Latest / The Steep Stuff Podcast / Gabe Multer | CEO & Co Founder of Carbs Fuel

Transcript

Gabe Multer | CEO & Co Founder of Carbs Fuel · The Steep Stuff Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, fam, welcome back to the steep stuff podcast.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, james Lauriello, and today we've got a really special episode for you guys Mr Gabe Moulter, the CEO and co founder of the endurance nutrition company carbs fuel.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Not sure if you guys are familiar with carbs fuel really cool company based in golden Colorado.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: They're actually aiming right now to democratize the endurance fuel industry and by providing a low cost, high quality, high carbohydrate product.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Really interesting, great conversation I had with Gabe.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: We talked about the founding of the company, kind of his plans for the future with it, what he aims to do in the industry, both in running and cycling.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just a really high quality conversation.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: You get to learn about how this company got founded, just like really all kinds of really quality questions that you guys might might have with, uh, how nutrition companies should operate.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, I really enjoyed our discussion.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I really want to personally thank gabe so much for coming on uh to talk about this.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Just just a little note preface this is not a sponsored podcast in any way.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Um, I just had some just genuine interest in the business and the brand.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I really like upstart and startup companies, so that's how the conversation got started and that's how the conversation went was just learning more about this business, how he built it and where he plans to take it, and it's really inspiring for people like me and I hope it's inspiring for people like you.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed this one, without further ado, this Deep Stuff podcast with Mr Gabe Malter, the co-founder and CEO of CarbsFuel.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: It's time, ladies and gentlemen, we are live this distance that's perfect.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: So gabe uh dude, thanks so much for coming on the pod.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: How's it going?
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: I'm good.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man so, ladies and gentlemen, we got gabe malter on the podcast, the uh ceo and co-founder of carbs fuel.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: It's carbs fuel inc.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Llc.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: What are we working with here?
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: llc llc.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Well, dude, thanks for coming on, I appreciate it, of course.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah yeah, so, uh.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: So how's your day going so far?
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: it's good.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: I've spent the last week and a half or so up in aspen, okay, uh, and so just drove down today, went up and over Independence Pass.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: It was super nice drive and, yeah, it's cool to be back on the front range.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: This is where I normally am.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: You're from Golden right, not originally.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: I'm originally from Santa Cruz, california, okay, but I've kind of lived all over Colorado and nowadays I would call Golden home.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: For the last couple years, nice yeah, man, aspen area.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I was actually just out there last weekend myself, uh, my family in carbondale, so went over independence.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Dude, there's a lot of snow up there still yeah seriously um, I'm excited for the snow to melt.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: I'm more of a cyclist I'm sure we'll talk about this more later, but this summer I am really excited to actually do some peaks and do some 14ers and things like that.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Sweet man.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: How long have you been in Colorado for?
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Well, I originally moved out to go to Fort Lewis College down in Durango.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, great school, yeah.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: And I loved living in Durango.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: It's an amazing part of the state.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: So I was there for a few years and I've kind of gone in and out of Colorado.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: But after that I lived in Boulder for a while, then Louisville and then Denver and nowadays in.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Golden and there's been places in between, but cumulatively I'd say it's like eight years in Colorado, Nice man definitively.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I'd say it's like eight years in colorado.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Nice man, yeah, I uh actually how I found out about and kind of like started my colorado journey.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Um was was fort lewis and, like durango, I didn't go there.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I um, when I was an undergrad, I studied geology and I did like a senior field camp where we stayed there in the dorms for six weeks and got to like do all of our work out of there.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: It was cool, like the whole intro to the san juans, and know it's funny for me as, like a mountain athlete, I'm like how does anybody get anything done here?
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I feel like I'd be in the mountains every day.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Like I'd never go to class.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I think that's how most people yeah, oh, for sure, and they go to Fort Lewis For sure.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: It's like I think one of the funny and if you do move here from other places like I, so it's not to go off on a tangent my uh cousins, just like one of my cousins, just graduated high school and it's the ones in carmondale and they go to this.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Uh, it was like a satellite high school or something like that of like colorado rocky mountain school or some shit like that.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: And and like dude, like they're outside like I don't know 50 or 40 percent of their week, like doing like gardening or all this different, like outdoorsy stuff, and it's like I didn't go to.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I didn't have that in school, like I had a nun that like yelled at me to sit, still you know like yeah, like, yeah, it is.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's interesting.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: The school is definitely different here, different vibe, so, uh, all right, so I'm not gonna hide the lead too much.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: You're the co-founder and CEO of carbs fuel.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe you can go into what carbs fuel is, your mission, you know, and we can kind of get into how you started it and go from there.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Carbs Fuel.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: We're a sports nutrition brand newer in the space.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Our whole mission is to help more endurance athletes effectively fuel their sport.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: So at the center of everything we do is making simple and effective products that are really focused on athletes' and, you know, providing both really high quality products to people, but also ones that are dense enough and the carbohydrates they need, and affordable enough so that people can, you know, from any economic class be able to consistently afford and have access to top quality nutrition.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I love it, man I I've personally have used the project, really enjoyed it.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: The thing, some of the things I picked up with that I thought were interesting and kind of differentiated.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: You guys were two major points.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: One, the price point $2 per gel.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: We're going to get into that because I'm just so curious on how you're able to like have have any margin whatsoever.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: We don't have to give too much inside baseball, but we can.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: I do want to talk about that.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: And then the second thing is is that it's simple.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: It's a.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: It's a great tasting product, it's a.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: It's a simple gel, um, I haven't tried the, the pat like the powder yet, um, but the gel itself really just like appealed to me.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: It was super easy, super simple, fit.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: 50 grams of carbs, um, and how.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: What was the calorie content?
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: 200, 200.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, simple as it gets.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: So those are the two things that kind of stuck up with me and, like the whole, um, I think the price point is a big thing.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Especially I sound like a boomer and like, oh, this economy, but like, seriously, from an economic perspective, um, like you said, just affordability, and you kind of are democratizing the nutrition space in a lot of ways.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe gone are the days of this.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Five to seven to even like a Martin, like a what is it?
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: A $10 gel you know, like, and you're eating like 20 of them, like.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's, it's interesting.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the idea and that's the goal is to uh bring the price down across the industry.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: You know I I'm an endurance athlete myself.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: You know I'm more of a cyclist, uh, but you know, I think the fueling requirements are the same, uh, and I was just getting so frustrated by how expensive and complicated it was to actually hit the carbohydrate goals that I had.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: I mean there's been tons of research, like, if you're involved in it, you can't miss it.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: You know the consume 90 to 120 grams of carbs every hour, and so me, as an endurance athlete, you know, I wanted to do that myself in my own activities.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: I was like how in the world are people actually doing this?
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Like, I get it if you're a pro, if you're getting stuff for free, but you know, if you're a normal person that has to buy your nutrition, like there's no way you could consistently pay.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: You know, five $6 per gel.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: It's a car payment dude, like, literally, like it's crazy, you know for?
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: me as a cyclist.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: You know I'm training 15 hours a week and I mean the cost of nutrition just for training or racing it adds up.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Uh, so that was the idea, was we wanted to try to fix that problem for people.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: How did you so?
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: There's the idea.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: How, at what point did you say I'm going to make this a company?
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: So I went through that thought process, uh.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Then I was like I'm gonna start talking to people and try to figure out how they're doing this, uh, and then I realized basically no one is.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: People aren't fueling 90 to 120 grams of carbs an hour.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: Uh, so they're under fueling, which is fine.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: You know you can get through it, but you know you're going to underperform.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: That's not optimal.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going to be on your knees more at the end of your activity and you're not going to recover as well and this and that, and it's like, okay, that's not great.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: And I found the people that actually achieved it for the most part, were just jamming powder into a bottle and making like a sludge, like an ultra gel, and I was like that doesn't work for me either, cause I'm a heavy sweater and now you're eating from your bottle, you're not actually hydrating with anything, and so that's not really a fix either.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: And so this stuff was frustrating me.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: And you know, I've always been into the idea of being an entrepreneur and starting my own business and growing something, and I was like there's something here that could be changed.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: And when I started the scheme of how I could potentially fix it you know, my background isn't in science or nutrition, you know and so I was like, how would I go about this, this?
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: So I called a friend of mine that I grew up with, his name's aaron gow, and I knew he was getting his phd in human bioenergetics and he was a good friend of mine, and I was like, all right, if anyone knows how I'd go about this, if I'm being crazy.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: If this is a bad idea, uh, it would be aaron and so I talked to him and once we like talked through this idea of what if we launch something that's more dense in carbohydrates and like, could we make something just good, if not better, than everything else on the market and have it be less expensive, like once we started to talk about this and realized that maybe it was doable.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's where it really switched from idea to let's start formulating this and let's start, you know, playing around in the kitchen to make something.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: So that's super cool.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: So you actually started playing around in the kitchen to come up with this.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean it took us like nine months to land on the formulation of our energy gel, which is sometimes crazy to people because when you look at the ingredient list it's quite simple.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: But it was anything but simple to get there because it was critical for us.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Even though we're launching a less expensive product, we did not want to launch a cheaper product.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: We wanted to be perfect, and so we took a ton of time and a million different variations.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: And something that was really interesting was uh, you know, people look at the ingredient list and say they see maltodextrin in ingredient lists and usually they think that's the same as other maltodextrins.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Like, we tested probably 30 different types of maltodextrin I didn't even know that was the thing.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes huge differences to the taste, the texture, your gi's ability to to process it.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: I mean it's also derived from different things, like corn or wheat or tapioca or you know so on and so forth, but anyways, so yeah, it took a long time to formulate it, but the early days was Aaron and I in the kitchen making gels.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: That's wild.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Now, we never launched with that, so products that consumers buy are definitely not coming from our kitchen Right, right, right.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: But you know, internal testing was all yeah, in our own kitchen.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: So you just thinking of myself, I was in this situation.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: You come up with this formula.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Once you get this formula, where do you go from there, Like, how do you get the packaging?
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: How do you get this formula?
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Where do you go from there, Like, how do you get the packaging?
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: How do you get this out to people Like how does that work?
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a journey of discovery for me.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: No-transcript.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Should we get it made somewhere else?
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: How are we going to fulfill this to people?
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like the Shopify or whatever like on the, yeah, the site.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Like how does all that work?
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean I mean it, it was a lot of.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: It was a lot of googling, a lot of planning, uh, and then a bunch of conversations and I mean ultimately we, we found our manufacturing a little bit backwards from, I think, how most companies do.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: Uh, I think a lot of what we did was pretty backwards from what most people do, but I found the actual packaging film supplier that I wanted.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: And then I had them introduce me to contract manufacturers that they often worked with Okay, and I just happened to tour one of them and I was incredibly impressed by it.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: That's smart.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Is it in states or outside?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: It's in the states, that's cool.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's in the U it.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: That's smart.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Is it in States or outside?
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: It's in the States, that's cool.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's in the U S nice dude, that is really interesting.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I always wondered because I always have like friend, like you know, you'll see, like these Instagram accounts where like, uh, like one one funny one was like Zach Miller like making his own gels or something like that, putting them in a thing.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: And I thought to myself before I'm like, hmm, if I was to start this company, like how would you even go about all these things?
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: So that's interesting.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: It was a cool process, learning all of it.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: You know when I entered into it.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: I knew nothing.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Now, now you're running a company.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now I'm running a company and it's, it's cool once you learn it Like I feel like I could start any sort of consumer package.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Good company now, because ultimately you know it's making a food and putting a food in a package and you know a lot of the process is the same and so it's.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I've acquired a ton of very specific knowledge to this space, but let me ask you a question, and this is just out of pure curiosity how does it work with the FDA and selling a food?
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Do you have to send it to them?
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Do they test it and they're like, oh, this is good, you can sell this to people?
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: How does that work?
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, One of the good perks to working with a great contract manufacturer is that they kind of manage those relationships and it's it's them that's liable on that side of things, and so they actually facilitated that whole process.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: And you know, that took another thing off of my plate.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: You know, and it was actually funny early on, we had so many conversations about like, do we self-manufacture or do we use a contract manufacturer?
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: And you know we were really worried about like, if we offset this to someone else, how can we make sure there's the quality control that we want, because we want this perfect product?
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Uh, and now on the other side, I'm like I can't imagine.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Having done this, myself, like that would have been the quality issue right, uh, yeah seriously tried to do all this on our own, so you know they're experts that work with various other actually gel companies, um, and so they're experienced in, you know, ensuring that the nutrition facts and everything are correct and that we're filing things with the fda correctly, and wow.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: So they even do like, I guess, because, yeah, that would make sense, you'd have to have like regulatory filings and stuff.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Oh dude, this is a complicated business.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: It was you know, it was kind of learning one thing at a time.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Through it on the fly and you know it all happened quite quickly, which is what's made it really exciting.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this has always been like within the last like 24 months, right?
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Something like that.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Wow, we started doing this.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Well, when I described the conversation that I had with Aaron, that was probably in October of 2022.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: Wow, the company technically was founded November 2022.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: And we only launched the product back in December 23.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: So six months ago or so.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's catching on too.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: That's the exciting part.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I guess the exciting part like you guys and we'll talk about like distribution and how that works soon but, like you know, you guys are with the feed right, you're, you have product through there.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: That is so cool and it's like amazing to see.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I always love um.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I'm a very entrepreneurially driven person, so it's always interesting to me to see someone come up with this idea, formulate this idea, execute and then a few months later, like they're selling shit on the feed, like this is insane, um, and I I personally find it really interesting too because of your background as a cyclist.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of things we can learn as runners.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Um, I think the cycling world is a little bit more um, probably evolved from a nutrition perspective, um, than like we are like, for instance, like when I first started fueling, I used the less runners gels and I used more like first endurance gels and stuff like that cause that were made for cyclists to get a little bit more carb.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: It's a bigger gel and I don't know.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: I just found myself feeling more with their, with more stuff that was designed for cyclists as opposed to runners and that seemed to work a little bit better.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah it's.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: It's funny.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: I feel like triathletes set the example for cyclists and then maybe cyclists set the example for runners, and it's like we're all learning.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: So if you want to see what's next for cyclists, I feel like you look at the triathletes.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: That makes sense, and it's like people who are just more and more into the details.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: And you know, I think it's like people who are just more and more into the details, and you know, I think, yeah, the big subject in the last few years has for sure been high carb fueling.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: It's cool to see that expanding more into the running community.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we've dude.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: We've come a long way, man.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: I mean it used to be like power bars and shit we were using and then now you know, like I, like we've talked about you know before this, like there's so many different uh, like energy gel in general, like product offerings.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: It's kind of leads into the next question.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: It's like when you started this business, the two things that you thought were going to differentiate your, you feel, would differentiate you are, are the price point or the one thing I would imagine, and then just making a solid, simple, quality product I would imagine.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Are those the two things that you kind of attacked with?
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say there were like three or four control variables for us when we were setting out to do this.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: I knew it wanted.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: I needed it to be 50 grams of carbohydrates.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: That was non-negotiable for me.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: I wanted it to be carb rich enough so that you didn't have to carry a comical number of gels.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Uh yeah, two gels per hour, yeah, yeah because if you expand that over, you know four hours, eight hours, I mean, with a normal gel, that is so many different gels you have to carry.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: So the first thing was I wanted to be 50 grams of carbs.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Uh, I wanted to be two dollars.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: Uh, because it was very important for me to make something that wasn't just the best value gel in the world but like by a very significant margin.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: You know, like it's not about us, you know, eking out the ideal amount of money from people just to get you know the exact best carb to dollar gel.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Like no, it was a statement, yeah, $2, 50 grams.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: So that was the second control.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: The third was a thin consistency.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: I knew that with being 50 grams of carbs, if it was a thick paste that would freak people out.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, and, and it was critical, I didn't even think about that.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was critical that it was very thin and drinkable.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: And then the fourth was that we wouldn't cut a single corner on the formulation and that, at the front and center of everything, was we're going to make this just as good, if not better, than any other gel that exists out there.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I love it better than any other gel that exists out there.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Dude, that's, I love it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: That's when you started doing like due diligence into this, like did you, um, did you talk to any of the peers?
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Or like, did you, did you like try to get ideas from any of them, or did you just kind of just go in this, like this is what I want to do and this is how I'm going to set myself apart, and I don't like, what did you?
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: What were your thoughts on that?
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: when you say peers, do you mean like?
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: I mean like spring energy, I mean like martin, like all these guys that are just like goo, like people that are established in the space, and stuff like that no, uh, honestly, I didn't know anybody in uh in that industry specifically no, I think that's a good thing and and I felt like having aaron, you know I knew that he would go about it the right way from a formulation standpoint, uh, and I kind of wanted it to be a surprise and kind of a stamp in the industry, and so it's interesting for me and the reason I asked that question is, like, as a podcast host, right, I'm going to.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say my space is as competitive as yours, because sub ultra is still kind of this like budding thing.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: But I have been asked like, how much do you pay attention to what your competitors do?
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And I've had friends that run big podcasts tell me like, oh, you know, I'm always kind of paying attention to what they're doing and yada, yada, yada and like making it, you know, kind of following my competition.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I don't, I'm just like this is the idea and the vision that I have and this is what i'm'm going to execute on and if it works, it works.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: And if it doesn't, well, at least I'm having fun.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: I knew there was quite a big risk entering a very crowded industry.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: There's a million different gel brands and it feels like every day there's more brands emerging, and so I knew that there was the risk there.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: But I also had a lot of confidence that what we were trying to build is very different than everything else out there some of the other companies that charge so much for their product, and I'm like that is so funny to me, the thought of, like I love it them being frustrated by this and I was like and I think that means you know I'm on to something and you know, that kind of went with the name carbs.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: you know, yeah, it's a white package with just bold letters that says carbs on it, it's simple, dude and I wanted it to be like stand out among all the other nutrition on the shelf, where it's like what is this?
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: yeah like almost funny and it's so cheap, like that's the thing.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: It's like I, yeah, I I just think it works really well.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, and I love the idea when you say like piss off, like the, I don't think people realize, like these large corporations and I'm not picking on anybody like I'll take goo, for example, goo is a corporation, there's a large business, and I'm not picking on anybody, like I'll take goo, for example.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Goo is a corporation, there's a large business, and I don't think people realize the amount of, from their business perspective, like what they need to get an output, to make like x amount of margin, which is why they charge so much.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Like it's a tangible corporation.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Um, whereas, like I feel like as a small business, you can kind of come in and really disrupt a lot of this with your price point.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, I think this goes into the question that you alluded to earlier of, like, how have we built a business that operates on this margin?
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: And the answer is because we are, and we can be lean, whereas these other companies aren't.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, I don't think that these companies are screwing people over by charging what they charge, you know, but the extra money that they're collecting on the product is going towards payroll and expensive marketing campaigns.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: So we just need to take a more lean approach.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: You know, this is my full time job, but we don't have anyone else on the staff.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's seven of us that work on the business together, but they're, you know, working their own jobs.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: This is their free time, you know passion.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: It's their passion, yeah, and so we can operate really lean.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: And you know the sacrifice is.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: You know we don't get to do some of the really expensive marketing campaigns Like I would love for us to do.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: A Strava challenge, for example.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Did you know that that starts at $20,000 to post a challenge?
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: It's like they quoted $20,000 to $200,000 depending on the scope of the project.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Screw that dude.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: So that's not in the cards for us.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: You know which which?
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: You know that poses a challenge for us, like making an impact on the industry, yeah, and like people being aware of us.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: But that's a, that's a price I'm willing to pay to offer a really exceptional product to people maybe we can get into that a little bit.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Like I think marketing is is especially like in this day and age, with social media and all these different things out there strava is one of them.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Shit like that.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Like like what is your marketing strategy?
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: In a lot of ways, like, I'm sure you had to have like really thought this one through because you are lean and be able, especially like um, you know, to already have the brand, like I don't and maybe I'm just naive and don't understand how this works, but like to already have your product, like in the feed, for instance.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: You know, I feel like that's already a really big deal and that's like it.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Just that alone like is amazing because it's a big business.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Um, so, like what, what is the marketing strategy?
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Like, how does that work?
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: It's a good question and I could probably spend a couple hours.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Dude, go ahead Talk.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of different things, I mean from one standpoint, I guess I'll back up Ultimately.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: My priority, especially these first few years, is get as many gels into as many people's hands as possible.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, and that means through any channel that we can.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: It's not that critical for me to optimize which channel provides the best profit margin for us.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: As long as we're profitable in these different channels, then let's just keep investing into how can we get as many gels out there as possible.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: And so one part of the marketing or go-to-market strategy you could say is, yeah, through retail partners, companies like the Feed they've been huge for us growing awareness because they have such a big reach and our product is super differentiated and so it stood out in their 250 brand lineup even.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Uh, you know, and also going into, uh, running stores and bike shops and outdoor gear stores, things like that Uh, that's a huge part of our strategy.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Uh, because there's advertising right there in the place that people love to go to and they can trust and where they can get educated.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: And suddenly we're in a smaller pool too.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Whereas there may be 250 gel companies in that bike shop, there's five, and our already differentiated product looks even more differentiated among those five.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: And so having it in places where people go and giving them the opportunity to try one gel because it's food is an emotional thing and people find what they like and they want to stick to it, and so it's going to be hard for us to sell a whole box of gels to someone who's never tried it.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: So the trick is how do we get one gel in front of people?
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: And so bike shops, running stores, things like that, are great ways to get one gel in front of people.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: The feed is a great way to get one gel in front of people.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: And then events are a great way to get one gel in front of people, you know.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: So we're going to different events, like we'll be at I know this isn't SubUltra, but we'll be at the Leadville.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: That's fun, yeah.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Shout out to La Sportiva.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: They sponsor it, so we'll be there, shameless plug.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: A number of other events.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: To hand product out.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, people to try it, oh cool man, and you know beyond that it's also working with a lot of exceptional athletes, like you had Erin on the podcast recently and you know people like her that are just phenomenal athletes that have, you know, sometimes small, sometimes large communities that trust them and value them and, uh, yeah, having partnerships with, with people like that is really important for people to be introduced to new brands.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, um and shout out too, cause I know you guys have like Adam Vandenbaker as well, like you've got some like really solid runners.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Um, aaron, amazing human, like you know, amazing athlete, but even a more cooler human, um.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: So you come from a cyclist background and this is a running podcast.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: The product apply.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: It's just very you.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: It could apply to anything you know outdoor space.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Wise um are you?
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Is your marketing efforts focused kind of just dually on on cyclists as well as the running scene?
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: Definitely.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: I think that to your point the product can be.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: It can provide huge benefits to endurance athletes in sort of any setting.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: So I think of triathlon, I think of running, I think of cycling, but also things like backpacking or backcountry skiing.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: There's places where it provides a lot of value to people, but I think that there's a few areas where it's a more immediately understandable product it's a more immediately understandable product and I think Ironman triathletes I think like gravel racers on the bike and ultra and trail runners, I think like those are generally.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: What I've seen is like they hear 50 grams of carbs, $2.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: You don't need to say anything, please, please.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Whereas in other communities there's been more of an educational piece.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: This is a huge gel, you know 50 grams, like 200 calories, like I don't want that much, you know, and like there's an educational piece.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: And I think that that's going to be an ongoing opportunity to grow into there.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: But I see equal opportunity, you know, across everything and, honestly, more people run than they do bike yeah, so is that true, I would imagine.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, oh, cycling is a little more expensive to get into.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense, you just need good shoes and and uh, even that you could probably run with that's true, dude.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I was gonna correct you there.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Like you see a lot of these older runners that are running and like they've been wearing the same shoes for 600 miles.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Our community's weird, I don't know one of uh, one of the founders uh that is actually our chief financial officer, laney, okay, uh, she's the the runner, uh out of the group cool she.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: She definitely reigns us in sometimes because a lot of us are cyclists.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Behind the brand, um, you know, because it was me and then people that I knew that I trusted and then ended up being cyclists, and so, uh, I think naturally we find ourselves at more cycling events right now, at the early stage.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just because that's the community that I've been ingrained in, but it's a huge priority of mine to invest in the trail and the running community.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Have you, um, did you go to, like unbound?
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: I don't even know, like I I'm just aware of what that is, but like, if you guys like on there and stuff like that or and how, how has like, how has been that received by the community so far?
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Like, what do you think?
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: It was really cool.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, the the two big us bike events that have happened this year sea otter classic and then unbound Uh, we were at both of them.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Uh, sea otter was in April, uh, and that's like the biggest bike expo in the U?
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: S, you know, it's probably the second biggest in the world, um, and so that was a huge place for us to be from, like a median, introducing the brand standpoint, uh, and it was so interesting seeing the difference in reception at sea otter and unbound, which was just this month, uh, now, of course it's different event, different people.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: You know, unbound is a little bit more focused on, like ultra endurance bike riders and so naturally they'll be more cued into our product and offering.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: But, but Sea Otter was entirely educating.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Like, here's our company.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: You've never heard of it.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Here's why we exist and have a gel.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: When I was at Unbound, all kinds of people were coming up to us saying I love your gels, I'll be using them in the race tomorrow.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: What?
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: And then it was like, oh, but I didn't know you had a drink mix, and so it was a cool opportunity to hear like people are using it.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: People are starting to know who we are, and now we have this cool opportunity to introduce them to the next product yeah launched and uh.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: So it was really for me really exciting to see all of that and, of course, there's still a huge degree of like we haven't heard of you yeah, well, I think that's like the one thing, though that's and I was going to speak to like something like the feed, right, I feel like the product is like this thing that people just like stumble across and they're like, oh, this is really inexpensive.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And wait, 50 grams of carbs and they're buying it.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Then they're seeing you at these events, which means they're I love your product already.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you launched the drink mix.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: What?
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Like a couple weeks ago or something like that, or four weeks ago.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: It hasn't been that long.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Right, it was in May, may, okay.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: I think it was mid-May.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's all a blur, yeah yeah, yeah, I bet, I bet.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: But you know that product felt like the product we could never get launched.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Uh, we use highly branched cyclic dextrin in that product, which is also known as cluster dextrin.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Uh, and that product is that, that that carbohydrate is made by one company out in the uk and we had it was a nightmare getting it, and so it took us so long.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: We were waiting for months just to get this last ingredient to be able to launch that drink mix.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Dude, that's crazy.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so all right, this might be, you don't have to answer this.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: This is like might be inside baseball, but like how does that work?
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: So your third party that's creating this product, you're waiting on them to get it, they're going to create it and then it goes out to like, goes out to the masses.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Is that how that works?
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: so for our drink mix we work with uh, a different contract manufacturer, as the the energy gel yeah so this uh contract manufacturer is actually right in denver oh cool, um, and they're basically uh, they're more so a spices and seasonings blending company cool, so they.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Their specialty is, you know, let's bring these different forms of powders and blend them and put them in bags.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Basically, the only products in the sports nutrition space that they make are us and another really big drink, mix colorado sports nutrition company.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, I know what you're talking about.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: You don't say it.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: So for them, it's actually a really simple process making a drink mix, which explains why there's so many drink mix companies and way fewer gel companies.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: And this is what I was kind of joking about earlier, about us doing things backwards, going through the process of making a drink mix, was like this is so much easier than gels.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Uh, I was like why did we start with the really hard thing first?
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Uh, but I mean, it's a, it's a pretty simple thing.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Ultimately it's like coordinating.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: All right, we need to get the film for the, for the sachets, we need to get the, the pouches for the, for the stand-up pouch, and then we have to get all the ingredients in.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Then we have to have time on the line, but then the actual process is pretty simple.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like large scale dumping powder into a thing and just mixing it, that's so cool into into pouches yeah, well, no, I thank you for breaking it down because, like I don't know, the nerd in me was just always curious.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Like I don't think people realize they like go to the store and they buy something.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: I don't think they realize either how it's made, how like the inside baseball of, how it actually works, especially with, like you know, supply chain and products, we're saying, and things like that.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Especially in the sports scene, like you know, people take all these different supplements or this, that and the other.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to too, because I follow a lot of adjacent sports or just lots of sports in general, and you'll see, like um, like you saw it in water, like people will pop because some some random shit was like in their supplement.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: So it's, you know, it's just interesting to me that you know how different things work, yeah, yeah.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: And you know, I think the fascinating thing with the difference between the gel process and the drink mix process is the ingredient lists are pretty much the same between the two products.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: There's a few key differences, but for the most part it's the same.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: The only real big difference is water, and it's funny how that one little thing makes such a huge difference in your ability to it, because it was really important for us to not use preservatives in the product.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: You know that's minimizing, you know the number of ingredients and things that could potentially cause GI issues.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but to do that as soon as you add water to something, it's now like kind of a dangerous environment for things to grow in.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so the pasteurization process of the product and like it filling hot, like 170 degrees hot, into these packages and sealing it, that's so interesting the whole process behind, like being able to feed this product after pasteurization into this safe environment and close it and ensure, like, yeah, because it's got to be sterile, yeah, oh, wow.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: And so that greatly, greatly increased the complexity of the product between the two, even though at face value they're quite similar.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Interesting dude.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: This is thank you for filling all this in.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I was the nerd in me, um so so let's get back on the like the racing thing.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: Like what other besides Leadville?
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Like what?
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: What kind of races do you guys plan to go to this year?
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the next events, um, we'll be at the both the Leadville run and the Leadville mountain bike.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, um, we also work with, uh, adrian McDonald.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, uh, forgot about that.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know we're hoping he can beat the Leadville course record this year with carbs in his pockets.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: So we're really excited for the Leadville.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: This is one of, like the next key events.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: And then with the Leadville mountain bike, in the cycling area there's a big series called the Lifetime Grand Prix and it's a collection of these really competitive gravel mountain bike races and we work with a few athletes that are in the grand prix and so it's really exciting for us to be at those to to support our athletes for one, but then you know the the audience that comes to it as well.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Super cool.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: Beyond that, we're doing some other Colorado events.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Even though we think nationally as a company and we want to expand all over, we also want to keep our roots of being a Colorado company and investing in the community here because we love Colorado, and so we're doing some smaller events around the colorado area, and some are like stocking aid stations with product other are expo.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: That's kind of the event plan.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love the strategy and I think it's really smart in the first few years, just get that out to as many people as possible.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: And dude, what if?
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: I mean I would imagine, I mean, I'm, I'm, I know, like jp gliblin, who's gonna be, you know, at the front of the race, or like adrian's gotta he's gonna have his hands full this year, for sure, but like um.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: But if adrian does it dude, and has, you know, carbs fuel in his hand, like that's a huge deal.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: And we're like aaron's, a great example if aaron goes and gets the nolan's record, or and, or the colorado trail record, you know, those are all huge feats fueled by carbs fuel, which is pretty dope.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly he, adrian.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: He won Tarawara UTMB earlier this season.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: He's a beast dude.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: And he ate 25 of our gels during the race.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: He ate what is that?
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: 5,000 calories of carbs fuel through the 100 miles and, you know, through the a hundred miles.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: And uh, you know it's he.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: He, he's a funny guy.
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: He's uh, uh, he's very, like what's the word for it?
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Structured and he's very disciplined.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: And uh, when we asked him, like you know, why are you sponsored by carbs fuel and he's sponsored by cars fueling?
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: He's just very mad over the fact, like, I think it'll give me a competitive advantage.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: I love that dude.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: And, uh, it's like just as simple as that.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're hopeful that it'll make a big difference in in the in the Leadville race.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: But I mean, that's such a brutal dude, that's a hard race man.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: I no intentions of ever running a hundred miles, but that said, I have braced it two years in a row.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: My price at this year, or pace it this year We'll see.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Um, funny, like teammates need need that.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: But even pacing sucks.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: It's not fun through the night.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Um oh yeah, it's a hard race.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: I raced the Leadville mountain bike last year.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's a slightly different course, uh, from the run, but I was like on my knees finishing the mountain bike.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: I was like I can't imagine running this and the thing is that it's like, yes, the altitude will kill you A lot of times, the heat sucks and it's like for runners, like it's it's not a hiking race, it's a running race.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a lot faster than most a hundred milers in Colorado.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I think that that's the part that people um, I'm going to use the word misunderestimate, but that's a terrible word to use, but like it's a course that just people don't uh, don't really realize will sneak up on you and then next thing you know you're walking it in.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: It takes you 12 more hours to finish, sure, yeah, so cool man.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Now I appreciate you giving me all this like really interesting insight and, you know, kind of breaking it down.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Now I do want to kind of get back to your roots as a cyclist.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Like what did you started something in 2022 with like a cycling, some cycling group or something like that?
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Do you want to like unpack that a little bit?
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Holy cow racing.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what is that?
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: So I started them at the at really the same time, uh, and it's kind of a separate story altogether.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Uh, so I can give you kind of my whole background as a cyclist please do.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it feeds into why I started holy cow racing, okay, uh, and I think it's helpful context for, I think also for carbs and kind of how I think about things.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I got into cycling when I was 12.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: I got into it because my dad he was a cyclist and I thought he was super cool and I think I just wanted to do the same thing as him and, like, spend time with him.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: And so I got into the sport and pretty early on I realized I was pretty good at it and so I was like all right, let's make this my whole personality.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: And you know, I joined all these race teams and I was getting coached and my whole dream was to be a world tour pro on the road and to race in the Tour de France and you know, do that sort of thing.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: That's incredible, and so it was all building towards that and I was racing every weekend from the time I was 13 onwards, Anyways, by the time I was 18, it was pretty obvious to me and others if you'd ask them, I'm sure that I was not good enough to be a pro.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: I was good at bike racing, but to be at the pointy end of the sport, I mean, I'm sure the exact same with running it's genetics or a play.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: There's a lot.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: You have to be exceptional and it's like, yeah, mindset, genetics, work, ethic, Like there's a lot that goes into it.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: And I was definitely not good enough.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: And so that was a big reset point in my life where I kind of had to reevaluate what I wanted to do, and it burned me out from the sport entirely and really endurance sport, and so for years I didn't really bike.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Even when I'd get back into it, I'd start riding for a couple months and you know I'd start getting fit and I'd start dreaming of being a pro again.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Then I'd get mad at myself and be like it's not going to happen.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: And then I quit a pro again.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Then I'd get mad at myself and be like it's not going to happen.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: Then I quit biking altogether again.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of like a toxic relationship for quite a long time.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: But gradually, over time, I refound my love for the sport and nowadays I love cycling for I would call it three reasons the community I love the friendships that you can make and maintain thanks to well, endurance, sport really.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: Uh, I like seeing beautiful places, like that's the cool thing of gravel.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: It's like you can go to these just remote wilderness areas and see 120 miles of it, you know, and you would have never done that otherwise.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: And then the third is I'm still competitive and it's fun to push myself and you know, now I'm okay with it just being for myself, and so it's kind of been a full circle experience.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: And anyways, in the background I kept moving in and out of Colorado and two years ago I moved to Golden and when I came back I was like all right, every time I leave Colorado I regret it, and this time I want to stay and dig my roots in.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: And this was the same time I was feeling much more motivated on the bike.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: So I was like maybe I join a bike racing team, like it could be fun to meet a lot of people that ride bikes, go on some cool bike trips, maybe do some races if I feel like it, and so I started looking around for teams and I was really pretty uninspired by what I found I felt like it was classic roadie, elitist, clicky teams where it's like you had to be fast enough and cool enough and someone has to know you to invite you.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: You know, and it also had obligations of you have to show up to this many group rides, you have to do this many races.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: You know, I've already established like I'm not going to be a pro.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Uh, this is just to have fun, make some friends.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: And and then, on the club side, I felt like it wasn't serious enough.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, so I felt like in this middle ground where I didn't fit in on anything, and so I was like, screw it, I want to start a team and have it live what I'm looking for, and surely I'm not the only person that thinks like that.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: Uh, and so that's why I started a holy cow racing.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: Uh, you know, our whole mission is to grow the cycling community and spread fun.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: Uh, and yeah, we dress up and like colorful spotted cow kits.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: We moo at people when they say hi to us.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: How big is the team?
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: There's like 100 people.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: Oh my God, that's amazing.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: It's kind of crazy how much it's grown.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: I think it just the mission resonates with people.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: You know, I tell people when they are interested in joining that you can kind of be as much or as little as they want it to.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Uh, you know, I see some people a couple times a week, I see others a couple times a year.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: Uh, and both are fine.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: Like you don't have to race, you don't have to show up to rides.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: You know, there's no big obligations.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: It's like I just wanted to create this platform where people who like bikes can meet other people who like bikes and ride with them, and so it's compete when you can compete and like yeah, I get that, I like that, that middle ground yeah exactly.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: So it's been really fun.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: Uh, it's been cool to see like this community and, uh, it accomplished what I was looking for.
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: I feel like very rooted in the in the, the golden and Colorado area and yeah, so that's, that's fun.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: And, like I in the background was justifying, do I really want to start a team while I'm also starting this sports nutrition company?
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: And I could justify it because, you know, personally it was exciting to me.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: And, second off, like what a great idea this is because, know, built in now there are, you know, I was thinking at the time like maybe 50 people that are friends of mine, that are in the cycling community into different levels of riding, and like they're built-in ambassadors in a way yeah of carbs, fuel smart, and so I figured like they can benefit each other.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: And then yeah, on the flip side, like I provide a discount on our product to everybody on the team yeah, you know it's like trying to support.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: You know, keeping the family discount dude.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: It's already two bucks a job like that's yeah for anyone listening here one of the most frustrating things is when people ask me for a discount yeah, it's like what the hell built that into the product?
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: it it's already discounted.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: That's funny.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: No, and I love it and it is so.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: It's basically in the greater Golden area, more or less.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: That's so cool.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would call our team headquarters Golden.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: You know that's where we do a lot of the rides from.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: I might make it to a ride this afternoon.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but we have people kind of all over the place.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: There's actually like cows and probably six states and most are in the greater denver area.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: But uh, yeah, a lot of the times we ride in golden I love it for two things like.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: The first one is if you build it, they will come, obviously.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Second thing is is I have very much that mindset if I don't, if I can't find something I like or something that's going to fit me, I'm just going to do it myself.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: And there's not a lot of people that do that dude, so that's kind of like a rare trait that you see in some people.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Um, well, it's it's something that I thought about doing my whole life, like since I was 18.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: When I reset my ambition of being a, being a pro, I was like, all right, I still want to do something cool with my life.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: And uh, you know, at the time I was like I want to start my own company, I want to, like, be an entrepreneur, and uh, that's why I went to school for business and you know, it was kind of all like building towards this and it was it's kind of funny how these little things change in your life to make you actually do something.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: You know, I'd always talked about starting companies but it's hard to actually do it.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: And I had talked about it for years and years and years, like while I was in the workforce after school, and you know, I kind of justified this path of like I went into software sales.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, that was my path.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: So I was doing software sales and eventually I got into a management role of, like account executive teams.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: And during that time I was, I was talking to just a random guy and and I was talking about my path, like you know, I'm doing sales and now I'm doing management.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: You know, so I can see if I'm a good people leader and, you know, grow that skill set before I want to start my own company.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: And he was like that's BS.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: He's like you're either going to be a good people leader or you're not going to be.
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's fair.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: That's a good statement.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: And he's like just go for it.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: He's like just go for it.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: He's like stop waiting.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: And that was like a month or two before I started both of these things and it was like I think it was the blend of like.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: I was told that at the right time, right when these things were bothering me, and it was like the right thing to push me from thinking about doing things to actually doing them.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: Did you just quit your job and go for it?
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: Not right away?
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: No, doing them.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: Did you just quit your job and go for it?
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: Not right away?
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: No, uh, so I, I was working for, uh, I was building the business and the team for a year before I quit, smart kind of see this is can I do this?
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: And balancing, that's hard, man, yeah yeah, so it was, and that's why I ultimately did leave, like, uh, it was a scary thing to quit my job.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: for it Well, especially software sales and management, that's.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: It's a golden handcuff in a lot of ways.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah and it just got to the point where I felt like I was not doing a good job at anything, like I was too spread thin, like I knew I was doing a crappy job in my, in my software sales role, and uh, then I was like I know I'm not spending enough time on the team, I know I'm not spending enough time on building carbs, and I was like I'm just doing a crappy job everywhere.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like something needs to give.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: You know, because juggling those three things with, like, my own ambitions as an athlete and training and like having a social life and having a relationship, and I was like it's impossible right.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: I'm just doing a terrible job at everything.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: Something needs to give.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: Dude, I feel your pain.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: I'm going through that right now Uh, not to the degree you were, but like I have the podcast, I have my full-time day job and I'm also a professional runner and I'm getting married in a month and it's like Holy shit, how do I balance all of these?
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: How do I, you know cause I mean, this probably isn't a secret Like I would love to make the podcast my full-time thing at some point in time.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: That's the plan, you know, but I also work in corporate finance.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: It's a bit of a golden handcuff, you can't it's hard to leave you know, um and I'm kind of in that getting towards that transitionary point in the next few years of like, what do we want to do?
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: We want to stay, we want to go you know so.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: I feel your pain there and I admire you for taking that leap, because I feel like I don't know, just as if, like from the research I did on the business and just like understanding you and having this conversation, like I feel like you might very well be on a rocket ship to the moon with this, you know, with this business, which is pretty solid, you know.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: So you know, I should say too, like a lot of that jump from, you know, having a full-time job to doing this.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: Full-time was really made possible by my partner.
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: You know she.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: she's been super supportive through all of it and, like she's taken on other you know responsibilities from a financial standpoint and like really helped make that possible, cause you know, I don't come from a like a family situation where I have money to like just do anything yeah and like so.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: So a lot of that was made possible by the support of her, so I I've been really grateful for that as well.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: But no, it's been exciting like seeing the company grow.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is getting a lot more traction than even my most ambitious goals, uh, which is super exciting.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: It poses its own sorts of challenges, uh, you know, with making sure we have the product, but you know it's it's a good problem to have.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, definitely.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: It was funny, like when we first made the gel we made 60,000 of them and that's the smallest order we could do and we were kind of worried because I had a 12-month expiration date.
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: We're like that means we have to move through it within nine months.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: You know, at least you know, and turns out we moved through it like four something like that yeah and then, like it's exponentially increasing and like we've already done, like three or four reorders of larger quantities now and it's like you can feel it picking up the traction and, uh, people are starting to use it yeah dude that is.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you this from a scaling perspective have you because like you're, I feel like a leadership role in a company like this.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: I feel like you have to have one eye on the business as current and one eye on the business in the future?
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Um, how do you plan to scale this thing?
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: Or what's your plan to scale this thing?
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Are you just going to want to grow in sales and then I don't know, like how does that work?
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Well, the really nice thing is we built it from the get-go to be really scalable, without the necessity of you know, my time or other people's time.
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: So you know the contract manufacturing of the products.
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: You know I don't need to be involved in it.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: I need to be on top of planning and demand and you know hurting the cats to like make sure it gets done.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: But you know we're not actually on the line making this, and so that's one part of the equation that we don't have to deal with.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: That's one part of the equation that we don't have to deal with.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: The third is using 3PL, so having our fulfillment, so the warehousing, picking, packing and shipping to the customers.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: We don't do that either, so we outsource that, and it's an automated connection between our Shopify web store and the fulfillment center.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: So as soon as an order comes in, it passes through the API to the fulfillment center, and so I don't have to do anything.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: That's amazing On the whole, like when someone buys, yeah, there's no manual process.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: So you have no scaling issues then, other than like, maybe hiring like two people if you have to later down the line.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think when I needs for for growing the, the staff it's uh, it's kind of dependent, I think, on how aggressive we want to be yeah so if we want to really hit the ground running and like be at tons of events and things like that, like I can only be so many places and I can only ask the other people involved in carbs who also have a full-time job I can only ask them so many times.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: Eventually you need like a yeah, you know, and so like, uh, depending on how aggressive we want to be, from that standpoint, uh, there may be necessity to grow.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: but yeah, the whole idea was to make it pretty scalable I love it dude, how, um, and I will start winding down some questions, but I just have a question for you, like how stressful is it?
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: Like how does how, like what's?
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: How hard is that day to day?
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: uh, I think I could make it not stressful, okay, uh, but I naturally overthink things.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: What's your baby?
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: And so I make it stressful for myself.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: I would say, you know, I I really want to make a huge impact on the sports nutrition space and, like I, have very ambitious goals for where we take the business.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: And so I do sweat over every detail and you know that makes it certainly stressful and I would say the stress comes in waves.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: There's moments that are just overwhelming, but in the day to day, you know, actually in the last few months I feel like it's been really good, like I've prioritized my personal life also and like training on the bike, and you know I've been balancing.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: I think the work-life balance pretty well, but certainly there's stressful moments, like I remember a couple months ago, like things were delayed on manufacturing and we were about to run out of product and I was like, oh my god, we're gonna have a gap between having product and that's terrifying and that's like a momentum killer.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah you know, because suddenly all these people want to buy it but they can't.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: They're going to go somewhere else.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: Thankfully we didn't screw that up and came in time.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Uh, but it's like that sort of thing is those little things, dude, that can just.
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's terrifying and a lot of stuff is out of my control and I'm a control freak, uh.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: And so to like let go.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: You know it's like I can't control these different suppliers getting things to me on time, or like you know, the cost of film right now is more than it has been.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, and like I, instead of rolling over and like dealing with it like I'm, I'm being a pain to all of my suppliers yeah, yeah, how can we get this down?
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: yeah and it's it's like.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: That makes it stressful, uh, but generally speaking, I mean it's, it's pretty fun.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people, a lot of founders, kind of talk about starting their business and they're like it's really hard and you can like see the dead look in there.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah and so I try to be like grateful and happy because I am it's super cool man, yeah, and so I try not to be like a downer on that because, all in all, it's super fun yeah, no, it reminds me of like, um, I don't know you, just I feel, because I feel like I'm catching the business in a lot of early stages and it's going to be kind of fun to look back, you know, like in the future to see, like, where this goes.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, it reminds me of like that.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever watched or listened to the podcast guy rise how I built this.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: It's kind of what reminds me of in a lot of ways, cause, like you know, it's um, it's just the scalability no-transcript.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: So no kudos to you.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: It's very uh and it's cool to see.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know, as the athlete in me is a little bit of a contrarian as well, um, I love democratizing the sport in a lot of ways and I think, um, you know seeing I don't know a handful of brands having all the control I don't necessarily know if I like that, you know, I like to see lots of players in there, um, especially ones that can, like, come in and, you know, with a lean business and just totally disrupt everything and make everyone question their price points.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: So I think that's dope.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when I told people about the idea you know over and over again, people were like I told people about the idea you know over and over again, people were like well, you know what if X company just drops their prices?
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: I don't think they will, they can't.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're going to be undercutting themselves if they do that.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: And I think we would be.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: They'd need to be bleeding pretty badly for them to make that big of a shift, but like if they did that would make me so happy, I would love for that well, it helped the entire, help everybody, yeah because it's good for athletes I mean ultimately, we're making this company because it's what's right by athletes, you know.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: so if we actually were somehow able to make such a difference in the industry that we got screwed over because all these companies made inexpensive, great products Like that's best case scenario for everybody.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: And so if that's what happens to us, I'm fine.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, and I just don't see it happening.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Like, like we talked about earlier, like somebody, like take, I don't know, goo spring energy, whoever.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: Um, like you got to pay the secretary, you got to pay the financial analyst, you got to pay this guy, that guy, like they have a whole, you know, their payroll is probably insane.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: So to be able to even have those types of margins, I don't see it even possible, and while maintaining the quality of product.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: So it's interesting.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to the happy stuff.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: I got some funny questions for you, dude.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: What's start with?
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Um, what's your take on Bigfoot?
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: I'll start with what's your take on Bigfoot.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: On Bigfoot.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Well, you know where I'm from.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: In Santa Cruz we got the Redwood Forest.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: There's actually a Bigfoot museum, so we're probably the home of Bigfoot.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, I think he seems like a good guy.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: I just hope he believes in me.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, what's your take on grizzly bears in Colorado?
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: You've been here for a little bit now grizzlies.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you think I'm not talking about here.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about, like san juans, maybe in some wilderness area out there.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: Do you know something?
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: I don't are there, so there's books there's books written about this like there's like a whole underground thing of like grizzlies, possibly still like this remnant smaller subspecies of grizzlies still being in Colorado and the San Juans.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: Are you serious?
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: I swear to God?
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: I swear to God, I think it's called Ghost Grizzlies.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: It's a book that was written in the early 2000s.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: They like talk about the Ed Wiseman bear, which is like the last bear killed in the 80s, but like every year now there's like been more or less every year, there's like a semi-credible, credible sighting.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: And then there's like the wilderness in the san juans that like is like massively vast, um, and that's like where they think there could be, like somewhere out there.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: So uh, well, I can't say I have many thoughts on the grizzlies of colorado.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: This is news to me, uh, but I mean, could be Okay.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: All right, all right.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Last question what's your take on like AI?
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Now On AI?
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: In what setting?
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: Like, like what's?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: Are you pro-human, you pro-AI?
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Like, especially now, because, like you're a CEO of a company, like you know, like you could automate a lot of your shit, you know.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pro AI Okay.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: For sure Okay.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: I think it's going to be a good thing.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: I think it does affect some things in some negative ways, but, you know, I think all innovation and technology does.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: I think it's interesting to see what happens in education.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know I'm not as in touch with that as I once was, but I know from people that I talk to.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: It's like they use ChatGPT to For everything To do their homework, to do all of these different things, and like they can pass their classes and maybe there's going to be ways to stop that from happening.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: But you know, I'm afraid it's going to limit people's ability to actually learn.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: For sure, you know they'll learn how to use chat gpt, which maybe is what's the relevant lesson to learn.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: It's possible going into today's society.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: It's like how to leverage the tools at your disposal to get things done, like maybe that's what's important to learn, as opposed to the actual content.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know, but I do think that right now, people are passing classes without actually learning the content because of the help of things like that.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: Dude, my cousin just graduated.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: The cousin I went to go see and shout out to police for her graduation, high school graduation.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: I was in Carbondale for her and I wanted to ask the question because I feel like she said like she, they use chat, gpt for everything now and I'm like, are you just going to use that in college?
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Like you're not going to learn shit.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: But I guess you said like that makes sense.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: I have my best friend.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: He's got a, I think, a six year old, three year olds or four year old, and he three-year-old or four-year-old and, um, he's like bro, do I even save for college at this point?
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: Like is that even gonna be?
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: Is that gonna be a thing in like 14 years?
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: like it's a valuable question because we don't really know, you know well one, uh, I'm probably gonna butcher this.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: So, uh, if, if, rosie, you're listening to this, I'm sorry, but I was just at Unbound.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: And I was actually in this house full of Europeans.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: It sounds like a bar joke.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: It's like there was two Germans, two Brits and a Belgian and then me, but anyways, one of the Germans that was there was actually ended up being the women's 200 pro winner.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: It's like career changing moment, anyways, to give her a flex, like she just won the biggest women's gravel race in the world.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: And she's getting her PhD.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: And she's getting her PhD and it's in.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: She's studying something along the lines of supply chain and manufacturing, using AI to be able to help make more sustainable businesses.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: So she's a superhuman, yeah, but you know there's a use of AI to like help make the world a better place.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, ai to like help make the world a better place.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: I mean it's, it's uh, uh, trying to make, you know, manufacturing and supply chain decisions that are better for the environment.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: Makes so much sense.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about it like to like I don't know how much they leverage AI.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: I mean I work for like a fortune 500, but like I have no idea how much we leverage AI in our supply chain, like I would imagine probably not.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: And if you were to leverage something like that, what that's going to do from like a shipping container perspective, like what's a better route to take, given like this time of the year and this, that and the other, like I think there's like all these little like you know, my new things that probably go into play there.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: That, uh, from a sustainability perspective, and even just like products, like what you're using in the product that like a deep dive you can do into that For sure.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: Well, dude, on that note, thanks so much for coming on the pod.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate it.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: Do you want to give any shout-outs or any plugs?
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: Obviously, carbs fuel.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, carbs fuel, eat more carbs, that's right.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: Doing your activity.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: No, I would say no plugs beyond what we've been talking about.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: But I would say our ability to get to where we are is not me.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: I feel like I'm just kind of a person who waves my hands around.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: It's the people on my team that actually help get it done.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: So, lainey Rich, laney rich, like I said, she's our CFO.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: Uh, aaron Gao, who's the PhD, you know, guy, co-founder, made the product that everybody loves.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: Uh, and Michael Cussin, zoe Jeff, you know, like everybody in the team, like it's made possible because of them, you know, helping, helping row the boat.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: Dude, I love it.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: Well, dude, thanks for coming on Appreciate it Of course.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, What'd you guys think?
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: I told you this was a cool episode, really inspiring and not just inspiring, it was really interesting.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: Um, I know that there's been a lot of you know debacles possibly in the food nutrition slash like endurance industry lately, so I thought it would be a fun conversation to have someone on that was just very knowledgeable about the industry, how to start these businesses, how to run these businesses and, like I said, he's got a mission.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: He's here to democratize it by providing a high quality, low cost product that's not ran by a giant corporation.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: So I don't know.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: I found that refreshing and I hope you guys did too.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: Um, again, I really want to personally thank Gabe so much for coming on.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: He's got a great business.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: Um, we really want to give it some support.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: So if you guys are interested in maybe switching up your nutrition plan or trying something new, go ahead and check out carbs fuel.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: You can find them both on their own website and carbs fuelcom, and you can also find them on the feed.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Um, I think that's how actually a lot of uh, a lot of gels are starting to get into people's hands.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: I'm starting to see quite a lot of them on Instagram, photographed and, uh, just in the wild as well.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Um, you know what's better than a $2 gel and that's going to provide you a and that doesn't taste like shit.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: It's pretty great, Um.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, lots of shout outs to that.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: Um, I hope you guys enjoyed this one.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: Like I said, this is not a sponsored podcast.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: I just thought the product was really cool and the business models really neat as well.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, so another again special thanks to Gabe.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: Um, hope you guys enjoyed this one and uh talk to you guys next week.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: Enjoy, Thank you.