How to Make Customers Instantly Trust You & Your Product - Jeff Byers

Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where we don't care what you think, only what you can prove. On this episode, Jeff Byers, the former NFL lineman, turned CEO of Momentus, who's built a brand trusted by elite military units, pro athletes, and high performers. Inside a $200 billion supplement industry plagued by hype and broken promises lays out how to lead relentless consistency cut through the noise of a messy market and earn trust where almost no one else has. The show starts now. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. Jeff, I'm excited to have you on here, man. Yeah, likewise. So you've done some stuff that most people haven't done before. You're going after a complete bazillion-dollar industry, one that, regrettably, I know a lot of it, for the four or five people who don't know of what you've done both professionally in the corporate world, but also in the professional sports world. Can you tell us a little bit who you are and what you're going to? Yeah, I'm Jeff Byers. I'm the CEO and co-founder of a company called Momentus. We're a leading nutritional supplement in sports nutrition company. My background is a bit different and unique. I had an incredible opportunity. I played four years in the NFL. I was an offensive lineman, journeyman. I say I did a lot of practicing because I did do a lot of practicing and I was lucky enough to play in a handful of games and all that. But if you know who I am, from my NFL days, you were a pretty big die-hard Panthers fan as a whole. But when I retired, I always knew there was life after football. I jumped into an early-stage biotech that ultimately led me to Momentus as it is today. But my vision and goal was never to be a supplement company CEO. I actually said no for a long time. And the business I started, we didn't transition into a supplement company until 2021. The middle of 2021 when I acquired and merged two businesses together that really thrust us into this sports nutrition, nutritional supplement category. And it's been an incredible journey. But the reason why I didn't want to be in it is kind of why we're having a talk is like, our industry is messy. My industry is messy. There's a lot of BS. People don't know what to believe. It's confusing. There's no oversight on air. And so you can really do whatever you want, say whatever you want. But the industry is over $200 billion. And the state of society is as sick and as unhappy as it's ever been. And when you think about what is the role of a supplement is to help you be more healthy and be more happy. And that's a lot of things what people are claiming that supplements do. The fact of the matter, supplements are supplemental to everything else you do in your life. And we got to fix that other stuff too. But there is no way that the health and happiness of society should be declining while my industry is skyrocketing. So I fundamentally believe there's something broken and that has to do with trust and transparency and efficacy and cutting the noise and the BS out of a really big, big category. So what you're saying is I can't eat Dairy Queen nonstop and then just take a supplement to offset it. God, you're ruining for me, Jeff. Dude, come on. I am ruining it. You're ruining it for me. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. So, okay, there's a couple of things I wanted to chitchat about this because you've attacked an industry and a lot of people go after industries where it's not as big and it's not as aggressive as the industry you've gone into it. But again, your office is blinding. This is what you do. You have a different exposure to things. One of the things, you know, you played professional sports, I played semi-professional sports. One of the things we're taught really early on is we get access to resources and tools and just everything across the board, being people that the average public doesn't see. They look at someone like you saying, both, they're like, oh, if I get up every day, I'm going to run every day and it's the same as what he's doing. It's not even remotely close. Can you tell me where the things in business, where you've walked into saying, hey, you know, I've had these elite things in the NFL, these elite training things my entire life. What are some of the elite things that you've done in order to attack this industry? Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of goes back to the leaders that I was around. And one of those coaches was Pete Carroll, who's a legendary coach and watching how he built and managed culture. And what makes elite and pro sports so special is a lot of that is culture, right? You have huge egos and huge high performers all around, but you get them all pointed in the same direction, rowing in the same direction. Really special things happen. But there's an insane amount of accountability. There's a super short memory overall. And also, like me as a leader, one of the things I learned most from Pete Carroll is like, you have to show up consistently every single day, right? Doesn't matter what type of leader you are or how you show up. But like, a leader who is unpredictable is the leader who no one follows, or it's a crap show, right? Because if you just won the Super Bowl, you want that person to show up the same and predictable as if you just lost the Super Bowl, right? And I think those things I've taken from a leadership perspective really at heart and look back at like, what are the things that I saw in locker rooms that work really, really well. But then I guess from like an athlete perspective, what did I like? I have the same like the ball always gets snapped, right? Whether when I was a plan, it doesn't matter. The game never waits for you. The business game never waits for you. It all the ball always gets snapped. The lack of movement is ultimately what we'll call is everybody's failure here. And time is the greatest asset and the biggest enemy that any company has, especially companies that are trying to do it really differently and grow and disrupt, right? Because time is our friend if we go fast and if we don't go fast. And so the ball always gets snapped. It doesn't wait for you. Time does not wait for anybody. You better be ready to go and you better give your best effort regardless, right? And then, right, you have a very short window to evaluate, make a decision, and the ball gets snapped again. And so it's like this short memory being really, really resilient because you're always going to get beat. You're always going to have a problem, right? And you got to learn and move forward. And if you let that problem or that mistake linger, it just drags down more and more mistakes. And ultimately your ass gets benched or like your business stutters out and fails. And so it's like, how do you move fast, right? In those moments. And then I think the other thing is showing up matters, right? And like, get into the gym when your training matters, right? Putting the time in the training room matters, right? In the film room matters. It matters. And you can't do that by not showing up. Half the battle, you got to be there. You got to be in person. You got to make the effort to do it. And what I learned is like, once you're there, then you can go optimize. But getting there, a lot of people just don't get there. They won't aren't willing to do that, right? And it's like, go see your biggest partners, whether they're your raw ingredients, your manufacturers or your marketing partners, like showing up matters, because that's how you ultimately drive differentiation. So you talked about culture and having everybody kind of row the same way in sports. It's relatively easy to do that. When you're on the field, it is a clear enemy. We understand what we're doing. Yeah, there's a little bit of infighting here and there. But in a corporate America, how do you get everybody rowing the same way? Because this is a challenging bargain. Yeah, my co-founder and president of the org, Erica, has really built the process and the operating system within Momentus, right? And why is it so easy to get a team on the scoreboard for everybody is clear. You know what winning and losing is, like, on every position, right? Because that's what sports is. Business, your play over really, really long period, right? But what guides you in sport is, A, the practice plan, the meeting schedules, right? The game plan, how you call plays, right? All of that matters. And I think a lot of people forget in business, you have to have that core underlying operating system, right? When do you lift weights? When do you go to film session? What does your practice schedule look like? Right? Like how often how much do you do X to do Y? And so it's like this operating system that you have to invest time in and resources, just a meeting cadence as well. I would love to take credit for this. That is my co-founder that she has built this internal operating system. And we've taken from a lot of different people, which you always do. But she's been able to just build our culture around, right, the rhythm of business, right? And sport is the same rhythm. But ultimately, we have a scoreboard and we talk about the scoreboard a lot as a business. And everybody knows that they have a number on their head. That's part of what we installed. Like the numbers are softer for other people. But like, what are what matters to you the most? What is the most important thing that this individual can do to hit the number that we're trying to target in 12, 24 months? It's hard because there's some disconnect, but meeting rhythms, right? How often does marketing and ops get together? How often does the leadership team get together? How often do we do off-sites? All that rhythm creates that process and creates, right, people getting on the same page. Because the problem with business, unlike sports, I mean, I think sports have this huge history of like, right, process and systems and like, you know, you practice, you know, you do this. But in business and as you're building business, you forget about some of that because early days, Eric and I, we made every decision, we did everything, right? And we were that bottleneck. But the only way you're able to get through that is by having founders that drive everything. And then you get to the stage where, oh, shit, we only go as far as our team can go. And that means you have to build system, process, rhythms. And that's how we've really got around. That is like, you build that in place, that gets people on the same page, rowing in the same direction, right? And in sport, it's a little different. But if you take a bigger step back in sport, you have the athletes that are playing on the field, and you have all the coaches, you have all the trainers, you have all the front office, that's a business, right? Like that's how it businesses like you have your thoroughbreds, we have our thoroughbreds that are to have a very specific role, right? And then we have our support staff that do very unique things, right, that those thoroughbreds, if we don't have that growth engine, right, with support, that growth engine never works. And so it's, if you think of it just as sports, and just as the game and the players, you fail, right? You got to think about coaches, GMs, right, like the community aspect of it, like all of these things, because those athletes can't go out and play, if they don't have that support, and that's like business, right? You have your thoroughbred athletes that go out and play, then you have the people who cut the grass, right? Make sure we got fricking off, right? And those people are just, is important, just don't always think about them. So what do you do when you have someone who bucks the system? Because in sports, it's easy. If you're getting a situation where you're not, you know, ex-situating in a way we need you to, if you're not, because again, I've come from a baseball world, if you're not pitching, you're not throwing strikes, you're going to get a little bit of grace period, but not much. And then we're just going to rotate somebody else in because there's a million people who want their spot. How do you do that in business as well and keep the culture alive? That has been the hardest thing to figure out, right? Because in sports, it's black or white, right? And there's always like the next man up or the next person up mentality. And you really build that over time. And so I think number one is, right, we've focused and we've, from day one, had a very, very clear set of values. And these are how we behave and how people operate. Our values are non-negotiable. We hire solely based upon them and we fire based upon them very, very often. And then we have like, gets it wants the capacity to do it. That's like, can you throw a curveball? Can you do this? Like, those are the actual technical and do you want to do it? That's that kind of core values, non-negotiable. Gets it wants the capacity to do it is like, can you do your job? Do you want to do your job? Can you grow into your job? And that's part of can we build that? And so what we do is, right, I talked about the cadence and the end of rhythm of meetings. Then what you have is, right, touch points with people, right? We grade our people on our core values and, right, gets it wants the capacity to do it of that role, specific role, four times a year. And if somebody feels off, we have that conversation right away. We call it a three strikes policy, but it sounds way harsher than it is, Charles. But like, what it is is like, what we found is when you give feedback in like a one-on-one and all of that, people here on doing a great job and moving these projects, here's all the tactical things, oh, you need to get better at X, like, it's just like, okay, I'll get better at X, right? What we found is when you say, we are having a conversation of what we need you to do better right now, that is hard. And people choose one of two ways. They choose to lean in, or they self, they vote themselves off the island, right? Both things are the right outcome, right? And it's like, you rarely ever get to two or three strikes, because you're like, either that person's like, oh, I'm heard and they're like, I'm in, or they're like, I'm out, right? And that's what we want. And that's what we need, right? And so it's kind of creating that culture. But the team knows performance matters. And the best thing that we've created, I think over the last year, year and a half, is itself policing now, right? Whereas like, right, we have people, like people on a team are like, oh, they're too slow, right? And it's like, let me see if we can get them like, people are taking other people, their peers, into like, bring them along, because they know that we have to go, we demand, right? To go fast. And we demand 100% responsibility. It's like, we need people to show up and do their jobs. And so we do culturally, we've established, this is how we hire, this is how we fire, this is how people move in and out, there, there is no ambiguity, right? So people know, hey, I got my, I have, I have a strike conversation, I get better, change my shit, right? And rather than, oh, I just had a one on one, and I got a minus on this thing. And it's like, okay, whatever, I'll get it figured out. But like, I got seven other pluses, pluses or like, because that's how we like, we hear humans, we hear the good. And then we sometimes forget the bad, also as a leader and a manager. If you're not forced to have the hard conversation, it's like, strike, like we require like three examples or the things that we can do better. Anyways, I think it's the systems and processes. And again, like my co-founder has just crushed these things. Yeah, I think you, you hit there, you know, as a manager, that's your job, your job's to have the hard conversations. You're not there to be cute and fun and hold people's hands. You're there to find the competitive advantages in the market, your competitive advantages in your workforce as well and say, listen, this is what's going on. We're not going to have a BS conversation about it. Let's get to it. You know, we can be friends another time, but at the end of the day, I'm your boss and we need to get some. And I think having that intensity matters. Now, that's, that culture is not for everyone. We run into situations in Oryx where one of the first things that I do when I'm brought in, I tell HR, I'm like, you're fired. I will wipe the entire HR, you're gonna hate me, you're just gonna get in my way. I'm like, just for the next six months, you're fired. Go on vacation, go do something else because I'm reading, running fire. But you also have found a way in your industry, which is so saturating with BS and fillers, literally, that you found a way to have a competitive advantage there as well. And it's a story that when we had our, you know, we do our intro calls, we connect, you told me this story and I was like, dude, send me stuff with it. Send me stuff now, because you did something that most people haven't done. And I want to steal your thunder from you on that one, but can you walk me through that story? Yeah, I think at the end of the day, our industry has been perceived and is operated as very commoditized, right? You just go and say, I want vitamin D or I want creatinine, you just get generic BS. That's not how food works. That's not how any of the rest of, of when we think of health, wellness, optimization, nutrition, that is like, you're just not going to buy generic BS, right, on there. And what has happened over the last 40 years of this industry? Is it just like, it's just been this race to the bottom, right? And what does that mean is like, very few companies understand their sourcing and their supply chain. They don't know where things come from. They're literally just going to a manufacturer and saying, I want protein. And they're like, here's your done protein, you know, versus like, what, what dairy, what, what region is this coming from? What power the cow has treated, right? Where, what's their average age production, all of these things that matter so much, when, when you think about the output, quality and transparency, it all starts with the wrong ingredient. And if all you do is focus on the putting multiple wrong ingredients together to make a final product, and you aren't focusing on what are the quality of those raws going in, then you have an inferior product. And for us, it's our, we call the moment to standard, it's kind of, it's three pillars and it, and it starts with this science backed curated portfolio, right, which is like science backed, right, we have our, our elite advisory board help us craft and all that, and we have the right products in there. Then it's all about sourcing, right? It's like, where are we sourcing from? When does it matter? Does it matter what type of vitamin D we get? Yes or no? Can we get the highest quality? Does that have an impact or not? Right? Sometimes it matters. And other times it doesn't. And sometimes it matters a lot. And so for us, where we focused on sourcing is, is going to put eyes on facilities of our major products, going to understand what is the pureties, what is the process, right? Are they using a water wash or an acid wash? Because ultimately that has to do with impurities on it, that has to do with cost and, and, and ultimately the end quality. And we believe our category is not something you do for a day or four or 20. It's something that you do for a lifestyle or for a lifetime. And if you're going to invest in your health and wellness and you're putting an inferior lesser quality product in your body over years, decades, that has implications, right? That's why people eat organic versus not. That's why people eat grass-fed natural beef versus not. They're making conscious decisions. And we believe if you're making a conscious decision and you're investing in your health and wellness, you probably care about those things. And so for me, like getting on an airplane, like in two days from today, day and a half now, I fly to Ireland to go to our main dairy. There's two dairies in the world that manufacture our specification of whey protein. And then I go to Norway to visit our Omega, our Omega three distillery that makes our incredibly highly potent, Omega three that we are really, really proud of. But like those things is really, are really uncommon in our category, right? Maybe somebody in the ops team goes for me as the CEO, right? Like that's my business. Yeah. Right? Those are my biggest partners. I have these massive marketing partners too that are massive to us and I go see them too. But understanding how things are made and being able to look in your eyes and say, I know where my creatine comes from, I know where my protein comes from, I know where my Omega's come from, right? I know where these things come from is important to me. But also it allows us to uphold our moment of standard in a way that doesn't. So when we say, Hey, we have the highest quality protein that we can find for our business. That's true. I believe that because I've went everywhere. Yeah. I think you said it, you know, in the earlier call, you said you flew out and you met with a distributor and the supplier and I cool. What, you know, what else have you seen? What else is everybody else you've shown this to? What did they say? And they were like, no one's ever, no one's ever come and seen this before. No one flew out to that part of the world and did that, which I was like, okay, now this is a different conversation because people want to know, right? You know, again, this is a $2 billion industry at the bare minimum. It's taking off. $200 billion. Sorry, $200 billion industry. People are like, well, how do you penetrate a market like that? Do you have the fancy, you know, model doing this or do you show up and have an Instagram thing or like, no, this is my USP. I'm going to sit there and tell you, this is exactly where my stuff comes from, not out of theory. I have stood and touched the machines. And I think that's something that most people don't understand when they're trying to get success and they're trying to have proven growth. They're not going to have that USP. Well, I think the challenge, especially in my category, is it's really easy to build a business fast, right? And our thought process is if we want, like, we have an internal saying, we say we want to be the anti-supplement supplement company, right? We want to challenge the industry to do better. And we talk about 15, 20, 30 years. The only way you do that is by building a foundation on quality and transparency and sourcing, right? We could, like, we, like, we don't work on TikTok. Why? Because we won't say crazy things, because that is not our brand DNA and our brand ethos. And most businesses in our category are like TikToks that the Holy Grail unlock. And it's like, okay, great. That is not how you build a brand that is still leading in 20 years. And so the hardest thing that we do is that I think we do as a business is when we are making big decisions, what does this do for our business in 20 years? Is this help us or hurt us? Help us or hurt us, right? And it's like product portfolio, product category, sourcing, all of those things. Because ultimately, maybe it's a wash and then doesn't matter to that decision. And then you make a decision based on economics or marketing or growth. But ultimately, when you make big decisions, you need to look forward on what it is. And that long term thinking is sometimes at odds with short term profitability. And that is hard. And what is, like, and most people in our industry aren't always looking, it's like, some of the seat yos in our space, it's like, it's their seventh supplement company, they just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, because it's an easy place to make money. Eat now, like air quote, right? Like it's so big. And there's you can build a business that's seven people that can do $50 million in our category. But that brand is not here in 1015 years as leading like, that's the difference. I believe what I want to build, because I want to create change, what we talked about early on is like, the industry is massive, and it's doing a huge disservice. I want to help change that to directory. I want to be a positive part of the health and wellness and optimization of society. I just don't want to be a blip on the on the radar. So how do you deal with the the contradicting science, right? So there's a lot of people out there. So go you need to be purely plant based, or you need this is this supplement, you need that supplement, and you're making these universal claims to different body types, different blood work, different environments. How do you handle that onslaught? I think that's why we don't work on places like TikTok, or, right, like, like, traditional meta influencers, right? Because we won't say those things. And ultimately, we're all more alike than we are not as humans. But at the end of the day, we all have different goals, different challenges. And therefore, what we need to supplement, and how we do that matters, right? Some people like, Oh, I'm carnivore, and it crushes for me, great. You found something that works. Oh, I'm a vegan. Great. I don't really care, right? What I care is that you have found things that are sustainable over long periods of time that drive optimal health. And the research is always right going to ebb and flow on there, right? Guess what? We know proteins important, right? Creatine has almost been irrefutable based upon the amount of research out there. Omega three fatty acids, right? Same. And it's like, focus on the foundational things. And that's like for us, like, we don't have a, you know, these crazy products that are out there that very few people have ever heard of, or that are fixing it or proprietary blends, because that shit doesn't matter, right? Those are that's that can be noise, unless you get blood work, or you're trying to fix a specific problem within your, your end of one human. And so like, clamp based, all of this, and people have strong opinions. And for me, I'm stoked. Opinions is what people what matters in the world. And like, but you got to realize that every I I'm different than you, like I played, I played, I was an offensive lineman playing the NFL, you might have a messed up shoulder, I got messed up back hips foot, right? All these things like we have different things that we do. Therefore, we approach the gym differently. We approach the things like, why would we say, oh, once anyways, I, that's part of the challenges, the noise is so loud. So how do you do this is really important. How do you cut through that noise, right? Because we do have different things you you spent your professional career in car accidents over and over and over, and then willingly getting back in to do it. You know, I've got a torn labor in my left arm. So it changes how I work out and how I train. I didn't get into, you know, car accidents seven times a day during practice. Even when we come to business, you know, we approach things differently. I come from a tech background. I come from a systems and service provider background. So I can scale those in my sleep. That's easy for me. This is a product background. This is a different conversation. How do you approach these differently and penetrate through? Yeah, yeah, I think if we, we haven't done it great all the time, right? And we continue to get better. And I think, you know, like people used to ask me like, Oh, what should I take? And I just told them what I took. And I realized, Oh, that's really wrong. That's not good. Right. And so what we did was we started asking the smartest people, the pro sports dieticians, the exercise physiologists, the researchers, Hey, what are the core foundational items that matter? Right. We think about things that you can supplement. And that's we built what we call the momentous three protein, creatine, and omegas. Right. It's like, that is a foundation that you can build on. And if you do those things over long periods of time, they have immense amounts of clinical data and research, then everything else is condition specific. Right. And you can get protein from a lot of different sources. Awesome. Right. Creatine a little bit harder, but like creatine is relatively inexpensive for the highest quality stuff out there. Right. And like, it's really hard to get from your diet. And then omegas is the same way, but the like invest in what matters and when you can add. And so for us, like, we have a plant protein, we have a whey protein, we have unflavored, we have flavor. So like, how do we meet consumers with where they're at? Right. Creatine, we have different form factors, right? Omegas, we have a vegan omega, and we have a official omega. And it's like, how do we meet the consumer with our hour? If we say these matter the most, hit that consumer, right? Say, let's build around so that we can solve 90% of that and then build the biggest buckets around them, the biggest conditions. It's like, Charles, you have an issue with sleep? Cool. Right. Have you tried these behavior things, etc. Boom. And so, but what we try to do is like, we don't try to go out there and be like, sleep, everybody needs to take sleep, because it does x, y, and z. It's like, I don't take sleep. Why? I sleep great. Right. I don't know why I just do. I always have, right? It's one of my gifts on there. Other people sleep like crap, right? And that's, that's just the nature of the game. Yeah. And right, we give and take it. So it's like, how do you break it down simplicity, right? And what we try to do from a marketing perspective is talk about the foundation, right? And then we try to bring in behaviors, product guides, right, and create that education around why and how, and then leverage our partners. Because I think the biggest thing for us is people are going to take what they think they want to take, not just when we say it. And so we want to be known as the high trust brand and low trust category. We have standards that are uncompromisable, right? And we're going to certify what is in the product is actually in the product every single time, because that's what we do. And so if you need vitamin D, momentous is clearly the answer. If you need, right, if you need a sleep product, let's go to momentous first. And that's our, our goal. And what we want our partners and our like large ecosystem of people to say momentous is the standard. Right. So, and you're going through this as a, as a business owner, and as you're creating this, because a lot of people are trying to bring product to market, right? They're like, okay, we've got, we've got an active position, but fulfillment on this is a challenge because, you know, we've got a very intense political environment right now. That's about as, about as intense as I'll talk about that. But we've got an intense political environment. We've got a massive amount of things going on with tariffs. We've got con countries that don't like interacting with us the way they used to. How do you go through? Because again, acquisition is acquisition. And again, and I'm skipping ahead and I'll get the audience caught up on this. When you're playing collegiate sports, when you're playing semi professional or professional sports, you're not eating the same food as everyone else. You need to understand that's really important. You're not taking the same supplements, you're not sleeping on the same beds, you're not using the same blue light glasses. You're not doing any of that. Everything is very much through a filter and using the best of the best stuff. So a lot of your brand and a lot of it is used in environments where performance matters. Because everyone looks at college football and like, Oh, that's fine. It's just a game. No, it's a huge industry that makes an immense amount of money. And they're very much putting things in in a specific way. So for everybody listening at home, yes, we're all cheating. We're all using supplements. We're using, I remember when I, you know, I played college ball, all of a sudden they looked at my cleats like you're not wearing that anymore. I'm like, why? Well, we molded your foot and this works better for your foot and this metal works better on the cleats. I was like, you're talking about the metal and the dead cleat? What are you talking about? It's a pair of cleats. What are you talking about? So there is a competitive advantage that most people don't have and momentous has penetrated into that market. Now we're learning to do an environment of bringing them more to the public versus to that environment. How do you handle fulfillment? How do you make the relationships with vendors? How do you find the manufacturers where, yeah, maybe they go out and they do nice things to you because you were there on a Tuesday, but as soon as you leave Wednesday, they're going to put chalk and, you know, piss in there. How do you deal with fulfillment and all of that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's all around like this last core pillar of the standard is trust but verify. Everything that we do, right, every finished product off the line in a jar like this, we test it, right? It is test every batch, every single time, right? Because it's one thing for a wrong, like to go see a wrong green and supplier and they say, oh, this is how clean it is. This is how good it is. Look at our great test results and everybody will show you great test results. In fact, the matter is what comes out on the other end often is very, very different and changes batch to batch. And so like for us, it's like you have wrong ingredients that come in, then they hit a, like then they get shipped sometimes across the world or across the country. And then they hit a man, a co-man, right, that blends and packages. Lots of things happen in that warehouse, right? Lots of things happen on that blender. Lots of things go through those pipes. And then you have your container that you put it in. Lots of things happen in that manufacturing process too. And then you have your finished goods and you're like, well, there's a lot of steps. And so what we find in those step processes is cross contamination, if machines aren't cleaned correctly, if it's stored next to something that it shouldn't be stored next to, or if it's shipped in a container, all those things matter to us. And that's why you always trust but verify at the end. It's like, hey, we believe we found the best manufacturing partners and the best sourcing, but the money we're the most. And if it doesn't test to spec, we reject. So how do you do in your industry, when you're doing that and they're sending garbage, and it happens to be a vendor that you've worked with for a long time, you have a great relationship with them, but they're screwing the pooch, they're cutting corners, they're doing that. How do you address that? What is the step by step in that you just bring a hammer or what do you do? They know we have zero tolerance. Okay. Right. And they say, it's the same part of your culture with the three strikes. It's that same thing. It's like, listen, we're not here to be your friend. Yeah, but like, I like, lots of art, my employees are our friends. But they know when it's a when it's time to perform, it's time to perform. And if you don't perform, that's a different, that's a different conversation than a friend conversation. Right. We go hang out, have dinner, go work out, do all that. You have to show up and perform for us. And so everybody across the supply chain, like put in perspective, like in the last month, we've rejected three full containers of a wrong ingredient, just sent it back, because it didn't meet our spec. Right. And that's like, and guess what, our supplier was like, yep, okay, they just going to sell to somebody else at the end of the day. Or I mean, but it doesn't meet our standards. And they know that if we've told them these are our standards, contractually, if it doesn't pass these tests, you do, we do not accept this production run. And it does, but like, from a business perspective, we are our multi vitamin is one of the most comprehensive multis on the market. We were out of stock for three and a half months almost of it, because we failed three production ones in a row. On it, right. Our command doesn't pay us for our loss sales on there, right, like the people putting together the blend, right, we eat the loss sales, and it was about $700,000 in Q1, right. And that's, but that's, that's our standards. And we're okay with that. Hey, we could have, we could have just said, it's okay, right, like, it was one ingredient that was a tiny ingredient that didn't meet our spec. And it just is what it is. And we had to go find a new raw ingredient supplier, like for one of like 70 different ingredients in that product. And that's just our that's who we are. And our command understands it. They are like, yep, yep, this is momentous. They have other businesses that don't, hey, I'm sure we pay for it. I mean, I know we pay for it in our costs. But I so for me, yeah. So you've got this standard, both internally and externally with your suppliers and the people that are working with you on a day to day basis. How do you apply that level standard to growth then? Because if you have this, this bar that everyone must meet, and you're trying to connect with people, and you're not advertising the way that normal people do in the rest of the world, which is just regrettably your industry is, and I said this with as nice as possible, I've been around this industry for 34 years, 33 years, you know, because my dad was Senior Vice President of Bali's Total Fitness, who's Senior Vice President of GNC, and I knew the trash that was going in there. I mean, we would sit there and like, don't eat that. He's like, don't like, I'd go to, I'd go visit him in one of the stores, and I can't really grab one of these bars. He's like, don't eat that. Like, absolutely. Don't put that in your mouth. So we knew back then, and it's only gotten better. How do you market, how do you penetrate into a market and what your branding cycle looked like? Yeah, I think because our roots, I mean, we didn't really talk about the roots of the business, but the underlying business, right, we started with a $1.8 million contract with the Department of Defense to combine that with venture capital funds. And that was in 2018. And we were in the consumer biotech space. And we ultimately didn't get into the, into, right, the supplement space until 2021. And our roots are very, very different, right, as a whole. And so, right, we come from this background of clinical research of working with the best. And we were in pro and college sports in that time and like, this really unique space. And when we went into supplements and all of that, it was like, that like, that is our roots, we are born, we like, people like, Oh, you're a DTC native business. I'm like, I'm a pro and college sports US military native business. Like, we were wholesaling to those. Those were our customers. We built a little small DTC business on the back end. And then in 2022, we blew up in Ecom land. And that was because what we did was we continue to serve the best people in the world and do it right over and over and over again. And so then when we got into this huge TAM, that is sports nutrition supplements, and the momentous brand with born and pro and college sports, it was really natural for us to start partnering with these big voices in health and wellness that right, our PhDs, and they're like, Oh, my friends at so and so trust you, I trust you. And they know, as you know, man, it's hard to put my name behind something here. My brand is my name. And if I'm repping a BS brand, that's high risk. And so we became this high trust brand in a low trust category, like challenge your mindset as you can see, but like, really focus on the best. And we still most like, we still sell to every NFL team, every one of them as a customer, we sell nearly every other professional and college sports team in this country. We have some really unique things with the department of defense, we've won nine contracts with them to date, right? Like, those are our roots, those are the people that give us this really deep keel, right, like that keep us centered and grounded, and make us do it better than it's ever been done before. And so that flywheel has spun off, right, not low, low funnel, lower funnel marketing, it's spun off big top of funnel, middle funnel marketing. So we have big voices that are saying, Momentus is the best. And right, whether that was Dr. Hubertman or Tim Ferriss or Rich Roll or Dr. Stacy Sims, these people who are helping set the culture, and now we have a guy named Arnold Schwarzenegger. But those things took three plus years, a lot of those relationships of showing them that we are different, showing them that we will make hard decisions to cut products, change products that are better for consumers for them. And so it's like this flywheel of what I say, keeping like being at the forefront of high performance, spun off all these big name people. And now, all these influential people like we want Momentus, how do we work with Momentus? And rather than saying like, Oh, we're going to go after, you know, the transactional TikTok or Meta or whatever, we're going after people who are authoritative, right, that have transcended those types of things, or who are key opinion leaders, right, ultimately that drive that. And what that has allowed us to do is now work into these other spaces that are like, well, the people I trust, trust Momentus. So that's why I rep momentus. Yeah, very early on when, when the podcast took off, there was a specific brand, I'm not going to mention the brand, that wanted me to sell their stuff. It's a, I'll say it's a green brand. So I would go with that. It's got green, it's got green covers. And I immediately rejected it, even though it was a huge deal. Because the product that's inside of there was absolute trash, because I asked them, I said, give me, show me the signs. They're like, what? I'm like, show me the signs. Show me someone that you've worked with where you saw the blood work before, and we saw the blood work after. Show me walls of studies with that. They're like, well, we can't, but we'll pay you lots of money. I'm like, no, that, that's not proven to me. That's a different conversation. So when you're going in that, I'm curious, when you're working with contracts like the DOD, when you're working with contracts of professional sports, what are the things that they're, their litmus tests that they're asking you, because there are other business owners that we work with that are going to ask like, Hey, I want to penetrate a market like that. I want to fill the top of my funnel with that. What are the things that you've done in order to do that as a purely relationship base? Or is it just because you're a good guy or how do you do that? I think it starts with doing the right thing over and over again. Like for me, like I had a really clear litmus test of like, it has to be like the people who nobody knows that are the leaders had to be able to be behind it. And so it's like doing that right thing, right? And being very core, like there was a lot of people that were like, Oh, you should like, you should source your way protein different. It's way cheaper, way more accessible. And it's like, Nope. I just fundamentally, like it was a no, right? And it's like, Oh, you should do this or you should go here. And it's like, No, no, no, why? Because like, I always had that long term picture of like, we're trying to do it different, not like everybody else. And so when you really want to be a challenger, the second you start accepting what everybody else is doing, right? And you're just, you're just on your way to that. And that's not if you want to be a challenger brand, and you want to do it better than it's ever been done before, you got to make those decisions. And then it's then it then it has to do with like, showing up continuously the same way, right? And for me, the investment in the relationship is an investment in saying, this is what we do differently. And yes, if you ask for X, I'm going to do X, right? Or I'm going to say, Hey, X doesn't make sense. What about Y? And there have been countless steps along the process where somebody's like, you won't do that, you won't get that certification. I was like, why not? Right? And he's like, Oh, it costs too much money. It's like, boom, got it. Right? Oh, you won't, you won't do that clinical research, you won't show up to this thing is like, yeah, we were like, why wouldn't we? But the problem is most people don't think about those things. They're like, how do I get a deal done? How do I get a deal done? How do I get a deal done? Right? Arnold's a great example. Like, it took almost three full years to get a deal done with Arnold Schwarzenegger. And it was just this constant showing them we're doing it better and different. It wasn't a day one, let's do a deal. It was like, Oh, man, it'd be cool to partner together. And what you learn, while you get to know those people, what matters to them. And when you build these big, rich, deep partnerships, right, it is not just a transaction, it's about how do you build something that's meaningful to them, right, and meaningful to you. And so it's like, but that takes time and effort to do that. But again, it takes doing it over and over and over and over again, right? And it was there were years that were real hard and momentous. Like, we pulled the product off the market in 2023, that just single handed late and that was a 20 what year we in 2425. And in 2024, that that made us unprofitable the whole year, we pulled one product in Q2, and it took all of the EBITDA out of our business. That was a and we knew that when we did that, it was going to do that. But it did not in our portfolio, it was duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, goose, right. And it was like, get the goose out, right? We got the goose out. And ultimately, right, maybe we'd be way more profitable than we are today. But in that short term, it was really hard. I have investors, I have a board, right. And we had to say, Hey, we're going to lose $4 million in profit by one product that we're choosing to not do anymore. And here's why, because it doesn't fit our brand curation. And it's a goose in a portfolio of ducks. And we believe that long term, it will set us up better. Doing those things, partners like, Oh, that's interesting. They're not just money first. Ooh, that's interesting. They actually care about their standards. Ooh, that's interesting. And whatever those standards are, whatever your vision is for that business, when you start making decisions away from that as a founder, as a CEO, then this does not become authentic. This becomes transactional. In transactional relationships, they work, but they don't work long term. And they always, I've found that the transactional relationships always end the worst. I think you're talking about this as a relationship. Yeah, sure, you've got Arnold, but I guarantee you that in three months, if you don't keep that standard that he agreed to or saw for the last three years, he's gone. Absolutely disappears. So when you're a disruptor in the force, when you're being signal versus noise, when you are that lighthouse amongst the fog, you're going to get people to get pissed off at you. There's just no way around it. You're going to get people to get grumpy and they're going to hunt you. And regrettably, for those of you who are listening who haven't broken certain figures yet, just understand when you do, when you break certain figures, they're going to come at you. It is what it is. And it's expected. It is what it is. To put it in a sports thing, a sports analogy, you're fine until you catch the ball. The minute you catch the ball, everybody wants to kill you. So you've caught in a lot of these industries, you've caught in that ball. You are the tallest blade of grass and it's got to try and get cut. Can you share some of the examples of that and the ways that you've survived that hit? Yeah, I think number one is always hitting it head on, right? Like there was a consumer reports report that came out and it was like like a complete hit piece on a lot of people. It was like, here's a reality. Yes, right? We've always like, you can see these test results on our website. It was about plant protein and like spoiler alert, plant proteins have a little more heavy metals than whey protein. Why? Because it comes from the ground and that's what happens. But it was like, you will die if you eat plant protein. I was like, this is fair. This is just noise. Noise, noise, noise. It's like, here's our perspective. Here's what we believe. We've always shared these results with you, never tried to hide them. And this is the actual reality of what we're talking about. And just always being genuine and not being like, they're idiots. They don't know what they're talking about. It's like, hey, context is key and everything. And when you take things out of context, it hurts. And guess what? People are going to knock us, they always will. And you also just have to have a thick skin sometimes. And it's like, hey, you know, be unkillable here. And being unkillable sometimes take on the higher road, sometimes knowing not what to engage, sometimes just being genuine, being like, hey, we have to up. And like, it is what it is. And sometimes, you know, being being really, really, really transparent. And like, here's why we made a decision. Here's what why it matters as a whole. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But what what we care about is building a brand that consumers resonate with over long periods of time, right? And I was with, yeah, there's always going to be attackers that will be to the end, end of time. And it's an honor to be attacked to be quite yet. It really is. And I also think understanding that not every customer is your customer, not every person is your person. I think it's a really important thing. Because, you know, when this comes out, or the one my book came out when all these other stuff came out, I'm going to get attacked, I'm like, oh, you're not my people. And that's okay. I was on stage this weekend with a group of people and some of them, we did, we did a seven figure and they loved it. We did seven figures right from the, they loved it. It was this thing. Awesome. And there's other people in the group that are like, oh, these guys are SOBs, which we get, we're like, here, here's your money back. How about I say, we don't care. Not everybody you want to work with is your is going to do it. Just like not every supplement that you're going to take needs to be at this level. There are some supplements out there that you could, if it's for you, you could take a different path. But when you hold that standard, it seems like one of the reasons you guys are so successful and are doing this is if you've held a standard, not only for your products and your supplements, but also for your people. And you're going to get resistance in there as well. So what happens when you have an employee? And how do you deal with an employee that bucks that system, who you've trusted and then that trust is violated, just like a vendor's trust is violated? How do you deal with those? People are, as you know, Charles, people are the hardest, right? Because at the end of the day, they are humans. And there's more than just a job typically as at play. And we had a mentor, I don't know how long, like two or three years ago. And he was like, you just got to do it out of love. Right. And remember that they are human. And sometimes you don't say everything you want to say. And as the founder or leader, sometimes just to get to eat it. And, you know, like we moved on from somebody and I just got to shut up and just take it, right? Because we're already moving on, it doesn't do me any good. Right. And on there and it was really hard to just like bite my tongue, get lashed for all the things that I did wrong. Right. And some of them have truths to them, but some of them are missing context. And you walk away from that. And it's like, always take the high road when you're getting when you're moving away from people, always. Because the right, one of the greatest things we've had is we've had two people that we that left this business that ultimately have come back to this business. They've taken like two and a half, two years off. And right, I one of them, I would have sworn to God, they would have never come back a friend, right? Friend of the family, like got close with my wife, right? All these things. And it was like, oh, I we we napalm the shit out of that one. And I handled it terrible. And right, some water went on the bridge, some more water, right? And we just and what it turned out is we both needed to grow. And now she's like our chief marketing officer. And she's a baller. Right. And but it was one of those things when, you know, when we were looking for a new leader in marketing, I called her. And I was like, Hey, do you have anybody in your network? And she's like, What about me? I was like, Do you want to come back? Right? You know, it was like, but that's try to take the high road, right? And it's hard. But you have to have those conversations. And what I've always the regret that I always have is when you know, you know, and make that decision, then I always am like, Damn, I wish I would have done this three weeks earlier. Right? I wish it would have like, right? Because you just don't that doesn't change. Once once you've made the decision, it's done. And there's no better time because then it's all like, they then you then people start like, Oh, man, three weeks ago, it's kind of awkward was did they know? And they not tell me. And so it's hard. It's hard. And in the young growing business, everybody matters. But guess what? You figure it out, right? If that means I got to work a little harder the next three months before we backfill, great. But also what that means, maybe you prioritize your shit a little better. Anyway, I just people are really hard and like, approach every hard people conversation out of love. Remember, right? They are the ones that are suffering like, as much like the desert decisions been made, have it just be done. And, and like, you're also going to just very few. Some people are very gracious, a lot of people, right? In the heat of battle, say a lot about this and mean things. And they might try to come after you and you just always take the high road, always take the high road, try to take the high road. I do write because at the end of the day, the world's fucking small. And it's the idea that the longer you take to make a decision, the more it's going to cost you. It's just that simple. It's like being on a train, heading in the wrong direction, get off as soon as you can, because it's less way to head the other way back. And then we talk about, you know, getting mentors and getting in that situation. One of my mentors taught me, you know, because I was having a moment when the first people I ever had a fire, I was like, you know, this person's got a family, person got kids, how am I going to do this? And he sat down and he goes, look at this, you've got this one person. And yes, it's going to be devastating to their family. But you have 40 other families that you need to protect. So you have to make that decision. And they're never easy. And it's never fun. But again, being that outlier and keeping that level and that standard has been really challenging. What is one thing in your industry that the other supplements do? And I'm not naming other companies, but you're like, this one supplement for the love of God, if you never buy it from anyone else, please don't buy this trash. This is the one you can't mess around with. Don't put blah, blah, blah on your system unless you know where it comes from. Because it's just we've seen the research because you're, you're, you know, you're the tip of the spear when it comes to this. What is one that you're like, good God, don't put that in your system. Oh God. This is a dangerous question. I'll, I'll go, I'll kind of go two different directions here. I'll give you two different answers. Like, I think the peptide world is really dangerous right now. Right? It's, everything is research grade, which means there is nothing about it. And we don't know. We really, really don't know. And I would say we are, we are years, if not more away from understanding the true implications of what some of these research peptides can or cannot do or have problems. Also, yeah, the long-term effects of them as well, because I just don't think injecting Windex into your butthole is probably a good idea. You might want to have some other step on that. So, so I'll say like, I'm just like a complete people ask me all the time, like, Oh, peptides. I'm like, why no, like, there are so many other things right now that can solve it. Right. Like, if you have a crazy cancer and there's a peptide that can help, potentially help, you don't like, yes, but if you're trying to optimize and be, live healthier and longer, like no research, nothing. And then I would say on the supplement side, the one that I, the one that I think has the, like, it's like as deep as a Grand Canyon as why is the Grand Canyon from a, from a quality efficacy perspective is an Omega 3. Right. And when you think about that is like the efficacious dose of Omega 3 fatty acids is about 1.5 grams or more per day. And that, and that's DHA and EPA, right, combined, we do a one to one ratio, which we believe is the best ratio because it's the lowest taxing on your body and has the best benefits. But overall, most Omega 3s or most fish oils are just fish oil, right, and not heavy in the Omega 3s. And fish also have a lot of heavy metals in them, right. And the processing, the temperatures, how it's stored, the capsules and all that really, really matters, right in there. And so you truly get what you pay for in an Omega 3 supplement, a, from a dosage perspective, but B, from a quality heavy metals toxins perspective as well. And, you know, like my dad was like, is my greatest example of this. And he's like, Oh, I, I've been buying this, I've been buying 180 servings from the big box store, you know, for the last 20 years, and it's awesome. And I was like, pull it out, take a picture of it, and let's compare labels. And he was like, well, it has the same amount of fish oil in it, but it has one tenth of the amount of Omega 3s. And I was like, so you have to take 10 of these surfines to match one of ours. And I was like, what fish is it coming from? Where is it? What is it? Right. Yeah. Right. Like you want small fish, right? Sardines, anchovies, macarons, because they're small in food chain, they have less mercury, less heavy metals, right? Right. Like you don't want it to go bigger up. And like some fish, some fish oil, you can buy off the shelf, you have no idea what fish they come from, or how they're distilled, or they're cold processed. Anyways, so fish oil is the one that I think is the gap is wide. And there's some great companies out there. We are really proud of our, our Omega 3, like really, really proud. And we have like the most potent vegan Omega 3 on the market too. But like, that is one that I find is just like as deep and as wide as the Grand Canyon in terms of differences. And there's some people on one side and there's a lot of people on another. And the bottom is ripe with craziness. All right. So I'm going to selfishly ask for sleep, because I've, all my listeners are entrepreneurs, we're all founders, we're all small business owners. We run an environment where we just don't sleep well. It is probably the biggest thing that we run into in our, this specific niche. When we go in, when I talk to angel investors, when I talk to VCs, when we all get around, like, Hey, when was the last time you slept? You're like, what's sleep? I don't, I don't speak Sanskrit. I don't know what that word is. What are you talking about? Is there a magic thing? Is there something that Mr. I sleep really well over there, you bastard? For the rest of us who don't sleep well, what are the things that you would look at for sleep? I thought, well, I think I sleep really well because I get really, I burn really, really hot, right? And like, I just like, go, go, go. And like, I just shut down. Like, I can't, like, I literally, I literally can't, and that's part of like my training routine. Like, I'm a really high energy person. Overall, and like, I also really good hygiene when it comes to, right, when I train, when I work out, how I do those things that, right, what you find is the hygiene throughout the day actually really matters as a whole. And right, for me, how do I protect my time and my day and all of that? Like, my sleep hygiene is good. But like, I would say my, my, my circadian rhythm is what's good across that. And like, how do you optimize that? So like, when you eat, how you eat, caffeine, all of those things. And it just like, I've naturally done that. But honestly, like, Charles, like, back when I played in the NFL before sleep was a fucking thing, I was like, tracking sleep, right? Like, did I sleep good? Did I not sleep because it's so like, I just realized it was correlated to everything as a whole. So when I think about sleep, I think the number one thing is sleep hygiene before bed, right? And I know like the nights that I don't sleep well, it's because I'm staring at my computer till 11 or 12 o'clock at night, like, I'm up ripping and my brain's going, right? It's really, really hard. When you're going, you're going, right? And for me, it's like, how do I create habits that change that is super important. And a lot of times, that's not realistic. I choose to work early, like I always rather wake up and work than stay up, right? Like I try to go to bed. And if I need to wake up at four to get stuff done, I wake up at four, right? That's just my MO. I would rather not. So I keep my bedtime consistent. There are things that help you downregulate, right? As a whole, like apigenin, alfionine can really help you downregulate at night, right? That I think is really important to some people who burn really hot or have a hard time doing that as a whole. So that downregulation is super important. As a whole, I, anyways, I think that's, that's, that's important. So when we're going through and people want to track this down, because obviously, you come front, you come into this industry with a very different perspective, not only is professional sports, but also your previous, you know, clients are DoD. They are professional sports. They're people who it matters. Because, you know, you go to a big box store, they don't really care if you're performing on that high level. When you're talking about the clients that you've grown with, if they don't perform well, some of them don't come home. So performance matters in that environment. If someone's tracking it down, they're like, man, Jeff, I want to know more. I want to get access to how do people track you down? What's your personal home number? What's your personal, I'm kidding. You know, what do we do? How do we, how do we connect? How do people find you? What's the best way to go forward? Yeah. For me, I'm like pretty off of social media as just an FYI, just something I've chosen not to do with my life. And, but I'm on LinkedIn. It's kind of a dumpster fire for me as a whole, just to be completely transparent. But I'd also say like, a lot of me comes out in our brand, right? And our team has a wonder does a wonderful job of really breaking things down, like find me in LinkedIn. I'm, you know, like, it's easy to find me in LinkedIn on there. And that would be the best way to do that. But also like customer service gets a lot of questions that are directed towards me that I actually answer on there. People like, Hey, you know, I, you know, saw Jeff in the airport or I met Jeff here or I listened to the podcast here, like, can you ask him this? And it's like, yeah, why not? Like easy as a whole. So I would say that's super important as ways like just navigate through it. Like I've tried to not be on social media because I find that when I am on social media, I go down black holes. So yes, yes. I have found that as well. And I worked very hard on getting off social media. I'm the opposite that you are. When people reach out directly to me, you're going to run into a bunch of gatekeepers that I put there on purpose. People like, Oh, you know, I didn't know I was on LinkedIn for over a decade until I, you know, like, Hey, you've been on LinkedIn for a decade, but I haven't logged in since, you know, it's been a while. So working on that. But and if someone wants access to your brand, or, you know, where do they go? What's the best website to take a look at it? Yeah, live momentous.com is, is the brand. We're on Amazon. We're sold in vitamin shop now as well, which has been a big coup for us because we've become like this high quality brand in there and done really well. But yeah, live momentous.com is the best place to find us. Amazon super easy, our whole product portfolio is there. You can get it most places by this afternoon. Perfect. I appreciate you coming on Jeff and sharing some of the wisdom on how you, you know, kind of disrupt the $200 billion industry. Awesome. Thanks, Charles. Jeff plays the long game. He treats time like an opponent, engineers operating systems where most people slap on marketing and refuses to let his label cash checks his ingredients can't honor a four year NFL lineman who never planned on running a supplement company now ships to the military and stocks vitamin shop shelves. And the takeaway is this one, the ball always gets snapped, whether you're ready or not, leaders who waiver, lose the locker room and a real brand gets made in person at the factory with the partner in the room. We'll catch you on the next episode.