Brad Woodgate - Six Companies, Twenty Five Years, Billions in Sales

On this episode, we're joined by Brad Woodgate, Founder and CEO of the No Sugar Company, Joyburst, and Wellnx Life Sciences - the serial entrepreneur behind six companies and billions in lifetime sales. 

Brad has spent 25 years building across supplements, snacks, and beverages, turning a thirty-thousand-dollar start into a self-funded portfolio.

We start with the full origin story, from launching Wellnx Life Sciences in 2000 and scaling it to roughly 150 million a year, to the 2008 collapse that brought nine-figure lawsuits, mass layoffs, and a near-death rebuild. Brad breaks down the patterns that carried across every brand since, starting with his belief that in business there is no such thing as no, only not now.

We get into his unusual club-first go-to-market, why he launches at Costco and Sam's instead of graduating into them, and how in-store demos became his most powerful marketing tool. Brad walks through the real mechanics of club margins, minimum order quantities, and the buyer and shopper differences between the two.

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Episode Highlights:

🚀 Building six companies over 25 years
⚠️ Surviving the 2008 collapse and nine-figure lawsuits
🔁 Why "no" really means "not now" in retail
🤝 Skillful persistence vs persistently annoying
🛒 Starting at club instead of graduating into it
🆚 Costco vs Sam's, the buyer and the shopper
💰 Planning around club's lower margins
📊 Demos as his most powerful marketing tool
🧪 Cracking soluble creatine for Kreo Joy
🥤 Why protein soda gets won on taste
📈 Joyburst's self-funded growth curve
📺 The reality show that birthed Mighty Minis
🔮 Implementing AI across ops and forecasting

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Table of Contents:

00:00 – Intro
01:11 – Building six companies: the origin story
04:18 – The 2008 collapse and nine-figure lawsuits
08:06 – Patterns for winning in retail
09:30 – Skillful persistence vs being annoying
11:35 – Storytelling that gets buyers to grow their category
12:53 – Why he starts in the club channel
15:12 – Costco vs Sam's: buyer and shopper
16:54 – Planning around club's lower margins
19:38 – Running demos at scale
21:13 – Cracking creatine in a soda (Kreo Joy)
24:55 – Where the protein soda category gets won
27:47 – Joyburst's self-funded growth curve
31:17 – Splitting time across six companies
33:25 – The reality show behind Mighty Minis
36:11 – Implementing AI across ops and forecasting

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Links:

Joyburst – https://joyburst.com/
No Sugar Company – https://thenosugarcompany.com/
Follow Brad on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-woodgate-b30b8113/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out https://www.kitprint.co/.

Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.

Are you in the market for a new flexible packaging partner? Check out HD Packaging. Third-generation, family-owned and built for the needs of category leaders like Newman’s Own and A Dozen Cousins. Faster launches, lower costs, and no artwork fees. 

Transcript

0:00

all right welcome to shelf help today we're speaking with Brad Woodgate a prolific serial entrepreneur to say the least she started uh built it to close to 150 million a year 2008 hit whole host a lot of challenges cropped up like many during that time then kind of rebuilt started the no sugar company in 2018 I believe scaled that one to pass 100 million watch joy burst in 2022 with a big Super Bowl ad self funded reality show as well that birthed his fifth his fifth brand Mighty Minis which we'll probably talk about a bit as well which I think is now expanding into Walmart so yeah six companies billions of dollars in sales super excited to dive in to to say the least but yeah Brad maybe just kind of first off for listeners that aren't all that familiar I know you got a lot going on but maybe just kind of once I'm not that familiar with no sugar company joy burst Mighty Minis maybe just kind of give quick lay of the land just kind of quick origin story why behind each brand and then we can go from there sure yeah thanks for having me on like you said I started well Next Life Sciences in 2000 my last year of university that company really blew up in the nutraceutical supplement space so that got me the footprint across you know over 100,000 doors in the US alone retail doors in the US alone so when I decided to pivot in 2,018 into the No Sugar uh company um I had a distribution uh relationships that I could lean on so it made that transition of bringing these up products to the market easier than just starting from scratch cause I had built up relationships in different categories but still had a relationship had the you know um company setups and things of that nature but it still had to prove yourself from day one I just felt in 2,018 there was a movement that was going to be that reducing sugar was going to be extremely important and it wasn't going to be just a fad it's just going to get something that got bigger and bigger and bigger over decades and if I could take the kind of the positioning of like the foot in the ground so to speak of no sugar like there you can't be any better than that you can't be no no no more sugar like it's just that's final it's it and then have the position that in addition to being no sugar all items had to be naturally sweetened and taste the same or better than our competitors I felt that that would be an ownable position uh no matter what we did and as long as we could deliver on that promise we'd have some success and we did our path to market is quite unusual because we have been able to start with club most people graduate with club they go through like natural health channel and then maybe get a grocery channel then they get maybe get a drug channel then maybe after that they get a mass channel and then way down the line they have like a national brand that's you know really kicking and then they get a club opportunity we have the ability to start off at club and we've been able to prove that model successful so club really leans in on us to bring the newest innovation in both you know no sugar beverages like Joy Burst and so and and soon to be Mighty Minis so that's kind of you know how I got started having the retail footprint no sugar as a food and snack company was always a passion mine to reduce or remove sugar and I felt that something was long lasting and then in 2022 I thought hey with all that into play right now the biggest bite in the CBG world is to figure out how to do a beverage company the shipping is crazy the competition is fierce the marketing dollars are insane the legalities of it are just next a headache every day and I felt like I finally had kind of after essentially at that time 22 years of experience and the capital needed to figure this out to make a run at it and so far you know in our going into our finishing our fourth year for joy burst we're on pay 60 to 100 million in sales so it's been quite the ride I think I just saw you like I mean you kind of just went through the journey like hit the hundred forty million sales 20 million profit bunch of employees and then 2008 hit you got hit I think with like a hundred million plus in competitor lawsuits class actions by state attorneys mass layoffs like nine figure legal bills sales take a hit kind of like an existential crisis to a certain extent it sounds like I think that's probably less less uh uncommon than than people probably think how that experience is and building companies since that time in your life cause you had so much success since then yeah I I I mean I would hate to say it was a blessing in disguise cause it certainly wasn't a blessing in disguise it was very very painful but you Learned a lot more through painful situations than than than easier or or great situations at least I feel that way when I was that age and you see you know the four years of grinding to even get off the ground you are living in that moment and you're saying to yourself like you know there's no statistic that says if you just keep doing this you're eventually gonna make it succeed like that's not actual like whenever people have these success stories and they talk about oh the first three or four years were really challenging they can say it from that perspective cause they've already done it but when you're in that moment and there's no guarantee you're gonna be ever successful it's it's it's a very um uneasy time in your life you have like no money I I I commonly say you weren't working for free you were paying to work cause if you're using up your savings you're paying to work and so when we finally had success uh in year four and then we were able to rapidly grow to 140 million in sales and obviously I don't have I'm in my 20s I don't have experience like I do now

you think that 140 is gonna turn into 2: 5:44

50

and 2: 5:46

50 is gonna turn into half a billion and then like what how is this thing not going to stop and so for the very next year for you know to have a realization that okay your competitors don't really like market share being taken from you legality lawyers who make a living off of class action suits and and settlements are lurking when you get to a certain size on your IRA data all these things unknown to me or my brother at the time you have a rude awakening that comes very very quickly and so we had built the company to go from

you know 140 to 2: 6:19

50 both employees and cost structures and stuff like that and we had just an absolute you know kick in the teeth um we you know we had at one point I think lay off in a day like 60 or 70 people by department and you're like uh in in my late 20s or whatever I was and you're laying off people in their like you know 40s 50s with families and it was extremely um you know painful and you just thought the world was collapsing you didn't know how you're gonna get through this and you learn a lot of different things you learn you know who in the legal world that you can trust and how do you structure companies to be able to shield yourself from that you learn who are people that can help just take that side of the business into their own hands and not have it drained your mental psyche in addition to your dollars and you learn that competitors use these types of things as competitive tactics to drain your marketing budgets and so you learn those types of things that you don't necessarily have so all those key learnings I obviously apply today which is why many times when I get served litigation papers like I did yesterday I post about it cause I'm like I might as well get some marketing or a good story out of it than just the natural thing of getting legal papers cause they just happen so often when you're when you have success so I think that you know that year I didn't expect it to happen so suddenly like you have one of your best years ever and then for the next year just to be totally catastrophic but as I said I I I Learned so much and things that you know that's you know almost 20 years ago that I still apply on my daily entrepreneurial journey so from that perspective it was very helpful on the flip side I mean across multiple brands you've clearly figured some some things out any like patterns that have just emerged for you over the years when it comes to just succeeding in retail no matter the category I think that a couple things that I obviously that I live by is that in the business world I say this all the time is that there is no such thing as no I take no as not now right so like if a retailer says no I say they didn't say no they said like not now and I'll consistently be persistent to make that no turn into a not now to into a potential into into a yes that could be the same said with the manufacturer that could be the same said with the banker that could be said with pretty much anything so that's something that I certainly live by that no no no is final in the business world and I also I believe that innovation is like the best marketing word for new so if you can have new anything new marketing new products new employees new something you're gonna have a conversation to talk about with retailers and you're gonna have a seat at the table eventually to discuss that newness people the world changes so quickly people want to be on the cutting edge of newness and there are retailers who will always be in that Costco is one of them you know Casey's in convenience is one you know target is one like there's many retailers that are just love new and if you can align yourself with those retailers you'll have some opportunities I think that another thing that you have to consistently challenge yourself with is persistence is something that is a skill that you actually actually have to work on so I hear so many people who say like oh I'm persistent but you could be persistent and annoying and you can be persistent and skillful and that's a great point if you're persistent and just like filling up someone's email box or calling them non stop but you're adding absolutely zero value or if you're persistent and figuring out ways to keep them enlightened on industry news you're persistent with solving a problem that they're you're anticipating them having you're persistent of how to grow their category your there's ways to be skillfully persistent so I have a lot of respect for people who cold called cause I've done a lot of cold calling in my life but people who just blitz you and think that eventually that's going to work without a skillful persistence I think they they get weeded out pretty quickly so I think those are those are a few things that I've Learned along the way to you know have the success that we've had yeah I think that seems like it's particularly relevant right now in terms of persistence with actually adding value with just all these AI capabilities come online I feel like the mass cold outreach is just gonna get more and more easier to do and it it's if you can separate yourself by actually being actually adding value I think that's gonna that's gonna separate people even more so I think that's a great point just on AI alone like everybody now or you should be able to know like if you just put the least amount of work in AI the spit out of an AI email is gonna have dashes in there there are clear giveaways that they just been an AI response put in the extra 10 seconds to personalize it some way to make it not seem like you are just an AI responded person cause like no one's gonna tolerate that like so those are the types of things that I'm saying is like that is someone just spitting out AI and thinking they're persistent is just being persistently annoying in terms of um thing do you find our keys from a storytelling standpoint when it comes to getting buyers excited about putting your brands on the shelf cause you've cleared some excited three brands that have gotten in your thousands of doors that clearly you've you've you figured something out in terms of getting buyers excited I think the number one thing that people lose sight on is they get so focused on selling their product selling their services for them for their own benefit and they need to completely rethink that is I'm doing this and I need to go into the mindset as I'm going to show them how I'm going to grow their category I'm gonna grow their business I'm gonna grow their sales so you need to think of it from a totally different lens of they get pitched all day every day and it's always about me me me me me and me and my company and me and my products the best and that they hear that all day long so it's just like background noise what they don't hear as often is I really understand your category I understand it's challenging it's either declining growing stay uh steady Eddie this is how I'm going to figure out how to grow it and I'm not going to just figure out how to grow it this year I'm going to figure out how to grow it in multiple years so that to me is the biggest difference that you I always try to teach my my team and that I've lived by myself you cannot go in without the opportunity without knowing how you're going to grow someone else's business and then you are along for the journey and the ride but your focus is how to grow their business first you touch on the club channel at the beginning too it seems like you've you've definitely kind of figured out a figured out how to have a like outside success specifically in that channel some of the just the biggest differences in terms of what it takes to succeed in the club channel compared to all the other retail channels well first and foremost I you know for the longest part of my entrepreneurial journey I did not do business in club and I really didn't understand how big of an opportunity club was and and club's reporting of data is much different than the rest of the market and you never truly sense get a sense of how impactful and how large club is versus the rest of the market so since I've been in there since 2,018 I've really figured out like really it's almost like the best retail environment possible you ship in pallets so from an efficiency perspective yeah of shipping and full truck loads it's the best in terms of stated margins at Sams BJ's Costco you which is public information it's the lowest and the biggest unlock that they all provide that most retailers haven't figured out is the ability to demo your product and so demoing your product is essentially the number one marketing tool you could possibly have like at the end of the day when you do a Super Bowl commercial to a key influencer to a celebrity all you're trying to do is create awareness for them to try your product either try it for free and buy it or try it and purchase it and then buy it again that's it that that's all you're trying to do in any space after that if the product doesn't work or doesn't taste great or whatever the reasons are it doesn't matter who you have it's just not gonna have repeat purchase so doing demos in stores we don't look at it as many brands do as an obligation to the to the retailer we look at it as like how can we do more of it how can we put gas on this fire how can we get as many people trying our products and giving us real feedback and trying our products and then hopefully you know liking it buying it and buying it again so that is that exists in a very efficient way in club that just doesn't exist anywhere else and they have the foot traffic to make it efficient they have the process in the stores to make it efficient they have the food safety that makes it efficient like it's just really really efficient there so that to me is what is the biggest benefit delineating between some of the key players let's just I don't compare Costco versus Sam's let's say any big differences in terms of how each one buys what each each rewards in terms of is their actual consumer so the Sam's Club consumer is a much older consumer the Costco Club consumer is a younger consumer and I think that you know just by that very nature you know I don't have any exact proof of that I just have proof of what I've seen in terms of selling with them is an older demographic consumer takes just a little bit longer to be convinced to buy a product and is more skeptical because I don't know that's just how they operate and so you'll have to get in front of their faces much more more samples more time it's a longer build and that's who it is but they're also on the on the flip side if you get them they're actually extremely loyal cause they don't change brands that often in Costco it's a it's a younger demographic it fits our target market you know for joyverse our target market is millennial moms it's female focus on the joyverse side and that is like a prime shopper of Costco buying food for their kids buying food for team sports buying food for our drinks for all these different things so they come in droves they they're ready to purchase they wanna try new things it's a modern consumer in clubs per se and you can have a lot of impact the flip side to that is that they're willing to try your brand and they're willing to try many other brands as well and therefore you really have to fight to keep them within you know buying and repeating your product yeah so I think that that is probably the biggest difference is their consumer base rather than that you know they're both kind of very efficient club channels to do business with my understanding is that the margins that you know notably lower than other retail channels channel early where I assume you know volume initially gonna be lower or you don't have as much economies of scale as versus if you've you know scaled up you're in 5,000 doors before you start going after club how do you kind of plan around that from a margin perspective if you're going after club in early days if that makes sense so yeah a couple you know key information is that um clubs you know stated margin that they are wanting to is around 14% so they're wanting to only make whereas like other retailers are 30 40 50% so it's it's it's it's the lowest margin now on the same token they want to have the best price in the market so you have to factor in yes you're getting a lower margin but it's off of a lower price yeah but they have the buying power to buy at scale so you literally if you're in the cereal space if you're in the chip space if you're in the beverage space if you're at the bar protein bar space they all have such large minimum quantity runs from manufacturer that's just the name of the game of food and beverage but Costco is one of the few retailers or Sam's is one of the few retailers or even BJ's to a certain extent is one of the few retailers that if they bring the item on you can hit the minimum quantities and the minimum quantities are going to give you the efficiency so if like for example in cans cans minimum volume for a flavor is 205,000 cans you can easily with their minute with the opening orders from a Costco just in a region let alone nationally hit the minimum quantity so you're getting the scale pricing from them off the from off the bat it's actually much harder to go to the other retailers like Walmart and target and stuff and say hey if we brought you nationally can we think that that the minimum quantities will be hit they will be hit in a period of time and you'll have to bankroll and have inventory but they won't be hit in the say first six to eight weeks the way like a club environment would work so it's actually very very advantageous and has been a competitive advantage of ours to be able to go into club and you're gonna like through the demos because literally we're spending tens of millions of dollars in demos per year we're literally able to get real time feedback of like we really like this flavor we really don't like this one we really like you're able to get that and make adjustments before you even go to rest of the market so there's a ton to there's a ton to be had totally especially in this channel I think you're running I assume probably like thousands of demos a month across all the different club channels that you're in how big of a presence you have there how do you actually go about training during a you know a demo machine that that's that big effectively you have to invest in it so we have a department that actually invest in so each retailer has their their demo partners that they have selected that you have to work with so like as an example Costco you have to work with CDs don't have to but it's their preferred you can do it on your own but it's a huge lift so Cds is for Costco I think advantage or someone else is for Sam's and BJ's has their own and everybody has their own team that they have set up that know the schedule how to work within that environment food safety all that stuff is taken care of so our job is to get these demo reps excited about the product through videos sales sheets let them know what the talking points are have them armed with how the sample should be served chilled if it's a beverage the quantity amount all that stuff so our job internally is to use these sales and demo teams almost as a sales arm that can provide that knowledge that you're trying to get into a marketing campaign out to those consumers and so that's what our job is is to manage them and then we obviously analyze the data on a daily basis of what people cause there's been so so many demos going off of what people are saying how did it respond how did sales initially hit what was the lift what's the demo on a Monday due compared to a Tuesday and a Tuesday compared to a Saturday and a Saturday compared to something like it's very analytical once you get down to that detail and as it should be when you're spending that type of an investment on something you better have a team that's managing giving you the data you need to make decisions totally shifting gears a little bit creatine in a soda is not gonna work science doesn't support it consumers aren't gonna trust it clearly you've proven them wrong so far like walk but yeah walk me through kind of the a bit about the formulation R&D journey and kind of the key variables you were playing around with between that first iteration to the final version where you said okay I feel good about this this is I'm ready for to take this to market so obviously haven't been in the industry for as long as I have creatine is one of the most studied ingredients of all time and that the health benefits similar to protein are one of the greatest you know ingredients you can possibly have what was once thought of as more of like a a bro uh a bro ingredient made for fitness for males has recently in the last kind of 18 months taken on a new life that cognitive functions beneficial from the ingredient and therefore females have started to you really explore it and now the market has exploded that both males and females are doing so at that particular time is when I said OK in a new delivery format of a beverage which is what you know males and females consume equally this is the time to figure out how we can have this be soluble in in liquid which had never been done before so we invested a lot to know that if we were to figure this out with a coating process with a delivery format with an overage and all these things and a pH level that we could specifically work on on this specific creatine we'd have a shot of doing something that was kind of regarded as one of one and as it stands today we are the one of one and that's why we've had you know even 15 million cans that have been pre bought pre bought that we can't even fulfill because we don't even have the ability to make the the specialized creatine that we're using as quickly as you would need to so it really has been a game changer for us in terms of excitement around the product pre orders for the product it's launching in you know two short months in July 2026 but I feel like my 25 years of history kind of has brought me to this point because I've known about consumed used known the challenges of creatine for almost a quarter of a century so to finally get it out to you I think people forget you know obviously I've been on LinkedIn for a short period of time relative to my entrepreneurial journey so people may say oh who is this new person coming up this is just a fly by night I've been doing this for a quarter of a century I've I've really know the category and the ingredients really well and what can and cannot be done and obviously I I at the forefront of all my businesses think that innovation is very much the most important department that you can possibly have uh for retailer growth so this is something that has been well thought out of well tested something we're very excited about and yes like I do joke about it and and take pleasure in people doubting the process and doubting it but you know come July when we're one of one um and the excitement is there I think we're gonna we're going to shake up the industry a bit for sure without you know it this is probably too much of trade secret you probably don't wanna disclose but if there's anything that's I don't know able to do so like I'm curious like what you solved that seems like nobody else is really able to figure out to actually create a creatine soda in this product format it's all about the dosages and the encapsulation and the pH levels so those three variables are the key ingredients so to speak that we had to really nail for it to work and none none of those being done separately was going to get it done so I I can leave it at that in terms of that's kind of the sandbox yeah we make sense we had to play in but yeah that was that was what it was you know we branded it Kreo Joy so that we could you know own it ourselves and as I said we're we're super excited about it protein soda also seems to be crushing it I think I saw you post something a bit ago where you said like you know um protein soda is broken most of it doesn't taste good first purchase can get you on the shelf because you know retailers feel like there's so much demand for this but the category is really gonna be won by the ones that actually stay on the shelf after that second purchase yeah say more about what your kind of take on where this protein soda market is right now so joy burst our number one item that we have is this is this joy burst hydration like that's our franchise product it's been around the longest it's as represents currently 60% of our sales we're only in year four but you can do the math on what that is our second biggest item is actually our our protein coffee which went OK Ross Costco and it's going into target in August and it's in Aldi and blah blah blah so it's actually our second biggest brand it's also been around the second longest and then our third is is our protein soda that's gotten you know you've seen it national at Sam's Club Costco as well the Aldi like list goes on Meyer's H E B whatever so that's one that I've made post about it so protein coffee sorry Protein sodas has a lot of competitors there's many different people playing in different spaces from you know all the way as low as four grams of what we did all the way up to 30 grams I think that uh the industry is going to do the category of protein soda is going to do really well it's only gonna do really well though on the people who spend the time figuring out how to make the taste deliver on the promise people will try it cause it's novel bubbles and protein have really never been done before besides the last kind of year but at the end of the day for people to continue to consume it it's gotta taste something that tastes like soda um we saw that in the RTD protein space when Fairlife came out and they made a product taste like a milkshake it's actually like the number one item like of all time like it's it's sales are absolutely dwarves everybody because everybody they can't keep it in stock they and it's been years they did they and it's with I think Coca Cola owns them and they still can't keep it in stock so they figured out how to make something with that type of macros taste like a milkshake deliver on the promise and people just keep buying and buying it in the protein soda space I believe that no one including us has gotten to the point where someone say I feel like I'm just drinking a soda it just happens to have 30 grams of amazing protein I think there's a lot of work to be done the industry in the category is very early but what I was trying to say was who's going to win that the people who continue to not just take what their current product that they have in the market now is the final product continue to invest in and figuring out how to make ways to make the product taste more and more like just a traditional soda people as I said they won't compromise for that long and the people who do compromise are as much smaller segment than the overall soda category that everybody wants to get they're pretty wild I think it was like year one 3 million year two 11 million year three 45 year four on track for hundred million tracking for like 200000000+ next year path to you know was zero capital raise even profitable every year from what I know you know to grow a brand in like for that level of growth of no investor capital in the bank so you so the statistics that you just uh described are just for the joyverse company and as you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast I have six different businesses so right this is yeah we're talking about for joyverse so um one of the things that we've been able to do or what I've been able to and I try to teach this to is any aspiring entrepreneur is you may have a goal of saying I just wanna be in the beverage space or I just wanna be in the in the space of you know airplanes whatever the thing is you don't have to start off with exactly what you wanted to do you can create a path of how to get there and so when we were launching in 2000 we launched in supplements which had the largest margins like in some cases you would have 80 to 90% margins which would be unheard of in food and beverage and therefore it was a very cash uh positive business and if you were profitable like we had the year of like uh hundred and forty million in sales and 20 million in profit and it was not finance at all there's a lot of money on the way through that could be made both for myself personally as well as to reinvest into the businesses and so having done this for 25 years I've been able to have well next be able to be the backdrop of funding for when I eventually launched No Sugar in 2,018 and then that became cash positive and then I've been able to have wellnex and no sugar to help fund joyverse and that's you know been positive and so that's kind of how it's worked but it's something that's worked over 25 years I think that people lose sight in this world that they want it tomorrow or they want it next year and yeah they they're can't figure it out like they can't fathom how to figure this out so we've been told you know very often that we're a kind of a unicorn in the space and I take that as a compliment but it's a unicorn that was created over 25 years right sure that is a huge caveat to the situation of how we've been able to do it self financed right and I'm not saying getting financing or getting venture capital's funds or strategic funds is a is a bad move obviously every business you create eventually you're gonna figure out a time to to sell it I'm just saying is it takes a lot more disciplined it's been a longer road for sure of 25 years and it's been a lot of sleepless nights and with that I have the benefit is the board team and looks like this which is me on this call and that's who I have to answer to along with my you know my president partner who's also a shareholder so I can make these decisions with like launching multiple products in a year of innovation I can do things with Vanilla Ice like we've done that people would scratch their head at I can do a Super Bowl commercial I don't need a consensus from a board team I can do it and and you can see the results in terms of the growth the downside of this crazy Groen success story is that new founders are gonna think that's the norm and they're gonna hit that in three years which is certainly not the norm it's it's certainly not the norm and there's I mean you can unpeel that onion a lot and I've had some time to spend on it it's a great story it's it's yup an awesome headline it's great clickbait but there was a lot that went into that to make it go down the way it happened sure and yeah the six brands you're you're running walk me through how you split your time on an on a day to day basis or week to week basis between all the different brands you're running that's the hardest part and so when you see something like joyverse having 100% growth and like all this excitement and this stuff it's very difficult to say like hey Mighty Minis hey no sugar hey wellnex and stuff so it is difficult I think that you know they're not six different brands they're actually six different companies but they have shared service right so they have shared services of finance they have shared services a lot of times in marketing shared services in sales so the idea is that to the retailer they think of them as like six different brands cause the parent company still sells to those retailers no matter what the company is but to us they're very much different companies that require brand managers and people focusing on the growth of those from an innovation perspective from a marketing perspective and from everything else so if you ask me about it from me I think that you know the answer to that is is having great help in a team that can help you execute the vision that you're doing for each of those brands that we set at the beginning of each year but I also think it's like you have to have a very passionate team that's willing even in year 26 like it is for me to still put in the hours that that it requires to make this thing successful like there's no substitute for just grinding away totally that was gonna I was gonna ask about that like what gets used across multiple of the brands whether it's you know shared services co packers brokers distributors finance ops but it sounds like it's there's a fair amount of crossovers but there's a fair amount of we use our economies of scale to our advantage right so if we're buying corget we buy corget across the different companies and we combined that so we would be foolish to not take advantage of what we've created but again there's all six different legal structures so that they can eat they can they can operate in their own ecosystem whether that be from a positioning perspective whether that be from a marketing perspective whether that be from an animation perspective you know joyverse stays obviously in beverage you know no sugar stays in food and in snacks wellness stays in supplements and so forth and you yourself on this reality show now fast forward Mighty Mighty Minis is a retail ready brand expanding and heading into Walmart what's tell me about the story here yeah so I've you know I always had a kind of a bucket list dream to have a reality show so in 2,009 10 I actually moved to California I had a concept and an idea I created a sizzle reel to be a show perspective um reality show producers and I just walked the streets as someone who had had like a hundred and forty million dollar company by that point large advertiser spend and I went to all the major networks because we advertised on them and I pitched this idea and funny enough they all pretty much liked the idea but at the time uh your guy's President Trump was doing The Apprentice and ratings started to fall and so they did not think that a secondary business show was going to be possible so they just was like hey I like the concept I think it's new fresh and innovative and it doesn't make a lot more sense as opposed to the way the apprentice was set up at the time we just don't think the markets are ready for a show like that so given like I told you in business no means not now I had the opportunity to bring this opportunity the reality show back uh and and start production of it in like 2022 2023 and so I got with a team that did reality shows based out of Florida we filmed the show it took us about a year and a half to kind of modernize it and figure out how to make it happen and and and the schedule of it all and I was able to do it um and so that's one of my you know personal bucket list that I self finance along with the production house and then they were actually able to get it on to affiliate ABC networks across the country so that was very amazing to me like we were on you know New York Chicago LA Las Vegas and so forth through ABC so got you know it accomplished what I a bucket list that I had but from that journey a product was created which was Mighty Minis designed for multivitamins for kids without you know without sugar and Ariana who won the competition is the president of the company and she basically now's job along with us is to get the product in as many houses and retailers that would see a benefit because especially with kids nutrition I think if moms and parents knew that when most multivitamins that they're feeding their kids has actually more sugar than the actual actives that you're buying the product for they would make that quick change pretty quickly but it's just an education thing so I'm excited about that company it's gotten distribution now in Walmart it's just launched so it's you know if you look at Shark Tank if you look at some of the big shows not all of those companies even make it to a big retail totally so yeah it's been a wild ride but that's kind of the background of how I came up with the idea in the show and it was a passion project that turned into a great business opportunity last question for you Brad launching AI across Ops and forecasting I think is on your July 2026 to do list what are you kind of envisioning here what tools who on the teams kind of be leading implementation the vision here for I guess kind of the the the V1 of the AI implementation let's say so AI is really of interest to everybody including myself I don't think I in any way up to speed the way many founders necessarily are who are just in AI specifically but you can work with different teams that specialize and saying hey like this is how I wanna transform my business whether it be on the finance side on the operation sides on the tool side on the forecasting side and different things where I think AI uh can be very helpful and you can have a product development person who's actually leading that as opposed to you just kind of figuring it out and so that's what we've invested in and each of our departments who we set goals that we wanna have for AI benefits like I just mentioned are working with product development to make that happen the concerning part obviously is where's all this information going which really no one has a great answer right now they all say it's all it's confidential it's this it's that but at the end of the day it's so new no one really knows but when you but we're using that now because I think that the risk of not doing it and the efficiencies that it provides outweigh the potential risk of getting your information into the wrong hands but that's how we're trying to implement it as a stage one and then as it evolves from here we'll kind of you know continue to upgrade and go from there this has been awesome um now you said you're fairly new to to LinkedIn but what what's the best place for people to follow along with you you've got clearly such a great story and so many great insights yeah obviously I'm I'm much more Instagram and LinkedIn is kind of the two platforms that myself and some of my team members gravitate most towards for sure but I think obviously if you just remember the names of no sugar company joy burst in mighty Minis somehow some way I'll be attached to it somewhere and you can kind of fall along that journey that way perfect yeah awesome Brad I appreciate the time this has been super helpful um I think that's the pod alright Wellnex Life Sciences at 22 hundred fifty million in sales 20 million in profit by in 2007 post recently on LinkedIn 2007 29 years old what have you found or like I think the biggest difference in Costco versus Sam's the club channel requires brands to take is is you touch on how the power of demos half a billion in 2028 I think beverage is one of the most expensive categories to what is the I don't working capital cycle look like tell me about a billion dollar showdown in Mighty Minis