurogum love it yeah you know you started getting very interested in neuroscience and your undergrad can you share more about your interest in the human brain and how to optimize it a little bit yeah i mean the human brain the central nervous system in general just controls everything that you do from your movements your sleep patterns your mood um and any deviation that you experience even being knocked out of your circadian rhythm for sleep can complete as we all know can completely change

who you are, how your mood is. And when I was going through my deep, deep martial arts journey, the brain became so interesting to me because it dictated how I would go into competition, how it could go into flow state, before people started talking about what flow state is, you know, all those things that I wanted to accomplish in beyond just the physical format of martial arts and in my competitions, I knew were dictated by how my brain was performing that day, which is why neuroscience and cognitive science became a super obvious path for me

when I went to college. And I love that cognitive science and that field has become so expansive over the years because back in the day, it was really just physiology. They really saw, they knew the brain had all these different functions to it. And abnormal psychology was becoming more interesting, but it was so misunderstood still. And now we're looking at the chemistry, the physiology, all these different things that impacted from like sleep to fitness to, there's this movement towards health and not just physical health, but brain health that exists in the marketplace now. And, you know, like I said before, it truly dictates everything that you do.

Yeah, so I've got a bunch of accountability partners. We meet up each week and we just went through atomic habits. I think it's the third time I've read it. And just those little things you do to make a difference and the cues. And like, every time I read a book that I love, I just take more from it. It's interesting because the brain is such a powerful thing. But it's got to, like, now it's like mandatory that I get eight hours of sleep. Before I used to brag that I could get five.

And now I'm like, why? Like, you don't function as great. You know? Yeah. Do you have an eight sleep mattress and all that stuff too? I've got a temperate. So I got a temperatech turned it back in 30 days. Now I got a sleep number.

What's your favorite? I like eight sleep. Personally, it's expensive though. And I really dislike their forced subscription model. But it manages your mattresses temperature for you throughout the night. It makes micro adjustments so that you have the optimized temperature for sleep. So whenever I come back home to my parents' place or like stay in a hotel room, my sleep is just I've become soft, you know.

I know my sleep is a little bit off. Give me all your sleep tips. I'd love to hear to them. Man, so I've been obsessed with glycine lately. Actually, have you heard of glycine? No, I'm not familiar with it. It's a precursor to collagen and glutathione. So it's supposed to improve sleep.

But what they say about collagen is that the molecules of collagen ingested orally, like the vital proteins of the world, are way too big to actually be absorbed effectively. So glycine as a precursor promotes the production of collagen within the body. And on top of that increases the depth of sleep you have. So I would take that. Blackout curtains, you know, the optimized, the optimization of the temperature using my eight sleep. You know, I wish I could be a little bit more intense with it, but those are all the things. And I also know that if I don't run or work out during the day, my sleep is just absolutely garbage. I've also been doing the thing where it's like I only sip water three hours.

like i don't eat three hours before i still use my phone like before i go to bed which is terrible but um like obviously you're not supposed to do that and then we also have a sleep and recharge product where i melatonin is actually a super effective anti-inflammatory so it's actually perfect for working out and it increases uh it increases uh it increases uh like recovery like muscle recovery pretty significantly but so many of these companies that create melatonin products are loads it up with 5, 10 milligrams when realistically you only need one, if not even less. It's like, I think 0.6 micrograms is the effective, 0.6 milligrams is actually the effective dose to see a lot of those benefits of melatonin because it is a hormone. So for me, if and when I need

it, that has been kind of my secret weapon to resetting my circadian rhythm or getting maximum recovery for whenever I have like a hard work out there. I know what you mean. Like I need to walk for at least 45 minutes at a pretty bit brisk walk. I'm not a big runner. Maybe I should be. But it's, you hate it until you love it.

Is that how it works? Well, do you know who Ken Riteout is? Yeah, I've heard of him. So yeah, he's a great dude. But he has a great quote where it's like running is like reverse drugs. you hate it while you're doing it, but you love it afterwards

versus drugs. You love it while you're doing it, but you hate it afterwards. And it's, I still, you know, I run like four plus miles a day. And when I was training,

when I train from my ultras, I run like 10 plus miles a day. And I absolutely hate it. But in that moment, but I swear to God, like afterwards, if I don't run, I feel the rest of my day

does not feel the same. There's such, a significant impact cognitively and productivity wise and sleep wise for me that it's almost like a non-negotiable when for for anything I do like I need to get like my workout or my run it a long endurance especially like workout it hey guys I just want to let you know that the $250 off freedom ends tomorrow tomorrow night it's gone so the prices go back to full price that's up to $250 off every tier

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and we'll get you in. Do it tonight. I don't want you to miss this. What about cold plunging son? Are you a big fan of those? I love sauna. My brother-in-law,

my sister who are both very high-level athletes, national-level Olympic weightlifters, do cold plunge every single morning at 5.30, 6 a.m., which I think is absolutely nuts. I think mentally it's really good for you. But there's all that research that's coming out that, you know, the inflammatory markers like in your body post-workout are the things that induce muscle growth, that induce recovery. You know, that's why inflammation happens. when you shock your body and it causes the complete opposite, you know, when you go into a cold plunge. Like you are preventing yourself from muscle growth and muscle recovery. So I follow that research.

With that being said, Sona, outside of the fact that if you're going to get married next January and trying to have kids, it completely destroys sperm health. If you can get past that, it is the best endurance. it improves endurance significantly because it forces you into what's similar to like a zone two state when you're undergoing heat.

I didn't know that sperm thing, so that's interesting. Yeah, yeah. Carry an ice bag with you, you know, if you're going to sauna. At your local gym, you'll be that one guy. I wanted to ask you, so, look, I'm in the garage door home service industry.

We service 25,000 homes. a month. I love my industry. I haven't really cracked the code on influencers yet. It's not like as sexy as a supplement, but knowing how well you've done on TikTok and I'm sure other social media, how did you crack the code? Like what are some of the things that really has gone viral that actually equates to sales that you could teach me on that? You know, some of the biggest things, at least there's a few factors. There's credibility. there's just first and foremost there's like the four ease of marketing right how are you engaging someone how are you educating someone how you embedding them into your product and then um

there's past that if you get into like the hook cycle there's also uh the psychology of how people are reacting to certain clips or certain things that forces them to want to dive deeper into it So if I were looking at the garage door industry, I would say it's probably similar to Ring. I mean, there's probably an angle where you could say it's similar to Ring door cameras, where Ring wasn't necessarily a big deal when it was not preying on people's fear of security being breached at your house. You know, that's why they worked with the police. That's why they try to go down this path of, if you don't know who's at your door, you know, your package could get so on, this could happen.

And there's obviously like, it's backfired a little bit over the years because of like the state of like surveillance state and the mentality, the cultural mentality of Americans there. But I know for me, if my garage door could be broken into, if it wasn't working, properly if it wasn't functioning that is a gateway to your house so is there a way psychologically that you could tap into people and consumers to be like hey this is something that you need real professional work on or make sure every single year that it is secured and used and functioning properly now and we do that in the same way with energy and focus right like with our products It's the easiest thing to tell people is if you are tired, you are not at your best from a brand messaging level.

So what are the multiple ways that we could target that? And that could be your insecurity. If you're going on a day, then you're not able to function properly. Then you're not going to do well on the day. And if you don't do all in the day, you're not going to, you know, whatever, get laid. Like there's like a path down there. there's another angle where it's like so there's the fear-based angle or the insecurity-based angle and then there's the whole credibility angle of what influencers are you using that are high

impact that you could then piggyback behind like the joe rogans of the world or the andrew shultz's or the magnus carlson's of the world that you could piggyback behind to say hey if these people find it a credible product that and they're working and they're optimizing their life at the highest level, don't you want to be like them? So playing on, again, the psychology of either envy, fear, insecurity, something you may want, like all those things are, I think, deeply embedded into us that you can play into. And then obviously, just having a great product at the end of the day that stands out beyond anyone else. So that you could play against the energy, like people saying the same thing, but why are you so much better?

Right. And to us, that's the different attributes. I assume for you, it's the level of service. It's the level of quality of the installation. It goes much deeper than anyone else. Yeah, and it's the speed. We get out there within an hour, and then we've got a bunch of trademark parts

that last 10 times as long, but they're not easy to get. There's a lot of things that I think we could kind of differentiate ourselves. You brought up capitalism a couple of times. I love capitalism. I just feel like AI is, I'm cautiously,

optimistic. I mean, I've heard in the next 18 months, if you have a desk job, your job's gone. And I don't know the answer. You know, everybody I've talked to that's smarter than me says, human beings always find a way. And I'm like, yeah, maybe not this time, though. I don't know. It's exciting times. I mean, this is like mankind is changing dramatically. Look at the last two weeks. I mean, what are your thoughts on that? on the state of AI in general or on the state of the world as it pertains to human employment I guess anything and everything I think I want to say optimistic about everything I think the government have an immense amount of responsibility as much as the people and the organizations

that create the AI to make sure that we are responsibly building a society where if AI does take over desk jobs, then there is opportunity for people to exist alongside it. Because no time within human history has anything that has been introduced, whether it's the cotton mill, you know, there's the steam engine, right, all these different things. never has anything been more necessarily intelligent than us. And we are creating something that is taking over our levels of intelligence. And I think that is going to be the biggest existential threat that we need to figure out how to work alongside.

And if that is the case, what are the elements of human capacity? What are the elements of human capability that are going to complement something, not necessarily fight it but complement this new reality that is coming so and i i do think that takes a lot of responsibility you know um frankly i think the the whole move by the government to take away anthropic um was a little irresponsible i also know that that was probably realistically going to be the case because places like China and other parts of the world don't care about national you know they I was just going to tell you China doesn't care they don't play by the rules they don't have any red tape they could just go as fast they're going everywhere else right so it's like it's kind of like

a weird situation where it's like how do you balance out other opposing forces and other opposing superpowers if you are putting guardrails yourself there's countries like Italy who banned AI really early on and now they're super far behind with the rest of the world and in the development. It's like the nature of the world is, you know, I think realistically you just have to ride the waves of it. I think we have a responsibility to try to build regulatory responsibilities, but that has to come at almost like a global level, not a country by country level. whoever gets to super intelligence first it doesn't really matter what country it is because at that point the machine is building itself i mean yeah and then you know hopefully the number one rules do no harm to human beings but uh you know that that's

you know everybody says sky nets on the way and stuff and that's a doom and gloom uh paradox that people look at but i think we'll live through somewhat of a utopia i don't know about universal basic income Elon says it's kind of essential and it doesn't need to be universal. It needs to be universal high income. It's just where do you find your search for meaning? You know, where do you find your, you know, you derive a lot of your purpose from accomplishing things at work. You've already expressed that. So could you get a lot of stuff from golf and fishing and playing games and raising a family?

I think you could, but it's just a different way. If you were born into that, it'd be different. it's that's a thing it's like you still need self uh you still need motivation you need you still need that sense of purpose to go into any of those things and it's like pursue purpose you know i i think the reality is most people don't pursue purpose like i'm sorry to say it but it's like that's just the truth and when you things with that being said i do think when people people are who want to pursue purpose are given opportunities to pursue it, then those are the people that you could really pull out and they end up doing amazing things, not maybe in this

generation, but generations down the line. And to me, that is a representation of whatever you call it. It could be the American dream. It could be like the human element. It could be, you know, like the superpower that humans really have. Can we continue to? to promote that in a way. And is universal basic income the answer to that? Maybe. I don't know. You know, they could go down the way of it being like glorified welfare or it could go down

the way of really providing people with an opportunity to excel. It's really hard to say. But I think it's going to be a lot more robust than just saying like, here's a bunch of money for everyone at a basic income level. Well, you know, I don't want to spend too much time on this. but if there's 10 more robots, 10 robots to every human, and the robots don't sleep, they don't get tired, they don't need to eat, they literally, things start to get commoditized.

I mean, literally, real estate's not worth as much. Really, there's really not, the farming, food becomes free. Who's going to take care of the landscaping? Well, that's taken care of. Even garage drawers get fixed by the robots. I mean, it's just one of those things where, Yeah, I don't have all the answers, and it's fun to think about, and I don't think anybody does. If anybody knows 60 days ahead, they're probably lying.

But I think do your best. I'm just trying to make as much money as possible at this point. I think there's going to be some hats and have nuts. What's that? Yeah, AGI is going to be really interesting. There's a lot of, there's a lot of interesting world building that's happening within the AI space as well. That's going to be absolutely fascinating. You know, the way I always try to think about it is they're super intelligent people always working on the hardest problems that we

pose ourselves since like the dawn of man. And I truly believe that humans are so crafty in a way that when we allow them to someone, some hyper-intelligent human being smarter than either of us combined is always trying to figure something out and being one step ahead of everything. Yeah. No, you're right. It's going to be interesting how it all plays out. I mean, the world's going to change. I think it's going to become a better place. With narrow gum, you know, your 50 million sales into this, what do most people misunderstand about the brand? We're more than 50 million sales, but much more. But I think, I think, you're, think you know a lot of people I think still think of us as especially when I go to retailer

meetings as a energy drink alternative when in reality we almost play in our own space where we're just to throw out some stats we're 31% incremental to energy drinks so the people that are buying energy drinks are using us as a product to just get their caffeine boost for the second half of the day I think there's a lot of opportunity also in just supplementation in general becoming more accessible and approachable. So many people are used to taking pills and like, yeah, that has the highest margin. But how do you create habits in people? We talked about atomic habits.

Like, you know, James Clear always talks about these micro habits that you build throughout the day to create the person you are. You do that by removing friction as much as possible. And for myself and this product, neurogum and neuromints, it's removing those friction. points that people may have to improve their health. I love it. I'm going to ask you a few repeat questions. So what's one piece of game-changing advice you wish you knew in your 20s? Get good sleep when we talked about.

Finding balance, understand your weaknesses. I think in our 20s, especially for me, I was driven so heavily by ego that I felt like I could do everything. and not only when I started understanding that asking for help and people are willing to help is a reality, did the business not evolve into where we are now? It's great advice. If you had to start over tomorrow, you still got your connections, but there's just 10 million in your account, nothing else, no other investments. What would you do with it?

Oh, man. I think finding everything in business, revolves around not everything, but you know, in our industry, it revolves around the product that you have and then do you have the operations, the marketing, the finances, the sales to basically back that product up to enter it into the marketplace? With $10 million, that's a pretty significant, and your connections that you've built, that's a pretty significant amount of capital already. Like your connections already probably make up for that $10 million easily as well. So how are you leveraging and finding the people to fill in the blanks on, again, marketing, the sales, finances, operations, to be able to elevate whatever product that you have,

which, you know, if we were to start over with NeuroGum, again, it will be pushing NeuroGum into the line line as quickly as possible. And what's your biggest professional dream at the moment? My biggest professional dream is for NeuroGum to become a household name. I think we have the opportunity to become something like a Red Bull in a way where we enter beyond just a product phase and into a lifestyle phase. And as we enter into more marketplaces, I can only imagine that that's a reality where we shift more into a media company at the end of the day. And this might be something 10 years down the line, but,

you know, existing beyond the product itself. When you met your co-founder, Ryan, and obviously there was a snowboarding that changed both of your lives. Can you tell us a little bit about how you guys met and how you guys came up with Nero and how the relationship is still flourishing 10 years later? Yeah, I mean, Ryan's my brother and my best friend. We met in college his freshman year and my sophomore year. He was a captain of his cross-country and track team. Like I mentioned, one of the fastest kids in California,

just absolutely incredible runner. and I was training martial arts since I was five years old. I was flying in Thailand to fight. I was staying in Japan and training with the judo Olympic team out there. I was training at the number one college for judo out there. So both of us connected on this idea of education, athletics, and also

all the things that we loved outside of that. Ryan's sophomore year, he got in a devastating snowboarding accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. And the supplements that I was mixing these neutropics during that time, like 20 whatever years ago now,

or whenever I was in call, like, yeah, I guess like 19 years ago, the supplements I was mixing was the things I was giving to Ryan because he had limitations on what he could take. And it was what allowed him to get back into school. And on a scuba diving trip, which is one of the, the one things that as a paraplegic, you could do as well as someone with the use of their legs. we realize that again, the energy drinks, the coffee, these things aren't accessible, approachable, pills you don't want to take in public. When you're out on a boat and diving all day, it's something that energy is and focuses,

obviously something that you need. And it became so obvious to us that creating a portable, shareable, simple and efficient product, something like a gum or mint was an obvious answer. And, you know, that was 10 years ago. And how do you guys keep it going? Partnerships, I know fathers and sons that don't talk to each other because business, someone always feels like this guy's doing too much, this guy's not doing enough. Sometimes I see partnerships.

One person outgrows the other person. Sometimes there's animosity. How do you guys keep it together? You know, I think everything in the business is rooted in our promise of friendship. there is a genuineness and an authenticity that I'm hoping comes through with our brand. We also have very distinct roles in the business on how we operate. And, you know, it's not like we don't get into our little scuffles here and there, especially as the business grows, but at the end of the day, we trust each other,

and we trust what each other do in the decision-making process, in whatever department or whatever path where either of us, are going down. And when you build process around the business with budget, structures, and things like that, you almost eliminate the personal, there's still the personal element and that could come through with the brand. But with the business itself, you eliminate the personal side. And in any situation where either of us feel a certain way, you can go back to, hey,

is that part of the process? That part of the brand. Is that part of the principles? Is that part of the core values? A lot of the things that I think any business person should anchor the business on, something that exists beyond who Ryan and I are as people, as individuals. The team, the business matters much more than, you know, any individual in the business. You guys, so you built it off of trust.

What are your distinct roles in the business? So I'm the CEO. I primarily work on management, you know, vision, process, the strategic side of things on that end. Ryan is partnerships. He's like one of the most likable people that you'll ever meet. So he's engaging with people. He's negotiating contracts. He plays in finances a little bit as well because of those negotiations and how we should financially play into different

marketplaces. But those are pretty distinct roles. You know, like it's almost like I work internally in the business, how the process and everything should be built, how our brand should represent themselves. And he's more of externally representing himself in different ways when he goes and talks to, you know, the Yuki Tenoza, the Andrew Schultz, Mitchell Hooper, whoever our partners are of the world. That's great. So you guys, built the company out of this notion of refresh your state of mind, refresh their state of mind. How important is mental discipline to high performance? I think it's the most important thing. Someone who's mentally strong can beat anyone who's

mentally weak but physically stronger any day of the week, in my opinion. And nothing shows that more than ultra-marathons, which is probably why I love long-distance running. Yeah, I don't think I'm At least today You gotta build the muscles Of like a triathlon or an iron man It's like Oh boy

I could lift a lot of weight man I could do 235 Or 225 32 times is my record In the last year I got a lot of weight I can do a lot of tough stuff But like I could get into a cold plunge

But you know I will say that something I really want to get better at is like long distance stuff like working out like to the point where your body says no like your toenails are falling off and you just keep going like that's that's yeah yeah you hate it and you love it it's like such a weird your body just the runners high even in that moment even with all that pain is something that is unlike anything else and I mean, I used to be a guy that lifted. I never was like a weight lifting type.

I was more of a endurance or if it was fighting, you know, I guess, like there was strength and conditioning involved with it. But I don't know. It's different muscles too. It's like if you're benching 225 and you're aiming for whatever 32 reps, those last five reps, I guarantee, are still really hard and you have to dig deep, you know, to be able to do it. it's it's very similar in that sense where i mean i've gone to the gym some days to live some ways that should be easy for me and mentally i'm i'm just i can't do it there's something where it's

just like oh like you know you can't get that final push out and then other days you're pring so if my if i'm dialed in and and you know a lot of things need to be right one day my cousin called me and my she's like something's wrong with you she's like i can just feel She's like, maybe you're drinking too much. Maybe you're not eating the right food. But she goes, you need to go get checked out. She's like, something's off. And she's got a doctorate degree.

And my testosterone was like under 200. I had a leaky gut. I had, my sleep was horrible. And once you get all that stuff dialed in, man, there are times where I've been to the gym where I'm like pushing my trainer. I'm like, five more reps. And there's other days where I'm like, I want to leave early. And just showing up at the right time, knowing your.

body. And like for me, just the walks and getting the vitamin D and getting the like getting in my own head and just turning off all the distractions, that it's not like this crazy hard workout. Like, yes, you get a lot of steps. She'll probably add six, seven thousand steps onto your normal steps. But I just feel so amazing when that happens. And I love it when I get the feeling like at the right time. Some people, like I don't like working out right when I wake up. I'd rather go for a walk. You know, how do you do it? How do you find what time of day do you? What time of day do you do your best and how did you figure that out? Dude, I hate working on in the morning too, but when you force yourself to work out in the morning, you do feel amazing for the rest of the

day. It's a better day, I will say that. It's a way better day. And I think that's all that's needed to force yourself to do it. It's also like at the end of the day, that's not, sometimes it's harder at the end of the day because that's the last thing you want to do, you know, especially if it's endurance stuff. I don't mind going to the, you know, usually when I go into the office. Our gym is like right around the corner. So I'll just go into the gym and pump some weights. And that's not too bad. But knowing that I'm going to have to run like for 45 minutes straight, that's like the last thing you want to do after a full day of work. So to getting your peak performance is more mental or physical? It's probably more mental,

you would say. Who is it? Terry Cruz has a great, it's not a quote necessarily, but he basically is like if you can mentally push yourself to even just go to the gym and you don't even have to lift a single weight just go and sit there but then you start building that habit of going to the gym and then maybe one day you lift up a weight and then maybe you lift up a heavier weight the next day but you're every single day forcing yourself to at least take that drive and get to the gym sometimes that's all it takes to kickstart everything in your life and you know it all that all starts with the brain that all starts with the mind to push yourself together get there. You know, we talk about these little things. What I took a lot about atomic habits is like,

I started looking at my schedule for the day and I'm like, well, that Zoom meeting, I'm not running. I'm just a spectator. I could go on a walk for that. Or, you know, and then I made it real easy to do, like my executive assistant, she's amazing. Her name's Ashley. She'll be like, all right, let's do 50 pushups. And it's on my calendar. And she'll count me down. She'll do 10. I'll do 50. And like building that into my day, these little things that just are like super quick, easy. They don't take up much time. It's built into my life already. It makes it so much easier. Like, yes, I could drive. My trainer holds me super accountable. But what's really nice is when I could say I didn't see the trainer today and I got a really good workout and I don't even feel like I, like it's not easy to do like 50

good pushups and like counting up and down. I mean, you could some people could do 100. Some people could probably do 200, but for me, if I'm doing 50 good ones going all the way up, all the way down, and breathing right, and I just love it because I can get that in between. And after I get done, I got this little win. It's just stacking wins all day. Yeah. And it's also only like three minutes from your life at most, you know, two minutes. It's crazy. That's all it takes for you to just change everything. Do you have any things in your life that you've realized over the last 20 years that you're like, man, I wish I would have picked that up earlier. It could be reading.

It could be, you know, obviously long distance running. Is there any little habits that made you a better CEO, like listening more? Anything you may have done. I know we said this like sleep, sleep. I was similar to you. I would pride myself in the all-nighters I could pull. You know, I would pride myself in not sleeping. There was a period of time I did the Uberman cycle.

You know what that is? It's like sleeping for 20 minutes every four hours. Like I did that for like three months. You know, it was psychotic. I was not a good person during that time, I don't think. And the more I sleep, the more rational and logical my decision-making process can be, the more I could prioritize things versus impulsively reacting to things. I think that has changed.

If there's one thing, it's good sleep. and building a rational thought process. Those are the things that people are going to look up to you for when you are a leader. I also think this is something I've said on a panel before, but a good leader is someone who has a vision and all their actions stick to that vision. So like, is there something that you are, you know, you are doing that you stand behind and do you have, you know, I guess for us guys, you guys, do you have the balls to stand behind it? You know, I've got this. You know, I say it says stay focused and run and then it says ruthlessly prioritize because what I found in my life, there's a lot of things that are important. but which actions of the top five, then the top 30.

And my COO says to me all the time, he says, I say, dude, I really want to focus on this. He goes, which one of these do you want me to remove? And I love that he responds like that. Because, and I say, look, there's always something that comes ahead. It's not easy to ruthlessly prioritize. What's going to take us to the North Star, the fastest? But it's hard. Business is hard.

And when you get knocked in the face and kicked in the face or punched in the face all the time, but it's going yesterday I posted something on social media about Jeff Bezos that said you got to be able to pivot quickly. You know the market changes, your clientele changes. Like you know you've got a great vision

and you've got to keep the vision, but there's other things that you might need to reinvent yourself along the way and you might need to reinvent the company. And I think that that's important is keeping an open mind. Like I'm only signing a six-month contract with most software now because I know

software is going to be a dying thing in the next few months. you know the next few years because i'm just keeping my uh my options open you know when you is a rapper of go ahead what everything is a rapper of a program now so most of these companies these sass companies have you heard of the sask apocalypse that's happening right now yeah i know well i've seen it in the market too uh it's very obvious like i mean with a i i mean with a i i in general everything's just going to be a rapper of something that already exists i uh i've been having a lot of fun I mean, with Claude recently.

I mean, I'm not very good at these things, but it's crazy where you could build in a weekend. Just telling what you want, and it just builds it. And you're like, this would have took 80 people in two years a few months ago. It's crazy. It's actually crazy. So you pitched the business concept of neurogum on Shark Tank and got rejected. Yeah. How did you keep your motivation?

going and not get too discouraged by that well we got two deals presented to us but i guess you know like i said what is something you believe in and you know do you have the heart to stand behind it ryan and i went into the tank with a hard stop limit of what we were going to take and they went below that we went back up to that hard stop number They kept going below that. And it's like, we needed to stand behind what we truly believed in. And I don't know when this podcast is going to air, but if it's past a week from now, is it going to be past a week from now?

Yeah, a few weeks. Oh, then you'll see that we're the only company in Shark Tank history that got rejected, that didn't get a deal, and we're going back on Shark Tank. next week. Oh, that's going to be cool. Well, I'll be watching it. Yeah. On March 11th, and we got, we ended up getting a deal with the shark, you know,

because we stuck by our guns, we had a vision and we pushed for it. And, um, our company, our sales are literally 40x what they were when we aired on Shark Tank. What year was that that you were on originally? Um, yeah, 22. 2020 when we were on originally. 2020 and you know, what's the goal? I mean, look, you obviously, I always say there's, you could give the company away to your kids,

you could sell the company, or you could lose the company, I guess. You know, what's the ultimate goal? You know, I think I'm great, and this is like me understanding my weaknesses to a degree while still having a little bit of confidence in an ego. But I think there's like a certain state, of company that some people are great at operating at, and then there's a second, third stage

of a company that people excel at. And once our company gets to a certain size, I personally think that there's better people that are suited for that size of a company to take it to the next level, because it becomes a very different operational game. It becomes like a very different strategic game than someone who's building it from, you know, zero to 250. I will tell you I agree. I say, look, but that could take the company downhill very quickly if they don't buy into the vision. But there is a point where I'm still having a lot of fun. I got to say we're going to do it.

I mean, we'll do $400 million this year. It's got a super healthy. It's a record-breaking bottom line in the home service industry by far. The only company that's grown as fast as us, the banker, I just talked to him this weekend. And they're like, the only ones we can compare you to is meta on your growth trajectory. So I'm like, and I feel so, I feel like we're in the first inning. But I'm like, look, there's someone going to come along. I don't know if I'm going to be the co-CEO or the chief visionary officer or do what I love,

marketing, sales, recruiting, and culture. But I don't love the finance side of things. I don't love the dealing with the banks, the audits, you know, all that stuff that we do. But I've got a really smart CFO. And my CFO is a magician. super intelligent. He can manage a lot of things. And by the way, I never want to walk in the room and be like, I'm better than you at this.

At this point in my career, I'm like, man, you guys could run circles around me. I'm the guy out there doing stuff like this, learning, working on the vision, talking to all the front line workers, talking to the technicians every day. And I'm out there, I'm talking on a lot of stages and people are like, how is that good for the business? I'm like, because there's not, you know, we're in half the states, the United States will be in all of them soon. And I'm like, everyone uses us. Like, I'm out there representing the brand. And out of the 50 guys here training, I was at orientation, 40 of them are here because of me. They want to work.

They know I'm going to be fair. They know I want them to win first. And that's my job. My job is not to walk in and be like, guys, I know everything. I'm going to make all the decisions. And I think that sometimes your ego is not your amigo when it comes to being a CEO. Yeah, I like that. I like that you learn that about yourself too.

It's so important. And you never want to be a hindrance to your business. You know, and I think that's because you're right. It's like, well, it's fun. I'm going to keep doing it at the end of the day. And, you know, it's a company that Ryan and I built and our vision is what's been driving it. So at what point do I feel like it's not going to be fun? At what point do I feel like I'm going to hinder the business for its growth?

And that's probably the point where I'm going to say, okay, let's allow someone to take to the next stage and then I'll move over into a position that makes more sense, you know, whether it's chairman of the board or whatever it happens to be. Let me ask you this. Are you allowed to talk about the sharks and who you guys? Who did you strike a deal with? This year after March 11th, yeah, definitely. So Daniel Lubetsky, the founder of Kind Bar. Awesome. Sold to Wrigley's for over $3 billion.

his business. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, and he's the coolest, just the nicest, coolest guy. And when you went in there originally, did you have a particular shark in mind? I mean, he was definitely one of them. You know, it was either him or we felt Mark Cuban

could help us, although I've heard different things about Mark Cuban from other companies and other friends that have gone investments from him. But someone that's a CPG legend knows our space, knows how to grow, throw it. The only person in that room that had that skill set is Daniel. And in the end, he was the one that eventually came back to invest with us. And he's a permanent shark also now.

Oh, that's great. I think Cuban's on his way out, right? Yeah. So he replaced Cuban. Okay. Oh, that's interesting. You know, I met Damon John. He came to the house a couple of times. I just had Kevin O'Leary at my event. It's interesting watching these guys. Totally different flavors, by the way. Yeah, I bet. Kevin O'Lear is interesting. Was he wearing his like five watches? Yeah, I had the two watches on and he, you know, I sat down one on one and he's all about health and wellness now and talked a lot about England and what he does out there when he gets

to visit. It's just, you know, it's interesting to me about certain people, though, is like, I never want to slow down a lot, but, you know, I'm about to get married. We want to have kids. And I'm trying, like, dude, there's got to be space for that. You know what I mean? Like, I want to be, I don't want the best home service businessman on my casket. I want, like, the best dad ever. He was curious. He always said, you know, he tried hard and took care of people, and he was the best dad. That would be what I want. And, you know, I think I just need to make sure, like, that that's what I do. I mean, that's where my determination is, is like, the money is kind of out of the way now.

So, like, I still want to be the best son why I got my parents alive. But that's really should be the- People are going to remember how you make them feel is what they say. You know, it's not about how much money you made or how much money. Like, none of those things ultimately end up mattering. They help you a lot, you know, to become that person. And it gives you a little bit more leeway for sure. but I call it fun tickets.

I got a lot of fun tickets. So I'll just ask a few close-out questions here. Is there any books that really, like, impacted you? Like, they're just like, you got to read this book? Man, so I'll say some business books and then I'll say a fun book. So who is a guide to hiring? I think it's absolutely fantastic. GF, yeah, smart or something.

Yeah. I got that book. It's a great book. It's a great book. High output management by the former CEO of IBM. Fantastic book. Crossing the chasm. Also another one if you're a startup business, the mentality of how to get over your niche audience

into becoming a mainstream brand. And then for me as like a spearfisher, someone that loves being in the ocean, a lot of deep and breathe are both incredible, incredible books. Wow, why am I blanking on the name of the author right now? It's James Nestor, I want to say, amazing books on what humans are capable of doing. It's very in line with this AGI conversation. But about 150 years ago, people thought

that if you went deeper than something like 30 feet underwater, your body would just explode. And now we're scuba diving, you know, and that's like entry-level scuba diving. People are able to free dive. Alexei McAlaw is able to free dive hundreds and hundreds of feet down with a single breath and make his way back up. Like what human beings are able to do are absolutely incredible,

and it's a book that touches on that. So, yeah, I would say those are my top reads as of late. They did this experiment in the 70s where you could, you took like a mouse or it was a mouse or a rat. And they let them swim and they would die after 10 minutes. They'd drown. And then one day the experimenter took them out of the water, let them rest, put them back in. And it was like 36 hours they could go. Yeah.

Because they felt like there was. There's hope. There's hope. And it's just crazy what's capable. I know human beings are not rats, but it's crazy. There was another experiment where they were able to block the dopamine receptors in a rat. And literally within two days, like they had their water like right next to them. And they literally died of, you know, water, not drinking water.

There was no purpose to. Yeah, it was called them. Oh, my God. What was it called? It was like rat farm or rat. There's a name for the compound they built for the rats. to like basically get and it was supposed to be like oh look like heroin addicts and like people yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I think they talked about it in atomic habits maybe that's why it's fresh in my

mind oh that's probably what it is yeah yeah yeah that's what happened it's just it's a great experiment I read so many books and sometimes I'm like I found this I figured that but I know they're all mixed into like one yeah one little thing can't if somebody wants to reach out to you what's the best way to do that. You can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn. My Instagram is at Kentaro, just my first name, K-E-N-T-A-R-O, or my LinkedIn is, you can find me on Kent Yoshimura. Yeah. And finally, I'll just... And I'll let you close us... And I'll let you close us out, brother. Anything we didn't talk about. I know we discussed a lot. Obviously, I feel like you really hit home to sleep and I agree with you. But maybe you want to

close out with anything that's on your mind. You know, that I love that you brought up that rat experiment where they die in 10 minutes by drowning if they feel like no one's there to save them versus 36 hours or whatever it is when they know that there's hope. There is this mentality in business or anything in life where I think it's very easy to want to give up, you know, because things are so hard. And like I said before, it's always okay to ask for help. And most of the time, honestly, people are willing to help you. And it doesn't matter what level of business they're at. And when you have that optimism and that belief that you will succeed and even if you are struggling, people are there to help you, your business will go farther than, in my opinion. and any other mentality that you could have towards it,

that comes just from within yourself. It's great advice. Just ask. ASK, my favorite three letters. Kent, it's been awesome to spend some time with you, brother, and I hope to get to know you in the future. Thank you so much for taking time. Absolutely.

Yes, please. Thank you, man. Thank you so much.