Viral Brand Expert The Content Strategy Nobody Is Talking About

TITLE: Viral Brand Expert: The Content Strategy Nobody Is Talking About CHANNEL: The Anatomy of a Dream DATE: 2026-03-28 ---TRANSCRIPT--- We’re one of the only companies that have gone on Shark Tank twice, but also one of the most successful companies to come out of Shark Tank. So, if I were to build a brand today, this is the playbook I would use.

Meet Kent Yashimura, one of the founders of Neurogum. He’s built one of the fastest growing companies and is known as one of the biggest missed opportunities in Shark Tank history. I’m out. I’m out. Stinky poo poo. Until today. It’s time to make this a billion dollar company. And in this episode, he’s going to reveal his secrets to growing a viral business. If you’re building a brand, the little spark from your diehard fans goes a very long way. It’s not even about micro influencers anymore. You hear the term nano influencers. That’s where you can start building a real movement. And how to win at social media so you can break through in any dream. Is Tik Tok still the best place to grow a brand right now? Tik Tok’s very different now. Before you could create content and have infinite virality, and that’s not the case anymore. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to say this, but I’m going to say it anyways. Wait, what? Go do that. You heard him. The first two years of our business, we’re reaching out to basically anyone that’s willing to talk about us. We were posting every single day, multiple times a day. Our COO was helping us pack boxes, take it to the post office. My phone’s blowing up 24/7 cuz I’m the customer service line. We didn’t have any money, so I was doing hospital stays, you know, cuz I could get paid for doing experimental drugs until we got our first investor. So, we’re on this super high. Joe Rogan just mentioned us. Neurogum really works. Oh, yeah. We go through four or five boxes of that stuff. Our phones are blowing up. We’re getting orders like left and right. and we finally hit this national stage and then all of a sudden we got sued. So what happened next? If you’re new here, we actually have this project where we pick one person and help make their dream a reality. And right now we are in the process of searching for that next dream, maybe even dreams to help support. Now, if this sounds like you and you have a big or small dream that you need support in, let us know down below in the comments and you might just hear from us. And before you do, just make sure that you are subscribed and check out the details and the instructions in the description below. All right, guys, let’s get back to the video. I totally just lied. I forgot to say stick around until the end because we do do an entire breakdown of the whole conversation so you guys know all the takeaways in the anatomy of Ken’s dream. All right, guys. Now, let’s get back to the video. So, Kent, if I wanted to grow my brand in 2026, what would I need to do? I believe that nano influencers, not even micro influencers, nano influencers, people you trust, people that are your friends, are going to be the next stage in building trust, finding a smaller ecosystem of people that are going to create the spark for everyone else to find out about your product. Because those people that are dieh hard, that really love your product and believe in your brand and really consume it, those are the ones that lead to, you know, things like this, the anatomy of JP, like I’m here because of that, you know, like it’s it’s awesome, you know. So, I think there’s going to be like a new movement where you could really build a pot in that way, I think, from tapping into like a small ecosystem and then growing from there. I think that’s really encouraging because I think nowadays a lot of times it seems like the market is so oversaturated with these big content creators that it feels like it’s impossible to break into the space or even possibly, you know, really make any noise. And I think ultimately to your point, our previous guest Natalie Barbaru, she was saying that like she doesn’t even really go to the big content creators anymore. She just goes to her actual customers who maybe post occasionally online and that’s way more effective for her. I think the biggest thing that people were doing back in the day is trying to tap into a pre-existing following that already had attention to it. So, celebrity brands were really big back in, you know, I I guess like pre2020s in a certain way before people got disillusioned by celebrities. Like, okay, the Kardashians dropped what their like 50th brand that they partner with. Like, I’m sure there’s a group of people that care, but the reality is like most people are kind of tired of it. um PR and PR hacking was like a really big thing at a moment too because it was like a way to build credibility. Now I think there’s a level of authenticity that people expect. It’s not even about like micro influencers anymore. You hear the term nano influencers, you know, when people that you trust cuz you’re saturated with so much like there’s like everyone’s trying to sell you something, you know, but if that friend that you trust is tapping in to a brand, like who do you relate with more than a person who you share experiences with versus that social media influencer that might have 200,000 followers, but you know really nothing about their lives beyond what you see on a screen. Yeah. So, Neurogum was announced as Tik Tok’s fastest growing brand in 2024. What do you think that you guys did differently that got you there? The reality is at the end of 2023, our head of growth and I were like, “Oh my god, we need to post every single day and like figure this thing out.” And so, for literally like the first half of 2024, we were posting every single day, multiple times a day, trying to figure out what’s working, what’s not, until finally a video hit. And we realize like, okay, if this video hit with this hook, how many iterations of that hook can we create to make that successful again, but reach more audiences. And then you keep going and lading all these different things. And then you start creating an army of people, which we eventually did of affiliates to do even more content. And now all of a sudden, you have like, you know, we have 25,000 plus affiliates working for us, creating millions and millions of different iterations on a monthly basis to see what’s working and what’s not. And then now the learning system is pretty insane, right? It’s like a machine. You were tracking all of those hooks that you were creating. And we’re tracking all those hooks. Yeah. So you guys were tracking all of that, leaning into what worked because you basically the funny thing is like you started a company and then then you realized you’re like, “Oh my god, I have to become a professional content creator now.” Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how are you guys managing that? Like how are you like managing actually going on social media and developing all these hooks, trying to see what works, marketing the product, but also working on the business side? I mean, the beauty of Tik Tok is it doesn’t need to be crazy. Like, in fact, if you make it too polished, people actually don’t watch it. So, if you have a camera and you have a voice, you’re able to do anything. And you just have to get better every single day. Like anything else, you just practice every single day. I was terrible in front of the camera when I first started, you know, got better over time. Tik Tok’s very different now. All Yeah, it’s so different. I’m happy to talk about that, but it’s like very different now. We need to talk about that. That was actually one of my questions. Sure, for sure. Sure. Um, so Tik Tok’s pretty interesting and you know we talk about it with the Tik Tok team all the time because we consistently are a top product and they get feedback from us but um before middle of 2025 you could create content Tik Tok chop looks worked a lot like regular Tik Tok where you’ll have infinite virality without having to spend a single dime. Now they basically stop your growth unless you spend money to break through and then they stop your growth again. So now it’s trunch systems where you have to pay into virality if you are on Tik Tok shop. Oh my god. Yeah, it’s terrible. They hate it. That’s why all these companies are leaving. Like what’s crazy is I don’t even know if I’m allowed to say this, but I’m going to say it anyways. I I I think I can say it because they publicly said it to their creators. So if you’re part of their creator network, we found out Force Factor. They’re one of the fastest growing brands in January. They’re moving off Tik Tok shop completely because they can’t reach profitability now. It’s crazy. Oh my gosh. And they’re like a few hundred million dollars a year supplement brand. And like for us, I think we’re one of the only brands that literally operate profitably on Tik Tok because we are able to keep breaking certain things and interact with the Tik Tok team in a certain way where it’s like, no, we’re not going to do like these mega discounts. No, we’re not going to do X XYZ, you know. And then also with certain products, we realize we did a whole price breakdown of all of our SKs. What are the products that we want to push forward because we know that we’re going to get incremental profitability on it versus the ones that we know aren’t going to ever make profitability on Tik Tok. We just completely killed them. I think all these brands are trying to push everything they can on Tik Tok. Use Tik Tok as like an Amazon style marketplace. And that’s not the case anymore. You need to be very specific about what products are going to work, what products are going to be the rotisserie chicken at Costco, you know, the lead gen product. So you could then drive communication through your creators, through everything else to uh the rest of your portfolio. Can you explain to me one more time like why is it that that is what works? Let’s say you have three products. Keep it simple. Wintergreen, peppermint, and spearmint are three flavors of gum. But we realize that the people who buy the peppermint flavor are more likely to come back and buy the spearmint flavor. But someone that buys the winter green flavor is realistically just going to keep buying the wintergreen flavor or isn’t willing to experiment and do bundles and buy multiple products. We will completely cut out wintergreen if that’s the case because we know that person will go on Amazon and buy wintergreen. We know that they won’t be on Tik Tok anymore. But that person that’s buying peppermint that’s going to come back to Tik Tok and then buy spearmint in the future, that’s a really valuable customer and that’s a really valuable product. Being able to understand the interactions that your customers have with your product and not just Tik Tok but like the platform whether it’s Amazon, your website or Tik Tok becomes really important to be like, “Oh, these are my hero products here. This is my hero product here. There’s my hero product here.” And that’s why I use the rotisserie chicken example at Costco. You know, the rotisserie chicken at Costco literally loses them money. The hot dog at Costco literally loses them money. It’s been a $150 forever, right? But funny enough, the CEO of Costco is like, you know, I don’t know if I’m allowed to curse on this podcast. Like, you change the price on that. I like, he’s like, I will fire you right now. Like, he got that passionate about it knowing that there are some customers that will literally come to Costco, walk all the way to the back of the store to just buy the rotisserie chicken, and then they’ll go and buy everything else on the way back, but they’d come to Costco just for that rotisserie chicken. So it’s exactly the same and identifying that’s so important. It really is I think understanding that persona, right? Yes. And that’s the thing. It’s like if you’re just trying to acquire everyone, then you’re never going to get that learning. When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one, right? So, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs try to do that. They create the product and they’re like everyone’s our audience. And it’s like, you know, not to be that like not everyone’s my friend. There’s people I really don’t like, you know, and you should honestly identify that. So at the beginning, who were you speaking to? Like what were you guys by saying at the beginning? So we launched on Reddit our neutropics. So we were always part of this like biohacker community. People were trying to optimize their body and mind and we played into those people initially. But then as we became a larger energy and focus brand that could go up against the Red Bulls and the monsters and rock stars of the world, we realized like I’m not trying to be a rock star, you know, or I don’t want to be locked into 5 hours of energy when I’m stepping into like a meeting or just trying to do something. I’m just trying to get mentally sharp. And that’s what we realize is the path that we could really play in because a lot of people want that. So if you find your nano influencers, your tribe, how people interact, you’re closer with your customer because that’s the community you’re building and your community is giving you feedback, man. Especially if you’re just starting your company, like don’t worry about the revenue, you know, worry about like this is how my consumer interacts and that’s how you can get really deep. There’s a great tool in my life like name drop tools and stuff. Yes, go for it, please. There’s a great tool we discovered kind of recently. It’s called Outer Signal. Oo. Um, it digs through your email database and finds the people within like our customer ecosystem that I would have never found out about. It could even be this is a doctor that works at this hospital that’s like one of the top hospitals in the United States. And now we could reach out to him directly and be like, “Hey, we love that you’re a customer. Can we give you a product so you could recommend it to your patients or you could recommend it to your nurses?” Right? And these people are not trying to be influencers by any means, but their network, they have so much credibility in that’s where you can start building a real movement. Absolutely. And it gives you information as to maybe you wouldn’t have thought about, oh my god, there’s an entire market that we could tap into. There I gives them that data point. And going back to you can utilize in your content creation. Oh yeah. So it’s all interconnected. It’s all interconnected. So what do you think is the biggest lie that people believe about growing online? The biggest lie. Um, oh my god, that’s such a loaded question. One is I don’t think you need to have a bunch of new to brand customers and, you know, try to get as many people as possible, burn your money, and you know, those days of people burning money at any cost to try to get a customer is gone. Instead of doing that, finding again the core consumers that you could really build off of, that you could really build relationships with, I think is so much more important. And yes, it might be a little bit slower. And yes, you might not be able to control it with ad spend, but eventually you are going to see that impact of community grow like 50fold when that point comes. I mean, we’re in our 10th year, right? But when that moment hit because we were building community for the that first 5 years like it everything just skyrocketed. And so what would you say especially with social media like what are the metrics that you feel are most important to track? Man it’s so hard to say because every single metric has a different uh purpose and they’re all they’re all important. I think the idea of impressions is really interesting. You could get a lot of impressions, but it doesn’t mean they’re impressions where people are actually paying attention, you know? And I’d rather have onetenth of the number of impressions, but people that are actually listening than having just empty eyeballs on something. We did a partnership with Show Speed, for example, in December. Insane number of impressions, 86 million impressions in literally a course of like two weeks to a month. Although those impressions were pretty incredible and it built credibility for us because speed is so big, our sales were very low attributed to speed. And only when we started retargeting in other ways were we able to make up for those impressions versus when Joe Rogan organically mentions us and it doesn’t feel like an ad or it doesn’t feel like a partnership. That’s just been like one of our best moments. You know, the fact that Joe Rogan organically mentions us because he likes our product. like that’s awesome, you know, and he keeps doing it over and over again. Like those are the moments when we really see impact in our business. And it goes back to the idea of the tribe that we were talking about earlier. Like the little spark from your diehard fans goes a very very long way. I completely agree with you that I think in 2026 especially the word community I think is really it something I like learned recently. I posted this one video in my pajamas on Tik Tok. Okay. And I haven’t been able to crack Tik Tok for like two years. Okay. Like in like people are like, “Oh, just consistency.” And I’m like, “Okay, well, I’ve tried that. Now what?” Cuz it’s like nothing is working, right? Genuinely, like I did it for the purpose of I want to connect with other people who are like building their passion project right now. But I got the most amount of followers through that video that got like 15,000 views, but like it doubled. To that point, I’m curious like to you like what do you feel like for anyone that is starting right now, right? And they really want to build that community so that they can grow. What are the different ways that they could for your opinion? You you were talking about that Tik Tok video that went viral for you. You know, it’s you in your pajamas speaking honestly from the heart and you’re another person that’s trying to achieve their dream. You’re vulnerable. You’re showing yourself and you’re connecting with people that are feeling the exact same way as you versus you trying to sell something in some way, right? And you build connection and real relationships with these individuals. And in that sense, like you shouldn’t be afraid to leverage your connections. You shouldn’t be afraid to feel uh and share your vulnerabilities. And and again like going back to this idea of the nano influencer or the small tribe or just your group of friends don’t try to be successful for everyone. You know if you could create a place where people can communicate on a shared belief something magical is going to come out of it. And that could be for Tik Tok and the creator ecosystem or it could just be a community of people that are really passionate about brain health you know about this. It’s like you just have to create the ecosystem for people to be able to interact. So I have a little lightning round uh before we move on to our next section. So hot take on social media. It’s evolving. I think people are becoming disillusioned to it and inerson events are going to become a lot more valuable in the future. What’s the anatomy of a good hook? How are you capturing people’s attention immediately? What’s the problem you’re solving immediately? There’s like only so many ways that you could grab someone and be like I should listen in because it’s either tapping into a um an unconscious fear and unconscious insecurity like a deep insecurity. Um, or if there’s something that’s like so culturally relevant, but it’s like touching on attention, like something that you see in the news every single day, but like another angle on it. There’s only so many ways that you could skin a hook, but how do you use that and make it relevant to who you are? What do you think about going live? Is this the future? Cuz I keep hearing people talking about going live. Yeah, I think lives are really important. It’s funny because like lives are pretty expensive to run obviously. So, you know, a lot of people cut them out. We decided not to cut out lives at all and instead we like doubled down on it and we even built a studio here in Las Vegas to do all of our lives and we’re trying to go longer. Lives are the most authentic way that you could interact with a consumer because it’s not cutting, it’s not editing, it is you in the moment. People are chatting with you and it’s you being able to talk to them directly. And also on Tik Tok, if you click into a live, this is more of a technical thing, but if you are doing a live and someone clicks into it, you are now part of that company’s retargeting algorithm. So you will start showing up way more on that person’s feed if they decide to click into your live. So concurrent viewers become really, really okay. Important. And so if you were starting in 2026, would you still double up? Would you have gotten the studio if you had just started? Oh yeah, it’s fastest way to get consumer feedback also, right? do lives for a few hours a day and then focus on the business the rest of the day. And this is specifically if they have a product. Do you think that this is relevant for anybody who wants to be on on social media or do you think this is specifically for anyone who has a a brand? If if you’re not being interactive with your live, then it’s not going to work. But if you are truly using live as a means of showing up and being heard for your customers and vice versa, there’s a lot of value in that. I have a friend that’s a calligrapher that I paint murals with. He goes and just does calligraphy of people’s names every single day. It’s kind of crazy. Like within a month he had like 30,000 followers and he was just going live every single day twice a day at the same time. It was like when he woke up and before he went to bed and people would show up and he was just writing their names. It’s like what better way to interact with people than like actually live. So walk me through cuz so being interactive, what else is the key to making a good live? Interactive. Are you offering something like not just a product because people could buy products on their own by going to the product page, but are you doing giveaways? Like what’s special about your live where you’re adding on to just the product experience? You know, we bring guests onto our live. Like we did a live with Steve Aoki, you know, we do founder lives all the time. Mitchell Hooper we did a live with and he’s the world’s strongest man. So like visually he literally takes up the whole screen, right? like how are you creating engagement in a way where people are like I want to pay attention to what this is you know when it shows up in your feed. What’s crazy is I’ve heard with lives I think Alex Herozi was the one who was talking about this. I think he got this information from Mr. obvious if I’m not incorrect, but he was saying that um they were at a game and first the A-list celebrities came out and the applause was pretty big, but then came out the shorts creators. The applause was even bigger and then came out the long form creators like the podcasters, right? And then the applause was even bigger than that. And then came out the live content creators and the applause was crazy crazy and he was saying of course it’s like you’re spending much more time with these individuals so the fan base is a lot stronger, right? It feels like you know this. I mean, if you’re watching like Kai for like 8 hours a day unedited, you know that guy. Yeah. You know, there’s nothing that he’s hiding, right? It’s pretty crazy. I mean, like, you know, I was telling I was just in Dubai with the Mr. Beast team because we’re doing something with them. And when Mr. Beast walks around, it is like I’m with Ronaldo or something. It was crazy the security how people swarm him. And this is a guy that got his start on a platform where anyone can get their start on. and the possibilities when you start thinking about that it’s it’s it’s so awesome like it’s it’s become democratized you know is Tik Tok still the best place to grow a brand right now especially with what you said honestly every platform is an opportunity like YouTube is amazing I’m on YouTube more than Netflix Hulu Paramount HBO Max combined you know it’s also like the only subscription service I pay for which is me it’s crazy right in short to answer your question there’s There’s opportunity on every single platform. You just have to identify uh what that platform’s main purpose is. Do you think that you should be focusing on one? I know Caleb Rson talks about like he’ll focus on one at a time and then he’ll rotate once he got a handle of one. Do you suggest the same? Depends what you’re trying to do. You know, like I love Caleb because, you know, she’ll create like a 12-h hour course or something on digital ecosystem, you know, on YouTube. And that’s a perfect start because for the people that really want to dive deep, they go to the YouTube channel, they follow him, and they want to like learn more about, you know, hooks or whatever. And then if they want to just get tidbits that he’s sharing every single day, then there’s all these other social channels. Last question here, and especially I’m thinking about someone just starting like maybe they have, let’s say, like $10,000, right? Let’s just put a random number. How should they distribute their marketing spend? I would literally spend all $10,000 not on any platform chasing a C. I would try to find a community in your backyard and build that first and make it so sick. $10,000 is a lot of money. That is Do you remember in high school there’s that like one house party that was like so epic that you couldn’t stop talking about it? That was us in high school with zero money. Go do that. That’s what I would do. You heard him. Love it. All right. We have a principle about strategic partners and in this case, you know, it’s a lot of the content creators that you guys are working with. Explain to me like how like chess, you guys still work with chess.com. Yeah. Magnus Carlson actually the greatest chess player in the world uh was chomping on our product while he won the speed chess championship this last weekend. Wow. Pretty awesome. And so how so how do you how do you like go into taking that data, you know, let’s say you you go into your emails and all of that and how are you actually utilizing that information to shape your brand? So, it’s interesting because like let’s just take that moment for example because I wouldn’t even call that a data point moment. I would call that a historical moment that we’re capitalizing on. There is a Magnus Carlson chewing our product. Now, how do we tap into the chess ecosystem because we know that everyone has eyes on Magnus Carlson, right? If we were to look at data points though, I would take it a slightly different way. We went to chess.com not because of data points. We went to chess.com because it represented everything about the brain and performance and where our brain values lied. And we felt like if we partnered with them, there would be opportunities like Magnus Carlson chewing the neurogum. There would be opportunities similar to that that will arise inevitably. And lo and behold, they did. It’s the association. It’s the association. Same with Hundred Thieves. When we partnered with Hundred Thieves, we knew that gamers would be big. So when we decided to partner with them, it wasn’t necessarily looking at data points being like, “Oh, we have so many gamers that chew our gum. I mean, we do, but it was more around brain values associated with a sport that applies. You have to be sharp mentally and mentally and physically.” And then that tied into partnerships with Mongrel, Omar, like some of these people that are like now the top streamers in gaming, you know, like we wouldn’t just partner with someone because they’re a big name. like they truly have to live, breathe, love Neurogum. You use the word association. That’s exactly it. Like how how you tying your brain values to a moment, to a team, to something and then working off that association. In any case, when anyone’s building a brand, I think that a lot of times they think that branding is selling and it’s, you know, like putting their logo at at every single possible opportunity that they can. But in reality, it’s really focusing on these associations and like these like even just like these small things where people associate you to of course you can ass like like you know Nike like to your point could be associating to greatness to performance but in reality it’s also association like the biggest association that they ever did was you know Michael Jordan right and so like that was the greatest of all time that like that was really what set them off that association and that was a crazy risk that he took also. Exactly. He associated with them. he associated with them and it’s also crazy because Michael Jordan decided to turn down Adidas and be like I’m going to commit to these guys not just because of the deal they’re giving me but because of something they represent. Yes. And it’s like I mean it goes back to show you you are showing up in a certain way to be heard by people like a Michael Jordan in that instance. So speaking of those associations then you are also you have you know a a great great group of creators that are you said it’s 25,000 you said something like that. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of associations. Do you know more or less how much they’re making? Making a lot in millions. Hundreds of thousands. In the heyday, I would say at the peak when it was a little bit the platform was a little bit different. I mean, people could be making six figures. Yeah. In a month. Damn. Yeah. And then you’re just like, did I go into the right field? Yeah. It’s crazy. So, walk me through like especially in those early days where you just started working with other content creators. Like you did this from like a pretty early stage, right? Yeah, pretty early stage, you know, it all started with like what hooks work for us, like let’s be in the trenches together. Let’s make content every single day as our New Year’s resolution. And you were sharing those hooks with those content creators. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And seeing what works and what doesn’t. Like even the orientation, I would show up on Zoom calls with them once a quarter and, you know, talk to our top creators. If there’s no personal relationship that you’re building or or even like a personal brand relationship you’re building, these creators are just going to say whatever they want, right? Of course, because you’re not guiding them. And in the same way, if you’re not having that open dialogue, they’re not going to come back to you and communicate with you on what’s working, what’s not, I’m getting this violation for this, I’m getting. And I think the key word here is relationship. You know, if I were to strip it down into like the most fundamental basis for how we work with our creators, it is making sure that they are happy, making sure that they are fed. And when I say fed, it’s either through the incentives of what they’re earning off what they share or through the content and finding moments that they can share so that they could create content off of it. And making sure that there’s exciting things that are constantly coming their way so that they don’t get bored of you. Like this year we knew that innovation was a really big thing. We had to come out with new products so that they could be pitching and creating new things. So we’re coming out with, you know, new flavors, new innovations, new functions so that they could talk about it. We’re partnering with moments, the Magnus Carlson moment that happened. Trying to find PR moments, community events, all these moments where they could talk about it. Doing community events where all those guys can meet up, you know, so that now they’re all talking to each other, not just through a screen, but in person. and we sponsor that community event, you’re asking a lot from these people. So, you have to give as much as they give you. And what we realize that a lot of these companies start to do is like because they’re so desperate to try to get these creators, they would be doing sampling like here and there and then realize that most people are just there to get free stuff. You know, you could very easily run a very unprofitable Tik Tok business by just giving samples away to a million creators. So, unless you create a system where people are truly incentivized to create good content for you, most people are just going to be hovering around. And and that’s like with anything in life, right? Like, if you’re not incentivized to do great things in life, why would you even do it? I couldn’t agree more. And so I’m I’m actually curious. What do you know about building a brand now that would have made you grow 10 times faster back when you started? Oh my gosh. I mean, there’s so many things. Um, I think one of the key things is when most people first start, everything feels important. When I first started, I think I was so caught up in this idea that I need to work my way towards a solution. I need to be the struggling artist to create good work. And the reality is what I was doing was working so much and trying to do everything and putting prioritization on everything and I was like burning myself out. But the reality is, you know, in retrospect, I don’t think I need to make as many of those sacrifices. You’ve probably heard of the idea of Pareto principle. Mhm. The Pareto principle is 20% of the things that you do make up 80% of the impact of the thing that you’re trying to do. So if you focus on that 20% for the 80% impact, that’s way less work for way more impact. What was the 20% for you? The 20% for me was realizing what customer was the most important. How do we speak to them? How do we show up as a brand, you know, and making sure our brand looks nice to them? And then elevating from there instead of just trying to bulk sell a product. So, we operate off a simple pillar system. On in this interview, you may have heard Kent mention them. That’s not how I should do it. I just think it sounds very mid rolly. We need to go big. This video is sponsored by Outer Signal. Your business sales are about to be out of this world. Tiff, is there a way maybe you can explain that in an entertaining way? All right. Outer signal. Wait, wait. Outer Signal is out of this world because you are going to be able to know all the information about your customer. And the second that Kent literally told us about Outer Signal, we reached out to them and now they are a sponsor of today’s video. I just it feels not genuine. And I think that’s like sounds like an ad read. I get like their website does a great job. So, how can we entertain? I think we have to mention the fact that you can analyze by age, occupation, property value. On a side note, I really do think that we should start having our clients use this. If Kent’s using it, then yeah, I mean Kent’s literally using it. Maybe we could try to find a way to mention this, but like the thing that Adder Signal does is that it literally gives you information that generally I don’t think that people know about their customers. Like you would be able to understand what kinds of consumers are really attracted to your brand, how many times they purchase. It’s going to give you data that you normally wouldn’t deduce on your own. If you have this information, you’re going to be able to make better commercials, potentially even reach out and do a collab with them, right? But like, I don’t even know how we’re going to make that sound organic. You know what I’m saying? This was pretty organic. Why don’t we just use that? Use what? And we just go outer signal link in description. Always wanted to say that. So, we operate off a simple pillar system. And if you could identify the three things in your company that are going to make the most impact, then you should focus on those three things. And not only that, that framework is scalable to whether you’re doing $500,000 a year or doing over hund00 million a year. Let’s rewind. Yeah. You’ve had like so many lives. Okay. Just a few bullet points. What are some of the things that you did before Neurogram? Just like take us through that journey because I think it’s fascinating. Oh man. I was on a path to be a professional fighter since I was like 5 years old. I’ve been doing martial arts. So I used to fight in Thailand since like the age of 16 traveling. I used to train judo with the Japanese Olympic judo team and like the number one collegiate team in Japan in judo. And then I got really into neuroscience, you know, I wanted to understand like again this idea of the mind and the body. So I began majoring in neuroscience at UC San Diego while I was training, which is how I discovered the world of neutropics, supplementation, and diving deeper into what’s working for not just my body, but also my mind so I can perform at my best inside and outside sports and school. After that, I realized I really wanted to get back into my creative side and that’s when I got into film and then started making commercials. Um, then started illustrating children’s books. Then did the children’s branding for the coffee and tea leaf. Became friends with the CEO of the coffee and tea leaf and went to work in his new venture after coffee and tea leaf sold uh at Sony Music. So, we were making music for film and television. Realized that I hated working in the music industry cuz I had some crazy stories from that era of my life that I started doing illustration again. but bigger. So, I started painting murals. I’ve painted over 100 murals around the world. And you made the like the biggest mural in Shanghai. Is that Yeah, I painted the largest mural in Shanghai. Yeah, it’s right next to Hong Xiao airport. Yeah, I’ve just paint a lot of these big murals, you know, and then Sergeant Yurum during that time uh with my co-founder Ryan. He’s one of the most inspirational people in the world, you know, one of the fastest runners in California. C from his cross country and track team and then got in a really bad snowboarding accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. But his injury didn’t stop him from becoming an incredible parolympic athlete again. He went on to train with the parolympic team, creating this business with me in Neurogum, uh traveling around the world. Like he’s one of the most independent people you’ll ever meet. It’s it’s incredible. So he gets in this accident, you start giving him like supplements. Yeah. Yeah. So, I was mixing supplements in my room when I was studying neuroscience and realizing that there wasn’t really anything that was really benefiting mind and body. So, I got into the world of neutropics which I discovered through Tim Ferrris of all people um not personally but through his books and I began researching became a really big contributor to Reddit our neutropics and was part of this small tribe of people that was testing different supplementation and seeing how it worked. And funny enough, that was what I gave Ryan in pill format. And on a scuba diving trip, we both realized taking pills in public doesn’t really fit this value of friendship, sharability, accessibility, all these things that we would want in something that gives us energy and focus. And it was obvious that gum and mints was the format that would allow us to do that. Something that’s so sharable, something that freshens your breath. That was almost like the core of wow like we could spread this to our peers if we create a new format which became neurogum. And how long did it take to get from idea to execution? Idea v1 was probably a few months but that’s fast. It was fast. I mean you know back in the day like Google was your best friend. So we were just googling a bunch of manufacturers calling and seeing who would make our product cuz no one was doing stuff like this. And there was like one small mom and pop company that was like, “You guys are really nice. I’ll take this project on.” And they’re still our manufacturer. No way. It’s crazy. Yeah. Oh my god, that makes me so happy. Oh, they’re awesome. They’re great partners. It’s clear that you guys were really intentional in terms of the data points, data, consumer insights, what’s working, what’s not. Um, yeah. Yeah. All that stuff. Were you also like taking that feedback of like what’s working and adjusting the product in in any with that feedback or We went through 26 iterations of our product. We were handing it out. But we were getting feedback. They didn’t like the taste of it or it didn’t work or this like we’re adjusting different things. And the customer service line for Nuro was my phone number. I was getting phone calls literally all freaking day and night. So there was like immediate iteration that I was able to do. But that was such a valuable moment because I got to hear firsthand from every single customer that tried us what they liked about it and most of the time what they didn’t like about it, right? Because that’s why they’re calling. and being like, “Okay, you know what? Like person A, you are heard. I’m going to put that and apply it to our next iteration or I’m going to put that and apply it back into the company.” Being able to play with those data points and apply it to that next stage is something that I guess has always been in our DNA, the company since the customer service line being my phone number days. Yeah. But it seems like you guys were really committed to finding Oh, yeah. I’m going to attribute it back to our partners again because any other company would be like, “Dude, you guys made 10 iterations already.” Just this is the last one we’re going to make. This mom and pop shop was willing to just keep going with us to make differentations until it was perfect. Like to me, that’s crazy that they were willing to do that, you know? But we were committed, you know, we were like our first flight up there. We stayed in a hotel that was like $50 a night and we like Ryan and I until like five years ago would share a bed. Like that’s how we would travel, you know. Wait, I’m sorry. You guys would share a bed? Yeah, we would share a bed so we could save money. Sometimes we would be like, “Oh, one person.” Because sometimes when you say two people, the price goes up on a hotel. So I would say one person come into the room and share a bed. You get really close when that happens. Okay. So you get to V10. Then Indiegogo happens right after more or less. I read our products. We feel like it gets to a good point. We order we put a down payment on three pallets of gum that shipped to my apartment in Los Angeles. Literally the guy comes in with like pallets and they’re like, “Where’s the loading dock?” And I’m like, “Uh, take it through the hallway.” And it’s like the the fifth left, you know, or whatever it was. And it’s just sitting in my living room. My roommate at the time is now our COO, Tyler, um, was helping us pack boxes, take it to the post office every single day. He was like helping us set up our website and all this stuff. And we’re getting ready for this launch. And, you know, we’re reaching out to basically anyone that’s willing to talk about us. That was the first thing you wanted to do is was establish credibility. That was your first goal. Yes. Because knowing that people would not be willing to chew a neutropic gum, they don’t even know what the word neutropic is. But if anyone wrote about neutropics and biohacking or anything, we would reach out to them. If anyone talked about an idea of an energy gum or something, we would reach out to them. So we were doing that leading up to the launch of Indiegogo. When it launches, I make a post on Reddit, our neutropics. I was already part of this community that I’ve built trust in post about our product. Boom. We hit our goal literally in like the first hour. If we make it to the front page of Indiegogo, it was like instant. A few days later, one of the people we wrote to was an editor for Time magazine. Time magazine now writes about us saying Neurogum is now a thing. We get a whole new audience of people. After the campaign ends, Dr. Oz’s TV producer calls me while I’m at dinner with one of our early partner and it’s like, “Hey, we love this idea of neutropics. It’s a big thing right now. We want you to go on Dr. Oz’s show.” So, like a month later, we go on Dr. on the show. And all that started because we were actively reaching out to people, seeing who would talk about us, our community that we already were like deeply integrated with. And uh my phone’s blowing up 24/7, you know, cuz I’m the customer service line. Ryan worked at Hulu at the time, so he would bring us snacks cuz like I spent my funds on on this, so we didn’t have any money, so I was eating snacks from the Hulu cafeteria. Um, I was doing hospital stays, you know, because I could get paid for doing experimental drugs and stay in a hospital for two, three weeks at a time. So, I didn’t have to pay rent and continue to build our business, bootstrap it until we got our first investor. Okay, wait. So, hold on. I need to go back to this. How long were you in this um, let’s call it experimental phase where you had to do all of these, you know, things to survive? Like, how long was that period? Like the first two years of our business, I I was during that time I was doing something called the Uberman cycle also where I would sleep 20 minutes every four hours. I I would never get a full eight hours. I would literally just take 20-minute naps throughout the day. I did that for like 6 months. Like it was really bad. Oh my god. Where did that come from? Did you feel like you had something to prove that you like had to Totally. I I don’t even know what it was. I was trying to prove though. It was almost like, you know, I was talking about like my career path and all these like different things I was jumping. I never found like true success in any of those things, but I felt if I broke off and I started my own business, you know, like this idea of Neurogum, I felt so strongly about that I was willing to make that commitment and sacrifice all these things to make it there. What kept you going? You know what’s crazy about being in uh That sounds weird. Starting a business is like a abusive relationship in a way. You know, when you get those wins, man, like it when you’re getting beaten down, but you get like a win, you know, it feels good. And it’s like, yeah, you’re I’m taking all these calls and everything, but then like you get an email from, you know, like a 75 year old lady that’s like, I can’t live without this. And this is what gets me to wake up in the morning so I could do yoga even at my age. I’m like, damn. Like, why I have to keep going when I know like Dr. Oz comes knocking on our door and it’s like, you know, whatever you think about him as a doctor and he’s willing to look at your product that you just started. T Pay came knocking on our door and was like, I want you to be part of our TV show, Tain School of Business. It’s like it’s crazy that these moments happen even when you’re a small brand, you know? And I think those wins that come from time to time, even when you’re in like the thick of it, just those are experiences that I don’t think you can have unless you go through the path of entrepreneurship, unless you pave your own path, unless you build your own luck. So then a very important part of your story happens, right? Shark Tank. Shark Tank. We go on a casting call in

2019. And what’s crazy is like we filmed right before the pandemic hit right in September. So we were still in studio, everything. We had note cards. It was literally like studying in college. We had note cards of every single potential question that the sharks may ask us. And we wrote down the question on one side and then the answer on the other. And we just reviewed those note cards every single day.

So for those who have not watched, right, it’s not like you didn’t get an offer. We got two offers. Yeah. But Ryan and I had a very specific cut off point on what we wanted and the deal we wanted to take and Kevin Olirri gave us like the most convoluted what you know stinky poo poo offer and uh we were just like okay Kevin like we’re not like we did the math in our heads and it literally made no sense. So, we immediately dismissed that, but Robert actually gave us a really, it was pretty compelling um what he was willing to do, but it was him cutting our valuation literally in half. And, you know, going back to this relationship we have with our pre-existing investors, especially as a bootstrap company, there were people that were willing to put their money at a certain valuation. We’re willing to cut down a certain amount from that valuation, but not at a 50% haircut. That’s not only a disservice to ourselves, but it’s a disservice to every single person that had our backs in that moment. And for us, we were like, it doesn’t matter if you’re a shark or not, you know, like we’re not going to do our investors wrong. So, um, that was that. We told Robert we can’t take the deal. And we walked out. Values. values and sticking to them. But we aired during co that was the first time we got big national attention because you know even like the doctor I was saying and the taint thing like it it hit a certain demographic but Shark Tank people really tuned into Shark Tank and they make YouTube clips and everything off it too. Right after Shark Tank aired two things happened. One Joe Rogan shouted us out. So now we’re on this like super high, right? Is that how he found out about you guys? One of our friends, PR person seated him product like a few years prior and we were like, “Oh, Joe Rogan got product, but like we don’t know if he even got it or not.” And then out of nowhere, he’s like, “I’ve been chewing this stuff.” You know, it’s like I love it. I’m like, “Yeah, it’s it’s crazy. Like we’re on this super high like Shark Tank. Joe Rogan just mentioned us like our phones are blowing up because we’re getting orders like left and right and we’re like finally hit this national stage of recognition and then all of a sudden we got sued. Wait, what? Yeah. Yeah. It all that all happened in like a month. So you were on the highest of highs and then it’s like boom, crash. Oh yeah. It was crazy. We were like, “Wow, our company finally like hit the national stage. It was amazing.” randomly. This is our first lawsuit in a trademark case from someone that was using the neuro name in a totally different category. And this person was worth $300 million from a divorce. She just had so much wealth. And we’re like a tiny little company. I think we’re doing like $4 million a year or something at that point, you know, in

2020. When that lawsuit happened, it was almost like what? Like why are we being like punished in a way, right? like we finally hit this mark after 5 years where a company people are recognizing that we created a great product and then boom, someone’s trying to take it all away. Someone’s trying to stop us from sharing this great product that we’ve worked so hard to share. She literally sent us notice like I I’m I’m going to sue you guys until you’re out of business. And we’re like, what are we going to do? We’re just going to run out of money. And funny enough, most businesses typically tend to fail because they get into a situation like this. Not all of our funds are going to a lawsuit. We can’t use any of it on growth. Everything stagnates because our legal fees are stacking up. And I mean, I told you how much of myself I gave to this company. You know, I was literally staying in hospitals, taking experimental drugs to make money. I was eating McDonald’s on a daily basis because I found like a a glitch in their little app where I could get free hamburgers. But that’s that made me sad the point. Like I you know there was so much of myself that I was giving to the company and not just myself, Ryan too. our investors too, our employees also at that moment, all of us. To have something that we spend day in day out just stripped away from us is it’s like the worst feeling in the world. And I would imagine it’s similar to like, you know, I’m not a parent, but like your child getting taken away from you in a way. Neurogum was such a big part of my identity, and it still is. Neurogum is a part of my identity in a very very big way. What happens when your identity is literally trying to get taken away from you? You lose a sense of who you are. You lose a sense of yourself. So it was almost like existential in a way to think through who am I if neuro wouldn’t even exist? And uh I mean I would have fought to the end. I would have for sure fought to the end. Like it it wouldn’t have mattered whatsoever. You know, I felt like what I discovered, if we’re going to use the analogy of the hero’s journey, I found the golden fleece. Ryan and I discovered the golden fleece, which is Neurogam. And we are here to set sail and like share with the world. And if someone is trying to take that away from us, we will ride through those waves. And it didn’t matter what happened. But then one of the judges during the show, Daniel Lubetski, founder of Kind Bar, said, “If you guys need anything, I love you guys. I’m not investing in supplements right now, but if you need anything, reach out. I’m here to help you.” Ryan remembers that moment, goes on Instagram, slides into his DMs, and Daniel Lubeski responds back and says, “I got you guys.” Hops on a call with this lady who is, you know, furious, willing to sue us into oblivion. And says, “Look, I’m worth 10 times more than you. I’m going to back these guys until they win their lawsuit, and you could fight this war with me, or you could call it quits right now.” And right then and there, the lawsuit ended. He saved our business.

Oh my god. Isn’t that crazy? And now we are where we are. And funny story because I think this is going to air after uh this moment happens, but uh we are one of the only companies to go back on Shark Tank twice because Daniel Leescy came back and invested in us. Oh my god, isn’t that awesome? He saves our business and we finally get a deal from the sharks. And we’re one of the only companies that have gone on Shark Tank twice, but also one of the most successful companies to come out of Shark Tank. Man, I bet they are kicking themselves right now. The other sharks. Yeah. Yeah. Funny enough, Mark’s team reached out and was just like, “Hey, can we get some neuro gum?” You like love it. It’s like It’s funny that like everyone comes out of the woodwork, you know, in some way. But they all come back. They all come back. They all come back. That is incredible. First of all, it’s like one of the biggest I think mistakes that’s like ever been made on Shark Tank history and they’ll talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. But I think one of the biggest things is like you watched you watched your pitch and it was like they everyone was talking about like how great of people you are, right? And that I think is like again a testament to not only you guys as founders, but I think going back to those brand values, you guys exuded that. You know, there’s people watching that probably are in their dark night of the soul. Call Dark Knight of the Soul mainly because in in film scripts, Save the Cat. Yeah, Save the Cat. It’s a book that it really teaches you great film structure if anyone’s interested. But call it Dark Knight of the Soul mainly because that’s the part of the movie where all is lost. It’s it’s really where the the character has to dig deep and they’re in their darkest moment. Yeah. And so obviously you had, you know, the new hope, which was Daniel coming in to save the day. So for anyone that is out there that doesn’t have their Daniel, what can they do? The funny thing about people that I realized is, and I I kind of learned this from Ryan in a way, uh, you know, because he’s paraplegic and he needs to ask for help sometimes. When you ask for help, 99% of the time, people are willing to help you. It’s pretty amazing. But sometimes our ego gets in the way, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, right? We feel like we could do everything by ourselves. But if there’s one lesson I learned that I would love to have applied early on, it’s just asking for help more. Cuz if you’re going on this path, people are going to be there to raise you up cuz they know how hard it is. I think that’s beautiful. Especially like your to your point, we’re talking about community so much, right? Yeah. And you found community even going into that tank. Yeah. The fact that people like Daniel exist to fight against that to give people a chance. Like sometimes that’s all that takes, you know, and it’s and look where we are now. It’s amazing. Nuro is incredibly successful. Where is Neuro at right now? I mean, job’s not finished, but uh we got a long ways to go, but you know, in any given day, we’re uh one of the top brands on Tik Tok shop u within our vertical. We are one of the bestselling energy supplements in the retailers that we’re in. To that note, we sell more than five hour energy in revenue and retail velocity at places like CVS. We continue to be a category leader on Amazon and oh my gosh, we’re by the end of the year, we’re going to be in 35,000 touch points. Does that even feel real to you? That’s crazy. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of stores. Uh I mean KC’s is a big convenience store that we’re activating in that we’re like a top seller in. We very quickly became a top seller. GNC Vitamin Shop. We’re the number one selling energy product in. We are the most accessible, sharable, simple, and functional product that you could take with you wherever you go. Wow, that is incredible. So, I’m going to ask you a few questions for the lightning round. How do you hire a players? There’s a book that I’ve talked about before. It’s called Who. I love that book. Um, it’s a great book. Previously I would have an internal scorecard that we would follow to build a criteria for our person that represented one our brand principles not just from work but in their personal lives as well. So that was one and then two from that scorecard mechanism how are their experiences going to contribute to take our company to the next level based on our needs. One of the realizations I’ve had is it’s okay to have different personalities because different personalities challenge each other. Like we never hire people that are too arrogant or ego scores like I know how to do this. If they’re challenging each other and they’re willing to grow and they’re willing to take the next step to elevate the company as a whole, that is like more than you could ask for in a person. What’s a branding rule that everyone repeats that you think is complete BS? Oh, that’s a good one. Um, a brand doesn’t need to look sexy. I I like honestly like how you’re talking to a consumer is more important and the branding needs to match that. How does that actually translate into, you know, I’m looking at the packaging here, right? What does your packaging need to communicate in under two seconds on a shelf? I mean, that’s so important. I feel like that was like one of our biggest struggles like initially, you know, and one, what does it do? What’s in it? And how is it going to work for me? And then what’s the format? So for us, like that’s the system architecture. When you look at our packaging, you know it’s gum. It gives you energy and focus and you know what the flavor is. You know what you’re going to get. I have to say it’s brilliant because you know we talk a lot about pain points and immediately I’m like the biggest thing on this package is the pain point I’m trying to solve which is energy and focus, right? And then I’m like neuro isn’t the number one thing I’m seeing here. It’s the pain point. And I’m glad you like it because like we spend so much time on our packaging, you know, like it’s so important. If you had to summarize three things from this conversation for everyone to take home as to what are the three most important things for their 20%. What would you say they are? Understand your community and keep that tribe close. Maintain your focus on at most three key things that you feel will drive your business 80% forward. Don’t focus on the 80% of the things that only drive your business 20% forward. And don’t ever be afraid to ask for help. Thank you. Thank you. All right, guys. You know the drill. We’re going to be diving into the anatomy of Kent’s dream. Now, we’re going to be going over the principles that came up in Kent’s journey. And because there are so many, we’re going to be putting a list of all of them on the screen, probably somewhere here. And we’re just going to be touching on the few that we find to be the most important. And if there are any that you want us to touch on again in a future video, let us know. And to start, we know that Kent didn’t build this dream alone. He has a co-founder, Ryan, who is obviously integral to this story, but for all intents and purposes, we’re going to be focusing on the elements in Kent’s journey that helped him accomplish his dream. All right, let’s dive in. The first principle that came up in Kent’s journey is skill stacking. So skill stacking is this idea that when you combine multiple skills, even if they seem unrelated, they form a stack and ultimately become your unique advantage. Now, Ken’s journey is such a reminder that the things that might feel random in the moment might not be random at all. On paper, martial arts, murals, branding, storytelling at the moment that he was going through all of it, they obviously didn’t connect, but over time, as we said in the definition, they did stack up and together they became his competitive edge. So if you take the martial arts, it made him obsessed with energy and performance. If you take the neuroscience, that gave him a way to understand the brain and how focus works. The murals, they literally trained his eye. They made him an artist that no doubt helped him in creating the packaging and the overall design of the brand. And speaking of branding, all that work that he did in the commercial world in campaigns, you can see how much that shaped him. And what we’re starting to notice in the anatomy of a dream is that time and time again this idea of skill stacking of being a generalist keeps showing up in every single interview. Meaning it is a huge benefit to be the jack of all trades. David Epste who we interviewed wrote a book called Range. He actually shows that all of this research in the most real world situations generalists actually have the advantage because in most industries like business it’s not predictable. It’s constantly changing and in those environments the people who can connect the dots across different fields they tend to outperform specialists. No offense to specialists obviously we need them but at the end of the day in this everchanging world it is very important to be a generalist. And so if you are in a season right now where your life feels all over the place, where you’re not really seeing how any of it connects yet, that just might mean you’re on the right track. All right, next principle, speed to action. Something that we are noticing on the show is that the most successful people, they shrink the time from idea to execution. I mean, it literally took Kent and Ryan a few months to make their V1, which is to make gum, which I don’t know, to me sounds like very complicated. I don’t feel like it’s something that’s like very easy to do. And I know there are a lot of you watching this right now who have something that you’ve been thinking about doing. Hell, I do as well. Maybe it’s starting, I don’t know, a Substack or launching a website or filming a video like we are right now. Whatever it is, the goal is that you want to speed towards taking action. I want you to ask yourself, what is the one thing that I keep putting off? What’s one action I can take tomorrow to start? and what’s the soonest deadline I can give myself to get AV1 out. Even if it’s the rough version, the messy version, the not so great version, doesn’t matter. And something that helps me hold myself accountable is to put it where everyone else can see. So if you want accountability, put it in the comments below. All right, the next principle that came up in Ken’s dream is to do things that don’t scale. Now, doing things that don’t scale means you’re willing to do the things that feel small or inefficient because that is actually what gets something off the ground. And in Ken’s case, he literally was customer service. He was the one responding to people himself on his personal phone. Now, if you’ve seen our prior episode, and if you haven’t, we’ll link it here somewhere for you. Natalie Barbou, who is the CEO of Rea, she talks about this as well. at this stage of her business, she still schedules one-on-one calls with her customers. And the thing that I’m noticing is that if you’re going to do something that doesn’t scale, the best areas for you to do this in are in areas where you’re interacting with your customer because that’s how you get to know them. There’s a story about Airbnb that I don’t think many people know about how they started, and I was genuinely shocked to hear this. In the beginning, even though they didn’t have any money, they would fly to New York where they had some users and knock on the doors of the hosts and say, “We’re the co-founders and we just want to meet you.” Now, they came up with an irresistible offer and offered to professionally photograph their home. Even though they were the photographers within that session, not only would they develop a relationship with the customer, but they also got to know them. And they also got to know what they liked about the platform, what was working, what wasn’t working for them. They did this after following a piece of advice from Paul Graham, who is the co-founder of Y Cominator, which is to do things that don’t scale. Now, we’re so often disempowered by the fact that we don’t have any money or we don’t have any resources to hire people to do things like customer service. And that’s actually a huge piece of leverage that could solidify the foundation of your company. And I think this is why Kent and Ryan grew to the lengths that they did with Neurogum because they didn’t hire a social media manager when they started. They themselves were making the content. They were tracking the hooks and they were giving those findings to their affiliates. They did that for a very long time. And because of that, they got to know what worked. Then with their product, they leveraged customer support as a way to improve it. They improved the shipping. They honestly just improved every single touch point of their business. So ask yourself, what is the most unscalable task that I can take on for the next few months that would give me the most amount of insight into my customer or audience? It could be social media management. Is it customer service? Is it sales where you’re talking to potential customers? Are you onboarding new users or clients yourself? Or asking for feedback and having real conversations with your users? Oh, and down below we’ve included a downloadable worksheet where you can go through these questions yourself and hopefully start putting these principles into action. So, just for you to know. All right. Next principle is attention management. Attention management is the ability to aggressively focus on the few things that actually move the needle. So, Ken talks about the Pareto principle, which is that 20% of things that you do make up 80% of the results. At first, I thought this was just about time management, but in reality, we really should be applying this in every single area of our dream or our business. Yes, it could be in our to-do list, but it also should be applied to our marketing, to our strategy, in our finances. What does this look like in practice? Well, for Kent, he said that it was realizing which customer was most important. And that makes a lot of sense because in most cases, it’s really the small minority of your customers that are willing to pay the most amount of money and are bringing in the most amount of revenue for you. If the output you’re looking for is more sales, okay, well, which type of customer purchase the most amount of units? And if you’re creating content, which kind of audience member is most engaged and when do they engage the most? So going back to the beginning of Neurogum, they spent the first three years focusing only on online sales before they moved to retail. What I’m seeing is that simplicity is key to a successful business and it’s key to narrowing that focus. I want to do another example and apply this principle to your to-dos. The first thing to do is to brain dump every single to-do that you have on your plate. Next step is to ask yourself, what are the three to four tasks that have the most amount of leverage in my dream? I’ll give you an example. In our case, a few weeks ago, we had an interview. We also were planning on releasing this video. What I realized was that at that point, the highest leverage thing for me to do was to actually prepare for that interview because ultimately a good interview was going to mean a good episode. And that meant delaying editing and putting out this video. Because let’s say that I split my time. Now, both videos were going to suffer. And that’s not fair to you guys. All right, moving on to the next one. And that is data is your north star. This principle is how you stop guessing and actually start making informed decisions when it comes to your dream. And we see this so clearly in Ken’s journey. They literally created a spreadsheet where they wrote down every single hook that they were testing. Then they evaluated what worked and what didn’t work. And then they would iterate until they found something that worked better. And what I’m noticing is this pattern where the most successful people are obsessed with data because it literally tells them what to focus on. And now in Ken’s journey, they use this principle to create their viral hooks. They also used it to assess which products to sell on Tik Tok shop. And it’s the reason that he says that they’re profitable on there. They looked at the data. They identified which products are actually converting. And they were able to figure out which ones were their Costco rotisserie chickens, meaning the products that they were getting people to buy bundles. But none of that is a guess. it was coming from data. And when we first started our business, we were so hesitant to invest in anything that was surrounding data because at the end of the day, we were like, well, we’re not big enough. Like that is just for the bigger companies that have the money to invest in that. But the more that I do these interviews, I’m seeing that data is something that you want to implement as early as possible. But here’s a real question. What do you do if you don’t have data yet? Well, if you’re at the beginning of your dream, your job at that moment is to get as much output and volume so that you can actually collect some data. Do not let yourself believe that you can’t collect it anyway. You can test things in so many different ways. You can utilize people that you do know. You can leverage the customers that you do have and you can create experiments and have subjects even if they’re only 10 people. Moving on to the next one, which is the art of attention. Attention is the ability to intentionally capture and hold people’s focus in a world where everyone is competing for it. As Kent said with the micro and nano influencers, you don’t really need a big audience to get attention. You can literally have two followers and still go viral. And if anything, you can have more impact. What matters is understanding how to actually capture that attention. And so, in another video, we actually talked about the eight ways to gain attention. And I’ll go through it very quickly. I’m always going to go through it assuming that you guys haven’t seen it or to just to drill it back in your minds. But the first one is to do something unexpected. Second is to provide extreme value. Third is to have a very strong POV on something. Four is to be consistently present. Five, accomplish something. Six, collaborate with those who have attention. Seven, tap into culture. And eight, develop indisputable talent, which I keep saying is the hardest one to do out of all of them. There are a couple that I’m noticing that Kent and Ryan did. And the first one is that they were consistently present on TikTok when they first started, right? They were literally doing that so they could test all these hooks. The second one they did is that they collaborated with affiliates who have attention and they created a very strong partnership program with them under that same umbrella of collaborating with those who have attention. They went on Shark Tank, which is a bit of a hybrid of accomplishment and utilizing a platform that already has attention. Even though they didn’t really take the deal, who knows if that’s why they ultimately got that organic mention from Rogan. Now, if we’re looking at all of the different ways that we can gain attention, I think that the one of being consistently present online is probably where you want to start because you want to get people to get to the point where they’ve seen you like four or seven times and they’re eventually like, “Wait, who is this or what product is this? I’ve seen this before.” Basically, in marketing terms, it’s creating awareness. Literally, today I bought like this random bag. I think it’s a Hulkin bag. And I saw it like at least 10 times until ultimately I thought of it today when I was like, I really need a bag to go between my house and the office and I need something with wheels that’s easy for me to get in and out. And then I thought of that bag that I had seen 10 times. At the beginning of your business, you really want to focus on creating that exposure for your company or for your dream in any capacity. Be your own publicist. take that as seriously as your product because the great product or service you are offering deserves people knowing you exist. And speaking of that, one of Neurogum’s biggest shifts occurred when Rogan shouted them out. Well, we don’t nearly have as many subscribers as he does. I know that we already have a very strong community here ready to help each other in pursuit of accomplishing our dreams. So, in our previous videos, you guys have been commenting what your dream is for our what’s your dream project that we mentioned at the top of this video. We decided to randomly choose from that list of those who have commented and even DM’d us. And I want to shout out Emma Stuts. I hope I’m pronouncing your name correctly, who’s 23 years old, and her dream is her clothing brand, which is called Our Way. Now, I’m going to put her company’s handle here on the screen. Check out her stuff. Maybe we can even surprise her with some love and follows on her business page and get her one step closer to that dream. I’ve never met Emma in person myself. I just think that this could be a really cool tradition that maybe we do on this channel. I don’t know. Let me know what you guys think. And Emma, keep going. You’re doing great. And I personally ordered one of your tops and I can’t wait to get it. All right, moving on to the next principle, which is the proximity principle. The proximity principle is intentionally placing yourself around people and environments that make you think bigger, move faster, and get you closer to your goal. In Kent’s journey, when we think about something like Shark Tank, it’s very easy to look at it as a play for attention. And yes, obviously that’s part of it. But I think something that’s equally as valuable, if not more valuable in Ken’s story, is what it gave them in terms of proximity. If you really look at it, it put them in the room with some of the most prominent investors and entrepreneurs that you could possibly be around. And when you look at what ended up happening later, especially with Daniel Lubetsky, that opportunity doesn’t exist unless they put themselves in that room first. And I know that’s not always easy to do, by the way. But naturally, with the proximity principle, you are going to make yourself uncomfortable because it’s not your natural environment. And as a result, you’re going to increase your odds of success. Whether that’s because you’re around people who can teach you something, people who think differently than you, people who are one step ahead of you, or even people that you can potentially partner down the line with. So, how does this apply to us? How do we actually make this principle happen other than going on Shark Tank? Well, in the smallest ways, it could start with changing your environment. Maybe it’s going to a place where you’re around people who are building or moving or operating a completely different level than you are. I mean, I’ve seen literally a lot of people work out of fancy hotel lobbies for that exact reason. And it’s not even about talking to anyone. It’s literally just about being around that energy. And I think sometimes we overcomplicate proximity because I think we think that it has to be reaching out to someone who is 10 steps ahead of us. But in reality, it might just be finding people who are two steps ahead of you, people who are like a little bit further along, who have maybe figured out something that you’re currently trying to figure out in that moment. And I think the thing to analyze is how often are you putting yourself in rooms with people who match the potential you want to reach. But here’s the thing with proximity. I think a lot of people get caught up in this notion that if they meet the right person and everything will fall into place. And while it absolutely helps, I don’t think that that’s actually what determines whether you move forward or not. Because at the end of the day, you can be in the best room possible, surrounded by the exact people that you once wanted to be around, and it still won’t matter if you’re not grounded in who you are and what you stand for. And I think that that’s where the next principle comes in, which is to lead with the values. Leading with values is exactly what it sounds like, and it’s not compromising what matters to you, even when there’s something to gain. When you look at the decisions that Kent and Ryan made, especially in the early days, they weren’t optimizing for money or short-term wins, they were making decisions based off of what felt aligned with who they were and what they were trying to actually build. And I think that the best example of this was in Shark Tank. On paper, that was an opportunity that most people would do anything for. You’re in front of these investors. You have national exposure and you have the chance to walk away with a deal that could completely change your business, but they didn’t take it because it would hurt their investors. And I think that’s such a powerful moment because it shows that even in a room like that, even with that level of opportunity, they were still grounded enough to say, “This isn’t the right fit for us.” And I think that’s what leading with values actually looks like. If you watch the episode, the way that they knew that that wasn’t going to work for them when they got that offer, they were very firm on those values that it made that decision almost easy to make. It’s being able to make decisions from them when there’s something on the table that looks really good on paper but doesn’t actually align with where you want to go. Because if you don’t have that clarity, it becomes actually really easy to get pulled in a hundred different directions and you start saying yes to things that you shouldn’t say yes to. And over time, you can end up somewhere that doesn’t even resemble what you originally set out to do. And I think that ties back to everything that we’ve been talking about. Proximity can put you in the right rooms. Attention can get people to see you. Data can tell you what’s working. But values are what guide your decisions once you have all of that. And I know that values is a very fluffy principle, but ultimately it’s one of the most important things that you solidify early on in your dream. So I think the real question is not just what do you want to build, but it’s how do you want to build it and what are the things that you are not willing to compromise on along the way? Which leads us to our next principle to ask for help. And in this one, it sounds incredibly simple, but I actually do think it’s one of the hardest to do, especially when you’re early on. I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like there’s this belief that we’re supposed to figure everything out on our own. That if we’re capable, if we are smart enough, if we really want this, that we should be able to do it without needing anyone else. But when you look at Ken and Ryan’s story, that’s not what happened. And Ken actually talks about this lesson coming directly from Ryan. When they were in a really difficult moment, when the company was getting sued, Ryan made that decision to reach out and ask Daniel Lubeski for help. And that one decision that not only helped them get through that moment, it ended up leading to a relationship and a partnership down the line. And I think that’s such an important shift to understand. I think this ties really closely to the proximity principle because it’s one thing to be around the right people, but I actually do think it’s another thing to engage with them, to ask questions, to be curious, to not pretend like you have everything figured out. The truth is, there are people who have already solved the problems that you’re currently facing. And if you’re willing to ask, you can shortcut so much of that learning curve. And I know it’s uncomfortable. It literally feels like you’re exposing yourself and what you don’t know. But more often than not, people are honestly more often willing to help, especially when they see that you are serious and that you’re not just looking for a handout. But if they see that you’re genuinely trying to learn, they’re going to help you. And I think that’s the shift. It’s not asking for help because you can’t do it. It’s asking for help because you understand that doing it alone is slower. So if you’re in that place right now, I would really ask yourself, where am I trying to figure something out on my own when someone else already knows the answer? And by the way, in their case, asking for help came out of a moment of urgency. But I don’t think this principle only applies when everything is falling apart. More often than not, whether the problem is big or small, there’s always someone you could ask. Which brings us to our next principle, which is finding your audience. And look, when I say audience, I don’t mean followers or viewers. I mean the specific group of people that you’re trying to serve. And in Ken’s case, throughout that entire interview, he honed in on this particular principle. probably the most. It’s so clear that he understands the exact audience that they are serving and knows exactly their customer persona to a te. And the way that he talks about it as if it’s one person is really the key that I think makes it obvious that he has done his research on this. For those of you who’ve been keeping track with all of our interviews, all of our guests so far, and I mean all of them, have said, “When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.” Every single one. And I do not think that that is a coincidence. I think this becomes even more important when you look at the world that we’re in now. We live in a world where literally almost every single industry is oversaturated. Take a look at social media again. The algorithm isn’t try to show your content to everyone. It’s trying to show it to the right people, even if those people are not subscribed to you. Because when you’re clear on who you are for, your message, for whatever reason, gets sharper. Which brings me to our last principle of building a community. And I know this might sound super similar to finding your audience, but I actually think that they’re very different because finding your audience is about identifying who you are speaking to. That specific type of individual, their mindset, and what they care about and what they’re going through. Building a community is about creating a space, a product, a brand, even just content where people don’t just connect with you, but they start to feel connected to each other. And when you look at Ken’s story, I think this shows up from the very beginning. They were tapped into the Reddit biohacking community with people who really cared about performance and getting better in their lives. So when they launched that Indiegogo, that community was ready to support. And what’s interesting is that they didn’t stop this mindset as they grew. They didn’t just find a community. They actively are building one. Even with their affiliates, I know for a fact that they create Discords to connect and share what’s working and to learn from one another and to feel like they’re part of something bigger than just promoting a product. I actually went to this event the other day and the founder mentioned that she didn’t spend marketing dollars on influencers and that she spent it on community events and that went super far. So even if you have a company that you feel like, well, I run an agency like my clients are not going to be friends with each other. That’s not really necessarily the point. I think the point is finding ways to create community in your space. Maybe it’s with other agencies, with other marketers, because ultimately some of those people may be your future clients. So whether you’re launching a product or a service or you’re creating content, know that there are already communities waiting for your product. You just need to find them, be a part of them, and then find ways to grow them. And in Ken’s case, what we see Can I quickly just interrupt? Hi. Hi. So, I wanted to show you something. We hit okay. We hit 10. Oh my god. I’m so proud of you. Thank you. What? I feel like I can’t even focus now. Wow. This is so cool. Wait, let me see it. Give it to me. Can they see it? Yeah. Thank you guys. Honestly. Wow. It’s just crazy cuz literally at the beginning of this year, we were literally like 2,000 when we started this channel. Um, I kept saying that the biggest thing that I hoped that we would see is a community of people vulnerable enough to share their dreams. But more than anything that we would create a space where someone going through their darkest moment in their dream, someone who was like on the cusp of giving up potentially that maybe we like kept them going for one more day because like I’ve been there um where like someone on the internet that like doesn’t even know who I am made a video, turned on a camera and made a piece of content that literally fired me up just enough to get me to Friday. And going back to Kent’s story, you’ll see that in those darkest times, and there were a couple of them that he talked about, the time where he was literally staying at hospitals and he was literally struggling to just stay afloat. In those instances, I feel like a lot of people would have justifiably have thought, well, it’s time to throw in the towel. But I do think that if you look at Kent’s journey and how he just speaks about every milestone, I mean, it’s clear that he was just focusing on the small wins. And I know for Kent, it was the email he would get from customers like the 75year-old woman who did yoga. And I know for us it was those small wins that also really helped us, especially when we had 200 of you watching. We even had like this uh software that Roy built. Every time that we would get a subscriber, they would like go yay and we would just hear yay in the office. And I don’t know, I’m realizing that maybe this is actually a principle to count the small wins cuz I know that Kent did that. It’s the small winds that no matter how small they are, they remind you that you are going in the right direction. And I know a lot of you might feel like nothing is working, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. So, if you’re in that phase right now where you’re not sure if you’re reaching enough people or if what you’re doing is even the right thing, count the small ones. If you’re not sure this is even going to work, count the small wins. Count the small wins until one day you look up and you realize they added up to 10,000 wins. And one day you might look up and realize that you’re living in the anatomy of your dream. All right, guys. Um, I will see you in the next one.