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Speaker 1: Jump into the deep end and get out there and

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Speaker 1: make mistakes and let the world be your advisor. There

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Speaker 1: is no better way to confront truth and reality than

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Speaker 1: to be out there living in the real world.

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Speaker 2: Hey, Hardler's Emily a body bringing you Episode one hundred

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Speaker 2: and nineteen of Hurdle, a wellness focused podcast where I

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Speaker 2: sit down with inspiring individuals to talk about everything from

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Speaker 2: their big wins to how they've gotten through some of

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Speaker 2: life's toughest moments. On the show, you can expect vulnerability, motivation,

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Speaker 2: and candid discussions with everyone from top athletes to aspiring

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Speaker 2: entrepreneurs on what it really takes to follow your passions.

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Speaker 2: My mission is simple to inspire you to be your

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Speaker 2: best self, move with intention, and have some fun along

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Speaker 2: the way. Today, Hey, I am chatting with Nick Green.

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Speaker 2: He is the co founder and CEO of Thrive Market.

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Speaker 2: Now if you've never heard of Thrive Market before. In

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Speaker 2: Nick's words, it is like whole Foods meets costco online.

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Speaker 2: It's a membership driven model. You can buy healthy foods

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Speaker 2: from top selling organic brands at wholesale prices. I myself

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Speaker 2: have been a Thrive Market member for some time, growing

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Speaker 2: up in a household where my dad is a costco fiend.

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Speaker 2: Living in New York, where the prices for healthy items

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Speaker 2: can be extremely extremely high. Thrive Market has enabled me

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Speaker 2: to get a lot of the stuff that I love,

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Speaker 2: everything from fresh fish to staples like flour and almond butter,

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Speaker 2: all at super super reasonable prices. In today's episode, Nick

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Speaker 2: talks to me about growing up outside of Minneapolis and

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Speaker 2: learning from a really young age what it meant to

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Speaker 2: eat and live healthy. His mom was super health conscious,

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Speaker 2: so much so that he would literally bring his own

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Speaker 2: eats to sleepovers at friends' houses. He talks to me

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Speaker 2: about going to college, starting his first business at a

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Speaker 2: super young age, and the lessons that came with that.

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Speaker 2: We talk about him selling that business, moving out to

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Speaker 2: Los Angeles, and the winding road he followed to founding

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Speaker 2: Drive Market. We also open up today's conversation chatting about

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Speaker 2: how Nick is donating his salary to COVID nineteen relief,

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Speaker 2: and I think that's just a testament to not only

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Speaker 2: how good of a heart that Nick has, but really

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Speaker 2: the purpose and the mission of the company. And I

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Speaker 2: think you guys are really gonna love what Nick has

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Speaker 2: to offer. In today's episode, Before we get to it,

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Speaker 2: a quick shout out to my sponsors. First up, Athletic Greens.

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Speaker 2: iTunes store to rate and review Hurdle. And of course

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Speaker 2: I'd love to hear from you on social reach Out

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Speaker 2: to me at Hurdle Podcasts at Emily Abadi, and I'm

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Speaker 2: also always available for you over email. It's Emily at

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Speaker 2: hurdle dot us. And with that, let's get to hurdling. Today.

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Speaker 2: I am sitting down with Nick Green. He is the

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Speaker 2: co founder and CEO of Thrive Market.

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Speaker 3: How you doing, Nick, doing great? Thanks for having me

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Speaker 3: of course.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for taking the time on this

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Speaker 2: sunny day here in New York. You are based on

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Speaker 2: the West Coast, is that correct?

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Speaker 1: I am in another sunny place, Los Angeles, California.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to be honest with you. On April

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Speaker 2: twenty first, at twelve thirty five my time, I got

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Speaker 2: an email in my inbox which led to me reaching

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Speaker 2: out and us having this conversation. And the email in

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Speaker 2: my inbox had the subject line why I'm donating my

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Speaker 2: salary to COVID nineteen relief with your name at the top.

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Speaker 2: So let's talk about that. Let's kick start this off

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Speaker 2: by talking about that. First things first, what is thrive

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Speaker 2: Market and then why are we donating our salary?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so Thrive Market is a platform that makes healthy

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Speaker 1: products affordable and accessible to anybody. So a lot of

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Speaker 1: people will say we're like Whole Foods meets Costco online.

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Speaker 3: So it's a membership model.

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Speaker 1: You pay sixty dollars a year and then you get

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Speaker 1: access to basically the best products that you'd find in

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Speaker 1: a health food store, a lot of like snacks and

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Speaker 1: food items, but also you know, everything from health and

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Speaker 1: beauty products to supplements to home goods, and they're all

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Speaker 1: wholesale prices. So our goal is to make the organic, natural, sustainable,

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Speaker 1: ethically sourced product accessible add or below the price of

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Speaker 1: the conventional equivalent. And then we've created a whole sort

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Speaker 1: of structure on the site for making the process of

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Speaker 1: finding the best.

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Speaker 3: Products really easy.

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Speaker 1: So we curate down to the best individual items, we

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Speaker 1: let people filter the whole experience based on their diets

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Speaker 1: and values. We do a ton of content and tell

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Speaker 1: the stories behind the products where they come from as

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Speaker 1: well as well as well as how to use them,

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Speaker 1: and just really laser focused on making that typically very

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Speaker 1: difficult process of being a conscious consumer of living your

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Speaker 1: values of being healthy into something that's much more easy

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Speaker 1: and manageable. And the reason that I donated my salary

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Speaker 1: to COVID nineteen relief really goes back to our mission

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Speaker 1: as a business. You know, we are a social enterprise.

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Speaker 1: We are a mission driven business, and that mission is

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Speaker 1: really really simple. It's to make health living accessible and

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Speaker 1: affordable to everybody. It's been the miss mission since the beginning,

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Speaker 1: and I think we have felt since the moment this

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Speaker 1: crisis began that, you know, for us a business, more

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Speaker 1: than anything, it's just been a true moment for the mission,

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Speaker 1: where you know, before a lot of people were thinking

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Speaker 1: about putting healthy food on the table. Now every American

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Speaker 1: family is thinking about, you know, how do I get

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Speaker 1: good food on the table when I'm having to shop

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Speaker 1: from home? How do I make sure that that food

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Speaker 1: those products are safe. How do I make sure that

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Speaker 1: I know where they come from? How do I make

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Speaker 1: sure I can trust the platform that I'm buying and

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Speaker 1: buying it from. So I think that we felt like

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Speaker 1: it was a moment for us to really step up

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Speaker 1: and serve our mission. More broadly, we've obviously seen real

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Speaker 1: acceleration in the growth of our membership base, which was

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Speaker 1: already growing very fast. We've seen increased engagement from our

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Speaker 1: existing members who now are looking to Thrive as kind

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Speaker 1: of their one stop shop at a time when there

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Speaker 1: aren't a lot of other options, and we decided we

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Speaker 1: really wanted to do more, so we set up something

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Speaker 1: called the Thrive Market COVID nineteen Relief Fund, which basically

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Speaker 1: allowed our existing paid members to donate a portion of

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Speaker 1: their savings on every order to the shopping byudgets of

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Speaker 1: people that were directly affected or families directly affected by

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Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. So one hundred percent of what is donated

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Speaker 1: goes towards the grocery stipends for families affected, healthcare workers

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Speaker 1: people you know, frontline workers in the crisis. And we raised,

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Speaker 1: believe it or not, about two hundred thousand dollars in

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Speaker 1: like three and a half weeks. We saw donation rates

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Speaker 1: that were like nine times what we'd ever seen from

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Speaker 1: a prior campaign, and.

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Speaker 3: So really it was a long long story to get to.

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Speaker 1: I donated, but I was just incredibly inspired by our

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Speaker 1: members who are being so generous and really like standing

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Speaker 1: up and showing that they believed in our mission. Every

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Speaker 1: bit as much as we did. And you know the

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Speaker 1: only thing that outstripped their generosity was the need from

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Speaker 1: so many families that were applying. So I looked at

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Speaker 1: it and I said, look like, we got to make

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Speaker 1: sure this fun stays solvent. And if that means you know,

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Speaker 1: me stepping up in a significant way, That's what I'm

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Speaker 1: going to do.

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Speaker 3: And that's what prompted that decision.

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Speaker 2: Dig It. So you talked about part of the mission

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Speaker 2: of Thrive helping people put healthy options on the table.

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Speaker 2: Let's talk about you growing up and what was on

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Speaker 2: the table and where you grew up.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, I was so lucky growing up

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Speaker 1: in you know, in the nineties in the Midwest. I

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Speaker 1: grew up in outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, in a place and

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Speaker 1: at a time when there actually weren't that many healthy options,

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Speaker 1: and yet I happened to have a mom who you know,

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Speaker 1: did all that hard work to make sure that we

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Speaker 1: were that we were eating healthy. And so, you know,

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Speaker 1: my story around help actually really starts with her story.

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Speaker 1: And you know, she's a second generation Mexican American. She

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Speaker 1: grew up in Denver, Colorado, and you know, very working

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Speaker 1: class and really saw firsthand you know the effect of

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Speaker 1: maybe not as much awareness on health and that that

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Speaker 1: what that can have on people's livelihoods, their economic opportunities,

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Speaker 1: uh and and just their their their ability to really

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Speaker 1: like be fulfilled even beyond just being physically healthy. So

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Speaker 1: my mom was like a health nut at a time

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Speaker 1: when there were not a lot of health nuts, and

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Speaker 1: she basically passed that on to us as kids, where

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Speaker 1: you know, we were that weird family that like didn't

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Speaker 1: have any soda in the fridge, that wasn't allowed to

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Speaker 1: eat sugar and cereal, you know, where she was like

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Speaker 1: going and making sure that all of the milk we

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Speaker 1: drank was hormone free and has to be whole milk,

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Speaker 1: not skim and just doing all this reading.

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Speaker 3: I can remember the bookshelf at.

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Speaker 1: Home, you know, I was like mixed in with my

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Speaker 1: story books were like her books about you know, random

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Speaker 1: health topics that you know, were way ahead of their time.

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Speaker 1: And so you know, I basically saw firsthand one what

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Speaker 1: a meaningful difference in her life health had made, and

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Speaker 1: then in my own life, as you know, we were

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Speaker 1: raised as really healthy kids, But then also saw, like

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Speaker 1: I said, how difficult it was for her to do

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Speaker 1: that right. It took her basically self educating herself, becoming

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Speaker 1: almost an expert, and this is mine you was at

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Speaker 1: the time before the Internet, in order to make healthy decisions.

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Speaker 1: And you know, it's really interesting. You fast forward twenty

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Speaker 1: some years and as I looked with my co founder

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Speaker 1: Ginar at what was still the experience for most American families,

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Speaker 1: it really hadn't changed that much. They were, you know,

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Speaker 1: more more moms out there can get educated more easily

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Speaker 1: because they can take that awareness into their own hands online,

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Speaker 1: following different influencers and reading blogs and using just using Google.

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Speaker 1: But yet there weren't a lot of affordable options, and

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of misinformation and there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: overwhelm right in our busy lives, like how do you

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Speaker 1: make time for actually making those healthy decisions. So that

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Speaker 1: was the genesis for Thrives was, you know, I want

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Speaker 1: to build a platform that my mom would have wanted,

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Speaker 1: you know, if the Internet had been around back then,

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Speaker 1: and really that I think millions of other moms and

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Speaker 1: other conscious consumers would want who are all over the country.

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Speaker 1: And you know, I was living in California at the time,

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Speaker 1: lived out on the East Coast, but really, you know,

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Speaker 1: our target market from the beginning was those places that

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Speaker 1: probably that maybe don't have a whole foods.

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Speaker 3: On you know, within a within a mile away.

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Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people don't realize this,

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Speaker 1: but fifty percent of American families don't live within driving

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Speaker 1: distance of a health food store. So we wanted to

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Speaker 1: be that health food store. And that was very much

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Speaker 1: you know, the genesis the business was really twenty some

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Speaker 1: years earlier and my experience and actually my co founder,

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Speaker 1: Gnaar had a very different experience, but one that that

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Speaker 1: oriented him to the same mission. So you know, that

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Speaker 1: was that was how we became a mission driven business

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Speaker 1: and really how the whole thing started.

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Speaker 2: A few follow up questions. First follow up question, how

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Speaker 2: many siblings did you have?

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Speaker 1: I have two siblings. One of them my sister is

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Speaker 1: eighteen months younger than me, and she worked at Thrive.

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Speaker 1: So she left her job selling medical doing medical device sales,

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Speaker 1: much better paid to come work at Thrive for the

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Speaker 1: first the first two years until she had her first child.

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Speaker 1: And then my brother is actually my chief of staff.

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Speaker 1: You know, we're not technically a family business, but we've

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Speaker 1: got the you know, the family the siblings are all there.

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Speaker 2: And when you were growing up and your mom was

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Speaker 2: like super health conscious, I only imagine that at times

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Speaker 2: if you were going to friends' houses to hang out

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Speaker 2: or just out and about town that I mean, not

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Speaker 2: everybody else lived like you guys did.

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Speaker 1: It was it was I mean, I don't see, it

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Speaker 1: was the worst, right, Like, I like, these were the

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Speaker 1: things I like resented my mother for, especially as I

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Speaker 1: kind of you know, became an adolescent, because it was

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Speaker 1: it was like embarrassing, right, I'm like the kid that's

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Speaker 1: not allowed to drink mountain dew. I'm the kid that

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Speaker 1: like you know, brings my own cereal to eat the

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Speaker 1: next day when I have a sleepover because I'm not

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Speaker 1: allowed to eat lucky charms or whatever.

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Speaker 3: It was.

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Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say, though, like I feel

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Speaker 2: like I at the time, when I reflect on my

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Speaker 2: adolescence and my eating habits, I would look forward to

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Speaker 2: going to friends' houses because they might have the foods

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Speaker 2: that we didn't keep in the house. But you had

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Speaker 2: the rigidity to byo food.

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Speaker 3: My my mom.

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Speaker 1: My mom was like the like Jedi mind trick of

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Speaker 1: all mothers. Like she was able to make it so

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Speaker 1: that I like didn't even consider the possibility of not

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Speaker 1: following what you know, what her prescriptions were. And it

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Speaker 1: was strange because it wasn't like she was a mom

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Speaker 1: that punished or you know, was like threatening.

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Speaker 3: I wasn't afraid of it.

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Speaker 1: I just if I if I didn't do it, I

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Speaker 1: felt like I was doing the wrong thing, Like I

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Speaker 1: actually believed everything she said, because she wouldn't just she

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Speaker 1: wouldn't just say, hey, you can't eat trigger cereal.

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Speaker 3: She would explain ad nauseum why we.

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Speaker 1: Don't eat Tiggert cereal in our family, and so you know,

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Speaker 1: and there were it wasn't just about health r there

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Speaker 1: were so many topics where she would always have this like, well,

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Speaker 1: in our family, we do things this way, and it's

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Speaker 1: not because of what everyone else does, it's because of ABCD.

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Speaker 1: And she would like have her you know, styllogistic argument

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Speaker 1: for why we you know, why we why we do

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Speaker 1: things a different way. And as I said, it was

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Speaker 1: like the worst when you're like trying to be a

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Speaker 1: you know, conforming cool like in the in group adolescent,

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Speaker 1: but in rectross fact, like you know, forced me to

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Speaker 1: kind of kind of by definition be a bit of

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Speaker 1: kind of classic and you know, if I'm honest, like

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Speaker 1: without without that orientation, like I wanted to become an

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Speaker 1: entrepreneur totally totally.

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Speaker 2: And did you even at the time, I mean you

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Speaker 2: said that you would explain it ad nauseum, but did

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Speaker 2: you truly understand what was really going on and that

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Speaker 2: the things that you put into your body actually could

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Speaker 2: affect not just like how you feel, but how you're

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Speaker 2: capable of performing at that at that young of an age.

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Speaker 1: I mean, not at that level in that in those terms.

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Speaker 1: So she would always bring it down to.

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Speaker 3: Like where I was.

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Speaker 1: And obviously when I'm five or six, it was a

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Speaker 1: different explanation when than I was twelve than when I was.

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Speaker 3: Twelve or thirteen.

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Speaker 1: But I remember being just like very conscious of what

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Speaker 1: was in food. I think the other thing which I realized,

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Speaker 1: you know, after the fact, Like she was very cutting edge,

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Speaker 1: but there was also a ton of misinformation at the time.

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Speaker 1: You know, like the enemy at that at that time

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Speaker 1: was still fat.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: She would she she had a strink whole milk only

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Speaker 1: because she didn't want it to alterated. But she was

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Speaker 1: actually concerned about that that that was high fat. So

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Speaker 1: you know, I think there was there was stuff where

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Speaker 1: you know, the just the conventional wisdom of the time,

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Speaker 1: even in health circles, like we've later found out is

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Speaker 1: not is not right. There was also other stuff where

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Speaker 1: like remarkably her intuition on things was like spot on,

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Speaker 1: even though she didn't even have necessarily research on it, right,

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Speaker 1: like the push pushing towards organic, you know, I think

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Speaker 1: back in the day, like people were like, why would

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Speaker 1: you why would you do why would you do organic?

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Speaker 1: And just like people didn't even think about the pesticides issue.

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Speaker 1: It was like there is no difference. It's just it's

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Speaker 1: an environmental issue, and no one was thinking about life

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Speaker 1: is say it and its effect on humans and stuff.

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Speaker 1: So I didn't like have a deep, deep understanding the

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Speaker 1: way I have since then. And I think, like what

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Speaker 1: is remarkable to me is that my mom was able

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Speaker 1: to develop some level of understanding at the time before

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Speaker 1: the internet, before a lot of information was widespread, and

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Speaker 1: she had the conviction to act on it, you know,

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Speaker 1: despite the fact that it was hard.

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Speaker 2: We keep talking and we will continue to talk throughout

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Speaker 2: this episode about the importance of eating organic and why

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Speaker 2: we lean into these foods. But from an accessibility standpoint,

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Speaker 2: I mean, the question that I get time and time

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Speaker 2: again is I can't afford this, and what should I

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Speaker 2: be doing if this is what everyone is saying that

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Speaker 2: I should be doing, and I feel as though I

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Speaker 2: can't conform, And I mean, what do you say to

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Speaker 2: people when you hear stuff like that? Because I think

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Speaker 2: to an extent, and obviously we can talk about this,

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Speaker 2: but a certain amount of privilege can come hand in

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Speaker 2: hand with being able to shop and eat this way.

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Speaker 3: That's I think that's totally totally true.

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Speaker 1: And it's not just cost, right, Like that was the

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Speaker 1: most obvious barrier that we thought about when we started

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Speaker 1: Thrive was all, right, like, how do we get natural,

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Speaker 1: organic products at or below the price of conventional equivalents.

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Speaker 1: The other really obvious one is geography, Right, even if

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Speaker 1: you can't afford it, if you don't live near a

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Speaker 1: place and it's not convenient and you're having to drive

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Speaker 1: sixty miles from the years time, foods like it just

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Speaker 1: ain't going to happen for most families. But I think

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Speaker 1: one of the other things that we realize is there's

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Speaker 1: all sorts of other barriers too, which is I think

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Speaker 1: you're kind of getting at around like just you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of overwhelm. There's barriers of guilt, and like I

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Speaker 1: don't really want to address it because I know I'm

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Speaker 1: not going to be able to do it perfectly and

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Speaker 1: I don't know where to start, and so I'm just

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Speaker 1: going to kind of avoid the topic. I think there's

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Speaker 1: choice overload now, right, Like you go into the grocery

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Speaker 1: store and like every product has a bunch of health

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Speaker 1: claims on it. You know, you go into Whole Foods

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Speaker 1: and there's forty almond butters, Like, where the hell do

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Speaker 1: you start? And how do you know which ones are

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Speaker 1: which ones are good? And then you know, you have

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Speaker 1: a little bit of like also contradictory information out there,

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Speaker 1: just in terms of like health tribes and different diets

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Speaker 1: that tell you basically the opposite things, right Like if

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Speaker 1: you're you know, if you're keto, like you're probably having

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Speaker 1: a lot of meat. If you're a vegan, like, no,

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Speaker 1: you can't have any meat, you know, And I think

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Speaker 1: that that like that spins people up. So there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of things that I think stand in the way

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Speaker 1: of people getting healthy individually. And then when you talk

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Speaker 1: about a family and you know, in particular, like you know,

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Speaker 1: sixty five percent of our of our members are moms,

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Speaker 1: like eighty five percent are women, So it's mostly women.

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Speaker 1: And then within that most are head of household moms.

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Speaker 1: You know, these are people that are very busy, right,

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Speaker 1: So you've also got the like, how do I make

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Speaker 1: time for this? How do I afford it? How do

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Speaker 1: I get there when I've got all of these other commitments,

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Speaker 1: and so it's just it's just hard, you know. And

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Speaker 1: so I think people feel the pressure and they're more

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Speaker 1: aware now that they should be maybe being healthier because

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Speaker 1: they see that some of the information, but they but

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Speaker 1: they don't know where to start.

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Speaker 2: And I think the last follow up question I'll bring

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Speaker 2: into this referencing your growing up is I feel like

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Speaker 2: you have to have some maybe funny story about kind

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Speaker 2: of tviating from the normal at some point or another

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Speaker 2: and how it affected you and maybe all lesson you

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Speaker 2: learned from that. Oh my gosh, do you totally do.

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Speaker 3: Where to start? Where to start?

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Speaker 1: I mean, like like I was the kid that, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't allowed to watch PG thirteen movies

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Speaker 1: until I was fourteen, you know, I literally, like I'm

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Speaker 1: not even joking. I would go to a sleepover and

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Speaker 1: I'd bring my own cereal right because it was like

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Speaker 1: there was a list of cereals I knew I couldn't

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Speaker 1: I couldn't eat. I remember my mom making the case

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Speaker 1: for like or us, making the case to her that

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Speaker 1: we should be able to lead Life Cereal and that

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Speaker 1: was like the biggest win in our family was to

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Speaker 1: get Life Cereal, which had a.

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Speaker 3: Little bit of sugar.

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Speaker 1: So I don't know, there wasn't nothing sticks out as like, oh,

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Speaker 1: this was embarrassing and forced me to to get really

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Speaker 1: comfortable being different from the norm. I would say it

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Speaker 1: was like sort of a It was like the background

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Speaker 1: noise of my life for the first twelve or thirteen years,

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Speaker 1: like when most kids are being socialized and being sort

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Speaker 1: of indoctrinated into the culture. I had my mom standing

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Speaker 1: there and making sure like, you know, no, don't believe

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Speaker 1: that that's not the truth.

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Speaker 3: We're going to do it this way.

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Speaker 1: And like I said, it was like it was kind

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Speaker 1: of one big lesson in econiclasm.

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Speaker 2: So talk to me about coming of age and moving

437
00:22:13,760 --> 00:22:15,400
Speaker 2: on to college. Where did you go to college?

438
00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:19,840
Speaker 1: So I went to undergrad at Harvard, and that was

439
00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:26,400
Speaker 1: actually the genesis of my first business. I uh, I had.

440
00:22:26,720 --> 00:22:29,240
Speaker 1: I was a good student in in high school. You know,

441
00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:32,119
Speaker 1: it wasn't a lot to watching a TV. I was

442
00:22:32,160 --> 00:22:34,480
Speaker 1: really I was into sports, but like pretty much like

443
00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:39,480
Speaker 1: this like focused and pretty academic kind of kid. And

444
00:22:39,600 --> 00:22:41,560
Speaker 1: so you know, I done really well in school and

445
00:22:41,600 --> 00:22:44,800
Speaker 1: then you know, took the SAT and did really well

446
00:22:44,840 --> 00:22:48,320
Speaker 1: in the SAT, and then got to the got to

447
00:22:48,560 --> 00:22:51,959
Speaker 1: got to college and basically like met all these peers

448
00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:55,480
Speaker 1: who also did really well in the SAT. But you know,

449
00:22:55,560 --> 00:22:57,800
Speaker 1: many of them had been like preparing for college essentially

450
00:22:57,800 --> 00:22:59,720
Speaker 1: since they were in middle school. And it was this

451
00:22:59,840 --> 00:23:03,080
Speaker 1: like interesting moment to just see how different the experience

452
00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:06,560
Speaker 1: growing up of like most of my peers, who you know,

453
00:23:06,680 --> 00:23:08,760
Speaker 1: many of them had gone to private colleges, some of

454
00:23:08,840 --> 00:23:12,200
Speaker 1: whose parents had gone gone to Harvard or places like Harvard,

455
00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:15,320
Speaker 1: who'd been aware of places like Harvard, you know before

456
00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:18,160
Speaker 1: they were doing their college applications, whose kind of lives

457
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:20,680
Speaker 1: had been oriented, And you know, on the one hand,

458
00:23:20,720 --> 00:23:22,920
Speaker 1: felt like incredibly lucky that I had somehow sort of

459
00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:26,240
Speaker 1: stumbled into this place which was amazing and opened up

460
00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:29,760
Speaker 1: so many opportunities, but also realized that like, you know,

461
00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:31,920
Speaker 1: how many kids were at my high school, for example,

462
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:34,040
Speaker 1: that were just as smart as me, but like for

463
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:36,760
Speaker 1: whatever reason didn't do well on the standardized test or

464
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:40,200
Speaker 1: didn't know that, you know, like one B plus and

465
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:43,280
Speaker 1: some like random class was going to tank your GPA

466
00:23:43,320 --> 00:23:44,720
Speaker 1: and therefore impair.

467
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:45,879
Speaker 3: Your ability to get into the right college.

468
00:23:45,920 --> 00:23:48,200
Speaker 1: And so you know, sort of realized that it, like

469
00:23:48,320 --> 00:23:51,840
Speaker 1: college admissions was a game, that you know, standardized testing

470
00:23:51,960 --> 00:23:54,680
Speaker 1: was a game. And that was actually my first company

471
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:58,240
Speaker 1: was called IVY Insiders, when we basically hired IVY League undergrads,

472
00:23:58,320 --> 00:24:00,480
Speaker 1: kids who had just gotten into these is to go

473
00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:03,880
Speaker 1: back to their hometowns in places like you know where

474
00:24:03,920 --> 00:24:08,040
Speaker 1: I lived in Minneapolis and help kids at a fraction

475
00:24:08,160 --> 00:24:10,640
Speaker 1: of the price of Princeter Review and Kaplan to get

476
00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 1: better test scores and prove their college admissions chances. So,

477
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:17,119
Speaker 1: you know, I had the kind of I don't know

478
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:20,160
Speaker 1: if this is a dubious honor or something I should

479
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:22,880
Speaker 1: be proud of, but I basically that was my first

480
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:23,640
Speaker 1: company own.

481
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:25,320
Speaker 3: It was my first job. So I've never had a

482
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:25,880
Speaker 3: real job.

483
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 2: I don't know, is that what you say, like a

484
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:32,680
Speaker 2: real job? Who gets to define what a real job is?

485
00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 2: Although I always reference what I'm doing now, and I'll say, well,

486
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:38,320
Speaker 2: when I last had a full time job, And the

487
00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:40,359
Speaker 2: thing is, like, I have a full time job now,

488
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:42,879
Speaker 2: it's being a freelance writer and a podcast probably have

489
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:45,119
Speaker 2: more than a full time jobcas. I can't think of

490
00:24:45,200 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 2: a weekend in the last two years that I haven't worked.

491
00:24:47,880 --> 00:24:50,200
Speaker 2: And I'm sure you can relate, but I always say

492
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:52,320
Speaker 2: when I last had a full time job, and I'm like, well,

493
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:55,440
Speaker 2: that was just the last time that someone else, without

494
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,879
Speaker 2: you know, question sent me a check every other Friday,

495
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:00,800
Speaker 2: right right, yeah, And I.

496
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:02,119
Speaker 3: Think, you know, it's interesting.

497
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: I used to say that before, like, oh, I've never

498
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:08,080
Speaker 1: had a real job, and I think that more and

499
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:11,959
Speaker 1: more people had because that sort of like binary distinction

500
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:14,680
Speaker 1: is going away for a lot of people. You know,

501
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:16,680
Speaker 1: I think ten or fifteen years ago that was unusual.

502
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:19,119
Speaker 1: Now there's so many people that are doing things that

503
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:22,520
Speaker 1: are that are unconventional, and you know, some of that's

504
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:24,159
Speaker 1: probably the bias of the world, the kind of the

505
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:26,920
Speaker 1: people I'm around, but it feels like, you know, more

506
00:25:26,960 --> 00:25:29,359
Speaker 1: people are breaking that mold, and you know, for me,

507
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 1: I was I feel so lucky that I did break

508
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 1: it right away, and like, never get into that comfort

509
00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 1: of having a paycheck or like, you know, kind of

510
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:39,639
Speaker 1: staying in the in the rat race, so to speak,

511
00:25:39,720 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 1: because you know, right away I was off doing my

512
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: own thing and like not having to be kind of

513
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 1: comparing myself, you know, socially to others, and and just

514
00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:49,639
Speaker 1: focused on building.

515
00:25:49,400 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 3: Something I really believed in.

516
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:54,520
Speaker 2: So when you were building ivy Insider, how are you

517
00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:55,600
Speaker 2: making money?

518
00:25:56,720 --> 00:25:57,959
Speaker 3: We were so that business.

519
00:25:58,080 --> 00:26:01,639
Speaker 1: Interestingly, it was like it's a services business, so it

520
00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 1: was not capital intensive at all. I wrote a book

521
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:08,720
Speaker 1: called The Ivy Insider's Guide to the SAT, which introduced

522
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:11,400
Speaker 1: a concept I called SAT game theory, which I won't

523
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:13,280
Speaker 1: go into, but it was like my whole philosophy of

524
00:26:13,359 --> 00:26:15,159
Speaker 1: how these tests are games and you can, like you

525
00:26:15,320 --> 00:26:17,000
Speaker 1: treat it like a video game and beat it and

526
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:18,920
Speaker 1: level up and like try to make it fun. And

527
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:21,040
Speaker 1: you know, it's like I can't use this word at

528
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:24,359
Speaker 1: the time because I only get existed, but gamify the experience.

529
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:28,520
Speaker 1: And so you know, that was like my you know,

530
00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 1: that was my main It was my curriculum. It was

531
00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 1: equivalent of my product. And then I taught the courses

532
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:37,160
Speaker 1: in my hometown and the first summer I thought like, oh,

533
00:26:37,320 --> 00:26:39,040
Speaker 1: like teach a couple of classes. I ended up having

534
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty kids sign up, and then the

535
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:43,960
Speaker 1: second summer, I like, you know, I think I double

536
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:45,720
Speaker 1: or tripled that. It was like three or four hundred

537
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:49,440
Speaker 1: kids in my like in and around my hometown, and like,

538
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 1: I basically couldn't do enough of the teaching. So the

539
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:55,680
Speaker 1: year after that, I hired another instructor in my hometown.

540
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 1: As I was training him and like preparing all these

541
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:02,200
Speaker 1: materials to and him to do it back in the

542
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:04,360
Speaker 1: Twin Cities, I was like, I wonder if I could

543
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:07,200
Speaker 1: just do this with other undergrads at Harvard to do it,

544
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:10,719
Speaker 1: you know, in their hometowns. We're building a profitable business,

545
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:13,400
Speaker 1: but we were also helping people get into better colleges

546
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:15,000
Speaker 1: who weren't paying one thousand.

547
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 3: Dollars for the class.

548
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:19,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're also like twenty doing this.

549
00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:23,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe me. I can tell you a lot

550
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:25,159
Speaker 1: of I know, one of your themes is hurdles. Like

551
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: I can tell you so many mistakes I made in

552
00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: that business. The way I described it in the past

553
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 1: is I basically failed my way to success on that

554
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:37,199
Speaker 1: one for sure, probably in general, but especially in that business.

555
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:39,680
Speaker 1: I mean, I just had truly no idea what I

556
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:40,080
Speaker 1: was doing.

557
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:43,000
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure you learned a lot, right, Isn't that

558
00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:43,400
Speaker 2: the point?

559
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:47,399
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, I wouldn't change a single thing. And

560
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: you know, not to get philosophical, but I read a

561
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:52,359
Speaker 1: lot of books on business over the year, and a

562
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:55,600
Speaker 1: lot of books on health, and a lot of books

563
00:27:55,640 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 1: on performance and personal improvement. The only lessons I've ever

564
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:01,720
Speaker 1: really internalized that have really made a difference in my

565
00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 1: own effectiveness or happiness or performance. They've come through They've

566
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 1: come through learning, or they've they've come through the grind

567
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:11,760
Speaker 1: and just like actually getting out there and testing what

568
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:14,520
Speaker 1: is true in the real world. And you know, I

569
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:17,680
Speaker 1: feel like with IV Insiders, I basically compressed, you know,

570
00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:21,359
Speaker 1: decades of lessons that could have been, you would have

571
00:28:21,440 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 1: been gotten in less painful ways into this like really

572
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:28,399
Speaker 1: really intense boot camp that really, you know, set the

573
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:30,119
Speaker 1: stage for what I've done since.

574
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:34,160
Speaker 2: All right, So then one more question about college before

575
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:37,560
Speaker 2: we move into what happened after IV Insider. What was

576
00:28:37,600 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 2: your diet like in college?

577
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 1: Oh, now, this is this is gonna be this is

578
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:46,960
Speaker 1: gonna sound like a contradiction. So I, uh, when I

579
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 1: got to college, I'm a I'm like a pretty skinny,

580
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 1: skinny guy. It was like naturally, which like being on

581
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:57,800
Speaker 1: a good diet actually doesn't help that issue. And so

582
00:28:58,080 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 1: when I got to college, I was I was really

583
00:28:59,440 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: competitive or in high school and was a skinny kid.

584
00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:05,520
Speaker 1: And I weighed one hundred and twenty pounds and five eleven.

585
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 1: I was very very skinny. And I got to college

586
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:12,600
Speaker 1: and decided I wanted to beef up and that was

587
00:29:12,640 --> 00:29:15,880
Speaker 1: I sort of weightlifting. So my diet in college was

588
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 1: actually very very strict, but it was I look back

589
00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:21,240
Speaker 1: on it now and I'm like it was horrible. Like

590
00:29:21,320 --> 00:29:22,960
Speaker 1: it was the whole like you have to eat your

591
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 1: body weight in grams of protein, right, and so I

592
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 1: was doing like exit every meal. I was doing a

593
00:29:29,240 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 1: ton of dairy. I was doing chicken breast up the

594
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:34,200
Speaker 1: you know, just like I can't even eat chicken breast

595
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 1: anymore because I ate so many chicken breast, you know.

596
00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 1: I was like obviously doing all the way protein stuff.

597
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:43,360
Speaker 1: I was taking creatine, and so I put on about

598
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:47,240
Speaker 1: twenty five pounds of like mostly muscle during that during

599
00:29:47,280 --> 00:29:47,560
Speaker 1: that time.

600
00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:49,880
Speaker 2: Worth again, Like I love the voice inflection of that,

601
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:52,960
Speaker 2: like mostly there was, there was you know, there's definitely

602
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 2: some fat, but like I was, I was, I was lifting.

603
00:29:56,800 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 1: So it was an interesting period for me because it

604
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 1: was like I wasn't actually a sport, but I got

605
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 1: very serious about weightlifting. I look back and I'm like,

606
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:07,600
Speaker 1: it's kind of embarrassed about it. And I'm also like,

607
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:10,160
Speaker 1: it's interesting because at the time I thought what I

608
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: was doing was really healthy. So it was also like

609
00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:14,560
Speaker 1: I look back on and it's like a reminder that

610
00:30:15,360 --> 00:30:18,000
Speaker 1: you know that you like in a subjective sort of

611
00:30:18,080 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 1: echo chamber, you can and like other people that were

612
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:23,000
Speaker 1: lifting that way and eating that way also thought they

613
00:30:23,040 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: were being healthy. And you know, now I know pretty

614
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:29,480
Speaker 1: definitively it wasn't healthy at all. Like it may have

615
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:33,000
Speaker 1: increased my bench preast, but it was definitely not you know,

616
00:30:34,040 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 1: conducive to life extension.

617
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:41,160
Speaker 2: Okay. So life goes on though, and you graduate college.

618
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 3: And now I'm back down to one hundred and thirty

619
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 3: five pounds, so I regress to my mean.

620
00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 2: How tall are you? I'm five eleven five eleven, okay.

621
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:53,760
Speaker 2: Ware paining a visual for the listeners.

622
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 3: It's not it's not a great visual.

623
00:30:55,960 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 1: My wife gives me a really hard time because when

624
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: we met we met him in college, and she is like,

625
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 1: you know, when I met you, you were like you

626
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:04,959
Speaker 1: looked great, and you know, it's like most people they

627
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:06,560
Speaker 1: sort of let themselves go over the year and gain

628
00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 1: twenty pounds. I lost twenty pounds, and you know, now

629
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:11,960
Speaker 1: I look a little bit amaziate.

630
00:31:12,920 --> 00:31:15,080
Speaker 2: I'm sure that your wife thinks you look just fine.

631
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:19,720
Speaker 3: Like shit, we're thirteen years in. There's no there's no

632
00:31:19,880 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 3: turning back.

633
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:24,760
Speaker 2: I love it. Okay, So you graduate college, you met

634
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 2: your wife in college, So what happens after that?

635
00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: So I basically had a fork in the road. You know,

636
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:33,800
Speaker 1: I had an option to go at an offer to

637
00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:37,440
Speaker 1: go consult at a company called McKinsey and Company. It

638
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 1: was sort of like the dream job coming out of

639
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:41,960
Speaker 1: college at the time. This was two thousand and seven,

640
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: and yet I was like seeing my business just continue

641
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:49,239
Speaker 1: to grow, and it was it was actually, I think

642
00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:53,160
Speaker 1: kind of the the first really big test of that

643
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:57,800
Speaker 1: ability to be a contrarian, because I had the thing

644
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 1: that like McKinsey job, that is the like gold prize

645
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 1: at the end of the Harvard road, that like my

646
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:07,280
Speaker 1: peers were all gunning for that I should have been

647
00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:10,360
Speaker 1: wearing as a badge of honor, and that I should

648
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 1: have like a no brainer, gone and done, and like, honestly,

649
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: the people that were amazing, the opportunity was amazing. There's

650
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:20,000
Speaker 1: nothing bad to say about the place or even that path,

651
00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:22,560
Speaker 1: but it would have been a path that would be

652
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:24,640
Speaker 1: very difficult to get off because you can it can

653
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: set you on that trajectory to then go to business school,

654
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:28,480
Speaker 1: and then for business school you go to you know,

655
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 1: the next gig that's going to make money, and you

656
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: know whatever. The proverbial golden handcuffs and conservatism I think

657
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:35,800
Speaker 1: can really set in.

658
00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 2: So you know, I was.

659
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:39,560
Speaker 1: I did a lot of reflecting on it. I can

660
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:41,040
Speaker 1: remember at the time, I actually went out with a

661
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 1: buddy of mine who I was working at a startup

662
00:32:43,280 --> 00:32:45,800
Speaker 1: out in San Francisco, and like had my first experience

663
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:48,160
Speaker 1: at Silicon Valley, which had nothing to do with my

664
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: startup but was just kind of inspiring, and decided to

665
00:32:53,280 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 1: turn my own path and went full time on IVY

666
00:32:55,760 --> 00:32:59,640
Speaker 1: Insiders and basically spent the next two and a half years,

667
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 1: two years heads down, Like I literally rent to an

668
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 1: apartment in Harvard Square, we got an office in Harvard Square.

669
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 1: I didn't leave a seven block radius for like, you know,

670
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:14,000
Speaker 1: including college, six or seven years. And then we ended

671
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 1: up getting acquired in twenty ten by a company based

672
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:20,520
Speaker 1: here in LA called the Revolution Prep. And that's actually

673
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: what brought me here.

674
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 2: Before you step away, I mean, I can only imagine

675
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:26,360
Speaker 2: that the move to LA is a little bit stressful.

676
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:29,440
Speaker 2: You're obviously working quite a bit. You really want to,

677
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 2: you know, solidify that these guys did the right thing

678
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 2: by investing in you guys and going with you guys.

679
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 2: What does your overall wellness look like at that time?

680
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:44,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's actually pretty ironic because I

681
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:47,480
Speaker 1: imagine moving out, like everyone who hasn't spent any time

682
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:50,000
Speaker 1: in southern California, you had this image of like just

683
00:33:50,520 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 1: the beach and the palm trees and the Sokal kind

684
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 1: of like health and wellness lifestyle, which.

685
00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 3: Is really true.

686
00:33:57,440 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 1: But when I got out here, that was not my experience.

687
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:03,000
Speaker 1: It's because to your point, I was determined to make

688
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:07,000
Speaker 1: sure that the acquisition and integration went well. You know,

689
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:09,520
Speaker 1: I had something to prove. They had paid a significant

690
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:13,280
Speaker 1: amount for the business, and and I still had financial

691
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:17,200
Speaker 1: upside in the outcome. Once it was sold. So you know,

692
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 1: I actually probably worked more in that first year after

693
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:24,000
Speaker 1: selling to business than I did when I was when

694
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:26,960
Speaker 1: I was working, when I was working for myself, which

695
00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 1: has also been a common theme for me, Like I

696
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 1: feel like when I had I feel more pressure when

697
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:33,479
Speaker 1: I take someone else's money than when it's my own money,

698
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:37,320
Speaker 1: you know, at stake. But really I would say my

699
00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 1: like wellness, my life balance, my ability to like do

700
00:34:40,840 --> 00:34:42,799
Speaker 1: the things you would think one would do after they

701
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 1: just sold their company and in their mid twenties, Like

702
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 1: I didn't do any of that.

703
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 2: I was just you get out and it is around

704
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:56,640
Speaker 2: mid twenty twelve, you said, correct, Yeah, yep, okay, so

705
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:58,719
Speaker 2: it's mid twenty twelve, and what do you think you

706
00:34:58,840 --> 00:34:59,200
Speaker 2: want to do?

707
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:03,320
Speaker 1: Ah, that's a good question I'm taking taking myself back there. Honestly,

708
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 1: I was very open. I was less thinking about specific

709
00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:12,360
Speaker 1: businesses and more thinking about like the broad themes. So

710
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:15,160
Speaker 1: you know, the I did a lot of reflecting, Like

711
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 1: in spite of working NonStop during that year, I did

712
00:35:19,120 --> 00:35:22,560
Speaker 1: a lot of reflecting around like what had been what

713
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:25,359
Speaker 1: had really been meaningful, meaningful for me in the IV

714
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 1: Insiders experience, you know, it was interesting to like get

715
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 1: some money in my pocket and like have that win

716
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 1: and then sort of sit back and say, how does

717
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:33,200
Speaker 1: that feel?

718
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:33,360
Speaker 2: Like?

719
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:36,279
Speaker 1: How how fulfilling was that? Like what does that notch

720
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:37,680
Speaker 1: in the belt actually feel for?

721
00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 3: Feel?

722
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:38,239
Speaker 2: Like?

723
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:39,080
Speaker 3: What does it do for me?

724
00:35:39,600 --> 00:35:41,680
Speaker 1: And the truth was it didn't do that much, Like

725
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:44,800
Speaker 1: my lifestyle didn't change. I didn't start like, you know,

726
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 1: driving sports cars. I moved, I moved into a studio apartment.

727
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,640
Speaker 1: I didn't like go buy a big house, and like

728
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 1: realized that even though I thought that that was part

729
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:58,279
Speaker 1: of my equation, was like having those like trappings of

730
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:02,680
Speaker 1: success like when I actually got it, it wasn't. And

731
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 1: I also felt a little bit of that like anti

732
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:09,040
Speaker 1: climactic experience of getting what you getting what you want,

733
00:36:09,120 --> 00:36:10,360
Speaker 1: even separate from the money, just.

734
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:12,799
Speaker 3: Thinking about like having the quote unquote success and.

735
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:16,799
Speaker 1: Being like, ugh, I don't like I actually enjoyed more

736
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:18,719
Speaker 1: the chase to get it than actually getting there. And

737
00:36:18,719 --> 00:36:21,759
Speaker 1: I know that sounds super cliched, but it did make

738
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 1: me realize that what, you know, what I really enjoyed

739
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:29,480
Speaker 1: about about IVY Insiders one was the challenge. It was

740
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:32,400
Speaker 1: like the like continual growth that like always being at

741
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:35,480
Speaker 1: the edge of your capabilities, learning more about how the

742
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 1: world works, about how your mind works, about what you're

743
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:41,120
Speaker 1: capable of, about your just your emotional machinery. Like all

744
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:44,040
Speaker 1: of that to me was like it was a stressful period,

745
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:46,800
Speaker 1: but it's also as I looked back in retrospect, like

746
00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 1: with you know, the value of hindsight was like this

747
00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:52,239
Speaker 1: fascinating game that I'd been playing and I'd grown so

748
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:54,439
Speaker 1: much so quickly. So that was one thing I wanted

749
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:56,520
Speaker 1: to get back in that driver's seed, but do it

750
00:36:56,560 --> 00:36:59,799
Speaker 1: it even more scale, with kind of more intensity, more

751
00:36:59,840 --> 00:37:03,879
Speaker 1: at stake. You know, it's like the classic I guess,

752
00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:05,799
Speaker 1: like if you think about like an extreme sports person

753
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:07,680
Speaker 1: that just keeps wanting to go bigger, Like that was

754
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 1: what I realized kind of entrepreneurship was for me, and

755
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:14,080
Speaker 1: that was agnostic to what the business would actually be doing.

756
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 3: But then what I also realized what I was most.

757
00:37:17,400 --> 00:37:19,879
Speaker 1: Proud of about IVY Insiders looking back, when I actually

758
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:22,440
Speaker 1: got the most satisfaction from kind of that feeling of

759
00:37:22,560 --> 00:37:25,640
Speaker 1: your like your legacy or your impact was the tens

760
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:28,000
Speaker 1: of thousand students that would helped it was the like

761
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 1: handwritten notes that I had from kids and from their parents,

762
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:34,800
Speaker 1: whose whose trajectories in life had been transformed. It was

763
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:37,480
Speaker 1: the feeling that I had, like you know, taken that

764
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 1: baton for my mom and what she did for me

765
00:37:40,280 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 1: and my you know, my brother who ended up going

766
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:44,360
Speaker 1: to Yale, and my my you know, the three of

767
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:45,480
Speaker 1: us all went to college.

768
00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 3: Like my mom didn't graduate from college.

769
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:50,200
Speaker 1: The feeling that I had like taken you know, carry

770
00:37:50,239 --> 00:37:52,359
Speaker 1: that legacy and like done the right thing for hers.

771
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:53,560
Speaker 3: So I was.

772
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:55,880
Speaker 1: I knew that I not only wanted to play the

773
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:58,279
Speaker 1: game at a bigger level and challenge myself and grow,

774
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:00,560
Speaker 1: but I wanted it to be on some thing that

775
00:38:00,719 --> 00:38:03,839
Speaker 1: had real purpose and to me, the only thing more

776
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: fundamental than education, and like the only thing my mom

777
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:09,400
Speaker 1: cared about more than education. As I said before, was

778
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:12,279
Speaker 1: helped right. These were like the two cornerstones of kind

779
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 1: of my DNA growing up and it took. So I

780
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:19,239
Speaker 1: looked at a lot of businesses. I actually I was

781
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:23,759
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur residence for God eight months and saw met

782
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:27,279
Speaker 1: with probably it has to be over five hundred other

783
00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: potential co founders I integrated through dozens of my own ideas.

784
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:36,000
Speaker 2: What does that even mean? Entrepreneur in residence.

785
00:38:37,080 --> 00:38:39,879
Speaker 3: Well, it doesn't mean much. That doesn't mean much.

786
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 1: It means that I had a really good friend he

787
00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:46,120
Speaker 1: remains one of my best friends, who was the managing

788
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:49,279
Speaker 1: director at a startup accelerator and he basically invented a

789
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:51,280
Speaker 1: job for me to come hang out of the office

790
00:38:51,840 --> 00:38:55,120
Speaker 1: and sit on their investor committee, but mostly just like

791
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:58,880
Speaker 1: led ideas percolate and meet interesting people to see if

792
00:38:58,880 --> 00:38:59,279
Speaker 1: I could come.

793
00:38:59,280 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 3: Up with my next thing.

794
00:39:00,640 --> 00:39:01,760
Speaker 2: Oh, that sounds awesome.

795
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:03,600
Speaker 3: I mean it was amazing.

796
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:06,360
Speaker 1: It was amazing, and it was also dizzying, right because

797
00:39:06,360 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 1: I saw all these people that were out doing things

798
00:39:08,400 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 1: and it was actually a really tough period for me

799
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:13,000
Speaker 1: in my life because I wasn't doing anything at the time.

800
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you, like, during that seven or eight

801
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:18,440
Speaker 1: month period, there were definitely points.

802
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 3: Where I was like, you know, am I one? Like

803
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:21,359
Speaker 3: you have self doubt?

804
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 2: Right?

805
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 3: Am I a one hit wonder?

806
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:23,239
Speaker 1: Like?

807
00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:24,080
Speaker 3: Am I not? Really?

808
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:26,880
Speaker 1: Maybe I just like stumbled into that first one and

809
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 1: got lucky, you know, and that that fear of kind

810
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:34,239
Speaker 1: of failure to launch, and that was the first It

811
00:39:34,320 --> 00:39:37,399
Speaker 1: was a really really interesting experience for me because when

812
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:40,280
Speaker 1: you once you get going, like there's something about momentum

813
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: where you just like keep going right, and I, like

814
00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:46,120
Speaker 1: I stumbled in IVY Insiders right away started spinning fast

815
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:49,480
Speaker 1: and like you just go with the flow, and that's

816
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:53,320
Speaker 1: a that's an incredible experience. There's also like the opposite

817
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:55,520
Speaker 1: that happens when you're not moving, where you get that

818
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:58,600
Speaker 1: like inertia, you sort of ossify and like you can

819
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 1: start becoming really risk averse. And it was the strange

820
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 1: experience for me where ironically, like I should have been

821
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:06,319
Speaker 1: able to take more risk, right, I had more time,

822
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:09,280
Speaker 1: I had more money, I had more experience, but instead

823
00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 1: I was feeling afraid of failure and intimidated by other

824
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:16,479
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs that were out doing it. So there's a whole

825
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:19,160
Speaker 1: like kind of personal journey in that in that experience.

826
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:23,200
Speaker 1: And then you know, as as it happened with uh

827
00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:28,280
Speaker 1: with basically every big thing in my life, like destiny

828
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:30,360
Speaker 1: kind of dropped dropped it in my lap and I

829
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:33,600
Speaker 1: met I met Gnnar, my co founder, who pitched me

830
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:36,320
Speaker 1: on an idea called shop Tribe, which was it was

831
00:40:36,400 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 1: the mission was actually exactly what what iv Ins for

832
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,080
Speaker 1: Thride market became, but it was going to be done

833
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: through basically group on for healthy food and he is,

834
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 1: you know this like incredible entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur. He's grew

835
00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:54,400
Speaker 1: up on a hippie commune in Ohai, California, where they

836
00:40:54,440 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 1: had been doing group buying organic foods back in the

837
00:40:57,400 --> 00:41:01,360
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties. Uh And and he pitched me on investing,

838
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:03,319
Speaker 1: and by the end of that meeting, I was pitching

839
00:41:03,400 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: him on doing something together.

840
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:09,239
Speaker 2: So at the very beginning of Thrive Market, did you

841
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 2: is this like in the height of group on?

842
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:15,080
Speaker 3: It's It's exactly right. It was exactly right.

843
00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:17,719
Speaker 2: I haven't like said the word groupon in a long time,

844
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 2: but it is kind of crazy that it has like

845
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:22,160
Speaker 2: all of those models, I mean, living social group on.

846
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 2: I used to shop on Guilt City all the time.

847
00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:26,799
Speaker 2: Why is it that you think, and I mean I'm

848
00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 2: jumping ahead a little bit, but why is it that

849
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:32,240
Speaker 2: you think that you guys have been quite successful whereas

850
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:34,160
Speaker 2: a lot of the other businesses that you may have

851
00:41:34,239 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 2: been slightly modeled after have not been.

852
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:39,759
Speaker 1: The reason, I think, honestly, is that we didn't end

853
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:44,080
Speaker 1: up modeling ourselves after Groupon. So I wasn't attracted necessarily

854
00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:47,360
Speaker 1: to that business model. What I was attracted to was

855
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:50,800
Speaker 1: the mission and the conviction that he had and like

856
00:41:50,920 --> 00:41:53,839
Speaker 1: to see, like honestly, it was to working with him

857
00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:56,320
Speaker 1: as an entrepreneur as much as it was even to

858
00:41:56,440 --> 00:41:59,640
Speaker 1: the to the mission itself, because I like I saw

859
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 1: his connection to it and there was like the feeling

860
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,840
Speaker 1: I remember in that first meeting where like, Okay, I

861
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:07,520
Speaker 1: don't think that he's nailed the business model, but like

862
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,680
Speaker 1: we can figure that out, and like he's got enough

863
00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 1: drive and I'm the same way that like, we'll figure

864
00:42:13,719 --> 00:42:15,840
Speaker 1: that out. And we spent months iterating on the on

865
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:18,640
Speaker 1: the business model, and it wasn't until we started studying

866
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: costco that you know, we we basically landed on membership.

867
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:26,160
Speaker 1: And I think the you know, you hear a lot

868
00:42:26,239 --> 00:42:29,240
Speaker 1: of the you know, the uber for fill in the blank.

869
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 1: I think one major lesson is don't be the you know,

870
00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 1: the fill in the blank for fill in the blank

871
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: unless that first fill in the blank is actually a proven,

872
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:44,320
Speaker 1: like successful business and most pre profitable even public you know,

873
00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:49,840
Speaker 1: high flying UH tech companies are not proven. So, you know,

874
00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: I think where where it pays to be derivative is

875
00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:55,560
Speaker 1: when you can pull from models that actually stand stood

876
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:57,719
Speaker 1: the test of time. And for us, that was the

877
00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:00,719
Speaker 1: membership model, which you know has been the bedrock of

878
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: everything we do. It powers the mission, it powers our

879
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:07,120
Speaker 1: our path to profitability, It powers the loyalty of the

880
00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:11,360
Speaker 1: membership of the customer base. So you know, we ultimately

881
00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:15,880
Speaker 1: dropped the group on picked up the Costco wholesale buying model,

882
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 1: and we never looked back.

883
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 2: Talk to me about what the membership model is, and

884
00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:25,200
Speaker 2: just right now at least, what does the membership cost?

885
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:28,719
Speaker 1: So it's sixty dollars a year it has been since

886
00:43:28,760 --> 00:43:32,320
Speaker 1: the very beginning. Everyone asked, have you tested different levels,

887
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:34,160
Speaker 1: like what could you charge more for us?

888
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:35,200
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, we could charge more.

889
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: The typical member makes back their membership being savings in

890
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 1: about two purchases, so they save about thirty dollars per

891
00:43:41,080 --> 00:43:44,240
Speaker 1: order of retail on average. But honestly, we just pegged

892
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:44,800
Speaker 1: it to Costco.

893
00:43:45,320 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 3: Again.

894
00:43:45,600 --> 00:43:48,600
Speaker 1: It was like, if that model has worked so successfully

895
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:51,320
Speaker 1: for this long and they have, you know, tens of

896
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:55,680
Speaker 1: millions of members worldwide, like why would we why would

897
00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:58,359
Speaker 1: we go try to like optimize and tinker and improve.

898
00:43:58,120 --> 00:43:58,880
Speaker 3: On the core of that.

899
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:02,720
Speaker 2: Your debate on the price for a while. We oh, totally,

900
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:04,880
Speaker 2: but that's can talk to me about that I have

901
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:06,719
Speaker 2: a fun story to share with you after you tell

902
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:08,640
Speaker 2: me about I.

903
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:10,399
Speaker 1: Mean, honestly, it was like it was one of those

904
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:14,120
Speaker 1: like pointless armchair discussions because you just don't know unless

905
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:16,920
Speaker 1: you test it. And I think one of the things,

906
00:44:17,400 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 1: you know, one of the amazing things about business today

907
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 1: and online businesses is you can test anything, right. You

908
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 1: can run a split test and actually get like really

909
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:28,239
Speaker 1: good clean data for just about any question you want

910
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:30,640
Speaker 1: to have answered. I think one of the things that

911
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:33,680
Speaker 1: you have to like that can also be a dangerous

912
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,480
Speaker 1: thing because testing anything can lead you to want to

913
00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:40,160
Speaker 1: test everything. And one of the things that we landed

914
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:42,439
Speaker 1: on with that decision, and I think with a number

915
00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:45,480
Speaker 1: of other things since then, is like, what are the

916
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:46,160
Speaker 1: what are the.

917
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:48,239
Speaker 3: Things that aren't open to testing? Right?

918
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:49,640
Speaker 1: What are the things that we're just going to like

919
00:44:49,719 --> 00:44:52,640
Speaker 1: plant a flag and say this is what we stand for, right,

920
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:56,600
Speaker 1: And and like sixty dollars feels fair. We know people

921
00:44:56,640 --> 00:44:59,920
Speaker 1: can make it back into membership to purchases. It makes

922
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:02,200
Speaker 1: the membership a no brainer. If we're leaving a little

923
00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:04,239
Speaker 1: bit of money on the table, we're gonna we're gonna

924
00:45:04,239 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 1: be okay with that.

925
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 3: For now. We decided not to not to mess with it,

926
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:08,400
Speaker 3: and it's.

927
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:11,120
Speaker 1: Been I think there's been a number of things like

928
00:45:11,239 --> 00:45:13,520
Speaker 1: that where like we've said, hey, we're just going to

929
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:15,800
Speaker 1: make a decision based on like what we think is

930
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:18,600
Speaker 1: the right thing to do, and we're not gonna we're

931
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:21,360
Speaker 1: not gonna leave it to be an optimization question. And

932
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:24,720
Speaker 1: some of our best decisions like going fully non gmo

933
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:27,839
Speaker 1: from day one on our food catalog, like we were

934
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:30,440
Speaker 1: within six months of launching, we were the largest seller

935
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:33,399
Speaker 1: exclusively non gmo food in the country online or off.

936
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:37,200
Speaker 1: And you know, we've lost quote unquote a lot of

937
00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:39,400
Speaker 1: sales from that with brands that we could be selling

938
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:43,920
Speaker 1: that don't hit those hit hit that criterion. But I

939
00:45:44,000 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 1: think it's been that this pillar that because we haven't

940
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:49,319
Speaker 1: had to spin cycles on like making the decision. It's

941
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 1: just been really easy, really clean. And I think people

942
00:45:52,200 --> 00:45:54,600
Speaker 1: trust us because we've made decisions like that, Like they

943
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:57,080
Speaker 1: trust us because they know the membership fee isn't going

944
00:45:57,160 --> 00:45:59,239
Speaker 1: to be hiked the moment that they come in. They

945
00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:02,319
Speaker 1: trust us because as we were carbon neutral back when

946
00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:05,399
Speaker 1: we launched, when like carbon neutrality on shipping wasn't even

947
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 1: a thing.

948
00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 2: When you say that you can save up to what

949
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:12,759
Speaker 2: the membership fee is on your two orders. Where's that

950
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:14,520
Speaker 2: savings coming from? In what way?

951
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 1: It's just peg to retail, So there's like the MSRP.

952
00:46:17,960 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 1: And obviously there's places that people can buy things that

953
00:46:20,200 --> 00:46:22,239
Speaker 1: are cheaper if you want to, like you know, price

954
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 1: shop and get you know, your twenty item grocery list

955
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 1: from five different places. But it's what you'd pay at

956
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:31,840
Speaker 1: a place that charges retail or a place like Whole Foods.

957
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:35,080
Speaker 2: Got it okay? And then the story that I wanted

958
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:37,360
Speaker 2: to share with you quickly I had Hayden's later on

959
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:41,440
Speaker 2: the show from Press Juicery, also La based. He and

960
00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:43,640
Speaker 2: I were talking about when they first came up with

961
00:46:43,719 --> 00:46:46,040
Speaker 2: the cost of the juices. And he's on the phone

962
00:46:46,080 --> 00:46:48,319
Speaker 2: with the printer that's making the labels, and I think

963
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 2: at the time, if I remember correctly, the amount of

964
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:55,280
Speaker 2: money or the cost of each juice was on the label,

965
00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 2: and so the printer is like, so how much are

966
00:46:57,640 --> 00:47:01,000
Speaker 2: the juices? And Hayden's like one second, he puts the

967
00:47:01,080 --> 00:47:03,400
Speaker 2: phone on mute, and he like looks at his business partner.

968
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:05,239
Speaker 2: He's like, do you think they're nine dollars? And she's

969
00:47:05,280 --> 00:47:07,120
Speaker 2: like I think that's too much money. He's like, how

970
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:09,919
Speaker 2: about six dollars? And she's like, I think that's too cheap,

971
00:47:09,960 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 2: and they like landed on seven dollars and he picked

972
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:14,840
Speaker 2: up the phone. He said, they're seven dollars or something

973
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:17,719
Speaker 2: along those lines. So it's always so interesting to like

974
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:21,560
Speaker 2: listen back and hear about how and why things are

975
00:47:21,840 --> 00:47:22,600
Speaker 2: the way that they are.

976
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 1: I think you had like there's it's easy to assume

977
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:27,960
Speaker 1: that like everything was like made with such deliberation and

978
00:47:28,160 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 1: like examination. But the truth is, in entrepreneurship, there is

979
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,439
Speaker 1: a huge premium for just being willing to take action,

980
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:38,400
Speaker 1: for just moving the ball forward. And if you get

981
00:47:38,440 --> 00:47:42,520
Speaker 1: the broad strokes right, all that optimization around the edges, Like, yes,

982
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:44,840
Speaker 1: that matters as you get to scale, it's real dollars.

983
00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:48,000
Speaker 1: But it's not the difference between success and failure. But

984
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:51,200
Speaker 1: action versus inaction actually is like if he would have said,

985
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:52,880
Speaker 1: like hold on, let me call you back in two

986
00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:56,879
Speaker 1: weeks when we do a customer study, like you know, chance,

987
00:47:57,080 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 1: it's just it's a different orientation, but you got to

988
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:02,400
Speaker 1: have that bias to action as an entrepreneur.

989
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:06,400
Speaker 2: I love it. Well, So when do you first know

990
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:09,440
Speaker 2: I mean, you know in your gut that what you

991
00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 2: are putting together, what you guys are building, is there's

992
00:48:12,239 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 2: a need for it. You feel really strongly about what

993
00:48:15,040 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 2: you are building. But when do you first recognize that

994
00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:20,840
Speaker 2: Thrive market is going somewhere?

995
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:23,800
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question.

996
00:48:24,080 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 1: I mean I believed in the mission so deeply from

997
00:48:27,640 --> 00:48:30,000
Speaker 1: the beginning, Like I said, it was like within in

998
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:32,840
Speaker 1: that first meeting I was pitching and working together, I

999
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:34,759
Speaker 1: was like, this is the this is the area of

1000
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:36,320
Speaker 1: health that I want to have an impact on, Like

1001
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:39,080
Speaker 1: I want to I believe that food is medicine. I

1002
00:48:39,200 --> 00:48:41,799
Speaker 1: believe that access to healthy food should be a right,

1003
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 1: Like I believe that it's crazy that you know, preservative

1004
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:51,520
Speaker 1: laden like denatured foods costs less than simple organic ones.

1005
00:48:52,080 --> 00:48:53,960
Speaker 1: Like it just resonated so deeply with me that that

1006
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 1: conviction was there on day one and it never wavered.

1007
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 3: Now that said, we.

1008
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:03,960
Speaker 1: Had like a bazillion hurdles in the first year, Like

1009
00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:06,480
Speaker 1: we didn't get to launch till a year in and

1010
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 1: during that time, you know, we spent hundreds of thousands

1011
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:12,360
Speaker 1: of dollars with an outside consultancy building a site that

1012
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:16,080
Speaker 1: never launched. We tried to build a content platform because

1013
00:49:16,080 --> 00:49:19,759
Speaker 1: we wanted to integrate like health education on top of

1014
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:23,040
Speaker 1: the on top of the shopping experience, and that total

1015
00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:26,600
Speaker 1: like didn't even get to launch. We signed up wholesale

1016
00:49:26,640 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 1: accounts to a bunch of brands that we never activated,

1017
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:31,800
Speaker 1: using like a shell company because we were worried that

1018
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:34,280
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be comfortable with us selling at the prices

1019
00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:36,239
Speaker 1: that we were, and all of that ended up going

1020
00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:39,640
Speaker 1: to waste. And then we actually, once we finally kind

1021
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:41,880
Speaker 1: of got our act together a little bit, we went

1022
00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:45,279
Speaker 1: out to fundraise and we got rejected by dozens and

1023
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:48,319
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of vcs, Like I counted it up

1024
00:49:49,280 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 1: back in twenty fifteen, and during twenty fourteen, we were

1025
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:54,680
Speaker 1: rejected by more than one hundred and fifty vcs. It

1026
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 1: was like everybody in Silicon Valleys off New York and

1027
00:50:00,160 --> 00:50:02,080
Speaker 1: a basically said note to thrive market.

1028
00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:05,319
Speaker 2: And was there a common theme as to why they

1029
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 2: were saying no?

1030
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 3: There were a few.

1031
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:10,759
Speaker 1: You know, I think we took for granted that we

1032
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:14,279
Speaker 1: would be successful at raising money because we had both

1033
00:50:14,320 --> 00:50:18,359
Speaker 1: successfully started and sold businesses before. And I think when

1034
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:22,160
Speaker 1: we actually talked to vcs, you know, they discounted those

1035
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:25,080
Speaker 1: successes because they were in a totally different space, and

1036
00:50:25,560 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 1: I think rightly so, Like the truth is, we didn't

1037
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:29,319
Speaker 1: know how to build an e commerce business. We didn't

1038
00:50:29,360 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 1: know anything about fulfillment and operations. We didn't know anything

1039
00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 1: about managing inventory and doing procurement. Like a lot of

1040
00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:39,280
Speaker 1: those early mistakes were actually, you know, the same things

1041
00:50:39,320 --> 00:50:41,000
Speaker 1: that the vcs would have said. See, that's why we

1042
00:50:41,040 --> 00:50:43,320
Speaker 1: didn't invest in those guys. So there was like a

1043
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 1: legitimate set of real you know, like is this the

1044
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:50,480
Speaker 1: right team to go out and tackle this opportunity? And

1045
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:52,840
Speaker 1: what I would say there is like what they missed

1046
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:56,400
Speaker 1: is how much it matters to just like be totally

1047
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:59,360
Speaker 1: connected to the mission, the mission, all in and willing

1048
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:01,520
Speaker 1: to figure shit out no matter what it takes. Right.

1049
00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: So they saw that we didn't have all the answers.

1050
00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:06,200
Speaker 1: What they didn't see is that we were the ones

1051
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:09,719
Speaker 1: that had the discrimination to get to the answers. And

1052
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:12,840
Speaker 1: that was like one category of people that said no.

1053
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:15,240
Speaker 1: The other was people that just didn't understand the problem.

1054
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:20,800
Speaker 1: You know. And if you're a wealthy male VC in

1055
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:24,160
Speaker 1: San Francisco who lives a block from Whole Foods, doesn't

1056
00:51:24,200 --> 00:51:27,920
Speaker 1: do your own grocery shopping anyway, Like you don't get.

1057
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:30,920
Speaker 3: The plight of middle class and middle American moms. Right.

1058
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 1: Like, if you look at the the VC backed technology companies,

1059
00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:38,279
Speaker 1: most of them are not solving problems for middle class

1060
00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 1: middle America. That's just the reality. They're solving problems, you know,

1061
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:47,320
Speaker 1: for the vcs, right it's like elite millennial urbanites with

1062
00:51:47,440 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 1: a lot of disposable incomes. So I think we were

1063
00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:54,320
Speaker 1: just doing something very different that wasn't wasn't obvious. It

1064
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:57,080
Speaker 1: was a latent demand that no one is really servicing.

1065
00:51:57,200 --> 00:51:58,680
Speaker 1: And the biggest question we got was how are you

1066
00:51:58,680 --> 00:52:00,440
Speaker 1: going to be with Whole Foods? And we had to

1067
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:02,719
Speaker 1: say over and over and over, we're not competing with

1068
00:52:02,760 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: Whole Foods. We want to make this lifestyle accessible to

1069
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 1: people that you know, don't live near a Whole Foods,

1070
00:52:07,680 --> 00:52:11,480
Speaker 1: or are intimidated to go into a Whole Foods, or

1071
00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:16,759
Speaker 1: can't afford to shop at Whole Foods. And you know, interestingly,

1072
00:52:17,520 --> 00:52:19,640
Speaker 1: we ended up raising that first round eight and a

1073
00:52:19,680 --> 00:52:23,760
Speaker 1: half million dollars from about two hundred and fifty basically

1074
00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 1: influencer and mission aligned investors, individuals like in everywhere from

1075
00:52:29,960 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollars to fifty thousand dollars chunks, And it

1076
00:52:33,239 --> 00:52:36,000
Speaker 1: was like the exact opposite experience, right, Like they saw

1077
00:52:36,080 --> 00:52:39,200
Speaker 1: our determination, they aligned with the mission, and many of them,

1078
00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:42,480
Speaker 1: like if they were bloggers, their audience were the people

1079
00:52:42,520 --> 00:52:44,839
Speaker 1: that we, you know, were the people that we were

1080
00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:45,560
Speaker 1: going to be serving.

1081
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:47,160
Speaker 3: So it was so interesting.

1082
00:52:47,239 --> 00:52:50,400
Speaker 1: Once we shifted our strategy, which also happened by accident.

1083
00:52:50,760 --> 00:52:52,879
Speaker 1: But once we did that, ball got rolling and it's

1084
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 1: like all of a sudden the checks came. It was like,

1085
00:52:57,080 --> 00:52:59,680
Speaker 1: you know, we got almost no nos. It was like, all,

1086
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:01,560
Speaker 1: I'm on board with us, I care about it, and

1087
00:53:01,600 --> 00:53:03,000
Speaker 1: not only do I want to invest, but how.

1088
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:03,399
Speaker 3: Can I help?

1089
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:05,400
Speaker 2: What's the strategy shift?

1090
00:53:06,480 --> 00:53:09,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, honestly, we again, like I know, I sound like

1091
00:53:09,440 --> 00:53:13,160
Speaker 1: I'm like I'd just gotten really lucky, but we I

1092
00:53:13,200 --> 00:53:15,400
Speaker 1: had a friend from college who was crashing on my

1093
00:53:15,480 --> 00:53:16,280
Speaker 1: couch for a weekend.

1094
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:19,200
Speaker 3: His name is John Durant. He was an influencer in

1095
00:53:19,239 --> 00:53:19,839
Speaker 3: the paleo world.

1096
00:53:19,880 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 1: He wrote a really a best selling book called The

1097
00:53:22,160 --> 00:53:26,120
Speaker 1: Paleo Manifesto, and you know, he started we started talking

1098
00:53:26,160 --> 00:53:27,799
Speaker 1: about Thrive Market. He said, oh, you know, I've got

1099
00:53:27,840 --> 00:53:29,840
Speaker 1: some friends that would probably really think this is cool.

1100
00:53:30,520 --> 00:53:33,480
Speaker 1: And so he introduced us to a guy named Mark Sisson,

1101
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:37,160
Speaker 1: who is like the godfather of the paleo movement. He

1102
00:53:37,280 --> 00:53:39,640
Speaker 1: soon started a company that he sold to Craft Times

1103
00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:43,759
Speaker 1: called Primal Kitchen. We met with Mark at a at

1104
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:47,160
Speaker 1: a Starbucks in Malibu, and he invested on the spot

1105
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:51,320
Speaker 1: and introduced us to five other folks who each introduced

1106
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 1: us to probably five more, and all of a sudden,

1107
00:53:53,600 --> 00:53:55,680
Speaker 1: we had the who's who of the entire kind of

1108
00:53:56,280 --> 00:54:00,600
Speaker 1: like online health and wellness blog paleo you know, blogger

1109
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:05,680
Speaker 1: community on our cap table. And it was honestly, it

1110
00:54:05,719 --> 00:54:07,520
Speaker 1: was the best thing that could have possibly happened to us.

1111
00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:09,520
Speaker 1: That's when I realized that while we're going to have

1112
00:54:09,600 --> 00:54:12,640
Speaker 1: some serious firepower. And when we launched, you know, it

1113
00:54:12,800 --> 00:54:16,200
Speaker 1: was like the floodgates just opened because these people started

1114
00:54:16,239 --> 00:54:18,279
Speaker 1: to tell their audiences and you know, we were getting

1115
00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:21,200
Speaker 1: Like I remember, we had a five thousand square foot

1116
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:24,920
Speaker 1: office that also had our warehouse inside of it, like

1117
00:54:24,960 --> 00:54:27,000
Speaker 1: all of our products racked and bin We had to

1118
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:30,920
Speaker 1: add storage containers in the driveway and then moved to

1119
00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:33,480
Speaker 1: a forty thousand square foot warehouse two months after launching

1120
00:54:33,560 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 1: because the business was going so gangbusters.

1121
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:40,160
Speaker 2: So when you after you launch and you start to

1122
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:43,319
Speaker 2: see success and now you're getting all of these investors.

1123
00:54:43,520 --> 00:54:45,640
Speaker 2: I know, I read that you raised one hundred and

1124
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:50,200
Speaker 2: forty one million dollars across three rounds of funding following

1125
00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:54,400
Speaker 2: your November twenty fourteen launch. So after this things are working,

1126
00:54:54,680 --> 00:54:58,440
Speaker 2: it's going, well, what would you say at this point

1127
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:01,760
Speaker 2: is the biggest challenge today?

1128
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:04,000
Speaker 3: Like twenty twenty, after you find.

1129
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:06,280
Speaker 2: That initial success, after you have that meeting in Malibu,

1130
00:55:06,360 --> 00:55:08,520
Speaker 2: after the money is there, and like it seems that

1131
00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:09,800
Speaker 2: you have a viable business.

1132
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:12,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, like mid early twenty we call it like mid

1133
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:15,960
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, so we're like six months in the business

1134
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:19,520
Speaker 1: is just going gangbusters. All those vcs that rejected us

1135
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:21,560
Speaker 1: at a five million dollar valuation are coming back and

1136
00:55:21,640 --> 00:55:23,880
Speaker 1: want to fund the business at one hundred million dollar valuation.

1137
00:55:24,440 --> 00:55:27,800
Speaker 1: It was insane, right, And the biggest challenge at that

1138
00:55:27,920 --> 00:55:32,359
Speaker 1: point is staying humble, right, not looking at the business now.

1139
00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:35,040
Speaker 1: You know, just as when you're when everyone's telling you no,

1140
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:38,160
Speaker 1: you got to keep your conviction when everyone's telling you

1141
00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:40,200
Speaker 1: yes and telling you how brilliant you are, and like

1142
00:55:40,320 --> 00:55:42,400
Speaker 1: what amazing thing you're doing and how they want to

1143
00:55:42,440 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 1: be part of it, like really staying grounded. And you know,

1144
00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:48,880
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I don't think we did a perfect

1145
00:55:48,960 --> 00:55:50,719
Speaker 1: job of that, Like we at times started to drink

1146
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:51,399
Speaker 1: our own kool aid.

1147
00:55:52,200 --> 00:55:54,280
Speaker 3: We moved in some cases too fast.

1148
00:55:55,200 --> 00:55:58,320
Speaker 1: We made some mistakes on hiring, We made some mistakes

1149
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 1: on kind of sequencing, Like we tried to launch fresh food,

1150
00:56:03,640 --> 00:56:05,480
Speaker 1: which is something we were not ready for at all.

1151
00:56:07,120 --> 00:56:09,160
Speaker 1: So we made some mistakes of hubris and it was

1152
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:11,840
Speaker 1: a real lesson learned. And I think, you know, the

1153
00:56:11,880 --> 00:56:14,279
Speaker 1: best thing that ended up happening to us there was

1154
00:56:14,800 --> 00:56:17,080
Speaker 1: we got a great investor at the Series A, and

1155
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:19,480
Speaker 1: then a year later when we raised our Series B

1156
00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:23,400
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, we brought in a group called called Imbis.

1157
00:56:24,080 --> 00:56:28,279
Speaker 1: They're out of New York. They're a private equity fun

1158
00:56:28,400 --> 00:56:31,560
Speaker 1: but totally unlike any other private equity group you've ever known,

1159
00:56:31,640 --> 00:56:33,560
Speaker 1: and that they are not raising funds all the time.

1160
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 1: They have an evergreen source of capital from one family

1161
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:39,480
Speaker 1: that they raised back in like the late eighties, and

1162
00:56:39,600 --> 00:56:42,279
Speaker 1: they've just done so well at compounding that that they

1163
00:56:42,320 --> 00:56:43,880
Speaker 1: don't have to go out and raise funds. So they

1164
00:56:43,960 --> 00:56:48,600
Speaker 1: have a long timeline. They're very grounded themselves, they're very quiet,

1165
00:56:48,640 --> 00:56:51,839
Speaker 1: they don't do any pr and you know, they really

1166
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:54,320
Speaker 1: got us focused on, like back to the basics of

1167
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:57,759
Speaker 1: the business. And I think had we gone out and

1168
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:01,440
Speaker 1: like gone crazy just raising BC money and just propelling

1169
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:04,239
Speaker 1: growth for growth's sake, we could have really screwed up

1170
00:57:04,239 --> 00:57:07,239
Speaker 1: the business. And instead, I have to give a lot

1171
00:57:07,280 --> 00:57:09,279
Speaker 1: of credit to the people that, you know, both the

1172
00:57:09,600 --> 00:57:12,200
Speaker 1: early investors who like believed in our mission and kept

1173
00:57:12,280 --> 00:57:14,960
Speaker 1: us grounded to that, as well as the you know,

1174
00:57:15,080 --> 00:57:18,160
Speaker 1: some of the folks that we brought on, especially gray Croft,

1175
00:57:18,240 --> 00:57:20,160
Speaker 1: which is the fun that let our series A and

1176
00:57:20,240 --> 00:57:23,040
Speaker 1: then in this who let our series be who you know,

1177
00:57:23,160 --> 00:57:25,400
Speaker 1: both of them had been on our board and really

1178
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:27,200
Speaker 1: kept us nail to that north star.

1179
00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:30,640
Speaker 2: I'll never forget when I sat down with Rachel Drury

1180
00:57:30,720 --> 00:57:33,280
Speaker 2: from Daily Harvest that she said one of the biggest

1181
00:57:33,480 --> 00:57:37,920
Speaker 2: challenges that they tackled after they were delivering successfully in

1182
00:57:37,960 --> 00:57:40,400
Speaker 2: the New York City area was figuring out how to

1183
00:57:40,600 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 2: make this a large scale operation, especially when it came

1184
00:57:43,600 --> 00:57:47,440
Speaker 2: to delivering fresh foods like all around the United States.

1185
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:51,040
Speaker 2: I can't even I mean, just the logistice. I always

1186
00:57:51,120 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 2: use this word. It's definitely not a real word, but

1187
00:57:53,640 --> 00:57:56,600
Speaker 2: I always just think about the logisticizing that goes into

1188
00:57:56,800 --> 00:57:57,360
Speaker 2: all of that.

1189
00:57:58,280 --> 00:58:01,280
Speaker 1: That's a great term but perfectly perfectly captures the kind

1190
00:58:01,320 --> 00:58:05,320
Speaker 1: of like complexity, right, it's I mean, it's crazy, right.

1191
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:09,000
Speaker 1: We ship We're shipping millions of products every month to

1192
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:11,760
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands of people. We have over

1193
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:14,480
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand members today in every one of the

1194
00:58:14,640 --> 00:58:18,120
Speaker 1: lower forty eight states. You know, we've got eight hundred

1195
00:58:18,200 --> 00:58:22,000
Speaker 1: thousand square feet of fulfillment center space. Right, we went

1196
00:58:22,160 --> 00:58:25,800
Speaker 1: from five thousand square feet to eight hundred thousand. And

1197
00:58:26,600 --> 00:58:29,600
Speaker 1: you know, and we and we employ more than five

1198
00:58:29,720 --> 00:58:30,640
Speaker 1: hundred people.

1199
00:58:30,440 --> 00:58:33,040
Speaker 3: In our in our warehouses. So you know, it is

1200
00:58:33,360 --> 00:58:33,920
Speaker 3: a real.

1201
00:58:33,800 --> 00:58:37,920
Speaker 1: Difference between your traditional tech company versus a company that

1202
00:58:37,960 --> 00:58:38,960
Speaker 1: sells physical products.

1203
00:58:39,080 --> 00:58:43,320
Speaker 3: Is like, you have a lot of a lot of logisticizing.

1204
00:58:42,600 --> 00:58:45,640
Speaker 2: To do, a lot of logisticizing to do. Okay, So

1205
00:58:46,080 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 2: for someone that has never been to the Thrive market website,

1206
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:52,000
Speaker 2: talk to me about the kinds of things that they

1207
00:58:52,160 --> 00:58:52,880
Speaker 2: can find there.

1208
00:58:53,760 --> 00:58:56,880
Speaker 1: You can find the best selling products which you find

1209
00:58:56,920 --> 00:59:00,760
Speaker 1: at a place like Whole Foods at at real savings

1210
00:59:01,640 --> 00:59:04,160
Speaker 1: you can find a bunch of products that will be

1211
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:06,600
Speaker 1: in whole Foods in the future, but are like the

1212
00:59:06,760 --> 00:59:12,040
Speaker 1: new cutting edge, most innovative brands that we're outsourcing first

1213
00:59:12,160 --> 00:59:15,000
Speaker 1: and bringing to market first right, brands like Primal Kitchen

1214
00:59:15,360 --> 00:59:18,880
Speaker 1: that now have widespread distribution, like we launched Marx avocado

1215
00:59:18,960 --> 00:59:23,000
Speaker 1: maynaise before it was available anywhere. You will find seven

1216
00:59:23,080 --> 00:59:25,959
Speaker 1: hundred plus products that are in the Thrive market brand

1217
00:59:26,320 --> 00:59:30,080
Speaker 1: where we are actually sourcing like organic in many cases,

1218
00:59:30,160 --> 00:59:33,480
Speaker 1: regenerative ingredients ourselves and then working with co packers to

1219
00:59:33,560 --> 00:59:37,000
Speaker 1: develop first of their kind programs, and you'll find it

1220
00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 1: across all the categories basically except for things that are

1221
00:59:40,280 --> 00:59:42,680
Speaker 1: in the refrigerator, So like the entire periphery of the

1222
00:59:42,720 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 1: grocery store, snacks, cooking ingredients, all of your supplements, all

1223
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 1: of your home goods, all of your bath and body products,

1224
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 1: all of your baby products, a lot of beauty products.

1225
00:59:54,400 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 1: So it's basically fifty percent of what people basically buy

1226
00:59:57,360 --> 00:59:59,200
Speaker 1: at the grocery store you're going to find on Thrive

1227
01:00:00,080 --> 01:00:02,280
Speaker 1: and you're not going to find a bazillion of each product,

1228
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:04,240
Speaker 1: So like we're not going to carry forty alm butters.

1229
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:06,440
Speaker 1: We're going to carry the like five or six that

1230
01:00:06,560 --> 01:00:09,200
Speaker 1: are the highest quality, best and really differentiated.

1231
01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:11,240
Speaker 2: And how do you get ahead of the curve, Like

1232
01:00:11,360 --> 01:00:14,000
Speaker 2: with knowing what's coming and what's going to be.

1233
01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:16,960
Speaker 1: Hot, oftentimes the curve comes to us right Like the

1234
01:00:17,080 --> 01:00:20,000
Speaker 1: best brands and the newest brands are doing innovative stuff.

1235
01:00:20,160 --> 01:00:23,920
Speaker 1: Know that Thrive Market has conscious consumers that will appreciate

1236
01:00:24,200 --> 01:00:26,840
Speaker 1: the extra lengths they're going to. They know that we

1237
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:29,040
Speaker 1: will tell their story in a way that doesn't happen

1238
01:00:29,080 --> 01:00:30,120
Speaker 1: when they go onto Amazon.

1239
01:00:31,120 --> 01:00:33,040
Speaker 3: They know that we're aligned with the mission, and many

1240
01:00:33,080 --> 01:00:34,840
Speaker 3: of them want to make.

1241
01:00:34,800 --> 01:00:38,600
Speaker 1: Their products accessible to normal people, not just people that

1242
01:00:38,680 --> 01:00:43,000
Speaker 1: shop you know in in you know, Arawan and Los Angeles.

1243
01:00:42,600 --> 01:00:43,080
Speaker 3: In New York.

1244
01:00:43,320 --> 01:00:45,920
Speaker 2: I think what's interesting also about your business? I mean

1245
01:00:46,000 --> 01:00:48,960
Speaker 2: speaking as someone who lives two blocks from a Whole

1246
01:00:49,000 --> 01:00:51,880
Speaker 2: Foods and also like in the mecha of every food

1247
01:00:51,960 --> 01:00:55,240
Speaker 2: I could ever want delivered, I myself placed an order

1248
01:00:55,400 --> 01:00:58,880
Speaker 2: on Thrive two weeks ago because I could get the

1249
01:00:59,040 --> 01:01:03,040
Speaker 2: most amazing deal. Like I ordered a box of seafood, okay,

1250
01:01:03,400 --> 01:01:06,520
Speaker 2: and in that box of seafood that cost one hundred

1251
01:01:06,520 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 2: and sixty dollars, I probably got three hundred dollars worth

1252
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:12,000
Speaker 2: of seafood that I would have bought at my local

1253
01:01:12,040 --> 01:01:12,760
Speaker 2: grocery store.

1254
01:01:13,120 --> 01:01:15,840
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, So when that's like, that's a perfect example

1255
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:19,720
Speaker 1: of a program that we that we do ourselves where

1256
01:01:19,720 --> 01:01:24,040
Speaker 1: we're actually working directly with the seafood producers. Right, So

1257
01:01:24,200 --> 01:01:27,440
Speaker 1: it's like wild caught salmon program we're doing like on

1258
01:01:27,560 --> 01:01:30,040
Speaker 1: the with with our meat program, like we work with

1259
01:01:30,120 --> 01:01:33,280
Speaker 1: a fourth generation regenerative farm for all of our pork.

1260
01:01:33,320 --> 01:01:36,040
Speaker 1: We're working with a farmer's collective on all of our

1261
01:01:36,080 --> 01:01:38,720
Speaker 1: grass fed, grass finished beef. And because we source it direct,

1262
01:01:39,040 --> 01:01:41,000
Speaker 1: we cut out all the middle men. We can offer

1263
01:01:41,040 --> 01:01:44,040
Speaker 1: it a much better price. And the big difference that

1264
01:01:44,120 --> 01:01:46,160
Speaker 1: our members appreciated, it's not only a better price, it's

1265
01:01:46,160 --> 01:01:49,640
Speaker 1: actually a better quality too, So you know that's that's

1266
01:01:49,720 --> 01:01:51,760
Speaker 1: the goal is, like you shouldn't have to choose between

1267
01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:55,160
Speaker 1: better quality or the right price. Like if we can,

1268
01:01:55,320 --> 01:01:57,120
Speaker 1: if we can have the right model and we cut

1269
01:01:57,160 --> 01:01:59,360
Speaker 1: out the middlemen and go direct, we can actually offer both.

1270
01:01:59,600 --> 01:02:02,760
Speaker 2: So talk to me about what excites you right now.

1271
01:02:02,880 --> 01:02:05,280
Speaker 2: Obviously we're in one hell of a time with everything

1272
01:02:05,320 --> 01:02:08,480
Speaker 2: that's going on with the pandemic, But what excites you

1273
01:02:08,720 --> 01:02:12,000
Speaker 2: about Thrive at the time being Well, the.

1274
01:02:12,040 --> 01:02:14,680
Speaker 1: First thing I'll say is, yes, the pandemic has been

1275
01:02:15,320 --> 01:02:20,000
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's historically unprecedented, insane in so many ways,

1276
01:02:20,520 --> 01:02:23,840
Speaker 1: a tragedy in so many ways. But also, as I said,

1277
01:02:23,920 --> 01:02:26,360
Speaker 1: for us, this like true moment to step into our

1278
01:02:26,440 --> 01:02:31,400
Speaker 1: mission and serve. And that's been the word's not exciting,

1279
01:02:31,880 --> 01:02:35,120
Speaker 1: but it's been incredibly fulfilling and purposeful to know that,

1280
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:38,120
Speaker 1: you know, the ten million products that we've shipped since

1281
01:02:38,200 --> 01:02:41,480
Speaker 1: mid March are all going to people that really need them.

1282
01:02:41,680 --> 01:02:43,560
Speaker 1: Right The half a million dollars that we've raised through

1283
01:02:43,600 --> 01:02:46,120
Speaker 1: our COVID nineteen relief fund is all going to grocery

1284
01:02:46,160 --> 01:02:50,280
Speaker 1: stipends for frontline health workers and families that are directly affected.

1285
01:02:50,880 --> 01:02:55,400
Speaker 1: So that's been it's been an incredibly galvanizing moment. And

1286
01:02:55,480 --> 01:02:58,760
Speaker 1: it's so strange and surreal because you know, our two

1287
01:02:58,880 --> 01:03:02,640
Speaker 1: hundred plus headquarters workers right now, we're all working from home.

1288
01:03:03,160 --> 01:03:05,560
Speaker 1: You know, people are working in their closets, like they're

1289
01:03:05,600 --> 01:03:09,240
Speaker 1: working in like their living room, right They're managing like

1290
01:03:09,400 --> 01:03:12,720
Speaker 1: so much challenge. But at the same time, you know,

1291
01:03:12,800 --> 01:03:15,320
Speaker 1: I feel like we have more like more sense of

1292
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:17,720
Speaker 1: purpose and a higher level of conviction we're doing than

1293
01:03:17,760 --> 01:03:20,400
Speaker 1: we ever had before. I think there's also some real

1294
01:03:20,520 --> 01:03:24,880
Speaker 1: silver linings in in this, and one for us as

1295
01:03:24,920 --> 01:03:28,680
Speaker 1: a business is that, like people are accelerating that shift online, right.

1296
01:03:28,720 --> 01:03:30,720
Speaker 1: I think there was always there's always been the people

1297
01:03:30,760 --> 01:03:33,200
Speaker 1: that are kind of holdouts on buying their groceries online,

1298
01:03:33,760 --> 01:03:35,880
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, like nobody has that or

1299
01:03:35,960 --> 01:03:38,960
Speaker 1: most people don't have that choice. So you know, I

1300
01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:42,240
Speaker 1: think we're we're going to accelerate that secular trend five

1301
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:45,720
Speaker 1: years in that many months. And then I think the

1302
01:03:45,800 --> 01:03:48,160
Speaker 1: thing that actually has been a little bit ignored but

1303
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:51,600
Speaker 1: I feel really strongly about, is that there's also going

1304
01:03:51,640 --> 01:03:54,080
Speaker 1: to be an acceleration of the trend or unconscious consumption.

1305
01:03:54,640 --> 01:03:57,800
Speaker 1: Like I think the moment that COVID nineteen hit, everybody

1306
01:03:57,880 --> 01:04:00,800
Speaker 1: at some level became a conscious consumer. You know, everybody's

1307
01:04:00,840 --> 01:04:04,480
Speaker 1: thinking about safety, everybody's thinking about where their products come from.

1308
01:04:04,720 --> 01:04:07,520
Speaker 1: Everyone wants to buy from the places they can trust.

1309
01:04:08,320 --> 01:04:11,080
Speaker 1: And you know, that's a really powerful thing. And I

1310
01:04:11,160 --> 01:04:13,600
Speaker 1: don't think that's something that goes away, right, Like, you

1311
01:04:13,640 --> 01:04:16,880
Speaker 1: don't you don't get rid of that, that understanding of

1312
01:04:16,920 --> 01:04:19,960
Speaker 1: the risk of COVID nineteen. Even after the you know,

1313
01:04:20,040 --> 01:04:23,280
Speaker 1: say that there's a vaccine for the for the virus.

1314
01:04:23,440 --> 01:04:27,600
Speaker 1: So my hope is that it accelerates that trend as well,

1315
01:04:27,960 --> 01:04:30,280
Speaker 1: and that coming out of this, people are more thoughtful

1316
01:04:30,280 --> 01:04:33,560
Speaker 1: about the products they buy. They more are more attuned

1317
01:04:34,000 --> 01:04:36,600
Speaker 1: to the fact that, like, you know, disasters that affect

1318
01:04:36,760 --> 01:04:39,960
Speaker 1: like huge swaths of people and the environment are possible.

1319
01:04:40,600 --> 01:04:42,160
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think people are thinking a lot

1320
01:04:42,160 --> 01:04:46,200
Speaker 1: about sustainability at this moment because they're focused on the virus.

1321
01:04:46,800 --> 01:04:48,600
Speaker 1: But you know, it's a reminder that things that you

1322
01:04:48,680 --> 01:04:52,160
Speaker 1: think are unimaginable can happen. And we're already in the

1323
01:04:52,200 --> 01:04:55,160
Speaker 1: early stages of seeing that with climate change right whether

1324
01:04:55,240 --> 01:04:57,600
Speaker 1: it's in California with the forest fires, it's the way

1325
01:04:57,640 --> 01:05:00,520
Speaker 1: that the hurricane seasons have gone. I think that that

1326
01:05:00,680 --> 01:05:03,880
Speaker 1: for us like will extend this moment for our mission

1327
01:05:04,600 --> 01:05:06,560
Speaker 1: to be going on and being that platform that is

1328
01:05:06,640 --> 01:05:09,479
Speaker 1: the trusted partner for people who want to get healthy

1329
01:05:09,520 --> 01:05:12,520
Speaker 1: for themselves but also want to live their values, and

1330
01:05:12,720 --> 01:05:15,080
Speaker 1: you show up in the world as consumers that are

1331
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:17,920
Speaker 1: that are that are sustainable and doing the right thing

1332
01:05:17,960 --> 01:05:18,480
Speaker 1: for the planet.

1333
01:05:19,480 --> 01:05:22,800
Speaker 2: When you look back on the past six almost years

1334
01:05:23,040 --> 01:05:25,920
Speaker 2: of Thrive, what would you say has been one of

1335
01:05:25,960 --> 01:05:28,920
Speaker 2: the best pieces of advice that you've been offered.

1336
01:05:30,640 --> 01:05:33,080
Speaker 1: That's a good question, and this is going to sound

1337
01:05:33,120 --> 01:05:34,560
Speaker 1: like a cop out, but I would go back to

1338
01:05:34,640 --> 01:05:38,760
Speaker 1: the statement I made earlier that the only things I

1339
01:05:38,840 --> 01:05:42,400
Speaker 1: feel like I've really learned and really internalized are from

1340
01:05:42,440 --> 01:05:43,240
Speaker 1: my own experience.

1341
01:05:44,200 --> 01:05:48,080
Speaker 3: Some of those have validated advice that I've gotten, but

1342
01:05:48,480 --> 01:05:49,440
Speaker 3: I've never had.

1343
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:51,480
Speaker 1: A moment where like someone gave me a piece of

1344
01:05:51,520 --> 01:05:54,480
Speaker 1: advice it was fully internalized and I didn't have to

1345
01:05:54,560 --> 01:05:56,439
Speaker 1: learn it on my own. I just don't think that's

1346
01:05:56,520 --> 01:05:58,800
Speaker 1: the way the world works, and I don't think it

1347
01:05:59,000 --> 01:06:02,440
Speaker 1: hasn't been my experience entrepreneurship. So I guess the the

1348
01:06:02,520 --> 01:06:05,600
Speaker 1: advice that I would give to to your listeners if

1349
01:06:05,600 --> 01:06:08,720
Speaker 1: they're if they're looking for advice is don't take advice.

1350
01:06:09,000 --> 01:06:11,360
Speaker 1: Jump into the deep end and get out there and

1351
01:06:11,520 --> 01:06:14,200
Speaker 1: make mistakes and let the world be your advisor. There

1352
01:06:14,320 --> 01:06:18,320
Speaker 1: is no better way to confront truth and reality than

1353
01:06:18,400 --> 01:06:20,080
Speaker 1: to like be out there living in the real world,

1354
01:06:20,440 --> 01:06:23,680
Speaker 1: not listening to books. You know, not not not to

1355
01:06:24,040 --> 01:06:26,200
Speaker 1: slam podcast but not just listening to podcasts.

1356
01:06:26,400 --> 01:06:27,760
Speaker 2: Say don't turn them away.

1357
01:06:29,400 --> 01:06:32,240
Speaker 1: But let's be honest, like that stuff is inspiration, like

1358
01:06:32,520 --> 01:06:34,640
Speaker 1: if you read a book and it gets inspired, right,

1359
01:06:34,720 --> 01:06:36,800
Speaker 1: Like read a biography and get it inspired, Like to

1360
01:06:36,920 --> 01:06:39,160
Speaker 1: listen to a conversation with someone that you really admire

1361
01:06:39,600 --> 01:06:41,680
Speaker 1: or someone who's perspective on the world you really appreciate.

1362
01:06:41,760 --> 01:06:43,000
Speaker 3: But don't don't.

1363
01:06:43,560 --> 01:06:46,240
Speaker 1: Don't fool yourself into thinking that is the that's where

1364
01:06:46,240 --> 01:06:48,840
Speaker 1: you're going to learn how to get where you want

1365
01:06:48,880 --> 01:06:50,920
Speaker 1: to go. The way you're going to get where you

1366
01:06:50,960 --> 01:06:53,480
Speaker 1: want to go is first know where you want to go, Like,

1367
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:56,400
Speaker 1: actually get clear on that and to start walking.

1368
01:06:56,960 --> 01:06:59,720
Speaker 2: If you look back right now on your experience in

1369
01:06:59,840 --> 01:07:04,280
Speaker 2: the entrepreneur incubator of sorts, and you're feeling like you're

1370
01:07:04,360 --> 01:07:06,360
Speaker 2: kind of stuck right and you're not sure what's going

1371
01:07:06,400 --> 01:07:10,080
Speaker 2: to happen next, and you're feeling just stagnant, and you

1372
01:07:10,120 --> 01:07:13,040
Speaker 2: look back right now on that hurdle moment, you have

1373
01:07:13,200 --> 01:07:17,040
Speaker 2: an opportunity to offer yourself one piece of advice.

1374
01:07:17,800 --> 01:07:21,640
Speaker 1: What do you tell yourself just remember that, I mean,

1375
01:07:21,720 --> 01:07:24,880
Speaker 1: this is a stoic saying that the obstacle is the way.

1376
01:07:26,280 --> 01:07:28,920
Speaker 1: I mean, it's totally aligned with your philosophy and this

1377
01:07:29,000 --> 01:07:32,160
Speaker 1: podcast too, of like the hurdles are those defining moments

1378
01:07:32,720 --> 01:07:35,640
Speaker 1: that feel like you're stuck, but it's when you break it.

1379
01:07:35,800 --> 01:07:39,200
Speaker 1: Like but once you do break through, it like releases

1380
01:07:39,320 --> 01:07:43,640
Speaker 1: all this energy and insight and growth. That is always

1381
01:07:43,680 --> 01:07:46,880
Speaker 1: the way it is, Like it never happens from like

1382
01:07:47,280 --> 01:07:49,280
Speaker 1: just like someone's spoon feeding you something. If it was

1383
01:07:49,320 --> 01:07:50,440
Speaker 1: that easy, everyone would do it.

1384
01:07:51,400 --> 01:07:53,720
Speaker 3: So you know it's it is. It is struggle.

1385
01:07:54,040 --> 01:07:57,320
Speaker 1: And once you have a level of like of course

1386
01:07:57,320 --> 01:08:00,560
Speaker 1: sort of meta awareness of that, you start to actually

1387
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:03,280
Speaker 1: crave the struggle. You start to interpret it differently. It

1388
01:08:03,360 --> 01:08:05,560
Speaker 1: starts to feel different in your nervous system when you

1389
01:08:05,680 --> 01:08:10,000
Speaker 1: know and reinterpret that feeling of like this sucks, all

1390
01:08:10,000 --> 01:08:12,600
Speaker 1: of a sudden it becomes oh, I'm being stretched here.

1391
01:08:12,720 --> 01:08:15,080
Speaker 1: I'm going to learn something from this. This is good

1392
01:08:15,120 --> 01:08:18,120
Speaker 1: for me. And that doesn't make it feel good, Like

1393
01:08:18,240 --> 01:08:20,640
Speaker 1: it's still like you're still like I'm still human, I

1394
01:08:20,680 --> 01:08:22,479
Speaker 1: still feel all those the pain when I'm stuck, and

1395
01:08:22,640 --> 01:08:26,200
Speaker 1: like that period was still miserable, but it was you know,

1396
01:08:26,439 --> 01:08:28,600
Speaker 1: it was an inflection point. It was super formative, and

1397
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:31,360
Speaker 1: most of my most difficult moments have turned.

1398
01:08:31,120 --> 01:08:33,320
Speaker 3: Out in retrospect to be that.

1399
01:08:34,920 --> 01:08:37,599
Speaker 2: What's the one item you put in your shopping cart immediately.

1400
01:08:37,760 --> 01:08:39,880
Speaker 2: Every time you place an order on Thrive.

1401
01:08:41,680 --> 01:08:43,760
Speaker 1: I place big orders, so I put a lot of

1402
01:08:43,800 --> 01:08:47,240
Speaker 1: items in my shopping cart every single time I shop

1403
01:08:47,360 --> 01:08:49,600
Speaker 1: on Thrive. I'm the wrong person to ask that. This

1404
01:08:49,760 --> 01:08:53,800
Speaker 1: isn't gonna sound really simple, but try our are olive oil.

1405
01:08:54,720 --> 01:08:58,799
Speaker 1: It's extra virgin, fair trade organic, and it's single sourced

1406
01:08:58,920 --> 01:09:03,519
Speaker 1: from is amazing multi generation family farm that is about

1407
01:09:04,040 --> 01:09:06,479
Speaker 1: three kilometers away from the oldest olive tree in the world.

1408
01:09:07,000 --> 01:09:09,680
Speaker 1: And it will be one of those experiences of like,

1409
01:09:10,360 --> 01:09:13,400
Speaker 1: unless you've had amazing olive oil before, it's probably one

1410
01:09:13,439 --> 01:09:15,880
Speaker 1: of those items that you consume but don't think a

1411
01:09:15,920 --> 01:09:18,479
Speaker 1: lot about, and then you have a good one. It's

1412
01:09:18,680 --> 01:09:20,719
Speaker 1: like I compare it to like I drank wine in college,

1413
01:09:20,800 --> 01:09:23,400
Speaker 1: but I never had a good glass of wine. You

1414
01:09:23,439 --> 01:09:25,120
Speaker 1: will experience that with this olive oil.

1415
01:09:25,439 --> 01:09:27,320
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your time today, Nick. It

1416
01:09:27,439 --> 01:09:27,880
Speaker 2: was awesome.

1417
01:09:28,320 --> 01:09:29,400
Speaker 3: Thank you really enjoyed it.

1418
01:09:29,680 --> 01:09:31,800
Speaker 2: Please take a moment and leave a quick review by

1419
01:09:31,840 --> 01:09:34,320
Speaker 2: clicking the link with the description to this episode. We

1420
01:09:34,479 --> 01:09:37,160
Speaker 2: all face multiple hurdles in life. I want to hear

1421
01:09:37,160 --> 01:09:39,479
Speaker 2: about yours. Reach out to me at Emily at hurdle

1422
01:09:39,560 --> 01:09:42,519
Speaker 2: dot us. Connect with the podcast on Instagram and Twitter

1423
01:09:42,720 --> 01:09:46,120
Speaker 2: at Hurdle Podcast, Nick, where do they find you? How

1424
01:09:46,200 --> 01:09:48,680
Speaker 2: do they keep up with thrive market? Give me the

1425
01:09:48,840 --> 01:09:51,080
Speaker 2: details thrivemarket dot com.

1426
01:09:51,280 --> 01:09:52,320
Speaker 3: I don't and I don't.

1427
01:09:52,360 --> 01:09:54,160
Speaker 1: I don't blog, I don't have Twitter, I have no

1428
01:09:54,280 --> 01:09:57,200
Speaker 1: social media, so you can keep up with me through

1429
01:09:57,240 --> 01:09:58,680
Speaker 1: frivemarket dot com as well.

1430
01:09:59,439 --> 01:10:01,519
Speaker 2: I dig it. I am at Emily a Body at

1431
01:10:01,600 --> 01:10:05,800
Speaker 2: Hurdle Podcast Another Hurdle conquered. Catch you guys next time