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

On this episode, Jeff Byers, the former NFL lineman, turned CEO of Momentus, who's built a

“brand trusted by elite military units, pro athletes, and high performers. Inside a $200 billion”

supplement industry, plagued by hype and broken promises, lays out how to lead with relentless consistency cut through the noise of a messy market and are entrust where almost no one else has. The show starts now. Are you very welcome back to the show. Jeff, I'm excited to have you on your own. Yeah, likewise. So you've done some stuff that most people haven't done before. You're going after a complete Brazilian dollar industry, one that regrettably I know a lot of it. For the four or

five people who don't know of what you've done both professionally and the corporate world, but also in the professional sports world can you tell us a little bit who you are and what you want to. Yeah, I'm Jeff Byers, I'm the CEO and co-founder of a company called Momentus. We're leading nutritional supplement and sports nutrition company. My background is a bit different and unique.

“I had an incredible opportunity. I played four years in the NFL. I was an offensive lineman,”

journeyman. I said I did a lot of practicing because I did do a lot of practicing and I was lucky enough to play in a handful of games and all of that. But if you know who I am from my NFL

days, you were a pretty big diehard pants or shan. As a whole. But when I retired, I always

do their life after football jumped into an early stage biotech that ultimately led me to two momentous as it is today. But my vision and goal was never to be a supplement company CEO. I actually said no for a long time. And the business I started, we didn't transition into a supplement company till 2021. The middle of 2021 when I acquired and merged two businesses together, that really thrust us into this sports nutrition's nutritional supplement category. And it's

been an incredible journey. But the reason why I didn't want to be in it is kind of why we're having me talk is like our industry is messy. My industry is messy. There's a lot of BS. People don't know what to believe. It's confusing. There's no oversight on air. And so you can really do whatever you

want, say whatever you want. But the industry is over $200 billion. And the state of society is

as sick and as unhappy as it's ever been. And when you think about what is the role of a supplement, right, is to help. You'd be more healthy and be more happy. And that's a lot of things what people are claiming that supplements do. The fact of the matter supplements are supplemental, the everything else you're doing in your life. And we got to fix that other stuff too. But there's no way that, right, the health and happiness the society should be declining while my industry

is skyrocketing. So I fundamentally believe there's something broken and that has to do with trust and transparency and efficacy and cutting the noise in the BS out of a really big, big category. So what you're saying is I can't eat dairy queen non-stop and then just take a supplement to offset it. You're ruining for me, Jeff. There. Come on. So I am ruining it. You're ruining for me. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. So okay, there's a couple of things I want

to chitchat about this because you've attacked an industry and a lot of people go after industries where it's not as big and it's not as aggressive as the industry you've gone into it. But again, your offices of alignment, this is what you do. You have a different exposure to things. One of the things you play professional sports, I played semi-professional sports. One of the things we're taught really early on is we get access to resources and tools and just everything

across the board being people that the average public doesn't see. They look at someone like you saying bolt and I go, if I get up every day, I'm going to run every day and it's the same as what he's doing. It's not even remotely close. Can you tell me where the things in business, where you've walked into and you know I've had these elite things in the NFL, these elite training things my entire life, what are some elite things that you've done in order to attack this industry?

Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of goes back to the leaders that I was around and one of those coaches was Pete Carroll, who's a legendary coach and watching how he built and managed culture and what makes elite and pro sports so special is a lot of that as culture, right? You have huge egos and huge high performers all around but you get them all pointing in the same direction, rolling in the same direction, really special things happen. But there's an insane amount of accountability. There's

a super short memory overall and also like me as a leader, one of the things I learn most from

“Pete Carroll is like you have to show up consistently every single day, right? Doesn't matter what”

type of leader you are or how you show up, but like a leader who is unpredictable is the leader who

you want that person to show up the same and predictable as if you just lost the Super Bowl,

“right? And I think those things I've taken from a leadership perspective really at heart and”

book back of like, where are the things that I saw in locker rooms that work really, really well?

But then I guess from I can athlete perspective, what did I like? I have the same like the ball always

gets snapped, right? Whether when I was a plan, it doesn't matter. The game never waits for you, the business game never waits for you. It all the ball always gets snapped. The lack of movement is ultimately what we'll call as everybody's failure here. And time is the greatest asset and the biggest enemy that any company has, especially companies that are trying to do it really differently and grow and disrupt, right? Because time is our friend, if we go fast and if we don't go

fast and so the ball always gets snapped. It doesn't wait for you, time does not wait for anybody. You better be ready to go and you better give your best effort regardless, right? And then, right, you have a very short window to evaluate, make a decision, and the ball gets snapped again.

And so it's like this short memory being really, really resilient because you're always going

to get beat. You're always going to have a problem, right? And you've got to learn and move forward. And if you let that problem or that mistake linger, it just drags down more and more mistakes. And ultimately, you're asked it's benched or you like your business, stutters out and fails. And so it's like, how do you move fast, right, in those moments? And then another thing the other thing is showing up matters, right? And like, getting to the gym when you're training matters,

right? Putting in the time in the training room matters, right? In the film room matters, it matters. And you can't do that by not showing up. Half the battle, you've got to be there, you've got to be in person, you've got to make the effort to do it. And what I learned is like, once you're there, then you can go optimize. But getting there, a lot of people just don't get there. It won't aren't willing to do that, right? And it's like, go see your biggest partners, whether

they're your wrong ingredients, your manufacturers or your marketing partners, like showing up matters

“because that's how you ultimately drive differentiation. So you talked about culture and having”

everybody kind of row the same way. And sports, it's relatively easy to do that. When you're on the field, it is a clear enemy. We understand what we're doing. Yeah, there's a little bit of infighting here and there, but in a corporate America, how did you get everybody rolling this set away? Because this is a challenging bugger. Yeah, my co-founder and president of the org, Erica, it has really built the process and the operating system within momentous, right?

And why is it so easy to get a team on the scoreboard for everybody is clear? You know what winning and losing is? Like on every position, right? Because that's what sports is. Business you're play over really, really long period, right? But what guides you in sport is a the practice plan, the meeting schedules, right? The game plan, how you call plays, right? And all of that matters.

“And I think a lot of people forget in business, you have to have that core underlying operating”

system. Right? When do you lift weights? When do you go to film session? What is your practice schedule look like? Right? Like how often, how much do you do X to do Y? And so it's like this operating system that you have to invest time in and resources. Just a meeting cadence as well. I would love to take credit for this. That is my co-founder that she has built this internal

operating system. And we've taken from a lot of different people, which you always do, but she's been

able to just build our culture around the rhythm of business, right? And sport is the same rhythm. But ultimately, we have a scoreboard and we talk about the scoreboard a lot as a business. And everybody knows that they have a number on their head. That's part of what we install. Like the numbers are softer for other people. But like what matters to you the most? What is the most important thing that this individual can do to hit the number that we're trying to target in 12, 24 months?

It's hard because there's some disconnect, but meeting rhythms, right? How often does marketing and ups get together? How often does the leadership team get together? How often do we do offsights? Right? All that rhythm creates that process and creates people getting on the same page. Because the problem with business on my sports, I mean, I think sports have this huge history of like, right, process and systems and like, you know, you practice, you know, you do this.

But in in business and as you're building business, you forget about some of that. Because early days, Eric and I, we made every decision. We did everything, right? And we were that bottleneck.

you get to the stage where oh shit, we only go as far as our team can go. And that means you have

“to build system process rhythms. And that's how we've really got around. That is like, you build that”

in place that gets people on the same page, rowing in the same direction, right? And in sport, it's a little different. But if you take a bigger step back and sport, you have the athletes that are playing on the field and you have all the coaches, you have all the trainers, you have all the front office. That's a business, right? Like, that's how a business is like, you have your third old bread. We have our third old bread that are to have a very specific role, right? And then

we have our support staff that do very unique things, right? That those third old breads, if we don't

have that growth engine, right? With support, that growth engine never works. And so it's, if you think

of it, just a sports and just as the game and the players, you fail, right? You got to think about coaches, GMs, right? Like, the community aspect of it, like all of these things, because those athletes can't go out and play if they don't have that support. And that's like business, right? You have your third old bread athletes that go out and play. Then you have the people who cut the grass, right? That make sure we got friends and stuff, right? And those people are just, isn't

important? Just don't always think about that. So what do you do when you have someone who who bucks the system, because in sports it's easy? If you get in a situation where you're not, you know, executing in a way we need you to, if you're not, because again, I come from a baseball world. If you're not pitching, you're not throwing strikes. You're going to get a little bit of grace period, but not much. And then we're just going to rotate somebody else's in, because there's

a million people who want your spot. How do you do that in business as well and keep the culture alive? That is, that has been the hardest thing to figure out, right? Because in sports, it's

black or white, right? And there's always like the next man up or the next person up mentality.

“And we had to build that over time. And so I think number one is, right, we've focused and we've”

from day one had a very, very clear set of values. And these are how we behave and how people operate. Or values are non-negotiable. We hire solely based upon them and we fire based upon them, very, very often. And then we have like, gets it wants a capacity to do it. That's like, can you throw a curve ball? Can you do this? Like, those are the actual tech, and do you want to do it? That's that kind of core values, non-negotiable. Gets it wants it capacity to do it.

Is like, can you do your job? Do you want to do your job? Can you grow into your job? And that's part of, can we build that? And so what we do is, right, I talk about the cadence and the end of rhythm of meanings, then you what you have is, right, touch points with people, right? We grade our people on our core values. And, right, gets it wants a capacity to do it. Of that role, specific role, four times a year. And if somebody feels off, we have that conversation right

away. We call it a three strikes policy, but it sounds way harsher than it is, Charles. But like, what what it is is like, what we found is when you give feedback in like a one-on-one and all of that, people here on doing a great job and moving these projects, here's all the tactical things. Oh, you need to get better at X. It's just like, okay, I get better at X, right? What we found is when you say, we're having a conversation of what we need you to do better, right now. That is

and people choose one of two ways. They choose to lean in or they self, they vote themselves off to Ireland, right? Both things are the right outcome, right? And it's like, you rarely ever get to two or three strikes because like, either that person's like, oh, I'm heard and they're like,

“I'm in or they're like, I'm out, right? And that's what we want and that's what we need, right?”

And so it's kind of creating that culture, but the team knows performance matters. And the best thing that we've created, I think over the last year, year and a half, is itself policing now, right? Whereas like, right, we have people like people on a team are like, oh, they're too slow, right? And it's like, let me see if we can get them like, people are taking other people their peers into like, bring them along because they know that we have to go, we demand,

right, to go fast and we demand a hundred percent responsibility. It's like, we need people to show up and do their jobs. And so we do culturally, we've established this is how we hire, this is how we fire, this is how people move in and out. There, there is no ambiguity, right? So people know, hey, I got my, I am, I have a strike conversation. I get better change my shit, right? And rather than, oh, I just had a one-on-one and I got a minus on this thing and it's like,

I like, because that's how we're like, we hear humans, we hear the good. And then we sometimes

forget the bad, also as a leader and a manager. If you're not forced to have the hard conversation, it's like strike, like, we require like three examples or one of the things that we can do better.

“Anyways, I think it's the systems and processes. And again, like, my co-founders just crushed these things.”

Yeah, I think you hit there, you know, as a manager, that's your job. Your jobs to have the hard conversations. You're, you're not there to be cute and fine in whole people's hands. You're there to find the competitive advantage is in the market. Your competitive advantage is in your workforce as well. And so listen, this is what's going on. We're not going to have a BS conversation about it. Let's get to it. You know, we can be friends another time. But at the end of the day, I'm your boss.

I'm going to need to get some. And I think having that intensity matters. Now that's that culture's

not for everyone. We run into situations and orgs where one of the first things that I do when I'm

brought in, I tell HR, I'm like, you're fired. I will wipe the entire HR, email you're going to hate me. You're just going to get in my way. I'm like, just for the next six months, you're fired. Go on vacation, go do something else because I'm reading, writing fire. But you also have found a way in your industry, which is so saturated with BS and fillers literally that you found a way to have a competitive advantage there as well. And it's a story that when we had our, you know, we do

our intro calls when we connect, you told me the story and I was like, do send me stop with it, send me stop now because you did something that most people haven't done. And I want to steal

“your thunder from you on that one. But can you walk me through that story? Yeah, I think at”

them of the day, they're, they're, our industry has been perceived and is operated. It's very commoditized. Right? You just go and say, I want vitamin D or I want creatinine. You just get generic BS. That's not how food works. That's not how any of the rest of of, when we think of health, wellness optimization, nutrition, that is like, you're just not going to buy generic BS, right? On there. And what has happened over the last 40 years of this industry is it just like,

it's just been this race to the bottom, right? And what does that mean is like, very few companies understand their sourcing and their supply chain. They don't know where things come from. They're literally just going to a manufacturing and saying, I want protein and they're like, here's you're done protein. You know, versus like, what, what dairy, what region is this coming from, what, how are the cows treated, right? Where, what's their average age? Production and all of these

things that matter so much when, when you think about the output quality and transparency, it all starts with the wrong ingredient. And if all you do is focus on the putting multiple wrong ingredients together to make a final product and you aren't focusing on what are the quality of those rods going in, then you have an inferior product. And for us, it's, or we, we call it the moment to standard. It's kind of, it's three pillars and it starts with the science-backed

curated portfolio, right? Which is like science-backed, right? We have our, our lead advisory board help us craft and all that and we have the right products and they're, then it's all about sourcing. Right? It's like, where are we sourcing from when does it matter? Does it matter what type of vitamin D we get? Yes or no, can we get the highest quality? Does that have an impact or not? Right? Sometimes it matters and other times it doesn't and sometimes it matters a lot.

And so for us, where we focused on sourcing is going to put eyes on facilities of our major products, going to understand what is the purity? What is the process? Right? Are they using a water wash

or an acid wash? Because ultimately, that has to do with impurities on it. That has to do with

cost and, and, and ultimately, the end quality. And we believe our category is not something you do for a day or four or twenty. It's something that you do for a lifestyle, for a lifetime. And if you're going to invest in your health and wellness and you're putting an inferior lesser quality product in

“your body over years, decades, that has implications. Right? That's why people eat organic versus”

not. That's why people eat grass fed, natural beef versus not. They're making conscious decisions. And we believe if you're making a conscious decision and you're investing in your health and wellness, you probably care about those things. And so for me, like, it not an airplane, like, in two days from today, day to half now, I find Ireland to go to our main dairy. There's two dirries in the world that manufacture our specification of weight protein. And then I go to Norway

to visit our Omega 3 distillery that makes our incredibly highly potent Omega 3 that we are really, really proud of. But like, those things are really uncommon in our category. Right? Maybe somebody in the ops team goes for me as the CEO. Right? Like, that's my business. Yeah. Right? Those are my biggest partners. I have these massive marketing partners,

able to look in your eyes and say, I know where my creatine comes from. I know where my protein comes from. I know where my Omega's come from. Right? I know where these things come from is important to me. But also, it allows us to uphold our moment to standard in a way that doesn't. So when we say,

“hey, we have the highest quality protein that we can find for our business. That's true. I believe that”

because I've went everywhere. Yeah, I think you said it, you know, in the earlier call, you said you flew out and you met with the distributor and the supplier. And I'm like, cool, what else have you seen? What else is everybody else you've shown this to? What did they say? And they were like, no one's ever, no one's ever come and seen us before, no one flew out to that part of the world and did that, which I was like, okay, now this is a different conversation,

because people want to know, right? You know, again, this is $2 billion industry at the band.

Minimal, it's taking off. $200 billion. Sorry, $200 billion industry, people are like, well, how do you penetrate a market like that? Do you have the fancy, you know, model doing this or do you show up and have an Instagram thing or like, no, this is my USB. I'm going to sit there and tell you, this is exactly where my stuff comes from. Not an a theory. I have stood and touched the machines. And I think that's something that most people don't

understand when they're trying to get success and they're trying to have a group of growth. They're not going to have that USB. Well, I think the challenge, especially in my category, is it's really easy to build a business fast, right? And our thought process is, if we want, we have an internal saying, we say, we want to be the anti supplement supplement company, right? We want to challenge an industry to do better. And we talk about 15, 20, 30 years.

“The only way you do that is by building a foundation on quality and transparency and sourcing,”

right? We could, like, we, like, we don't work on TikTok. Why? Because we want to say crazy things because that is not our brand DNA and our brand ethos. And most businesses in our category are like TikToks of the Holy Grail unlock. And it's like, okay, great. That is not how you build a brand. That is still leading in 20 years. And so the hardest thing that we do is that I think we do, as a business is when we are making big decisions, what does this do for our business in 20 years?

Is this help us or hurt us? Help us hurt us, right? And it's like product portfolio, product category, sourcing, all of those things. Because ultimately, maybe it's a wash. And then you don't make, then it doesn't matter to that decision. And then you make a decision based on economics or marketing or growth. But ultimately, when you make big decisions, you need to look forward on what it is. And that long-term thinking is sometimes at odds with

short-term profitability and revenue. And that is hard. And what is like, and most people in our industry

aren't always looking, it's like, we're not, like, some of the CEOs in our space, it's like,

it's their seventh supplement company. They just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, because it's an easy place to make money. Like, air quote, right? Like, it's so big. And there's, you can build a business that's seven people that could do $50 million in our category. But that brand is not here in 10, 15 years, because leading. Like, that's a difference. I believe what I want to build, because I want to create change when we talk about early on. It's like,

the industry is massive and it's doing a huge disservice. I want to help change that trajectory. I want to be a positive part of the health and wellness and optimization of society. I just don't want to be able to put it on the radar. So how do you deal with the, the contradicant science, right? So there's a lot of people out there. So go, you need to be a purely plant-based or you need this, this supplement. You need that supplement.

And you're making these universal claims, the different body types, different blood work, different environments. How do you handle that onslaught?

“I think that's why we don't work on places like TikTok or, right? Like, traditional meta-influencers,”

right? Because we won't say those things. And ultimately, we're all more alike than we are, not as humans. But at the end of the day, we all have different goals, different challenges. And therefore, what we need to supplement and how we do that matters. Right? Some people were like, oh, I'm carnivore and it crushes for me great. You found something that works. Oh, I'm a vegan, great. I don't really care, right? What I care is that you

have found things that are sustainable over long periods of time that drive optimal health.

And the research is always, right, going to add in flow on there. Right? Guess what?

We know proteins important. Right? Creatine has almost been irrefutable based upon the amount of research out there. Omega-3 fatty acids, right? Same. And it's like, focus on the foundational things. And that's like for us, like, we don't have, you know, these crazy products that are out there that very few people have ever heard of or that are fixing it or proprietary

or you're trying to fix a specific problem within your, your end of one human. And so, like,

plant-based all of this and people have strong opinions. And for me, I'm stoked.

“Opinions is what matters in the world. And like, but you got to realize that every, I'm different”

than you, like, I played, I played, I was an offensive one and played in the NFL. You might have a messed up shoulder. I got messed up back, hips, foot, right? All these things, like, we have different things that we do. Therefore, we approach the gym differently. We approach the things we're like, why would we say, once, anyways, I, that's part of the challenges. The noise is so loud. So, right. How do, this is really important. How do you cut through that noise, right? Because

we do have different things. You, you spent your professional career in car accidents over and over and over and then willingly getting back into do it. You know, I've got a torn labor in my left arm. So, it changes how I work out and how I train. I didn't get into, you know, car accidents just seven times a day during practice. Even when we come to business, you know, we approach things differently. I come from a tech background. I come from a systems and service provider background.

So, I can scale those and my sleep. That's easy for me. This is a product background. There's a different conversation. How do you approach these differently and penetrate through? Yeah. Yeah. I think if we, we haven't done it great all the time, right? And we continue to get better. And I think, you know, like people used to ask me like, oh, what should I take? And I just told what I took. And I realized, oh, that's really wrong. That's right. Right. And so, what we did was

we started asking the smartest people, the pro sports dietitians, the exercise physiologist, the researchers, hey, what are the core foundational items that matter? Right. What do you think about things that you can supplement? And that's, we built what we called Momentus 3. Protein, Cretino Megas. Right. It's like, that is a foundation that you can build on. And if you do those things over long periods of time, they have immense amounts of clinical data and research.

Then everything else is conditioned specific. Right. And you can get protein from a lot of different sources. Awesome. Right. Creatine a little bit harder. But like, Cretine is relatively inexpensive for the highest quality stuff out there. Right. And like, it's really hard to get from

“your diet. And then Omega is the same way. But like, invest in what matters and when you can”

to add. And so for us, like, we have a plant protein. We have a way protein. We have on flavor, we have flavors. So like, how do we meet consumers who are there at? Right. Cretine, we have different form factors. Right. Omega's, we have a vegan Omega. And we have an official Omega. And it's like, how do we meet the consumer with the rat. Well, if we say these matter, the most hit that consumer. Right. Say, let's build around so that we can solve 90% of that.

And then build the biggest buckets around them, the biggest conditions. It's like, Charles, you have an issue with sleep. Cool. Right. Have you tried these behavior things, et cetera. Boom. And so what we try to do is like, we don't try to go out there and be like, sweet, everybody needs to take sleep because it does x, y and z. It's like, I don't take sleep. Why?

I sleep great. Right. I don't know why. I just do. I always have. Right. It's one of my gifts

on there. Other people sleep like crap. Right. And that's that's just the nature of the game. Yeah. And right. We, we give and take. And so it's like, how do you break it down simplicity? Right. And what we try to do from a marketing perspective is talk about the foundation. Right. And then we try to bring in behaviors, product guides, right, and create that education around why and how. And then leverage our partners. Because I think the biggest thing for us is people are going to

take what they think they want to take, not just when we say it. And so we want to be known as the high trust brand in low trust category. We have standards that are uncompromisable. Right. And we're going to certify what is in the product is actually in the product every single time.

“Because that's what we do. And so if you need vitamin D. Momentus is clearly the answer. If you need,”

right. If you need a sleep product, let's go to Momentus first. And that's our our goal.

And what we want our partners and our like large ecosystem of people to say momentus is the standard. Right. So, and you're going through this as a, as a business owner and as you're creating this, because a lot of people are trying to bring product to market. Right. They're like, okay, we've got, we've got a acquisition, but fulfillment on this is a challenge because, you know, we've got a very intense political environment right now. That's about as about as intense as I'll talk about that.

But we've got an intense political environment. We've got immense amount of things going on with tariffs. We've got countries that don't like interacting with us the way they used to. How do you go through? Because again, acquisition is acquisition it. And again, and I'm skipping

playing semi-professional or professional sports, you're not eating the same food as everyone else.

“You need to understand that's really important. You're not taking the supplements. You're not sleeping”

on the same beds. You're not using the same blue like glasses. You're not doing any of that. Everything is very much through a filter and using the best of the best stops. A lot of your brand it a lot of it is used in environments where performance matters. Because everyone looks at college football. It's fun. It's just again. It's a huge industry that makes an immense amount of money. And they're very much putting things in in a specific way. So if everybody listen to

it home, yes, we're all cheating. We're all using supplements. We're using, I remember when I played college ball, all of a sudden they looked at my cleats like you're not wearing that anymore.

I'm like, why? Well, we molded your foot and this works better for your foot and this metal

works better on the cleats. I was like, you're talking about the metal on the damp clean. What are you talking about? It's a pair of cleats. What are you talking about? So there is a competitive advantage that most people don't have. And momentous has penetrated into that market. Now we're learning to do an environment of bringing them more to the public versus to that environment. How do you handle fulfillment? How do you make different relationships with vendors? How do you

find the manufacturers where, yeah, maybe they go out, they do nice things you could you were there on a Tuesday. But as soon as you leave, Wednesday they're going to put chalk in piss in there. How do you deal with the fulfillment and all of that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's all around

like this last core pillar of the standard is trust but verify. Everything that we do, right?

Every finished product off the line in a jar like this, we test it. Right? In this test every batch, every single time. Right? Because it's one thing for a wrong, like, to go see a wrong green and supply and they say, oh, this is how clean it is. It's how good it is. Look at our great test results and everybody will show you great test results. In fact, the matter is what comes out another end, often is very, very different and changes batch to batch. And so like for us,

it's like, you have wrong green answer come in. Then they hit a, then they get shipped sometimes across the world across the country and then they hit a comb and write that blends and packages, lots of things happen in that warehouse, right? Lots of things happen on that blender, lots of things go through those pipes and then you have your container that you put it in, lots of things happen in that manufacturing process too and then you have your finished goods and you're like, well,

there's a lot of steps. And so what we find in those processes across contamination is machines are clean correctly. If it's stored next to something that it should have been stored next to you or if

“it's shipped in the container, right? All those things matter to us and that's why you always trust”

but verify at the end, right? It's like, hey, we believe we found the best manufacturing partners and the best sourcing, but the money worth mouth and if it doesn't test a spec, we reject, right? So how do you do in your industry when you're doing that and they're sending garbage and it happens to be a vendor that you worked with for a long time and you have a great relationship with them, but they're screwing the poach, they're cutting corners, they're doing that.

How do you address that? How do you, what is the step by step in that you just bring it hammer or what do you do? They know we have zero tolerance, okay, right? And they say, it's the same part of your culture with the three strikes, it's the same thing, it's like listen, we're not here to be your friend. Yeah, but like lots of art, my employees are our friends, but they know when it's a, when it's time to go form, it's time to perform and if you don't perform, that's a

different, that's a different conversation than a friend conversation, right? We go hang out and have

“dinner go work out, do all that. You have to show up and perform for us and so everybody across”

this place, you like put in perspective like in the last month we've rejected three full containers of a wrong ingredient, just sent it back because it didn't mean our spend, right? And that's like, and guess what, our supplier was like, yep, okay, they're just going to sell to somebody else at the end of the day, or I mean, but it doesn't meet our standards and they know that if we've told them, these are our standards, contractually, if it doesn't pass these tests, you do, we do not accept

this production run and it, but like, from a business perspective, our multivitamin is one of the most comprehensive multis on the market, we, we were out of stock for three and a half months almost of it because we failed three production runs in a row. On it, right, our command doesn't pay us for our loss sales on there, right, like the people putting together the blend, right, we eat the loss sales and it was about $700,000 in Q1, right? And that's, but that's, that's our standards,

and we're okay with that, hey, we could have, we could have said that, it's okay, right? Like, it was one ingredient that was a tiny ingredient that didn't meet our spectrum and it just is what it is

that product, and that's just our, that's who we are, and our command understands it, they are like,

“yep, yep, this is momentous, they have all the businesses that don't, hey, I'm sure we pay for it,”

I mean, I know we pay for it in, in our costs, but, so for me, yeah. So what you've got this standard, both internally and externally, with your suppliers and the people that are working with you on a day-to-day basis, how do you apply that level standard to growth then? Because if you have this, this bar that everyone must meet and you're trying to connect with people and you're not advertising the way that normal people do in the rest of the world, which is just regrettably your industry is,

and I said this with this nice of a possible, I've been around this industry for 34 years, 33 years, you know, because I was my dad with senior vice president, Bally's little fitness who's senior vice president as you can see, and I knew the trash that was going in there, I mean, we who would sit there and like you don't need that, because I got he's like dope, like I'd go to I'd go visit him in at one of the stores, and I came to grab one of these bars, he's like only that,

the guy absolutely, he was still putting that in the mouth, so we knew back to them, and it's only got better. How do you market, how do you penetrate into a market and what

“your brand and cycle look like? Yeah, I think because our roots, we didn't really talk about”

the roots of the business, but the underlying business, we started with a $1.8 million contract

with the Department of Defense to combine that with venture capital funds, and that was in 2018, and we were in the consumer biotech space, and we ultimately didn't get into the into right the supplement space until 2021, and our roots are very, very different, as a whole, and so we come from this background of clinical research of working with the best, and we were in prone college sports in that time, and like this really unique space,

and when we went into supplements, and all of that, it was like, that is a root, we are born, we like people like, oh, you're a D to C native business, I'm like, I'm a prone college sports U.S. military native business, like we were whole sailing to those, those were our customers, we built a little small D to C business on the back end, and then in 2022, we blew up in Ecom land, and that was because what we did was we continued to serve the best people in the world,

and do it right over and over and over again, and so then when we got into this huge town, that is sports nutrition supplements, and the momentous brand with born and prone college sports, it was really natural for us to start partnering with these big voices in health and wellness, that right, our PhDs, and they're like, oh my friends, at so-and-so, trust you, I trust you, and they know, as you know, man, it's hard to put my name behind something here, my brand is my name,

and if I'm wrapping a BS brand, that's high-risk, and so we became this high-trust brand in a low-trust category, like, challenge your mindset as you can see, but like, really focused on the best, and we still, most like, we still sell to every NFL team, everyone on them is a customer, we sell nearly every other professional and college sports team in this country, we have some really unique things with the Department of Defense, we've won nine contracts with them to date,

right, like, those are our roots, those are the people that give us this really deep heel, right, like that keep us centered and grounded, and make us do it better than it's ever been done before, and so that flywheel has spun off, right, not low, low funnel, lower funnel marketing, it's spun off, big top of funnel, middle funnel marketing, so we have big voices that are saying, momentous is the best, and, right, whether that was Dr. Huberman or Tim Ferriss or Rich Roll or Dr. Stacey Sims,

these people who are helping set the culture, and now we have a guy named Arnold Schwarzenegger, but those things took three plus years, a lot of those relationships of showing them that we are different, showing them that we will make hard decisions to cut products, change products, that are better for consumers, for them, and so it's like this flywheel of what I say, keeping, like, being at the forefront of five performance spun off all these big-name people, and now,

all these influential people like we want momentous, how do we work with momentous, and rather than saying, like, oh, we're going to go after, you know, the transactional TikTok or meta or whatever, we're going after people who are authoritative, right, that are descended those types of things,

or who are key opinion leaders, right, ultimately that drive that, and what that has allowed us to

do is now work into these other spaces that are like, well, the people I trust, trust momentous,

“so that's why I wrap my letters. Yeah, very early on when the podcast took off, there was a specific brand,”

I'm not going to mention the brand, that wanted me to sell their stuff. It's a, I'll say it's a green brand,

even though it was a huge deal, because the product that's inside of there was absolute trash,

“because I asked them, I said, give me, show me the science, that's what, I'm like, show me the science.”

Show me someone that you've worked with where you saw their blood work before, and we saw their blood work after. Show me walls of studies with that, they're like, well, we can't, but we'll pay lots of money. No, that's not proven to me, that's a different conversation, so when you're going in that, I'm curious, when you're working with contracts like the DOD, when you're working with contracts of professional sports, what are the things that their,

their litmus tests, that they're asking you, because there are other business owners that we work with, that are going to ask, like, hey, I want to penetrate them, I don't like that. I want to fill the top of my funnel with that. What are the things that you've done in order to do this? It's a purely relationship base, or is it just because you're good guy, or how do you do that? It, uh, I think it's charged with doing the right thing over and over again, like,

for me, like, I had a really clear litmus test of like, it has to be, like, the people who nobody knows that are the leaders had to be able to be behind it, and so it's like doing that

“right thing, right? And being very correct, there was a lot of people that were like, oh, you should,”

like, you should source your way protein difference, way cheaper, way more accessible, and it's like, nope, I've just funded, like, it was a no, right? And it's like, oh, you should do this, so you should go

here, and it's like, no, no, not why, because like, I always had that long term picture, like,

we're trying to do it different, not like everybody else, and so when you really want to be a challenger, the second you start accepting what everybody else is doing, right? And you're just, you're just on your way to that, and that's not, if you want to be a challenger brand, and you want to do it better than it's ever been done before, you got to make those decisions, and then it's, then it, then it has to do with, like, showing up continuously the same way, right? And for me,

then investment in the relationship is an investment in saying, this is what we do differently, and yes, if you ask for x, I'm going to do x, right? Or I'm going to say, hey, x doesn't make sense, what about y? And there have been countless steps along the process where somebody's like, you won't do that, you won't get that certification, I was like, why not? Right? And it's like, oh, it costs too much money, it's like boom, got it, right? Oh, you won't, you won't do that clinical research,

you won't show up to this thing, it's like, yeah, we were like, why wouldn't we? But the problem is,

most people don't think about those things. They're like, how do I do it, deal done, how do I get it, deal done, how do I get it, deal done? Right? Arnold's a great example, like, it took almost three four years to get a deal done with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it was just this constant showing them we're doing it better and different. It wasn't a day one that's to a deal, I was like, oh, man, it'd be cool to partner together and what you learn while you get to know those people's

“what matters to them. And when you build these big rich deep partnerships, right, it is not just a”

transaction, it's about how do you build something that's meaningful to them, right? And meaningful to you. And so it's like, but that takes time and effort to do that. But again, it takes doing it over and over and over and over and over again, right? And it was, there were years that were real art of momentum, right? We pull the product off the market in 2023 that just single handed late and that was what year we in 2024 and in 2024, that made us unprofitable. The whole year,

we pulled one product in 2002 and it took all of the EBITDA on our business. That was, and we knew that when we did that, it was going to do that. But it did not, it are portfolio. It was duck, duck, duck, goose, right? And it was like, get the goose out, right? We got the goose out and ultimately, right? Maybe we'd be way more profitable than we are today. But in that short term, it was really hard. I have investors, I have a board, right? And we had to say, hey, we're going to lose four million

dollars in profit by one product that we're choosing to not do anymore. And here's why, because it doesn't fit our brand creation and it's a boost in a portfolio of ducks. And we believe that long term, it will set us up better. Doing those things, partners like, oh, that's interesting. They're not just money first. Oh, that's interesting. They actually care about their standards. Oh, that's interesting. And whatever those standards are, whatever your vision is for that business,

when you start making decisions away from that as a founder, as a CEO, then this, not does not become authentic. This becomes transactional. And transactional relationships,

they work, but they don't work long term. And they always, I've found that the transactional

relationships are always in the worst. And I think, you're talking about this as a relationship. Yeah, sure you've got Arnold, but I guarantee you that in three months, if you don't keep that standard that he agreed to or solved for the last three years, he's gone. Absolutely disappeared. So when you're disruptor on the force, when you're, you're being signal versus noise. When you are that lighthouse amongst the fog, you're going to get people going to piss off at you. There's just

regrettably, if for those of you who were listening, who haven't broken certain figures yet, it just understand when you do, when you break certain figures, they're going to come at you. It is what it is. And it's expected. It's, it's, it's, it's to put it in a, in a sports thing, a sports analogy, you're fine until you catch a ball. The minute you catch the ball, everybody wants to kill you. So you've caught, in a lot of these industries, you've caught an

apple. You, you are the tallest blade of grass. And it's got to try and get cut. Can you, can you share some of the examples of that and the ways that you've survived that hit? Yeah, I think number one is always hitting it head on, right? Like, there, there was a consumer reports report that came out and it was like, like a complete hit piece on a lot of, on a lot of people, there's like here's a reality. Yes, right? We've always, like, you can see these test results on our on our website.

Right? It was about plant protein and, like, spoiler plant proteins have a little more heavy metals

“than weight protein. Why? Because it comes from the ground. And that's what happens. But it was like,”

you will die if you eat plant protein. I was like, this is fair. Like, this is just noise,

noise noise noise. It's like, here's our perspective. Like, here's what we believe. We've always

shared these results with you. Never tried to hide them. And this is the actual reality of what we're talking about. And just always being genuine and not being like, there it is. They don't know what they're talking about. It's like, hey, context is key and everything. And when you take things out of out of context, it hurts. And guess what? People are going to knock us, they always will. And you also just have to have a thick skin sometimes. And it's like, hey, you know,

beyond killable here. And being unkillable is sometimes taken the higher road. Sometimes knowing not when to engage, sometimes just being genuine and being like, hey, we have to up. And like, it is what it is. And sometimes, you know, being really, really transparent. And like,

here's why we made a decision. Here's what why it matters as a whole. And sometimes it works

sometimes it doesn't. But what what we care about is building a brand that consumers resonate with over long periods of time. Right. And I was always, yeah, there's always going to be attackers. That will be to the end end of time. And it's an opportunity to be attacked to be quite. It really is. And I also think understanding that not every customer is your customer, not every

“person is your person. I think it's, it's a really important thing because, you know, when when this”

comes out or when my book came out, when all these other stuff came out, I'm going to get attacked my call. You're not my people. And that's okay. I was on stage this weekend with a group of people and some of them, we did, we did a seven figure and they loved it. We did seven figures, right from the, if they loved it, it was this thing. Awesome. And there's other people in the group that are like, oh, these guys are so bees that didn't, which we get, we're like, here,

here's your money back. Have a nice day. We don't care. Not everybody you want to work with is your, is going to do it. Just like not every supplement that you're going to take needs to be at this level. There are some supplements out there that you could, if it's for you, you could take a different path. But when you hold that standard, it seems like one of the reasons you guys are so successful and are doing this is if you've held a standard, not only for your products

and there's something that's but also for your people. And you're going to get resistance in there as well. So what happens when you have an employee and how do you do with an employee that bucks that system, where you've trusted and then that trust is violated, just like a vendor's trust is violated. How do you, you dealt with those? People aren't as, you know, Charles, people are the hardest. Right? Because at the end of the day, they are humans. And there's more than just a job

typically as a play. And we had a mentor, I don't know how long, like two or three years ago.

“And he was like, you just got to do it on a love. Right? And remember that they are human. And”

sometimes you don't say everything you want to say. And as the founder, leader, sometimes just to get to eat it. And you know, like we moved on from somebody and I just got to shut up and just take it. Right? Because we were already moving on. It doesn't do me any good. Right? And on there and it was really hard to just like bite my tongue, get lashed for all the things that I did wrong. Right? And some of them have truths to them. But some of them are missing context.

And you walk away from that. And it's like always take the high road when you're getting

when you're moving away from people. Always. Because one of the greatest things we've had is we've had two people that left this business that ultimately have come back to this business.

God. They would have made me come back. A friend, a friend of the family. I got close with my wife. Right? All these things. And it was like, oh, I, we, we naep on the shit out of that one. And I handled it terrible. And right? Some water went on the bridge, some more water. Right? And we just, and what it turned out is we both needed to grow. And now she's like our chief parking officer and she's of the baller. Right? And but it was one of those things when, you know,

when we were looking for a new leader of marketing and I called her. And I was like, hey, do you have anybody in your network? And she's like, what about me? I was like, do you want to come back? Right? You know, it was like, but that's try to take the high road, right? And it's hard.

“But you have to have those conversations. And what I've always, the regret that I always have”

is when you know, you know, and make that decision then. I always and like, the

am I wish I were done this three weeks earlier? Right? I wish I were like, right? Because you just don't, that doesn't change. Once you've made the decision, it's done. And there's no better time. Because then it's all like, they, then people started to say, oh, man, three weeks ago, it's kind of awkward. It was, did they know? And they're not telling me. And so it's hard. It's hard. And in a young growing business, everybody matters. But guess what? You'll figure it out, right? And

if that means I got to work a little harder the next three months before we backfill. Great. But also what that means, maybe you prioritize your shit a little better. Anyway, I just, people are really hard and like approach every hard people conversation out of love. Remember, right? They are the ones that are suffering, like, as much like the decision that they made, have it just be done. And you're also going to just, very few that some people are very gracious. A lot of people,

right, in the heat of battle, saying a lot about this and me. And they might try to come after you.

And you just always take the hard road, always take the hard road, try to take the hard road. I do

right. Because then in the day, the world's fucking small. And it's the idea that the longer you take to make a decision, the more it's going to cost you. It's just that simple. It's like to be on a train heading around the rupture, get off as soon as you can, because it's the less way to head the way the other way back. And then we talk about, you know, getting mentors and giving that situations. One of my mentors taught me, you know, because I was having a moment when the

priest first people I ever had a fire, as again, this person's got a family. Person got kids. How am I going to do this? And he sat down and he goes, look at this. You've got this one person. And yes,

“it's going to be devastating to their family. But you have four to the families that you need to”

protect. So you have to make that decision. And they're never easy and it's never fun. But again,

being that outlier and keeping that level, that standard has been really challenging. What is one thing in your industry that the other supplements do? And I'm not naming other companies, but you're like, this one supplement for the love of God. If you never buy it from anyone else, please don't buy this trash. This is the one you can't mess around with. Don't put blob up on your system unless you know where it comes from because it's just we've seen the research

because you're, you know, you're the type of the spirit when it comes to this. What is one that you're like, good God, don't put that in your system. Oh, God, sister, dangerous question. I'll I'll go I'll kind of go a two different directions here. I'll give you different answers. Like,

“I think the peptide world is really dangerous right now. Right. It's at everything is research”

grade, which means there is nothing about it. And we don't know. We really, really don't know. And like, I, I was here. We are, we are years if not more away from understanding the true implications of what some of these research peptides can or cannot do or have problems. Well, yeah, the long-term effects of them as well because I just don't think injecting wind decks into your bottles is a probably a good idea. You might want to have some other stuff on that. So, so I'll say like,

I'm just like a complete, people ask me all the time, like, oh peptides, I'm like, why? No. Like, there are so many other things right now that can solve it. Right. Like, if you have a crazy cancer and there's a peptide that can help potentially help, you don't like, yes. But if you're trying to optimize and be live healthier and longer, like, no research, nothing. And then I would say on the supplement side, the one that I, the one that I think has the, it's like as deep as the

grand canyon as wide as the grand canyon from a, from a quality efficacy perspective, is an omega 3. Right. And when you think about that, it's like the efficacious dose of omega 3 fatty acids is about 1.5 grams or more per day. And that's DHA and EPA, right? Combine, we do a

has the best benefit. But overall, most omega 3s are most fish oils are just fish oil, right? And

not heavy in omega 3s. And fish also have a lot of heavy metals in them, right? And the processing, the temperatures, how it's stored, the capsules and all that really, really matters, right, in there. And so you truly get what you pay for in omega 3 supplement, A from a dosage perspective, but B from a quality heavy metals toxins perspective as well. And you know, like my dad was like, is my greatest example of this. And he's like, oh, I've been buying this, I've been buying 180

servings from the big box store, you know, for the last 20 years. And it's awesome. And I was like, pull it out, take a picture of it, and let's compare labels. And he was like,

well, it has the same amount of fish oil in it, but it has one tenth of the amount of omega 3s. And

“I was like, so you have to take 10 to get the same amount of these surfants to match one of ours.”

And I was like, what fish or is it coming from? Where is it? Real is it? What is it? Right. Yeah. Right. Like, you want small fish, right? So indeed, so Dean's anchovies, macros because they're small and food chain. They have less mercury, less heavy metals, right? Like, you don't want to go bigger and like some fish, some fish oil, you can buy out the chef. You have no idea what fish they come from or how they're still there. They call process.

Anyways, so fish oil is the one that I think is the gap is wide. And there's some great companies out there. We are really proud of our our omega 3. I really really proud of we have like the most potent vegan omega 3 on the market too. But like, that is one that I find is just like, as deep in as wide as the Grand Canyon in terms of differences. And there are some people on one side. And there's a lot of people on another. And bottom is ripe with crazy. All right. So I'm going to

selfishly ask for sleep because all my listeners are entrepreneurs. We're all founders. We're all small business owners. We run an environment where we just don't sleep well. It is probably the biggest thing that we run into in our this specific niche. When we go away and when I talk to angel investor, if I talk to be sees when we all get around. Like, hey, when was the last time you slept? You're like, what's sleep? I don't speak Sanskrit. I don't know what that word is. What

what are you talking about? Is there a magic thing? Is there something to mister? I sleep really well over there. You're faster. For the rest of us who don't sleep well, what are the things that

“you would look at for sleep? I thought, well, I think I sleep really well because I get really,”

I burn really really hot. Right. And like, I just like go go go and like, I just shut down. Like, I can't like, I literally, I literally can't. And that's part of like my train routine. Like, I'm a really high energy person overall. And like, I also really good hygiene when it comes to right when I train when I work out how I do those things that right, what you find is the hygiene throughout the day actually really matters as a whole. And right for me, how do I protect my time

and my day and all of that? Like, my sleep hygiene is good. But like, I'll say my, my circadian rhythm is what's good across that. And like, how do you optimize that? So like, when you eat, how you eat, caffeine, all of those things. And it's just like, I've naturally done that. But honestly, like, Charles, like, back when I play in NFL, before sleep was a fucking thing, I was like, tracking sleep. Right? I've liked it. I sleep good. I'm not sick because it's so like, I just

think it was correlated to everything as a whole. So when I think about sleep, I think the number one thing is sleep hygiene before bed. Right? And I know like the nights that I don't sleep well, it's because I'm staring at my computer till 11 or 12 o'clock at night. Like, I'm up, rip in in my brain going. Right? It's really, really hard when you're going, you're going. Right? There. And for me, it's like, how do I create habits that change that is super important? And

lots of times that's not realistic. I choose to work early. Like, I always rather wake up and work,

then stay up. Right? Like, I try to go to bed. And if I need to wake up at four to get stuff done, I wake up at four. Right? That's just my M.O. On it. I would rather not. So I keep my bedtime consistent. There are things that help you down regulate, right? Uh, as a whole, like, apogenin,

“althinine, can really help you down regulate at night, right? That I think is really important to”

some people who burn really hard or have a hard time doing that. Uh, as a whole. So that down regulation is super important. Um, as a whole, I, uh, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I think that's that's that's

because obviously, you come front, you come into this industry with a very different perspective.

Not only is professional sports, but also the previous, you know, clients are D at a D. They are professional sports. There are people who, it matters. Because, you know, you go to a, a big box store. They don't really care if you're performing on a high level. When you're talking about the clients that you've grown with, if they don't perform well, some of them don't come home. So perform it to matters in that environment. If someone's tracking it down and I'm like,

“"Man, Jeff, I want to know more. I want to get access to how do people track you down?”

Do, what's your personal home number? What's your personal life? I'm kidding.

You know, what do we do? How do we, how do we connect? How do people find you? What's the best way to go forward?" Yeah. For me, I might pretty off of social media as just an FYI. I just something I've chosen not to do with my life. And, uh, but I'm on LinkedIn. Uh, it's kind of a dumpster fire, uh, for me as a whole, just to be, uh, completely transparent. But I'd also say like, a lot of me comes out in our brand, right? And our team has a wonderful job of really breaking

things down. Like, find me in LinkedIn. I'm, you know, like, it's easy to find me in LinkedIn.

“Um, on there, and that would be the best way to do that. But also, like,”

customer service gets a lot of questions that directed towards me that I actually answer. Um, on there, be like, "Hey, you know, I, you know, saw Jeff in their reporter. I met Jeff here, all right. Listen to the podcast here. Like, can you ask him this?" And it's like, "Yeah, why not?" Like, easy. Um, as a whole. So I would say that's super important, um, as ways, like, just navigate through it. Like, I've tried to not be on social media because I find that when I am on social media,

I go down black holes. So, yes. Yes. I, I, I, I, I found that as well. And I, I worked very hard on getting off social media. I'm the opposite that you are when people reach out directly to me,

“you're going to run into a bunch of gatekeepers that I put there on purpose. People are like,”

"Oh, you know, I didn't know I was on LinkedIn for over a decade until I, you know, like, "Hey, you know, you've been on LinkedIn for a decade?" I haven't logged in since, you know, it's been a while. So, working on that. But, and if someone wants access to your brand or, you know, where do they go, what's the best website to take a look at it? Yeah, livemomentest.com is, is the brand where on Amazon were sold in vitamin shop now as well, which has been a

big coup for us because we've become like this high quality brand in there and done really well. But, yeah, livemomentest.com is the best place to find us. Amazon, super easy, our whole product, but fully was there and you can get it most places by this afternoon. Perfect. I appreciate you coming on Jeff and Sharon some of the wisdom on how you, you know, kind of disrupt the 200 billion dollar industry. Awesome. Thanks, Charles. Jeff plays the long game. He treats time

like an opponent, engineers operating systems where most people slap on marketing and refuses to let his label cash checks, his ingredients can't honor.

A four-year NFL lineman, who never planned on running a supplement company,

now ships to the military and stocks and vitamins shop shelves, and the takeaway is this one. The ball always gets snapped whether you're ready or not. Leaders who waiver lose the locker room, and a real brand gets made in person at the factory with the partner in the room. We'll catch you on the next episode.