Josh Taekman, CEO of EBoost | VP Marketing at Bad Boy, To Serial Entrepreneur

Welcome to the success story podcast, I'm your host, Scott Clary. On this podcast, I have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures, all who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and their insights. I sit down with leaders and mentors and unpack their story to help pass those lessons on to others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between, without further ado, another episode of the success story podcast. Before we start today's episode, a quick note from our sponsor, Enthrown, a fully comprehensive equity management platform. This is what they do. Business owners, are you looking to raise capital and unlock shareholder liquidity? Before hiring expensive consultants or brokers, you need to know about Enthrown. Private businesses use Enthrown to unlock liquidity without bloating costs. With Enthrown's equity management suite, you'll be able to create liquidity, engage with shareholders, and control your company's destiny, all in one secure platform. Get your free guide to liquidity, go to enthrown.com slash liquidity. That's enthrown.com slash liquidity. Thanks again for joining me. I am sitting down with Josh Takeman, who is the founder of EBoost, the industry leader of Clean Fuel for a Better U. So these are products, including the line of super fuel beverages and powder that are natural and non-GMO. Now, EBoost is a powerful, sorry, Josh, not EBoost, Josh is a powerful innovator in brand marketing and business development with a specialty in music, entertainment, and consumer facing products. He's made a career working with talent brands, agencies, proprietary size of the industry. Josh was the vice president of marketing for bad boy entertainment, where he co-founded bad boy marketing and enjoyed unprecedented runs, creating multi-million dollar enterprises at the cross section of music, fashion, technology, and social good. Takeman then co-founded a marketing, Linchpin Buzztone agency, where as president, he was responsible for all business development and leadership, building the company to 30 plus employees and over 50 million in annual revenue clients. Now let's speak about what he's working on now. So, you know, career-long marketer executive, he's now building out his own thing, recognizing the gap in $25 billion in nutrition and supplement category, he's created EBoost. And this was first started in 2008, it's grown into a dynamic wellness brand with performance products, including super powders, pre-workout, BCAAs for the actor consumer who wants to feel great, do more on 2018, Takeman partner with the founders of Arizona beverages, created EBoost super fuel, first of his kind natural energy recovery, ready to drink beverage fortified new tropics, with new tropics, vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, and other key nutrition nutrients, named the best new product of 2019 by BevNet. Josh, you've done a hell of a lot of stuff over your career, super impressive, thank you for sitting down, excited to unpack how you went from, you know, entertainment to now you're working in nutrition, building out your own very successful business. So yeah, tell me your story, what's the origin story of Josh Takeman? Well, thank you, I appreciate it, I don't know, it's been an interesting road for sure, particularly from where I'm from, I grew up in Northern California in a small little suburb, a suburb outside of San Francisco, I went to school at a University of Arizona, I migrated to Los Angeles after University of Arizona, but in college I did a lot of night club promotions and kind of like event planning, so I kind of got my taste in the fusion between entertainment and music and bringing people together, so my goal was always to be in the music industry just because I love the culture, I love the lifestyle, for whatever reason I fell in love with urban music at a young age, and at a young age I was going to concerts I probably shouldn't have been going to at the Oakland Coliseum, and putting myself in situations that most 11 year olds wouldn't do, but I was very naive about it. Pretty damn young, yeah, was taking part to go to these fresh festivals and you know the Houdini, L.O. Cool J, all these great old, well L.O. is not that old school, he was young at the time and run DMC, and in the middle of Oakland and I would go with my friends, older sisters, boyfriend would take us, he was like 17, and he was also into the music, but he lived in a different city in a town called Livermore, so it was definitely a little bit more multicultural than Danville, I grew up, but I just fell in love with it, and so I got exposed to it at a fairly early age, and it kind of stuck with me, so when I went to University of Arizona, I thought there was an opportunity to kind of bring that music and culture to the nightlife, and that's how I got started doing parties and events and clubs, and then when I moved to Los Angeles, I started doing production and work on music videos and commercials and things like that, but my goal was always to get music industry, so I started an internship at a record label, an urban record label called Tough Break, which was great, except I didn't get paid, I think I got free lunch every Friday and occasionally, you know, free snacks in the office, but for whatever reason I loved it, I still had to do production work on the side to be able to pay my bills, but just being in that environment and that old office, the type of people that were associated with music industry, it just really got me fired up and got me really, really excited, so that was my passion point, and when I lived in L.A., there was an upstart magazine at the time called Vibe, which Quitchie Jones was a partner, it was really a New York based magazine, and I got to know the publisher, and she asked if I wanted to come over and be on her starting team during ad sales, and so I thought it was kind of an interesting way to get paid first and foremost, because there wasn't really a job at Tough Break for me that paid anything, just because it was a small record label, and there wasn't like new positions really being created, because it was a joint venture with a larger record label called A&M Records, so they didn't really need a lot of positions outside of the founder and maybe like a head of promotions, so there was not what you call a lot of growth opportunity there, so I ended up going over to Vibe Magazine, because it was great, it was documenting the culture, the music, the fashion, the lifestyle, and I thought it'd be really exciting to be part of an upstart magazine, particularly something that Quitchie Jones had founded, so I was doing local ad sales, I was responsible for doing sales in Southern California, so it allowed me to work with the record labels and the fashion brands, and other things associated with that culture, and it kind of put me at the center, which was great, and it gave me a pretty good round well, round of experience, of dealing with sales, talent, culture, and that was kind of how I learned a lot of the marketing stuff, because I was also responsible putting together programs for the partners that we had, and that kind of was allowed me to tap into my experience back in college, putting together nightlife and clubs and concerts, and that was great, and I did that for like a year and a half, and then I got recruited to go to an entertainment marketing company, where really it sounded better than it was on paper, because I got kind of wood, at that age I just kind of got really excited about making a lot more money, and then I was under the impression that I had lots of travel associated with it, so my job in Southern California was just Southern California, so outside of having to go to New York, potentially going to New York for like a big sales conference, which I would have gone to, and I not left, there was really no travel, and I thought this would be a great way to get out and see the country and go to high profile events, and so I was doing that, and I went to New York for my first time for a trade show in DC, because I had a friend that lived in New York, and so he was modeling, so I went and visited him, and I just couldn't believe that a human being lived in such a small space, and paid so much and rent, I mean, from Southern California, I'm like, you're paying like $1,500, and you literally, you would open the door, and you're in his bedroom, you know, basically the front door, banged up against his bed, I didn't even know how you called a studio, but I was just, after spending a week in New York, and just getting immersed in the action, and the pace, and the lifestyle that New York, that's exclusive to New York, I just became, so energized being there, I basically looked at my other friend, I think I literally had like three friends that lived there, and I mean friends that I'd call them up and stay at their house, I might have known a handful of other people, casually, but like three people that I could have stayed at their house, and I'm like, I'm moving here, and my buddy's just like, yeah, right, and I said, no, I'm moving here, I'm quitting my job, and I will be here, he's like, all right, if you get here in the next month, you could stay at my apartment as long as you want for free, I'm like, done, I go, I'll be here in 21 days, and I literally went back, I quit my job, I collected like four or five or six grand in commissions, which at the time felt like a lot in 1996, was enough for, you know, I think I was 24, so I went back, I returned my car, I dropped all the stuff off of my parents' house, and I bought a one-way ticket to New York, and I landed, and I went to my friend's apartment, and I said, I have no job, I'm stayed at a friend's house, I just know I want to get back in the music industry and experience living in New York, and that was kind of like my, that was kind of like the hook that got me there, yeah, and then what's the steps from, you know, thank you for the story, so where do you go from there to VP marketing at Bad Boy, that's a big, that's a big jump, you know, you finally get to New York, and obviously that's where the kind of music and culture and everything that you're sort of involved in, and I see everything sort of compounding in your life, it's sort of like all coming together, so I get it, but like how did you make that jump, like where did you, where did you get involved with, with Bad Boy at all? Well, it's funny, so I spent the first call at two or three months in New York going out every night, getting immersed into the night life and the culture, and just meeting lots of amazing people, and I wanted to get back in the music industry, but it was kind of weird, for some reason I was like too proud to be an assistant, but not really qualified to be a product manager, and that would have been kind of like the spot for me, so I was interviewing at different record labels and different people that I had relationships with, and it was really not a position for me, because I kind of fell in between, but I really should have taken an assistant job, to be honest with you, because I always believe that if you're really passionate about something, and there's a company that you really want to work for and you're talented and you work hard, the best way to grow, the best way to get into a company is starting at the very bottom, if that's your only entry point, but if you're waiting for that perfect job, it really opens up, and if it does, it's usually someone internal filling it, so my motto is always like if you're talented and you're passionate and that's the company you want to be at, you just find an entry point, you find a crack and you're like water and a crack, you just find a way in, and then if your talents will speak for themselves, so the truth is I probably should have taken like one or two assistant jobs, because it would have been, you know, like one was a deaf jam, which would have been incredibly exciting, but I didn't for whatever reason, I look back, maybe I was just a little too arrogant, and so I ended up taking some other jobs that I absolutely hated, because I wasn't passionate about it, but at that point I ran out of money and I needed to work, and it still was like connected to entertainment, but there was no sizzle to it, there was no nothing that got me excited every day, other than collecting the paycheck. So ironically I ended up going to Florida for a tennis tournament, my friend was ahead of marketing for Hugo Boss, and they were the sponsor of this big tennis tournament in Miami, and she said, why don't you come and help me run the VIP suite for like a week, and I'm like a free trip to Miami for a week, I'm in, and so I did that, and while I was there actually Evan Forster, the guy that was that own tough break, I saw him at the Delano Hotel, and he's like, you know, I'm here, I'm like, oh, come to the tennis tournament, I got tickets for you in a suite, and the whole thing is great, and he's like, I need four tickets, I'm going to bring my buddy Jeff, and some other people, so we brought what was going to be the new president of Bad Boy, and so I met this guy, Jeff Boros, you know, lightly met him, hung out for like a hot minute, and in the back of my mind, I'm like, that's the company I want to work at, you know, I was always a huge fan of Puffy as a producer, and even when he was at uptown records as an intern and the work they did with Mary J. Blige and Joseph C and Heavy D, I'm like, this guy's a superstar, like this guy's got the Midas Touch, and Bad Boy had Craig Mack and Biggie and Total, and I'm like, now that is someplace that I could totally dig in, and I think I could add value and connect you kind of the non, I always felt like there was a bridge to be built between corporate America, and the power of music and their ability to touch and influence people, and I'm like, I could be that bridge in terms of like bringing advertising, marketing, sponsorship, endorsement, type deals to this culture, because at the time there was not a lot of bridges and a lot of ways to authentically tap into the talent and the lifestyle, for these brands, whether it's the Pepsi's of the world, I mean, they always did like Michael Jackson and stuff like that at a super high level, but they were never really grounded at kind of the ground floor of the community and the culture and the lifestyle. So I just felt like there was this really immersive opportunity, and there was another guy at Loud Records, Steve Rifkin, that was doing it, so to be honest, he really created the blueprint, and I'm like, well, if he's doing it successfully, imagine being able to say, you know, doing it alongside Puffy, who I think will become a household name, and so sure enough, I went back to New York and I called Paul Jeff and I pitched him on the idea of building a marketing agency with a bad boy, and he got it, because you know, there was already an example, a proof point with what Steve was doing, and he was doing a really great job at it, getting, you know, Mountain Dew and Levi's and some big brands, and it was kind of mesmerizing the industry and how he was thinking outside the box to create marketing, to deliver non-traditional marketing dollars to help market the urban artists, and so that was kind of at the epicenter of the idea. So I put together, you know, my version of a business plan for Jeff, and he's like, well, put it together, and we'll sit with Puffy and take him through it, and I'm like, great, you know, I've never met Puffy, of course, and sure enough, I called Jeff and I go back, and we meet with Puffy, and I take him through all the stuff, and at the very bottom, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's like, yeah, you know, I thought about him as two, yeah, yeah, this is great, and at the very bottom, I put like $2,000 just to show like I'm all in, like I just need enough to like cover my rent, or get a bagel, or maybe even a bottle of water here and there, or a subway pass, and he looked at me and he goes, you want me to pay you $2,000? I thought he was going to laugh, like, come on, man, how are you going to live on $2,000 in New York City? And he goes, I go, yeah, I just really want to show you that I'm committed, and I'm like, I'm willing to, you know, do sweat equity, and put, he goes, you ain't getting shit, he goes, I'm not, he goes, you eat when you kill, because I am paying you shit until you make me money, and I'm like, wow, I go, well, how do I live? He goes, that's not my problem, that's your problem. So, it's hard, man, that's hard, nox. So here's the irony, just a few months before I was too proud to be an assistant and get paid, and now I hear I'm willing to go work for free, as a glorified intern, right? At least like you come work for free and to eat when you kill. So, sometimes you have to be careful of the path that you choose, so I said, I said fine, I thought about it, and I said, just give me a desk and a phone if I need Jeff to come on a meeting, I need him to come. It just felt like I, it felt like a challenge that I was willing to accept, because I knew that if I could get inside the walls or the doors, and by the way, that the doors, they were like arm security guards that you had to get by every day to get into the office, it was a, it was a whole nother experience. I said, you know, I just need to get a foot in the door, and then from there I could just find my way, and so that's what I did. I started in the mail room, not getting paid a dollar, and, and started as, I would, I hate to say it, but a glorified intern, as a 24-25-year-old guy in 1996. So, how was it, you know, you worked your way up through through Bad Boy? And, and what does, what does the end result at Bad Boy look like when you're running VP Marketing? Like, this is something that you sort of grew with throughout your career. So, it's a lot to do with the day in the life of VP Marketing at Bad Boy's, like, because I want to learn some of those lessons that you, you learn. Yeah, so it was great. So it was kind of like it, it was, I would say it was a non-traditional VP of Marketing position, because I was really much more, I was not really putting together, called the day-to-day Marketing Plans for the artists in terms of, like, their media, their media tours, their promotional schedules, their photo shoots. They were, that, I was doing much more of the business development and branding and marketing. So I would say I was much more of a business development role. And then my job, it also carried over to the marketing agency that we created together. And so my job was to go get outside dollars to come in. So whether it's like, didn't Pepsi be the sponsor of his tour, or do marketing programs for films that were getting released, or like Foot Locker, I got a huge budget and basically produced a commercial with the talent and brought in the directors. So I was just using our platform to go out and attract outside dollars to provide different services for them or provide certain access. You know, ironically, one of the clients that we had at the time was St. Iads. And St. Iads was really well known in the inner cities, but, you know, like the hardcore hip-hop heads, like it was a big deal to do a St. Iads campaign. You know, I think Ice Cube might have started it, Snoop did it, who else did it, Red Man did it. And so at the time, they're like, we want to get this guy Jay-Z. And so I'm like, okay. And so I literally saw Jay-Z and his partner at the time, David Dash in a nightclub. And I went up to them and I'm like, hey, I'm Josh, I work at Bad Boy, blah, blah, blah. And he's, all right, they're actually really kind to me. And I said, hey, I'm working with St. Iads and they want you to do a radio spot, TV spot for them. He's like, nah, man, I don't do that. Go get me Christal. And I go, unfortunately, I don't have Christal. I said, but I have St. Iads. And I said, listen, it's for the inner city, you know, Biggie did it, Ice Cube did it, Snoop did it. I said, you know, it definitely touches your core consumer. He's like, nah, man, I'm Christal. He says, go get me Rolls Royce or Christal. And I said, it's 150 grand. He goes, dammit, give me your number. And so literally, Damien gave me his phone number. And I had, I think like four weeks to create the radio spot. I had to get them to sign the contract and do the radio spot. So I'm excited now. So I go back to the client. I'm like, I got Jay-Z's going to do the radio spot and possibly the TV spot. So I'm going through the motions. I'm dealing with this business manager and he checks all the boxes. And so now I have a contract that's got it. I got to get Jay to sign. And John's like, that's on you, buddy. You got to get him to sign it because I don't have time to chase him around for that. And so I literally showed up in the hood in Brooklyn with contract. And I said, yo, if you want to get this check, you got to sign this contract. So they're like, wow, this guy's wow. Like he showed up in the like really deep inner city or they're shooting a music video to get it signed. And so I get it signed and I get Damon's cell phone number. Now I get to get the radio spot done. So I'm calling Damon like every single day. Like, yo, I gotta get this done. Like when can he's like, oh, you know, tonight, you know, meet, you know, hip-hop at the studio at this time. I show up. No one's there. It's going straight to his voice mail. There's no like texting back then. There's no email back then. So you literally have their cell phone number. Yeah. So that's all I had. So I'm stalking him like crazy. And now I got like four or five days left to get this done. And by the way, I don't get paid unless I get it done. If this doesn't get done, I don't get paid. And so finally, I'm stressing Damon so hard. He's like, yo, I can't take you anymore. You have to call Jay directly. Like you got to deal with his assistant Carlene or here's Jay's cell. Like you got to just get him yourself that he wants his money. So I literally stalk him so hard is like, fine, fine. Meet me at this studio at this time. So he showed up on time, goes in the studio. He's like, what do I have to say? I'm like, you got to say St. Isaac's number of times. And this time the other, he literally goes in like, I think the producer is this guy Tim Bo King. He played a beat is like, nah, he played another beat. He's like, nah, he played another because yeah, that's it right there. He goes play that for me. He played it. He goes played again. He played it for me. He goes, all right, hit play. And he literally like one time to like, he just like nailed it. And he's like, are we good? I'm like, you got to do it a couple times. Like, come on, man, we got to have a bunch of different options. And you got to say this one more time. And literally, he nailed it on the first take. And I have to find, I have to find that I have that dot somewhere in my storage because that would be a nice piece of our archival footage to have Jay Z doing a St. Isaac's prop. That's a, you know what, you know, you went through a lot of shit to get that job, but that's a fun, that's a fun story. That's not many people can say that kind of, not many people have that kind of story working in the, in any sort of role in a business. You know what I mean? Like, working out, working way up and you know, like you said it, you were a VP marketing, but you were doing everything. VP marketing by name, but like, you know, Jack of all trades realistically, you're doing the sales, you're collecting the, you're collecting the checks, you're getting the signatures, you're legal, you're HR, you're finance, you're sales, you're marketing. Back then, you had to do it all. And that's I think where I learned, like, you literally got to roll up your sleeves and you got to just grind. Yeah. I don't, anyone that says they're not grinding and hustling to get things done, then they're not really about the end result. Yeah, that's, that's good advice. That's very good advice. So let's, uh, after, after, uh, bad boy, you know, there's, there's things in between bad boy and eBoost. What are, what are notable things that, you know, we can spend all day, yes, I'm really good stories, but I do want to talk about what you're working on now. So what is that between bad boy and eBoost? So, you know, I did that, that bad boy for a while. And honestly, I had some really unbelievable deals set up with Pup, because I was really almost doing like this venture business. And unfortunately, he had two big legal incidences that set back a lot of big opportunities. Uh, you know, there was a situation where we got a, a very public felony, uh, from a fight, um, with another record executive. And then there was the whole gun charge with, with, um, yeah, shine and the shooting in the club and Jennifer Lopez. So that also unfortunately killed a bunch of other huge deals that I was working on. So after that, I was just like, man, I'm beating my head against the wall. I'm getting things to the finish line. I mean, we had some deals that were like game changers. I mean, back in 97, 90 joint venture with Nantucket Nectars to create a line of fruit juices. So it was going to be called Tom, Tom and Puff. Literally, everything was done. All we had to do was just sign the contract. And then that felony hit, they called me and they're like, yeah, I'm so sorry, but, you know, we have Cadbury Schweppes as an investor and we can't be in business with a felon. And this is before social media. So, but, you know, back then, Puffy was a household name. So it was on MTV, it was on VH1. It was on BET. It was on the newspapers. So everyone knew about the situation. So I just looked back at that one deal in particular and there was nothing. There would have, it would have been a game-changing opportunity for us to enter the beverage industry that no one had taken an approach of using a powerhouse like him and our market and ability and something that was there was a huge boy in the marketplace, especially for the urban consumer, you know, creating urban inspired flavors that really appealed to their taste pot and with him behind it and the ability for him to leverage all the other talent. I mean, it's really kind of what Shorak is today. Yeah. So imagine if we had a Shorak type of marketing approach back in 1997 when no one else was doing it. Now there's a lot of people doing it. He's just been wildly successful with Shorak, but back then there would have been no other competitors approaching it that way. Yeah, for real. So if that happened, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. I'd be somewhere on a boat or an island somewhere. Hey, listen, man, you can still talk to me. I don't care if you're out of nowhere. No, I feel like you had a lot of good stories and one of the things I'm noticing is you're really paving the way for a lot of new innovative concepts and opportunities at the time. So you know, where you were at, you were at that intersection of culture and music and marketing and business and commerce and partnership and brand. And that's something that now we see everywhere. But like you mentioned, it didn't happen. But that seems to be a trend, right? Like that, your ability at least to find those gaps. Because if I think about even sports and nutrition and what you're doing with eBoost, it's not like it's hard to make headway in the sports and nutrition industry because it's saturated. But you seem to have like some like a knack to find those gaps. Is that something that's innate or are you just, you just hustle, you figure it out, you do your research curious. What's the, you know, the secret to defining these things? It's definitely not research, that's for sure. It's definitely much more of an instinct. I mean, again, like there's multiple people like you look back at my career and there's real VP of marketing. Guys that went to business school, guys that, you know, worked at Fortune 500 companies that have like a real VP of marketing playbook. Mine was much more of a school of hustle playbook. So, you know, those guys had, you know, multiple assistants and were dictating on what to do and they're white boarding. We were much more like our sleeves were rolled up and say, how are we going to make this happen? And how are we going to connect some non-traditional dots? So I would say that my path has been, my path has been definitely different than a traditional marketing person. And that's why I'd play kind of in more non-traditional spaces. You know, the music industry is not necessarily a traditional corporate type of position. And my marketing agency that I created after Bad Boy was not a traditional kind of marketing agency as much more experiential lifestyle. And how I built eBoost as a brand, which much more of a lifestyle approach than how I see other people that are going out and raising big money and doing a much more traditional push. And so, you think it's not an immediate drive. I was just going to ask you think that the non-traditional, I guess, upbringing in marketing has allowed you to be more successful with some of the things you've launched. I mean, I don't know if the words more successful is right. I think it's allowed me to take a different approach and to build a different type of brand with a different type of personality. I think if I had a more balance of some of that other stuff, I probably could scale business quicker. So, I'm definitely not saying having a real traditional kind of like business, you know, MBA type of approach with proper funding and resources. I'd probably be in a different place today if I did a little bit more of a hybrid model. Unfortunately, I've kind of done it in a very bootstrap way. So, it's been a much longer path than others have taken. So, you know, like I say, this is going to be the greatest 13-year overnight success in history. So, let's talk about the 13-year overnight success. So, what? So, how did you or why? Why eBoost? Why nutrition? Why is that something that you wanted to go into? What's the what's the goal? I can't say that I can't say that I ever really wanted to go into it. It was never like a lifelong journey or passion. I had I had on the marketing agency called BuzzTone. And, you know, again, like I said, we worked a lot of brands and products and we were our job was to do experiential marketing and connect a lot of unique costs to, you know, help build brand or awareness or trial. And I never really even took vitamins. I took like Baraka when I was hungover or, you know, sometime in the day if I needed like a little extra lift, I never really drank Red Bull unless it was a vodka handful of times, but then I felt horrible the next day. And I always felt like I needed like a lift of energy back. I could never find a clean source. So, I just kind of stayed away from it. I had tried a few pre workouts. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I worked out every single day. I didn't drink coffee. So, I was never like a caffeine junkie. But, I was, you know, when you live in New York, you live a hard life. You really, you know, I would leave my house at, you know, seven in the morning and I wouldn't come home sometimes until three or four because you go right, go right to the gym, right to the office, right from the office to dinner, then right from dinner to out. And I was like five or six nights a week, especially being in the music industry. And that was kind of like New York back in the late 90s. It was like on fire. In the early 2000s, like there's just a lot of stuff to always do. And if you're in the middle of it, you know, that's just kind of the day-to-day life that you're living. Yeah, yeah. And then so I, in the back of my mind, I was always like, why is there not a product that I could take every day that would give me like that healthy lift of energy? Those essential vitamins and minerals, but I'm sure I'm missing every single day. It's not red bull. It's not monster. It's not rockstar. There's not one of these cracked out pre-workouts. And so, and so I had a supplement, a guy that owed a big supplement company approached me about creating a, us helping him market a brand that he had created, targeting kind of urban market and consumer. And it was just horrible. The packaging was horrible. The name was horrible. His ideas were horrible. The product tasted like shit. Like everything he brought was horrible. It made no sense whatsoever. I just said, this will be, this will be failure again. And I'm like, you know what? If you really want to do it, I did, I did think, you know, back then. And this is pre-social media. It was only a handful of news outlets that really was able to be the broadcast and dictate kind of culture to pop culture. And that was, you know, MTV at a Tade, you know, BET to some degree, all the magazines, the peoples, the us weeklies, all that stuff. So there weren't really a ton of channels to get a message out there. And if you were living on those channels in a, in a pervasive way, then you had major influence. So if you think about that, that era of a time, like in the late 90s or 2000, like hip-hop dominated everything, hip-hop was the new rock and roll. So if you were a successful hip-hop artist, you had a platform to build a brand. And Puffy was the pioneer in that. Well, I take that back. Rundi MC was the pioneer in that with the Deedas. Puffy took that and put it on steroids. You know, we did that with Sean John, which I was, I was there from day one with Sean John. It's actually my friend signature. But I just saw it. And I always looked at Puffy. I'm like, you're a brand builder. Like you can create brands from scratch because you have so much influence over media that you don't have to pay for. So when this guy was approaching, when this guy was approaching the idea of doing something for this market, I said, well, why don't we just go partner with this kid 50 set? He's got a whole brand, he's got a whole brand called, and movement called G unit. You know, he launched a Reebok sneaker and it's wildly successful. He launched a clothing line and it's wildly successful. He's relevant. He's ripped. I said, he's business savvy. He's fitness savvy. So I approached his manager and I said, do you think 50 would want to do G unit supplements? And he's like, I know he would. This is even before vitamin water. And so he literally had to deal done with 50 to do G unit supplements. And it just didn't get across the finish line because there was one last meeting that had to take place on a Friday and he was leaving on Saturday for Europe for three months. And of course, he was not able to make it to the meeting. He thought he could just call in and that never really works in the real corporate world and partners that are, yeah, they want they want to they want to know that you're equally as invested and as excited about the partnership. So unfortunately, that fell to the way side. And that was really what led to the creation of eBoost. And that was you, that was you just basically taking, you know, taking the concept that was going to go and then just running with it. No, actually, it wasn't. It was actually me having lunch on a Monday like that Monday with my best friend and just commiserating once again, I get to like the finish line and had this amazing joint venture setup and like the idea was definitely ahead of its time. And he's just like, wow, that's just socks. He goes, well, why don't you just, you know, what about like, and he started coming up with the idea. So it was really his idea. He's like, there's no like clean healthy products. And so we just started building on that idea. And we're like, well, imagine if there was like a brocket needs emergency met, like a clean healthy red bowl and a powder that you could take every day. And it actually tasted good and worked. We're like, well, shit, we would take that every day. We don't, even if we just built it for ourselves, my guess is there's a lot of people like us that would want to take it. Yeah. Yeah. And so we're, we're our own little, our own little focus group of two. But, you know, your instincts are if you make something that makes you feel great and do more, people are going to want it. And so that was really the, the impetus of the idea. And I go, well, shit, my guy Mel can do it. He can make the product. And he was the guy who's going to do the deal of 50 with and sure enough went back to Mel, pitched so many idea and he loved it. He's like, great, let's do it. We'll partner. We're really amazing human being. God rest his soul. And so we spent, you know, like nine months with him trying to develop the product. And unfortunately, he was an amazing chemist, but he was not an amazing marketing person. So every time we went back to sample, it didn't taste good. And the product never fully dissolved. So it was like the last time we went to go see him and get a sample that you thought was really great. It had floating particles because we were trying to do a tablet. And we wanted it like Baraka, just just by dissolve like Alka Selser. And so after like two and a half minutes, there's these floating particles. I'm like, Mel and he's hitting it with a spoon. He's like, Oh, it's fine. It's fine. No one will care. I'm like, perception is reality. I'm like, you want to look good? You want to taste good? And you want to feel good? I said, this doesn't look good. This doesn't taste good. And even if I feel good, you've already lost me on the taste and the look. So I was a little depressed. I'm like, God, spend all that time. I thought it was a really cool idea. I thought it'd be really fun. And I owned my marketing agency at the time. So it was kind of like off the side of my desk, passion project. As opposed to like me stopping everything and just focused on it. And then my best friend introduced me to a guy out in New Jersey that that's what he does. He's got one of the largest contract man to factor. So we went out and saw him and he just got it. I mean, this guy's amazing. He's bigger than life personality. He's like, I'll come back, come back in two days. I'll have a sample for you. Sure. I've got to go back in two days. And I'm like, this is great. The only thing about the sampling made for us, he used sucralose. And we're like, no, we have to use natural sweeteners. We do not want any artificial gradients. We want it to be mature. We want it to be clean. He's like, nobody cares. Trust me, nobody cares. I'm like, we care. Like that's that's what we want. I said, even if it's a small business, like we want to make sure that something that we can drink every day and we feel proud about is like, you don't get it. Nobody cares. You want it to taste great. You sucralose. Like, sucralose is disgusting. Like I wouldn't drink, I don't drink soft drinks. So why would I choose to drink something in a drink that I'm going to go out there and promote if I can't feel comfortable with myself? And the truth is, he was right in the sense that nobody cared. Nobody gave a shit. So we created a more expensive product that tastes good, but didn't taste as good as if it had sucralose. But we were proud. And that's what we wanted to do. So we stuck to our morals and we stuck to our gods. But we'd probably be in a different place today if we would have listened to him with using sucralose and just try to go mainstream. Yeah, you still, you're not doing so bad. What? You've got 4,000 locations. You're you're multimillion revenue. It's not so bad. So we're all right. I'm I'm I'm I'm far from proud from where I mean, I'm proud of the brand, but I we could be in a whole different place if I would have made some different decisions along the way. But yeah, that's being an entrepreneur. That's figuring it out. You know what I mean? That that is what life is. Yeah, I'm not pounding my chest. I'm proud of the brand and I'm proud of what we've done with with having little resource and what a small team we are. But no, no, are we nowhere near the finish line of my claiming victory? So, you know, lessons learned as an entrepreneur. This is the first time you you've truly built something, I guess. Well, the marketing agency. Yes, marketing agency is like a it's not like a widget. It's not like a it's not like a, you know, it's not the same type of of entrepreneurial venture where you have to figure a supply chain, you have to figure a profit margin, that kind of thing. So how did you, you know, lessons learned from building eBoost? What what are some? Um, I think you got to be laser focused on revenue, right? I was laser focused on promotion. I love giving the shit out. Like I mean, I would always have I was like a street marketer like I was just as excited about walking around and giving the product to people and make sure they drink and see how they liked it. If I spent more time focusing on just generating revenue and less time just giving away free product, probably be in a different place. So, but I was so proud of the product and I was just so enamored with like how it made me feel. And I'm like, God, everyone else, I hopefully they have the same experiences I do. So I would just like send free product out to all my friends and send it all over and I go to all the, you know, the Super Bowl is in the all-star games, but I had no distribution. I mean, we were a little too expensive to be in mainstream grocery store. And we didn't have any marketing money. I mean, it was all funded through friends and family. So we always just had enough to like have one or two people, including me on staff at like a fraction of a salary to make enough product and have a website to give away a bunch of stuff. And then we had nice little online business at the time. And then we were building up all these kind of non-traditional retail stores like hotels, like all the W hotels, which was our first client. So we had great distribution in hotels. And then we were in like North, US, Northeast Whole Foods and SoCal Whole Foods and Sprouts and Lifetime Fitness. So we had these cool kind of like natural specialty channels. But in the real world, there was no distribution, Equinox, W Hotel Whole Foods, but the perception is we were everywhere or on Virgin America. So we did a great job marketing the brand from an awareness tip point, particularly if you lived in New York in LA. But there was really nowhere to find the brand. So if I look backwards, I would have been way more laser focused on finding a channel that I could scale. So I always was enamored with D to C. And I should have just really focused on being an early mover in the D to C space. And we were early on Amazon. And I thought I had the right resource at the time to manage our Amazon business, who is an X Amazon buyer for the category. And he was leaving to start an agency because he really understood, you know, how to pull up the levers at Amazon. And at the time he was starting an agency and his whole platform for his agency was, oh, we build a custom shopping cart. And then we manage all your activities on Amazon. Fast forward, the guy went to build like a billion dollar marketing agency. We were just happening on force to be one of this first clients. And we were his beta test for the concept of a shopping cart. And it was just buggy. So it didn't go well. So it was like eight months of kind of wasted time and energy. But I really went and found another just Amazon exclusive agency that really understood the inner workings of Amazon. We could have really been kind of come up and first and search if we had focused on that. So I think between that and just spending money in digital marketing and direct to consumer sales and then support it with like the right specialty accounts and natural food stores. I think we could have been a really, we were, we had all of the makings to be a great direct to consumer brand. And now you sort of learned those lessons as you've grown, like, you know, being an entrepreneur is not easy. It's not like you have these, you don't know this stuff. You don't know what you don't know, right? So you have to, you have to sort of roll with the punches and you've done that you, you know, you kept your head above water in a big way, right? In a very good way. So what, you know, how do you, what are the next steps for the brand as you want to scale it out? Well, I say the best thing that we did, I think we had to go through all those years of pain and suffering because the perception is we are always way bigger than we were. So like, you know, it's like, oh, wow, these successful. We were on gas films. We were hand them out. So, you know, everyone else thought like, oh, my God, like even like, perception is reality, right? They'll help. Well, it doesn't always help. We had a, we had one of those frivolous classics and lawsuits where a guy bought our product and then on the very back of our package, it said like, boost your immunity. And then, you know, these class action lawsuits where they go and they find like a stupid study. And there was a study by Harvard that was based on a AIDS patient that somewhere within there, it said, you can't boost your immunity. And it was totally related to this case study. And it wasn't about overall really boosting your immunity. Nonetheless, they do these heinous class action lawsuits of one where this guy never even was able to, he lied three times to a judge where he purchased the product. He said target. We're like, we've never sold a target. Oh, that's right. I bought it at CVS. I'm like, we never sold it at CVS. And we had to prove that. And then the third place we never sold it. But sure enough, we had to settle with this guy. And this is the irony is the judge goes, well, you know, I see you guys everywhere. You guys have to have a lot of money. That was for statement to me. I said, I'm happy to show you our books because we're, we're not making a lot of money. It's a matter of fact, we're losing money. But the fact for you to say that you think you make, we're making a lot of money because you seem to see us everywhere in New York and you're going to base the settlement on that. It just, it, that one really crushed me as having the settle when someone lies about something. But I got sidebarred. I'm not, but I'm sorry about that. Well, I was going to say it's a, it's a, it's a lesson, no, or an entrepreneur. It is a lot of bad people. Well, here's the, here's the real lesson. There are a lot of bad people out there. And unfortunately, there's a lot of bad lawyers out there. So you always have to protect yourself legally and you always have to know where the area is of, of, of risk and danger in your business. Because, you know, in the nutrition space, you know, there's all these stupid props and there's all these low hanging fruit for these lawyers to come after you. And California is, is egregious with their class action lawsuits. And it's really a stick up because they just have boilerplate templates that they just file. And they really just force you to settle because it's just nuisance. So no matter what businesses, I always say you're at risk. And so you have to understand your risk and make sure you're safeguarded against it, right? So like if you're a restaurant or if you're a brand and you don't have visually impaired on your website, you're at risk, right? Like restaurants, if you don't have handy proper, handy cap, access, you're at risk of a football lawsuit. So you just have to protect yourself and understand what those potential pitfalls are. No, that's, that's a tough lesson to learn. But it's, you know, like as I speak to a whole bunch of people who've built different types of businesses, it's one that I try and dry out. It's just like, you know, there's a lot of good, there's a lot of, you know, working for yourself, not working for somebody else, there's a lot of shit that comes with being an entrepreneur, a lot of tough times, a lot of stress, a lot of bad people, you know, it's just, it's not, it's not easy. It's definitely not easy. No, and by the way, not everyone's meant to be an entrepreneur. The success ratio is so low. The pain, the suffering, the risk, what you give up and doing it, it's like, it's not, it's not for everyone. Yeah. No, that's, that's a, that's a very important thing if you're looking to start your own thing, not to like dissuade people, but just like to like understand the amount of time invested. I speak to like VCs invest and they're just, and the ethical ones up front say, if you are ready to spend the next 10 years of your life eating shit, don't start to come. Yeah, exactly. If you can't go, if you can't be prepared to like be in the trenches, yeah, the trenches, trenches, it's not for you. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not for you. Anyways, on a more positive note, I don't want to make everyone all down on a, on a Friday afternoon. But no, I appreciate the story and I think that like a lot of lessons learned. And I never, I didn't, I didn't never really pull out of you. Where do you want to take eBoost? What, like, what's your vision for, for, you know, growing this, scaling this? Well, you know, we really are, you know, our whole platform is a clean fuel for a better you. So we just launched some amazing VCA's, which we're super proud of and excited and getting great reviews on. I mean, really our, our, our hero product is basically our, our legacy product superpower. We went to Arizona beverages, you know, a little under two years ago and said, guys, you have this amazing company, this amazing portfolio, but you don't have any premium functional beverages in your portfolio. You got the infrastructure, you have the expertise, you have the distribution, you're independently owned so you can make decisions fast. I said, imagine if we took our little brand in the hottest category and energy and the big white space and energy is clean energy, as Bang was disrupting the category. I said, we already have like a really amazing brand that just needs to be plugged into a platform. So imagine if we partnered with your talent skills infrastructure with our brand and our unique marketing, we could do something really special. And so it took a while to convince Don the owner, but thankfully for Sun's West and Spence, they were really behind it and they got it. They're like, this, there's a void in the marketplace for a product like this. They're like, I could be proud giving this to my friends because they would drink it. And so we spent about close to a year developing the product because Don's whole thing was like a mess of taste grade. I'm not doing it. And so we let him be the final say on taste. And he's got probably the best taste buds in the world because he makes the most delicious drinks. So, but he also works with an amazing flavoring house that he's worked with for 25 years. So they're able to sprinkle their secret sauce and make our drink taste amazingly good. Keep the sugar super low. It's like one gram of sugar, two gram of sugar. All the calories are either 10, 15 or 20. It's got 12 vitamins and minerals. It's natural. It's clean. It's non-GMO. It gives you healthy lift of energy. It's got focus, electrolytes. I mean, it's really kind of like it's much more than just energy. Energy is one of the components, but the taste is phenomenal and how you feel after you take it. Yeah. So I'm assuming it's like when you say clean energy, you mean like there's no crash. You don't feel like shit for the afternoon. No, no. I say, I warn people, I'm like, only drink this if you want to feel great and do more. It's a good tagline. You're a good monitor. If you don't want to feel great and do more, I highly recommend you not to drink this product. I love it. I wanted to, I wanted to get up with like just a couple like a rapid fire. But before, before, you know, I move off, we covered a whole bunch about your career about, you know, some of the things you've experienced, eBoost, was there anything that we didn't speak on that you wanted to talk about? No, I think that you know, we covered a lot of the points. Like I said, we're super excited about the can because that allows us to really scale and go mainstream. We've never really had any products that they could live and, you know, FDNM like in mass accounts, you know, we'll be launching in Target in August and CVS in August. So super excited about that. We just launched an AMPM and we really created a product for a dual gender audience and that's really hard to do. I can't say that we design that by nature, but just through our natural product development, it's just it's a product that appeals to men and women and that's really hard to build a brand that can appeal to both and kind of have success. So that's what I'm proud of and excited about where we're going with Arizona beverages. We're just launching inside of California. So super excited about that. And you know, we have opportunity for new flavor that we're finalizing that will be launching in the next couple months and then some potential product extensions. Very exciting. You know, I love the even point of that out because I just went over to your website and and I've always wondered that too. Like in the fitness and health industry, it seems like everything is like very much very much tailored to, you know, male, female, pinks and whites versus reds and blacks or blue and black. I don't really understand why that is, but I do know that like when I go to your website, it seems like it's just like a really good modern looking clean design and it's just a nice I don't I really don't want to be too like promotional about it, but like, you know, you're listening. Go check it out yourself. You'll see what I mean, it's like it's a it's a very clean looking website and I think that that's a nice feel. It doesn't really it doesn't really make anybody feel like they're left out and that's a marketing lesson through. I don't know if you mentioned it sort of happened like that, but I think you know, double down on that. That's a that's a really important thing to have and I think that the polarizing is not a good thing. Now I think that's just like the personality of of our company and the people that work there. Again, we just kind of use our own instincts and which drives a lot of this stuff and we kind of like create the company for ourselves in a weird way. So we're not so heavily focused on metrics and audience. We're just like, this is our community and we kind of have a sense of their taste and we think this is reflective of those tastes, but we have actually a new website that will be launching hopefully in the next month, which I think you'll really love. So I challenge everyone to go to our current website, ebus.com and then come back in 30 days and give me what you think of the comparison between the two. Yeah, no, let's I'm excited to see it because I'm a marketer at heart. So I you know, I love when people put together a clean website, like nice UI looks really, really good. But let's see what let's see what you're rolling out. It should be interesting, especially if it's like very intrinsically motivated. Like you said, like your team is the community. Yeah, yeah, very good. Okay, rapid fire just to end up life lessen questions, but I like to bring out some people that have had some measure of success. The first question would be what is one lesson that you would tell your younger self that would help you get to where you are a little bit quicker or a little bit easier? Focus. Find an area that you could scale and be successful and put blinders on. You know, I always think that we all get distracted by shining objects and I'm the king of getting distracted. If you're just Steve Jobs and you're just leisure focused on one thing and making it the absolute best it can be, I think that's a lesson that should apply to everything. Very good. And second one, a resource that you've gone to to learn something, a book podcast, person, audible, doesn't matter. What's a what's a good place for you to go? I can't always go back in principle to like Tony Robbins because it just his philosophy on everything and I think his philosophy on life and how you approach challenges. He just he just basically just says you just you're responsible for your own success. You can't blame anyone else but yourself. So if there's a problem, it's like I don't spend a lot of time drawing on the problem. I spend more time focusing on the solution and he kind of inspired that. I've always kind of lived by it, but the way he says it, it's just like a powerful mantra in mind. It's like, guys, the solution is here. You're spending 20 minutes talking about the problem. Yeah, that time could have been spent on getting us around the speed bumps. So and I just think that if you can't solve problems in life, it applies to your personal life, your business life, to everything. That's just a natural skill set that that has intrinsic value across every area of your life. Yeah, very well said. And I guess lastly, where do people go to find out more? Like you mentioned the website, but you know, where you have social that you want people to check out. Yeah, so we're on Instagram. You can engage with it on Instagram. We're always doing fitness events. We're really tied into the fitness community. You can go to eBoost.com. You know, if you have any questions or ever need anything, you can always email me Josh at eBoost.com. We're really accessible. We're a small team, but we're really engaged. You know, I personally respond to almost every single email that comes into our customer service. I like that's where I get kind of the pulse of what's happening and feedback. So we're very accessible. We're very open. Our goal is just to get our product to get people to try it. We think that, you know, because of that door bracelet, we're actually got a TV spot coming out in a couple weeks. We're testing some TV. So it'll be interesting to see how that does. You should go through your old roller decks, get some of your, get some of your old clients are pushing this. You know, I know I got to be, I got to get better at that. I was shameless for a long time. I just think I'm getting older. That's all for today. Thanks again for joining me on another episode of the success story podcast. You can download or stream this podcast wherever podcasts are available, including iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, I Heart Radio, and many others. You can also watch this podcast on YouTube. If you haven't already, please subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, family, co-workers, and peers. Please leave us a rating on iTunes. It takes about 30 seconds, as it allows other people to find our podcast and lets our amazing guests reach even more people with their message. And remember, any rating is fine as long as it contains five stars. I'm Scott Clary from the success story podcast, signing off.