SPEAKER_01
I don't know what you're doing per month, but I would not be shocked if this was doing between six and eight million a month in revenue. Blink twice if I'm right.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you guys are pretty on point with your ballpark. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01
All right, what's up? We got Derek from more plates, more dates here. Derek, I made a fatal mistake before this podcast. I don't know if you know this, but I was doing research last night.

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

SPEAKER_02
R slash more plates, more dates. To be clear, this is not like my subreddit. I didn't start it, but

SPEAKER_01
I didn't realize this at the time. Okay, so I'm on this subreddit thinking that's your subreddit. Think of these are just polite, civil, faithful fans.

In fact, it says there's 163,000 faithfuls. That's how they call the members. It is a top 1% subreddit.

So you're doing really well. And I say, Hey, I'm interviewing Derek. He's coming on a product.

We're going to hang out. What should we talk about? And I said, you know, give me some ideas hoping that this, you know, I do this like a, you know, unless you time of post was like the 1am. And I go to sleep and I wake up and I said, Oh, let me just check that real quick.

Maybe somebody had some really thoughtful questions. Here's the breakdown. 98% of them want to know how big your penis is.

That's the number one comment. By far, everybody said the same exact thing. I don't know if that's an inside joke or you just have some really, really eager fans.

And then the second was like, bro, you needed to know this is a trolling subreddit. This is not a, this is not the serious subreddit of like people trying to have a real conversation. Like you didn't, you didn't know what you were getting yourself into.

SPEAKER_03
And sure enough, I did not. The third comment was bring a ruler.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I can imagine what kind of stuff you got. Had an onslaught of for sure. There's a decent amount of trolling and I don't know, just like shitposting that goes on there.

But there is some insightful stuff. Like I, I'm a moderator on it. I didn't start it, but I do check in time to time.

And I've been pretty shocked how much it's ramped up. Like, I don't know what I don't know what a good subreddit is in size, but it seems like this is a good one. Yeah. So Derek, what I've

SPEAKER_03
been watching you for years. I remember watching you when you were doing like, I think a cottage cheese or some type of like protein intake video. And you looked horrible because I believe you were an amateur, maybe even more serious than amateur bodybuilder and you were like cutting and you looked just miserable when you were like really lean.

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

And what do you have now? 1.5 million subscribers, 1.8?

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think, let's see, 1.89. Yeah. Yeah. So you've built like a pretty like what it appears

SPEAKER_03
to be monster businesses, but you've done it like with some really high integrity, it feels like. And you've also like your video setup is like almost janky, although I feel like that's part of the shtick. But it's just like all about like just really high quality content that is well

SPEAKER_02
researched. Yeah, it's almost, it's quite unintentional, the jankiness, because I just don't know what I'm doing when it comes to, I don't know, videography and whatnot. So every time I try and spurs it up, it just, I fail miserably.

So I just leave it the same. But I've heard a rumor,

SPEAKER_03
I've heard a rumor that you've gotten, you know, you've clearly have gotten quite successful. I imagine your businesses are doing tens of millions in revenue. I heard a rumor that you've moved to a really nice house.

And between your first apartment when you started and your second better apartment and your third nice house, that you purposely make the background look exactly the same to the point of you've even like took a wall from your first apartment into the third

SPEAKER_01
place. Is that true? Is this true? Cause we've been saying this, we've been spreading this rumor, whether it's true or not. I heard a rumor from my mouth.

Okay, I gotta know first who told you that.

SPEAKER_03
I won't say, I won't say. One of your, one of your friends. Oh, they fucked me over.

SPEAKER_02
It is not a green screen. I'll tell you that. So a lot of people wonder if it is a green screen.

SPEAKER_03
It's not, some people use it. It doesn't sound like a real wall. That did not sound like a real wall.

SPEAKER_02
It's a lot of people use it in their zoom calls now, apparently, which is crazy. They've like pulled the background out, but yeah, it's, it's been the same background for a while. It may or may not be a sauna.

Some people, you know, that's the prevalent rumor as well. But I think it's a secret that's going to live and die with the channel. You also have done a good job of like

SPEAKER_03
somewhat hiding your identity. I mean, you have to go like pretty deep in order to find like your full name. And you've done a good job of like kind of staying under the radar while also being

SPEAKER_02
incredibly popular. Yeah, yeah. It's, I don't know.

I don't know how I even managed to have the foresight to think of that at the time, but it just seemed like a reasonable idea given if you were ever going to become popular to avoid, I don't know, weirdos and stuff. With that said, there's also the, you know, question if you're going to be able to leave as much of a legacy without your last name out there. But I don't know how much I believe in that anyway.

So it seems

SPEAKER_03
like it's worked out today. Yeah, I definitely think it has. Go ahead.

You and your business

SPEAKER_01
partner both have funny like kind of names of your channels, your content channels. So yours is more plates, more dates, which is hilarious. And then his, I think, goodlookingloser.

com.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah. He had like a men's self improvement blog from, he was an OG YouTuber before I ever was online. He started making content in 2009, I think.

And that's actually how I found his stuff was through his YouTube channel where he talked about, you know, how to talk to women. And he had like videos of him going up to girls, cold approaching. And I was, you know, baffled at the time.

And I was just a teenager in university watching his stuff. And was one of the first, like 10 or 15 people who joined his online forum and then tracked and logged my, I don't know, trials and tribulations with fitness and chicks and all that kind of stuff, university. And then eventually we ended up actually working together, which is really cool.

But yeah, he has not posted regularly in, I don't know, five plus years. But he is a good looking loser. That's the OG right

SPEAKER_01
there. And we're going to talk about your business side because it's unclear, but I believe you built a nine figure business, so over a hundred million dollar business or collection of businesses off of your channel. So we'll talk about the business stuff in a second.

But I want to start with this kind of pickup thing because I just had Mark Manson on the podcast, the guy who wrote the subtle art of not giving a fuck. And so he started also, now he's like kind of like all about, you know, life advice and, you know, self-help and things, you know, he was one of the most popular self-help authors ever. He wrote a book with Will Smith.

He's like, like super legit now. But he started off in the pickup world. And he had his blog, he was named entropy.

And his blog was all about picking up, picking up women. And I've noticed a few of these backgrounds that seem to lead to these, like, there's a few backgrounds, like origin stories, like a superhero would have that lead to interesting people. So I've noticed like elite gamers, so people are like hardcore gamers, they tend to become, they can become really successful in the game of business afterwards, if they so choose.

Or debate, debate lends itself very well to people who end up being, you know, leaders, you know, those types of people because they're, they think a certain way and they're able to articulate themselves. And now another one I'm noticing is pickup. And I'm curious, if you think there's anything to that, or am I just reading into it? Is there, are there any life skills, core life skills that you really get from that? Yeah, it's weird.

I was actually, I had lunch

SPEAKER_02
with Andrew Wilkinson a few weeks ago, and he said the same thing about pickup. He thinks that a lot of people come from that world. And I don't know if it's just like a feeling of inadequacy that drove you to the pickup stuff to begin with, which also translates to your like, weird drive in an entrepreneurial aspect that kind of takes you to this level.

Most people simply won't feel, you know, reasonable or something they, I don't know, want to strive for. But I think there's definite overlap there. And I don't know if it's like a emotionally healthy thing, always or a mentally healthy thing, but there's definite overlap where people are, I think, trying to optimize all areas of their life, whether it is social dynamics or what have you.

And that obviously translates into business. Like for me, job interviews became infinitely easier after I learned how to walk up to attractive women. Because if you can walk up to an attractive, you know, 10 out of 10 and not get nervous going into a job interview is just like, is butter.

Whereas before it used to be super nervous, you know, you're in the waiting room, you know, be extremely, I don't know, overthinking the entire situation. And it's to you, anything that could be anxiety inducing is just out of sight out of mind. So for me, I think there is a huge overlap.

Business presentations became so much easier, became more confident in rooms, meeting new people, whether it was talking to dudes or talking to chicks, didn't matter. And yeah, I think there's still a huge upside not to be like a dirtbag, which equates to being an entrepreneur. I wouldn't suggest that, but there are certain social skills and I don't know, like EQ you can gain from the pickup stuff that I think translates.

SPEAKER_03
Sean, you didn't you didn't study that stuff? I did. Yeah. Yeah. Because I read all the books. I bought some of the courses.

I went to like an event before, like I was like really into that because it was rooted in a sense of like, I feel inadequate and I want to meet women and like be liked. But it totally carries over to sales, you know, like the rule, there's like a three second, there's like a three second rule is like as soon as you see a woman that's like beautiful, you have three seconds to go talk to her or like, there's I mean, I used, I used all of it. I loved it.

I wouldn't call myself an artist,

SPEAKER_01
though. I don't think I made it big artist. It's like a subway sandwich artist.

SPEAKER_03
Yeah. You sure about that? And half of those guys ended up like with horrible lives as they got older. Like they're like 50 years old and they're still doing this shit.

And it's like, dude, that's not cool. It's cool to be settled down. Actually, it's cool to have like a relationship.

And so like the pickup artist community does a really good job of teaching young men how to be confident and meet a woman. But then half of them do a really bad job of saying, all right, now here's how you remain loyal and how you become a good partner and things like that. But they just get you to the interview or the first day, but they suck after that.

You know what I mean? It's like horrible and how to actually be a man and treat people respectfully.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah. I think one of the best takeaways from the pickup artist world is being able to review their lives from pre success being losers, essentially, to peak success, having this incredible, you know, dating life with diversity and choice. And then what happens to them thereafter, the younger guys have the luxury of being able to watch the entire timeline and see, did they end up somewhere that I would aspire to be and why or why not? And how do I avoid getting down that path? Because when I was, you know, coming up and learning about this stuff too, it was even getting on a date was a task in itself and an achievement if you were able to even muster up a dating life from scratch with women that were not introduced to you through your friend circles or whatever.

Being able to meet people cold was like the floodgates open in terms of opportunity. And thereafter, you know, as long as you were sleeping with women, you thought you ended the game and you were, you know, good to go, but you don't realize thereafter, there's a whole another element of how do you actually become happy, have successful relationships. No one taught you that stuff.

So being able to see the, I don't know, the before and after of like the Neil Strausses of the world or whatever and what happened to them, I think is pretty insightful.

SPEAKER_03
I want to ask you about some of your businesses and how you're actually managing all of this, because you have a lot going on. So there's Gorilla Mine, which it looks like that's

SPEAKER_02
pre-workout and creatine. You got to tell me what you name it, bro. I know you hit the name, right?

SPEAKER_03
Yeah. What was this other one we had? We had this other one called the, what was that one, Sean? It was called like Deer Killer or something. The Deer Amplerspray.

What about the Deer Killer one? Bucked up. Well, my thing with you, Derek, is like, I trust you. Like, I trust you a lot and I buy what you say.

Totally agree. It reminds me in the same form of like, you remember when we were younger, like, NO Explode and that stuff? Yeah. And I remember taking that and I was like, this is awesome.

And also, like, this might be illegal.

SPEAKER_01
Like, it was like, it felt like Adderall. It feels like I got two hearts right now. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_03
I didn't know anything about it, but I'm like, I don't know if this is good. But when I think of your brand, I think like, my values align with your values. But for some

SPEAKER_01
reason, I don't think the name... Okay, let's start with this. Objectively, this is working, right? Like, I'm looking at the traffic.

It looks like it's over a million visitors a month for an e-com store that's doing supplements, super high margin, high repeat purchase. Like, I don't know what you're doing per month, but I would not be shocked if this was doing between six and eight

SPEAKER_02
million a month in revenue. Blink twice if I'm right. Yeah, you guys are pretty, you know, on point with your ballparks.

But there we go. What I will say is, as far as the niche goes, and by the way, that's just like, I don't know if Amazon is equal to our Shopify, but we're starting to get into retail too. And the traffic numbers are oftentimes quite misleading.

So I don't know what you guys use for that. But I've started, I don't know if, how much I read into those traffic statistics. Do you use similar web or what do you.

..

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, this one, I was looking at similar web. But I have like layers. It's like, you can go like, quick look at traffic.

Then it's like, there's tools that will literally just tell you, here's the sales at the store, but it doesn't know what your wholesale and retail might be. But you're like, all right, I know if their Shopify is at this level, and I know that they have some retail distribution, you can get pretty close.

SPEAKER_02
Right. Yeah. So as far as the branding around it, I do agree in the health niche when it comes to trusted dietary supplements for, I don't know, let's just say a multivitamin or a B complex or a lipid support product, those kinds of things, I am totally on the same page that even I wouldn't necessarily have the highest trust factor in a company called a gorilla mind or a bucked up or whatever. When it comes to things that are meant to get you cognitively dialed in though, and things that are meant to be hardcore pre workouts and vasodilate the shit out of you, all of this kind of stuff, that is where the more edgy branding, I think, for example, the same way you wouldn't trust a gorilla mind be complex and you would go with a thorn, you probably would go with a gorilla mode pre workout over thorns pre workout.

Probably I think most people would.

SPEAKER_03
It depends who's buying it. Like I'm like a 30 something yuppie guy who doesn't, I like, I want to look good naked and I want to live a long time. And there's like a balance of like what, what, you know, am I putting like bro shit in my body or do you know what I mean? But then like your other one, Merrick health, I'm on that website.

I invested in this company called hone. I think Sean maybe did too. I think you my opinion, the branding of Merrick is like beautiful.

I think that's beautifully done. So Merrick health does like hormone optimization or hormone replacement therapy, you do a bunch of thyroid stuff. I think that branding is phenomenal.

And I would guess that this company will be more valuable than gorilla mind because it's I would imagine it's a subscription. And it's probably what like $300 a month on average per customer.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah. And the telemed especially in a high level preventative medicine diagnostic space, you are it's a lot more premium for sure. And the margins are superior, but it's also contingent on the level of service.

And that's where we differentiate ourselves. There's a lot of telemedicine pop up clinics now and hormone replacement therapy, you know, spots to go to and we try to steer away from that moniker. We are kind of like, I don't know, it's it's a broad spectrum preventative medicine whereby you can trust that you're not going to just get thrown on a cookie cutter script of testosterone and astrosol and get kicked out of the door.

Like we pride ourselves on the services and the doctor oversight and the quality of care and the providers, especially are highly educated and are vetted by me and my team specifically. So it's it's, I would say more than 300 bucks a month for sure, in general. But that is definitely the way of the future in terms of what I am most passionate about.

And yeah, you're definitely right that it's, I would say at least objectively right now, perhaps more valuable than the real mind. Are you who are you? How big is

SPEAKER_03
your your team now? And who do you have helping you run each of these companies? Because that's

SPEAKER_01
a it's fairly complex, I imagine. Maybe break it down like your core team, that's like not assigned to any one of these companies. And then like, what does a core team look like first? And then how do

SPEAKER_02
the sub companies look? Yeah, so fortunately, from an operational and back end standpoint, I live in Canada, by the way, the companies were based in the US. So for me, being on site is essentially impossible. So I have my business partner, Chris, good looking loser is in Idaho, where the real mind HQ was stationed.

And he's the one who built out the team in person for warehouse fulfillment. We will both be ones who vet out the high level C suite guys, but a lot of the more I don't know, like, hands on tasks are going to be fulfilled through teams there that I have minimal oversight or interaction with. I'm more the marketing and C suite level stuff, and retail a bit now.

But that is in terms of the team and number of people, I think there's like 50 to 100 in each company. But I don't I don't actually know to be honest. But as far as oversight from Gorilla, that's typically that's essentially how it works is we have Chris and Boise me in Canada, I oversee all things marketing content, product formulation, manufacturing supply chain, he oversees everything hands on fulfillment, warehouse distribution, legal accounting, and there's sub teams within that that we oversee essentially.

And we have, you know, financial controller, we have like a guy overseas retail, etc, etc. But that is kind of how the org chart would delineate out. And then on the Merrick Health side, my business partner, he's not out, he doesn't have an online presence, but he's somebody who I met through the industry myself years ago.

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

So he oversees essentially everything when it comes to the team, the, I will help vet out the providers and high level talent and C-suite guys and whatnot. And I'm also heavily involved in marketing, similar to Guerrilla, but he is without the,

SPEAKER_03
my partner is none of this would be possible. And then is Intelligent Shop, like the round is at the third one? Is that the third major one? Are those two significant? Yeah. Oh, I would say those two

SPEAKER_02
are definitely bigger than Intelligent, but Intelligent has probably the best profit margin, I would say. But that company is me and Chris as well. It's crazy is that like, you're going,

SPEAKER_03
you're like doing more challenging problems. So like, I have no idea how challenging a supplement company is, but let's just say that that's like a two or three out of 10. And then Merrick Health would be like a six or seven out of 10 or even higher, because you're like actually starting to do with like regulation.

And then I know that you, I think you said it here and you said on videos, you're thinking about doing a compound pharmacy, which like, which sounds like the hardest. And like, I don't know too much about it. But does that basically mean like, you're actually getting the commodities from whoever you're getting and you have to make sure they're safe and that you're handling them safely.

And I guess compounding means you're combining and shipping them out to the Merrick Healths of the world. Is that right? Yeah. So for example,

SPEAKER_02
when you get prescribed your testosterone, for example, from a clinic like Merrick Health or maybe own, I'm not sure how they operate, but in general, they will fill a prescription through a pharmacy like an MPower or a fill in the blank compounding pharmacy that is also having their own markup on medication is the ones receiving the active drugs and creating a finished product for you to prescribe. And just logically, anytime you can try and get more of the supply chain to control the margin, that's going to be beneficial, I would imagine at which point it becomes a logical and worthwhile use of your time, though, is to be determined because similar to the manufacturing side on dietary supplements, although there's different levels of quality control and oversight, you still have to be GMP certified and have a certain level of oversight in your facility. And is the bandwidth allocated to doing that, taking away from what your bread and butter is on the private labeling or marketing side of things depends on the person, I guess, because some companies kill it just being manufacturers and not even having a company that they sell

SPEAKER_03
stuff through. So, it empowers the guys that a lot of people go to, I believe, right? How big do you think that business is? 100 million plus, probably. What could that be worth? What would a multiple in that business be? I don't even know what those would sell for.

Is that considered

SPEAKER_02
just a manufacturing business? Well, it's tough because they definitely have some level of trust factor that other pharmacies don't have. Even for me, if I was to get a compounded testosterone from Empower versus from some rinky dink compounding pharmacy, I would 100% trust Empower more than fill in the blank, even though they have supposedly same levels of quality control, rigor, licensing, etc. There is pretty significant variability sometimes in the compounding world, plus minus on certain drugs even.

As shocking as that sounds, what you see on the label, even in the pharmaceutical world, is not always what you're getting in compounding.

SPEAKER_03
That just seems like such an intimidating business to go down the path.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, fortunately for me, and it's something that it's actually wild because guerrilla mind is probably the thing that has the highest level of difficulty for me because I'm instrumently involved in product formulation. Whereas on the telemed side, fortunately, there is no need for me to, I don't sit there making medication formulations. You have a preset testosterone concentration or fill in the blank drug.

I don't control all that or need any creativity or insight into what goes into that because it's a very tightly regulated thing. Whereas in the supplement world, people will just look at our label and rip us off often. I am often the guy who has to be creative, come up with innovative ideas.

I don't want something to come out with my name on it that I don't have significant personal time investment into that formula that goes out. For me, the guerrilla mind formulation and product rollout side of things is the most time consuming. I would say guerrilla is like six or seven out of 10 and Merrick is like a two out

SPEAKER_03
of 10 for me. Interesting. We had Doug Damoro on.

Do you know who Doug Damoro is? He's a car YouTuber. Yeah. He's awesome. He's cool.

He built this thing up to four or five million subscribers. Then he launched this thing, Cars and Bids, which he sold a portion of the business. Cars and Bids could be a multi-hundred million dollar business, I think.

I think it's awesome. But going to compare you to him, that would be him starting to make car parts. I'm like, dude, Doug, why don't you just make the best car marketplace ever and just crush that? Because if I think of you, Derek, launching, and I don't know much about the space, when I think about you launching a pharmacy, I'm like, man, that seems like you're leveraging yourself pretty high.

What if that fucks everything up? Like as opposed to chicken ass at these other two things. I'm not dead set on it. I imagine during,

SPEAKER_02
I don't know, discovery from buying a company or just the process of flashing out all the details, I will probably uncover that leaning into our bread and butter is probably more worthwhile. So despite it being on my radar, similarly to the manufacturing side of supplements or energy drinks, it's probably not worth our time or money right now. So to be determined in the future.

SPEAKER_03
There's one reason why I imagine you should do it, which is it's pretty dope. There's still that component of this seems very challenging, but this would be sick if you could actually pull it off. There is that factor of it's, you know, entrepreneurship's art, and that's

SPEAKER_02
a cool challenge. Yeah, no, it's a, and just being able to control everything, I think there's, you're not putting yourself in a position where you can get squeezed, whereas companies like Roman, they have their own pharmacies, and there's a reason why, you know, they're not going to just private label to hell and market the shit out of it. They're going to control the drugs.

So, you know, to me, it seems like at scale, there is some inevitable obstacle of trying to control that aspect of the business and not being subject to whatever the, you know, drug makers decide for you, but to be determined on that.

SPEAKER_01
Do you, like, what's your business goal? So like, you shifted your focus, you're like, okay, I went through this bodybuilder dating, like number one priority, that you're like, all right, making money, entrepreneurship became the main focus for like the last period of time, last season. What's your business goal? Because we've met a bunch of people that are like, some of them take this, like, aw, shucks, I don't know, I'm just trying to, you know, help people, like type of attitude, which I rarely believe, to be honest. And then there's a lot of other people like Rob Deer that came on and he's like, dude, I was like, yeah, I was like a skateboard kid, then ended up doing this, this, I ended up on TV, still wasn't making any money.

And I finally realized, like, oh, like, in the last, like, in this last like five year period, I figured out like, okay, I need to go from rookie white belt to black belt, and I made it my focus, I made it my goal. And I said, I want to make a billion dollars and I decided, all right, to do that, what do I need to do? I need to own my own production company, instead of just being a talent. I'm now in the talent and the production company.

And then I brought people in, and I started investing, I own real estate. And he, like, was very articulate about it. And our audience loved it, because they're like, dude, I had no idea he actually kind of had that part of his brain had like intentionally set a goal and made a plan and started figuring it out.

What's how would I describe it for you? What's your, you know, because you started off just doing this fun thing, the business came up about what what's your goals and how did that come about? So you may know this, but

SPEAKER_03
my beginning in business was being a copyrighter. I mean, it just basically means figuring out what motivates someone and how to use the written word to take an action, get them to take an action, or to think a certain way. And the way that I learned how to copyright was I did this thing called copy work and copy work is this famous technique that's not really popular anymore, but it used to be really, really popular.

And you basically take writing that is great writing that you love, and you write it out by hand and you copy it and you make notes of what particular thing that that writer is doing that makes it special. That's how I learned how to write. I locked myself in a room for six months and I just did this for many hours a day.

I created a program to make it easy so you can do that. It's called copy that copy that.com. You can go there and you can check it out. It's a 10 day exercise to make it really easy to learn how to write.

If you want, you can just go do this on your own. You can find great writing and just literally copy it by hand. I know it sounds crazy, but it works really effectively, but I made something that makes it a little bit easier.

So check it out. Copy that.com and back to the pod.

SPEAKER_02
Um, yeah, I should probably revisit my goals because I don't really have a firm concrete objective. I do know from a value standpoint, I think Aril Amar and Maricel are billion dollar companies in the future at some point. I do very much intend for them to get there and I strongly believe they will.

I mean, that sounds like a good goal. I mean, if I was to put somebody on paper as a financial metric of sorts, those would be two concrete ones. I could say in my near near-ish future I foresee as doable and I want to make sure it happened.

But I don't necessarily want to sell them either. It's just kind of a vanity metric or something that you're chasing almost like a million subscribers on YouTube. Once you get there, you know, it's the same old the next day.

Nothing changes other than your objective success and how you feel about yourself to some extent maybe and how people perceive you, but, and maybe you have more flexibility in what you can do. But you know, that's kind of how I see it too is once the businesses get to a certain point, it's just going to be more of the same. Probably, I don't know.

I can't imagine there's like, especially from the Maricel side of things, it's a company that I'm so passionate about preventative medicine. If something is working, that is literally me being able to at scale educate and import value about that. It's hard to see me deviating from it to be able to do what that again.

It doesn't really, I don't know, maybe I'll change my mindset as I get a bit older and I have kids or something. But right now, not really. That's kind of all I could say as far as concrete goals on a piece of paper financially and also my path in terms of

SPEAKER_03
what I'm passionate about. Have you raised financing or funding for any of these businesses? No, never. Dude, that's crazy because like, all right, you have 1.

8 million subscribers, 1.9, close to 2 million. That's a lot, but that's not a lot a lot.

You know what I'm saying? I mean, that's like, if someone grinds for 10 years, like you could get there. What's crazy is that, I mean, that's just a huge number to have two multi-billion dollar, two, let's just even say 100 million plus brands off the back of 1.9 million subscribers.

That's a significant amount.

SPEAKER_02
Well, you have to keep in mind to our influencer marketing is pretty dialed, especially on the guerrilla side. We have a lot of people who believe in what I'm doing and my passion and path forward to and trust me. So they will also trust that I'm going to put them in the best spot to accrue the most value from whatever company they're partnering with and have mutually beneficial relationships as they develop their business careers too.

So especially on guerrilla, there is no way we'd be anywhere near where we are. Well, I don't know what we'd actually be at, but a lot of our influencers behind us are huge needle movers, huge. Like I would say our combined following is like, I don't know, in the tens of millions, if not 100 million plus.

SPEAKER_03
Is it contingent on you getting more popular, do you think? Or do you think that they've

SPEAKER_02
grown beyond that? Yeah, I think they're big enough they can be their own thing. And I think fortunately for me, it has allowed me the flexibility to reel back on the content frequency a bit because I used to be very heavily output oriented, which I should be still. But the trust factor is very high and the success of the company stands has its own, I don't know, resume of credibility through what it's done, like being, I don't know, one of the top selling pre-workouts on Amazon, for example, against companies I literally bought when I was 17 years old and edging some of them out now, like that's wild to me.

And those kind of things help us get into retail and help us do things from a global expansion standpoint that aren't contingent on me. Sure, it helps that I'm a face of the brand. And what I've done, and you know that when you work with us, I'm going to be the one formulating your products too, for example, like when influencers work with us, if you're going to have a collaborative pre-workout that drops, knowing that I'm indirectly endorsing it and making it for you too is a huge plus, whereas most owners are not even faces of the brand and no one even knows who they are.

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

But to be determined, it's all a bit of an experiment, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01
I went and read your blog and print for this and I read a bunch of the posts and you said something. You said, when I was 18, what were my priorities? You said, well, I wanted to make more money. I wanted to date hordes of gorgeous women.

I want to have a killer physique and I wanted to do well in school to set me up for my future. And you said, you know, I had these four goals and those all sounded like totally worth pursuing. And they all sounded like things I should be working on.

I'm in school, so I should probably work on school. I'm kind of 18 to 21 years old. I should probably try to date women or work out, make money.

All of these things seemed like good ideas at the same time. And then you realized I should go all in on one of these goals right now at the expense of the others. Why did you have that philosophy of go all in on one life goal versus try to have kind of this balance or pursue all four?

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that's tough because it's not like I would claim it to be the correct way to live your life, but I think a lot of people live, especially in the entrepreneurial world in stages. It's almost like seasons of your life. And there are certain seasons where you can complete certain things of prerequisites for the other.

And I would say that when it comes to getting women, for example, when you were young, you do not need exorbitant amounts of funds. You actually don't even need to have the ability to support somebody in a long-term relationship. If you're young, you can have a piece of crap car and live with your parents and still crush it with literally, objectively, 10 out of 10 girls in your age bracket.

And being able to kind of get that season of your life out of the way and develop those social skills, at least at the time when I was broke, too, I felt like was worth getting out of my way, so to speak, before I went down the road of entrepreneurship, which I knew would consume the majority of my free time and dating, especially large amounts of women when you're trying to kind of, I don't know, get your anxiety out of your system entirely and become even used to this dynamic of being out with attractive women. It's not something that I feel you can juggle both simultaneously, dating is a full-time job, honestly. If you're single, you can definitely agree with what I'm saying, that it can be as consuming as a full-time job in itself.

So for me, trying to... And I also was way more hard gore about bodybuilding at the time, so I would actually dedicate blocks of time to cutting and cutting phases would be getting striking distance of stage-ready condition, which is something that is super mentally sapping and demanding of your body and more extreme amounts of cardio, caloric restriction, etc. And it's not.

.. Trying to do everything at the same time, I feel like you'll just fail or do everything kind of half-ass, essentially. You will not get anything done with exceptional quality, so that was at least my thought process and logic at the time, and I would still probably agree with it, even though that blog is.

.. I don't even remember the last time I wrote an article on that blog. It is super outdated, but it is something I would still resonate with, probably.

I think people should be segregating things into seasons, personally.

SPEAKER_03
Yeah. I mean, we talk about seasons a lot, and I think that... What's that quote, Sean, about the line and the cow? Like, cow's graze, lion's rest, and then pounce. And oftentimes, it's a little bit easier in business to be like the line instead of just like.

.. Instead of like a constant 40 hours a week, maybe like sprints is a little bit easier. And I was watching some of your videos.

I remember there was one recently where I think you got back from Europe. You're in Europe, and it sounded like you're with a girlfriend or a wife or something like that. So I assume you're in some type of long relationship.

Has building these companies been a lot easier once you're... You have more

SPEAKER_02
stability as opposed to dating? Yeah, dude. It's night and day. If I was single right now,

SPEAKER_03
I would get half as much work done probably. Yeah. Dude, I remember when I was building my first company, there was probably twice a week I would lay on the floor and I'm like, this isn't going to work. I feel miserable.

I'm just going to quit. And having a spouse, or she was my fiance or girlfriend at the time, to be like, no, you got this. That is just like.

.. It was the greatest thing ever. That's when I knew I'm like, dude, having a wife is so much

SPEAKER_01
better than... She's also move out of the way. I'm trying to get into the kitchen.

You're just laying

SPEAKER_02
on the floor. Yeah. I totally agree with that sentiment for sure. You've got these.

.. You have

SPEAKER_01
the content machine running. You got the business machine running. Have you figured out what you want to do with your money? Have you learned how to either spend it in ways that are interesting or invest it? How much time and effort have you put into that? What do you do with your money?

SPEAKER_02
I've learned what not to do with it, which is good. What have you done? What have you done? Don't go with wealth management portfolio guys who will, even if it's with a big bank, because they get their management fees even if they suck. Oftentimes, they will make it sound like they're doing great things when objectively they're underperforming a basic index fund.

I would be very weary of that as a wealthy entrepreneur because a lot of those guys are the primary targets of those wealth management guys. They will shockingly stay with them for years despite underperforming just objectively. Then they just get rinsed the entire time while the management fees make the other guys rich.

I've learned not to do that the hard way. The thing that's tough is on the Canadian side, there is so much more complicated tax planning that goes into it. I've spent more time than I want to admit on figuring out how to not lose money than actually making money with my money.

I'm still figuring out how to put myself in the position most optimally to make my money work for me. Oftentimes, even knowing what side of the country I should be keeping it on, it's been an ever learning process. There are certain corporate structure things that I've been very hesitant to pour money into insurance fund that down the line is going to build money interest-free.

I've been very careful to not dive into any of those before I fully understand them even though they could make me a lot of money because I know once you're into some of those things, you can't unravel them. As a Canadian, it's a lot more complicated unfortunately than just dollar cost average into the index. If you're portfolio, let's just say

SPEAKER_03
you're, we'll do the pie chart thing without, so just percentages and not including your private businesses, where do you keep your money? Is it mostly equities or you investing in other private

SPEAKER_02
companies? What are you doing with it? I do some angel investing, but it's very minor. For example, media kits, you guys are familiar with Kieran. That's how we met.

His company, for example, invested in some stuff like that, but not very often. Primarily, it was wealth management, was overseeing a lot of it. Then I realized how not ideal that was and liquidated it all recently at a loss.

It's just sitting in bank accounts right now doing nothing as absurd as it felt. No shit, really? Yeah. I'm like all cash right now.

I have a decent amount of crypto, but I always forget I have that until somebody asked me what is your portfolio comprised of. So I guess technically some crypto. Then I guess it's the value of the businesses and whatever cash sits in those accounts, but yeah, it's mostly just chilling doing nothing useful.

SPEAKER_03
I remember you, I think you bought a Lamborghini or something like that and you made a video about like the hedonistic treadmill and you're like, this is kind of bullshit. What have you spent money on that you think would make you happy and it was bullshit versus where you actually like, where do you like to spend money on? You're like, this actually makes me happy.

SPEAKER_02
That's tough, man, because other than that, I haven't really spent egregious amounts of money on anything that I would deem to be irresponsible that was outside of a business capacity. I will invent, always go first class because of the convenience and just leg room and just like basic stuff, which is, and other than that, I don't really buy anything luxury other than groceries, which getting high quality food I think is justified every single time. Yeah, I haven't really spent money on anything I could think of off the top of my head that was

SPEAKER_01
stupid. What was the origin story for the businesses? What order did they come in and what triggered the thought of like, all right, I need to start this because I think you kind of you're in an internet marketing affiliate game. When did you transition to like, I want to own

SPEAKER_02
my own businesses? Yeah, especially prior to influencer integrations. When I first started affiliate marketing, it was still very SEO driven, blog heavy, there was not as much flat rate, you know, paper integration type stuff happening or at least I was not that aware of it. If it was happening at scale.

What were you selling? Oh, an array of things, whatever I use personally, Amazon links to it, etc. So I was getting, you know, 5% commissions on shampoo that I would use

SPEAKER_01
for hair loss prevention or. And was that like, your money or that was like, like, wow, I'm making stupid money doing this somehow. Like, how successful were you able to be doing that?

SPEAKER_02
Well, I guess success is definitely subjective. So at the time, I felt extremely, but you know, in proportional terms, perhaps not now, but back then, that was the stuff that funds your ability to actually start your own businesses. So I would say, in that sentiment, definitely successful.

And I think the thing that helped me the most and what I typically recommend people to do as when they're wondering, what do I even get into as a product or service or what have you, it's organically integrating things that you already use and truly believe in because if you just plug nonsense and you start to be a ad horror, essentially, where you just take whatever comes your way when it comes to integrations, even products you don't believe in or care about and you just become a robot, mindlessly reading scripts for, you know, dollars, you kind of get your credibility goes out the window and people don't listen to your product recommendations anymore. And for me, it was always how do I monetize stuff that I use anyways, and would tell people for free, you should use this because I use it. So oftentimes, that was taking piddly little affiliate commissions or none on products that I actually used and wanted people to also try to get results with.

And that would include, but not limited to, you know, supplements, hair loss prevention products, sometimes random diet hack related things. I don't know, it varied significantly. But across the board, it was basically what has an affiliate program that is a product I already use and I can get a commission for telling people something I would tell them anyways.

And that is how I kind of built up my initial funds to then start some of the businesses that replace the affiliate recommendations that I would have been making anyways. So it's, it was kind of stemmed from just what are the things I'm most passionate about personally and promote them and because I would anyways, and then replace them eventually with things that I feel are higher quality and reflect exactly what I would want to see as a consumer in that niche. So that is kind of how I went down the rabbit hole of dietary supplements.

I've always been a formulator. I've always dug very heavily into the chemistry and pharmacology side of things. And it was just an eventual inevitability that I was going to get into it at some point.

And once it became viable financially, that was kind of my segue into that and then hair loss prevention products. I've been recommending certain things for years and that was my segue into Intelligent Elephant, which is another company. And then Telemedicine was, I was making content for years about preventative medicine and how to interpret diagnostics and blood work and hormone optimization and PEDs, or eugenic aids, et cetera.

And it was, that was such a no-brainer for me to get into too. So across the board, that's kind of what I look for as the highest lever opportunities, at least how I kind of ended up starting those businesses to begin with and funding them.

SPEAKER_01
We had our buddy, Saeedon. And what he did was he had a high traffic blog that was helping people out with WordPress. He said, oh, yeah, I recommend using this email pop up.

And he would just basically see, oh, okay, the highest, the things that people click on the most because they're looking for a solution are X. Maybe that's a business I should go into. So what he would do is he would just go buy that business or buy the number two player, improve it, and then make it his recommendation.

And he just went systematically. It's almost like you've did that for the body. You were like, cool, I got this high traffic.

And I give this ability to get a bunch of high traffic. I can start with affiliates and see what people click and what, you know, even if they have a crappy affiliate program, at least I know that's a category that I know I can drive a lot of a lot of customers to maybe I should be the supplier instead of the affiliate.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it's crazy how much stuff has evolved just in the past. I don't know, not even 10, like six or seven years to in terms of where people get the recommendations from like SEO is so irrelevant now to where I shop and where most of our customers shop to back in the day. It was if your top ranked on Google, maybe for some services, it absolutely is still relevant.

But for certain products and e-commerce space and whatnot, it's like no one gives a shit at all. Whereas back in the day, if he it was all about how do I get top ranked on Google for buy fill in the blank or top three fill in the blank. And that was a lot of my affiliate stuff came through my blog articles back then and lesser YouTube, but now it's so heavily social media.

SPEAKER_03
The New York Times had this article come out a few weeks ago, and it was like, my guru is better than your guru or something like that. And it was about how I mean, this has always been the case, but it's just there's more now and they're bigger about how audiences will attract what will go towards a certain like health and wellness person. So like there's you, there's Huberman, but then there's also Mark Sisson, is that a same marks the the the older guy who started a primal kitchen.

And then there's like five or six or 10 or 20 other ones. And they actually but the article was saying, and this is true that they say different things like that not everyone agrees. So there's like, you know, eat a lot of plants, but then there's like carnivore MD.

And then you, you know, you did your whole thing on the liver King, like they don't, they oftentimes will say like different stuff. But you just get behind someone and you just do whatever they say like if you if you talk to Andrew Huberman, like the most common question he gets, and I'm sure you get this too, which is just tell me exactly what you do. And I'm going to do the exact same thing.

You know what I mean? But and that's in one hand, that's on one hand, that's maybe dangerous because it doesn't always apply to each person. But on the other hand, it makes a great ass business because it's just like whatever Derek says, I do and I buy. And I think that you've had like videos where you're like, my supplement company, like I'm not going to just make a ton of product because I have to make the quality good.

But you guys are buying so much of it that we need like two weeks off in order to restock. You know what I mean? So it's good for you as a business owner.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think trust factor is everything nowadays, especially because there is so especially in the health niche. It is so hard to know who to trust because oftentimes the charlatans will get platformed to because they say outrageous things. You'll see them on big podcasts even sometimes just because they'll say something that seems so contradictory to what is accepted as you know, scientific fact or whatever, just to get a good hook, not even necessarily because they're the authority or foremost expert in a certain area.

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

SPEAKER_01
you know, Hubertman's like a professor at wherever is like a Stanford lab or something. You know, you when I first saw your thing, you're like, oh, I think I was clicking like some of the videos that were like, what is Conor McGregor taking or John Jones or whatever. And you're talking about the pulsing effects of picograms of whatever that John Jones got popped for.

And I was like, how the hell would this guy know it doesn't even seem like you saw to even understand like what the hell's going on? Like, where is the literature of this? How would this random YouTuber know about any of this stuff?

SPEAKER_02
Largely through years of self education, but also through educating myself through experts and being I feel I'm very good at extrapolating out and determining what is valuable information and then assimilating it into my own consolidated framework. That's one of my strong, strong suits. So it's taken years.

I've been researching like a maniac since I was, I don't know, like 10, 10 plus years at this point. So for me, I don't necessarily claim to be an expert. Oftentimes people will, you know, label me as such.

But, you know, I'm just a guy who's a nerd and learns a lot of shit and it's been, it's been good to date. But yeah, a lot of this stuff is available though too. It's just hard to translate into layman's terms like somebody who's in the lab to determining if an assay is going to be implementable for the USADA in the future to catch people doing fill in the blank.

The USADA, I don't know, spokespeople don't necessarily understand the chemistry and the science. They're not going to go out and go into elaborate detail about why you could still get away with micro dosing, for example. Like that kind of, nor is it beneficial for them to assert publicly that it's possible to do such.

So a lot of this stuff is just swept under the rug and no one talks about it because they either don't understand it or it's not very, I don't know, readily circulated. So, but it's all publicly available. It's just a matter of being able to dissect it.

So, you know, that's kind of been it.

SPEAKER_01
What do you think of the sort of the tech testosterone movement that's going on? So, you got Bezos, Retires, Gets Jacked, you got Zuck becoming an MMA fighter. You have, who else is doing it? There's a couple of, Brian Johnson.

SPEAKER_02
Elon's on semi-gluton. So, he's at least trying to get ripped, not necessarily sauce to the gills, but he's trying to get lean. Don't lose weight.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah. What do you think of, who's doing it right? Who's doing it wrong? What do you see in the tech bodies?

SPEAKER_02
I think it's good that guys are prioritizing muscle mass and quality of life and whatnot over just, you know, existing. So, I think it's an overall good thing to have, I don't know, be pursuing kind of the masculine type, I don't know, path, but I don't necessarily know who's doing it wrong or right because they're not very outspoken about their protocols and what not.

SPEAKER_01
What about Brian Johnson? Because he's meticulous about, like, you know, publishing what he's doing. What's your take on what he's doing?

SPEAKER_02
That guy, it's tough because I do see the value in what he's doing, but I think a lot of it is totally contradictory. Like, for example, the guy will calorie-deprived the hell out of himself to the point of having hormone suppression, but then a supplement with testosterone, it's like, dude, make up your mind. Which one is going to be conducive to longevity versus not because you're kind of just correcting what you screwed yourself up for to begin with.

So, why is your body trying to fight back against you just to, you know, manually administer something to correct your deficiency self-induced from literal nutrient deprivation? Like, there's clearly some sort of, I don't know, contradictory actions in his protocol, in my opinion. But overall, I think it's interesting for sure, seeing what he thinks is impactful versus not. But as he starts to roll out some of the products and services related to his stuff, you start to wonder, you know, how much of it is just, you know, noble intentions versus, you know, the entrepreneurial, you know, aspect of it, which is fine.

But it's like, do not, if it goes down that road, where it goes heavy into selling, I really hope he is very candid about his desire to monetize and not make it seem like this noble, you know, thing entirely because it's certainly not, you know, your private label olive oil, like other people could have got it, you could have just recommended a good company. You didn't have to go do it yourself necessarily. You know, you use some other companies up until a certain point.

Why not just talk about them and give them the business? There's some sort of monetary incentive there, which is fine. I think a lot of the stuff he does is way overkill. And I think it's kind of hard to track anything with any relative certainty when there's a billion different variables.

And I also think he puts way too much credence into certain trackers like the age clocks. Those are complete bullshit, essentially. And I don't think it's of great utility to be tracking those meticulously as if that's reflective of exactly what's going on.

And why are the age clocks bullshit? That I would need to dig into more, but a lot of it is based on your current, what is going on in your body in this current snapshot of time and then trying to reflect, okay, your velocity of aging equals this because you had a transient, like better blood sugar or fill in the blank biomarker, like you could just as easily screw up your blood work and make it look like you're way older than you are in a matter of days. So it's like, obviously, your chronological, biological age didn't shift that much in a matter of days, but just based on your current health status in your blood, in your body right now, you can make it look like your plus minus 20 years. So to actually take that and make it assert that, oh, this is, it equals I'm this young now.

It's like, no, your maybe your current snapshot in time reflects something that looks like that, but it is not indicative that that is your overall health status. So I would have to do, I probably should do a video on it at some point, but it's most credible people that I trust

SPEAKER_03
think it's bullshit personally. I test all of them. So I've done inside, I think inside tracker or inside tracker and then true diagnostics and then like I've done all of them.

They're, they're, it's messed up because I know in my head that this is theory and that it's, it's like, I know it's a gimmick, but it's so fun. You know what I mean? It's the same, Sam, when you try and cross multiple services. Yeah, those two came out the same, which was basically like my blood work is great.

And I think they give you actually a number. So they're like, you're 34 biologically, you're 23 chronology or what is it chronologically, you're 34 biologically, you're 23. So it said I was great.

And then they have this other score where they look at, is it the methane hang on, hang on, you're 23 biologically. Yeah, like according to this shit, it's so, which is, which is like a

SPEAKER_01
false sense of Derek just said it's bullshit, but I'm not going to lie. Kind of admire you for that.

SPEAKER_03
Just one of my books, but that's my thing is I see that I'm like, oh, sick, I'm doing everything great. But I'm like, I'm pretty sore though. Like, I don't know, like, you know, like, I don't know if I'm doing everything perfectly.

And they, what's it called? What they look at? Is it the methane or methylation methylation? They look at that. And they're like, Oh, you're kicking ass, your rate of aging is super low. So I'm like, sick.

Like I'm not going to change anything. But, but that's not exactly the reality because I don't always feel great. You know what I'm saying? I also went on to kick, I've tested everything.

So I've tested the semi semi-glute, I've tested TRT, I don't do any of that now. And then I use a Nashor's all, which is like, in my opinion, the worst thing ever. I fucking hate that.

It made me feel miserable. I've tried clomid. Now I don't do anything.

But I've gone through, I've tried it all because I like experimenting with all these stuff. And then I like doing the blood work. It's like an addicting thing.

It's like someone who's obsessed with different gadgets. You know what I'm saying? Why did you come off of TRT? Because I would, so I got like, strong. So I like, I wanted to do it because I was really low for years, like 130.

And I was like, All right, let's get this right and figure out what's going on. And so I did it. And I got low body fat, I got strong.

I was hitting like record, squat and bench numbers. And then I was like, All right, well, let's try without it. Let's just see what happens if I don't take it.

And I still felt great. And so I was like, Well, you know, if I don't have to take it, and my testosterone level actually went down, but I still felt wonderful. And I was still lifting wonderfully.

And my body felt great. So I was like, let's just try not doing it for a while. How long ago did you come off? Last summer, a year.

Okay. Oh, what's your test now? Dude, it dropped. It was 800.

And then it went to 400, 420.

SPEAKER_02
You said it was like 130 or something before you started to your yeah, man. Yeah. And I was 26%

SPEAKER_03
body fat. And I felt miserable. I was also running my company.

And I was stressed and I didn't get and for a year I tried eating healthy and lifting and I just didn't get it right. And then I sold my company. So I got financial security.

I was pretty, pretty ripped. I was pretty strong. I got married and my relationship was awesome.

And I just felt happy. And I ate well, I ate all natural foods and I just felt dialed in and then I just went off of it and my testosterone dropped,

SPEAKER_02
but I didn't feel horrible. Interesting. Well, yeah, if you don't need it, you know, probably better to wait if you don't want to beat it.

How old are you? 30. Are you on it right now? Yeah, but it's for me more so because when I was younger, I did a lot of hardcore bodybuilding stuff and shut down my system. And now with what I know now, I could probably restore natural function similar to what you did, but it would be a lot more aggressive of a recovery phase and more arduous.

And putting myself through that right now isn't necessarily top of mind. So it's kind of just been a stay on it right now and optimize everything around it. But yeah, that's kind of

SPEAKER_03
how I ended up on it. There's, there's a few of the things that I really like though. What's it called? Is it BP 157? Like some of the, like some of these peptides that like, for example, if I strain my Achilles and as I get older, I'm like, not my, my injuries aren't healing, which is like the most depressing thing about age is that you just like heal slower or like,

SPEAKER_01
and you get hurt easier. Oh, you're 23. What do you mean? Well, that's why those tests are,

SPEAKER_03
that's what I'm saying. Those tests are bullshit. They like say that you're young.

I'm like, I don't know, man, my shoulder freaking hurts and it's been hurting for a month. And like, I've been really interested in some of those recovery drugs or peptides or whatever you want to call them.

SPEAKER_02
What do you think about those? I think they can be useful for sure, as long as they're context specific and not overused, because a lot of them are pro, for example, BPC is increased to something called VEGF expression, and it's pro angiogenic, meaning it will literally create, it can induce blood flow that essentially was not present. So you could also have a pro carcinogenic type proliferative effect with cancer cell development. If you have existing cancer cells that could be, you know, exacerbated.

So I think some athletes use it preventively a bit too much, but in the context where you actually have an injury, there's a little blood flow to it, you can actually have a use case for it. I think it's super high utility, very valuable product. From my like very amateur

SPEAKER_03
point of view, I think that like the semi-glutide and metformin and some of these other, what's it called a GLB limiter or, you know, am I using the phrasing correctly? GLP1 agonist? Yeah, like these things that like limit blood spikes or blood sugar spikes, those seem really fascinating. Like they even seem fascinating to the point of like, I think they can help cure or help alcoholics not become alcohol or, you know, get off alcohol. Like it like there's some like weird things about these drugs that they can do other things and what they are intended to do.

And that's super fascinating to me at the moment. But I know that you were, I think you were on semi-glutide. I

SPEAKER_02
don't know if you are anymore. Yeah, I've tested most of the GLP1 agonists for appetite suppression. And yeah, they definitely are.

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

And they certainly have question marks around their long-term use, especially in children who are developing. But yeah, I think they have

SPEAKER_03
like a children's dose now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think so.

We do. There's like an Ozympic juniors. Yeah, which is fucked up, right? It's just, I would want the answer to be just eat less.

SPEAKER_02
But yeah, the thing though is, is it are those children ever going to become optimal without it and then is the ROI worth it? And you could easily assert that those fat kids that would have been fat kids regardless are better off by taking it. For sure. Yeah. So, and I wouldn't say, well, generally, that's the answer for anybody who's overweight, of course, because there are certain, certainly ways to educate and help people get on the right path that don't involve drugs. And I've seen plenty of people do great that were formerly very fat and then end up down a different life path and are leaning around and have amazing lifestyles and get into a habit and cement it into their everyday life.

But now some kids are, I don't know, just might need it for all we know.

SPEAKER_03
You did this good thing. I mentioned your Europe video. And the interesting thing to me was actually that you said that you weren't training that hard.

And you, I think you like indulged in bread and food. Like you, you lived like a tourist, you know, you ate a lot. But you're like, I didn't, I felt great because a, I was walking a ton.

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

SPEAKER_02
for that? I go to a butcher for bison, liver and things of that nature, mostly my meats. But a lot of the other stuff is local grocery in Canada. There's not a lot of flexibility, unfortunately, on quality of, or just availability of some of the foods that you might otherwise buy at higher end places in the States.

So as much as I'd love to have, if I could, the highest level of everything, it's sourcing is a huge issue in Canada as absurd as it sounds like sourcing for like basic foods. So yeah, it's when I can, I get, you know, the best available, but like for example, bison, I think is the leanest, most nutrient dense red meat, essentially that you could get. And I will buy a ton of that, even though it's, you know, three times more expensive than extra lean ground beef at the grocery store.

That's one example. We talked about this company. I don't remember,

SPEAKER_03
Sean, if you said Huberman helped get it going or was a was a affiliate or something. Yeah, man. That thing was cool.

Like I ordered a bunch of stuff like the, but I have no idea if I'm getting sold in the marketing or not, but like the story behind it, like they got me bought in,

SPEAKER_02
like they got me so bought into it. No, I was at a Peter Reteas place a couple of weeks ago and I had the venison sticks or whatever that they sell and pretty damn good. And yeah, I trust him and his recommendation.

So I would imagine it's on the up and up and everything's probably pretty

SPEAKER_03
top tier. Yeah, man. That story like totally got me bought in.

I thought it was a cool business. And I've been watching some of your videos and it's made me nervous about just like my food and like the quality of food and like whole foods for the longest time was like the gold standard. And now I'm like, no man, that still might even be shit.

Like it's to the point where I want to start raising my own animals. You know what I mean? Or, yeah, it's tough because it's a lot of people

SPEAKER_02
will swear off supplements and say buy whole foods, but then other people will say the whole foods or the soil is depleted of nutrients. So then you should supplement, but then the, you know, there's trying to know what you're doing can be quite arduous and sketchy. Even when you're trying to optimize, even when you have the financial means, it's trying to even figure out what to spend your money on can be overwhelming at times for sure.

Well, we appreciate you coming on, man.

SPEAKER_03
I've been a big fan of yours for years. I know Sean has to your, I think what's going to happen is like in the next four or five years, there's going to be, you might have an exit or there's going to be some type of article that review that reveals how big your empire is. And I think that I think a lot of people are going to be surprised at some of the outcomes that you have, you know, the fact that you, I believe that you can build multiple billion plus or nine figure companies off the back of this audience.

And I think it's going to be really cool when that story finally,

SPEAKER_02
finally comes out. Oh, see where it goes. I appreciate you guys having me on and being so patient as I get back into content here, because I know you guys have been trying to, Kieran has been trying to get me on for a while.

So I'm glad we were able to make it happen. Yeah, shout out

SPEAKER_01
to him. Thanks Kieran. We appreciate that.

Yeah, right on. All right. That's it.

That's the pod.