Testicles, Testosterone & Ancestral Beef Sticks | Behind the Brand

Alex, so great to have you in Organiary 2025. Actually, I guess it's '26. I mean, we're in '25, but we are part of the Organiary '26. Um, I, I, I, I met you at, uh, at an event, and I remember when I tasted your bar, the Burski Bar, I was like, this is front and center, like, got organ meats in it. It was like, it was like very present. And I was like, wow, I was just super impressed about that. And I brought it home for my daughter to try and she gobbled it right up. And so I was sold in that moment. I was sold because there was part of me that was worried. I'm like, oh, is this too— tastes too organy, you know? But she loved it. So I was like, well, there you go. There you go. It's just a great bar. Um, but tell me about like what got you on this path because You, you, you're, you're not just about meat bars, right? I mean, you're, you're kind of overall just about health, right?

Yeah, I, I've been a health practitioner for almost 20 years now under, studied mostly under Paul Chek, one of his master practitioners, and been doing this for a long time telling people to eat healthy. And, you know, people are coming back and telling me, you know, it's hard to find good food, it's on the go. And I, I'm like, well, most of the options are you have to cook for yourself. And so I started eating, you know, raw meat and raw liver and heart and testicles, you know, organs in and of themselves raw. But then being time constrained, time constrained, what would happen is they would go bad. So I started dehydrating them.

Nice.

And then my co-founder who runs Eleiko, an international weightlifting equipment company, he comes in one day and goes, hey, I wanna make a protein bar. And then, so I'm sitting here going like something that I'd eat. He goes, yeah, well let's not make it, you know, you're not gonna eat it. It has to be that level of quality. So I'm like, let me think about it. So we kind of kicked the can a little bit down the road. And so then I realized I was, I've been eating, you know, raw dried liver. So I offered it to him and he goes, if we can make this taste better, I think we're onto something.

Yeah.

So then we became formulating and doing things and then, and then eventually through research it became, okay, we gotta find meat. Okay, what are the best quality meat? Okay, so we found We, we called so many different farms. I think we've called every, pretty much every cow producer that could in the United States. 'Cause one of our biggest missions is to support the US farmers. A lot of other meat stick companies and jerkies, they use Australian beef, Argentinian beef. So out of the country, which doesn't help our farmers here. So all of our beef comes from the United States. It's, and then, so we found a Savory Institute carbon-neutral farm, which is grass-fed, grass-finished, and pasture-raised. So talking to some of these farmers, you're going, hey, are you grass-fed? Yeah, we're grass-fed. Hey, we're grass-finished. Yeah, yeah, we're grass-finished. I go, are you guys pasture-raised? Like, yeah, they're out in pasture. Can you provide an affidavit? Oh, well, you know, and then so we go to the next person. So we found someone that meets all those 3, and obviously the no hormones, antibiotics, that's pretty standard in the industry nowadays. But our cows have never been fed grains and have never been inside more than 60 days, which is that pasture-raised claim, because normally they get brought inside to the lot. And most people don't know that you can grass-fed and grass-finish a feedlot animal, so you can put them in a feedlot, feed them grass. So that became a whole thing from me being a Czech practitioner, knowing what kind of meat to find. So I'm looking around for that. Then it became, let's look for manufacturers. Then no one wants to produce it without preservatives and things of such. So then I have to start looking at the USDA, finding what the USDA allows, and then quoting the USDA back to the, the, the manufacturers. So we found someone that could produce our, our sticks without it, and he's like, I'll give it a shot. And, and it kind of became this like, can this even be done at first? And then will someone do it? And everyone's like, well, mixing organs, we've never done that before. And it's gonna be too this, it's gonna be too that. I'm like, can you try it? And then, so then we were like, all right, it doesn't taste salty enough. It doesn't taste peppery enough. So then renditions and renditions and the packaging, and then, all right, we gotta find a package supplier. And then all of a sudden, can we even do this? And then once we did it, we're like, all right, well, let's run with it. We got sent back a sample that was phenomenal. And, you know, here we are, like, this is now month 9 on the market, I would say.

Oh, that's right. When I met you, you weren't actually on the market yet. You were just Selling it at the conference?

Yeah, we launched at the end of March, which is, and then we went to that summit and that was our very first showing.

Okay.

So we were, we only had salt. Now we have salt and pepper and, and, and so we're releasing Cajun here pretty soon. So people need to stand by for that.

Nice.

Yeah. So we were like, we only had salt and we sold out the first day and then we had, luckily we live in Austin, so we ran home, we brought the same amount. I think we brought more and we sold out of what we had previous day. So we, we overshot the second day, which is great, but then that was completely sold out. And yeah, it was not, not a bad first showing. People, people cleaned this out.

Yeah, people are looking. I mean, meat bars, obviously people are looking for clean protein, and meat bars are, are where people are looking. What method of preservation did you land on? Are you fermenting, or what do you, what are you doing to preserve it?

So celery salt is what we're using. So we're using celery, and we're cooking at a lower temperature for longer, and then we go right into cooling and then vacuum sealing. So they go, they don't really skip anything. So we, based on the USDA standards, we, we, I think they inject steam and then for like a minute or 2, and then the smoke pretty much takes care of the rest. And then we, we incorporate celery salt. So we have our only 2 preservatives are celery and sea salt.

Excellent. And what, what organs did you land on? I don't remember. Is it just liver or is there heart as well in there?

There, there is heart and, uh, we're figuring out other ones. I, I would love to make one with testicles in it, but it's hard to find them in this country.

Yeah, it is. It is. And then let alone like getting the flavor, you know, to, to work and all that. Totally. Now, do you yourself, you, you eat a lot of different organs? So like, are you eating testicles?

Yeah, I eat testicles.

Yeah, every day.

Almost every day.

Almost every day.

Unless I say, I say almost because when I run out, I can't tell you I'm, I'm eating them every day. So, got it. When I have them, I eat them every day, but when I run out, then I gotta go get some and I gotta go, you know, process them, like chop them up and, and make sure they don't go bad. And then I gotta dehydrate them and I go through this whole thing to make my, make my testicles. 'Cause again, it's like I de— I, defrost them and then what if, if they spend too long in the fridge, I feel weird eating them raw. So yeah, that's why I gotta like make sure I can do it all at once.

I've never actually had them. What do they, what, what do they taste like and how, how do you prepare it? I know some people fry them, but, but how do you prepare it?

Yeah, frying is gonna denature, denature them and you're not gonna get the most outta them. So what I, I like to do is if I'm eating them raw, I de— I Defrost them. Then I take a little olive oil, salt, and lemon pepper. And then I take a little bit of coconut aminos and I mix 'em all together and then chop 'em up and then down the hatch. And they have a texture of like a scallop and they kind of taste like tuna and, but also like a feel of a chicken breast. So your brain doesn't really know what to do with it at first cuz it's like, it doesn't taste like chicken, it doesn't taste like, like it tastes like tuna, but it, the texture is a sk— so your brain has to process it a little bit, but then once it lands you're like, okay, I know what I'm expecting. But I normally dehydrate them. I throw 'em in the dehydrator and every batch is a little different. So you gotta watch them pretty, pretty, pretty hard cuz if you cut 'em too, too thick, then they're still kind of raw when they come out. And if you cut 'em too thin, then they burn to a crisp and they're inedible. So you gotta like watch over them as you dehydrate them and, and that makes it easy to do.

Do you notice any changes in your health and your, when you do blood markers, you notice any changes from the different organs you're eating?

So I started training again about May. So last time, let me, let me pre— so I got my, I got recent blood work done with testosterone and things like that. Last time I, I got my blood work done 6 months apart with, for testosterone, eating testicles almost every single day. My, my testosterone went up 60 points over 6 months. So about 10 points a month they went up.

Wow.

And it went from like 840 to 900, 9, 9, 10, 9, 0, 6 or something like that. So, it went up pretty significantly. And yeah, I definitely notice a huge difference when you eat testicles than when I don't eat testicles.

That's incredible. It's a real testimony to what something I'm talking all the time about, which is like supports like, right? So, that the part of the animal you're eating is going to support that part in you. What other organs are you eating from the animal? Are you basically trying to eat everything?

I can't figure out a way to eat spleen and pancreas. It's kind of a very vile organ, so I'm just trying to figure out a way to cook it and eat it. So pills have been some of the best ways to consume that because you don't really taste them. But raw or cooked, I mean, it's— yeah, if someone has a suggestion, that'd be fantastic because that's pretty tough. There was something I was going to mention in there. You had I can't remember.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, no worries.

Yeah, no.

So where, what else? Yes, yes, I'm trying to, I eat organs at least every, yeah, every day some kind of organ.

And do you like, but you're also eating muscle meat as well, right? Do you find that you're, are you eating like a specific kind of balance of muscle to organs or are you just kind of eating what, what looks good?

Kind of what looks good. So being a Czech practitioner every day, you know, what I teach is If you're stressed out, you're gonna need more. If you're sedentary, you're gonna need less. And I weigh about 220 pounds and I eat, like, if you talk about macronutrients, I'm not a big believer in macronutrients. I've seen people who don't eat gain weight. And as you know, you can eat a ton and lose weight. And so there's all these unforeseen factors like stress, environmental factors, emotional factors, mental factors that can weigh on you. So if you're thinking a lot, your body will, will consume more carbohydrates. Your body will lean out a lot faster. If you're, if you're not thinking very much, if you have something very, you know, easy, easygoing day, then your, your brain's not gonna consume as much so you can lay off more. But I, I probably in calorie terms, maybe 1,500 to 2,000 calories a day and I sustain 220 pounds of of mass. And people like some, one of my clients flew in recently and he was like, this is crazy. I'm like, I stayed with you for 3 days and I watch you and you barely eat and how do you build muscle? And I go, 'cause it's the quality of food, it's the digestion that you put in. And we cook our sticks at a lower temperature, which means it preserves the enzymatic activity of them. And most people don't realize that when you eat food, it has to pass through your intestinal wall or your mouth, somewhere between mouth to anus. It has to get into your body because people forget that the mouth and the whole digestive tract is actually outside of your body. Because if you flip your insides out, that becomes your skin and you flip it back and now your skin's the outside. So the tube, if you open everything up, it's, it doesn't actually allow anything to go inside of your body unless it passes through that membrane and then it becomes inside of your body. So if your digestion is poor, it's going to eliminate what it can't absorb. And that's what most people, when they're, when they're eating for mass amounts of food or they're taking extra shakes or extra protein, you're not absorbing all that, only backing up your digestive system, which is gonna decrease how many gains or your results or your health benefits that you're trying to get. And it becomes a very expensive poop.

Right. So you're, you're clearly a real food advocate. I mean, you, you, you like to get These nutrients from real food versus isolates and, and when you, when you, uh, can avoid them, powders and things like that, right?

Yeah, because they're very dehydrating, uh, to the system. So where does that rehydrate? It has to rehydrate from your cells. It has to rehydrate from inside your body. And most people don't drink enough water as is. So to answer your question, it's like every day is a little bit different. And when you get in touch with your body and the more you clean it up, the more it'll tell you when you're hungry. Like most days I don't eat when I get up until like 1 o'clock today after my workout was like what, 11:30 I started eating. But some days I get up at like 7 and I'm, I'm, I'm, I need to eat. Like my body's telling me eat something. But most days I get up, I'm like, okay, I'm not hungry. I go work out and then I eat. Now I'm hungry. But before that, so I listen to what my body's telling me and the cleaner your body gets, the easier it is to pick up those signals. You know, like driving, driving in your car, if your windshield's dirty, you're kind of looking through for hazards. Yeah. Versus if your windshield's clean, you're like, oh, down I can see a mile ahead. And yeah, there's a wreck over there. I don't have to hit my brakes when I get too close.

Yeah, absolutely. How are you balancing your health, your entrepreneurship, your practice? Like, how are you balancing everything? Like, how are you prioritizing certain things over other things? Like, what does that look like for you?

Yeah, it's happy-making. Money making, and then so happy making would be spending time with family. Once I feel my family is like, oh hey, we haven't seen you in a while, I prioritize that over business or anything else. So that's number one. And once everyone's good, I see everyone's busy and kind of doing their own thing. Then I keep working on my coaching practice, Bursky, and my community that we have online, and. And if something isn't important, you have to note your values, like what is important. So family is most important, then it comes business. So I always focus on business until I notice I'm not spending enough time with family, and then I go back to making time or prioritizing time for family, whether it be taking time out of my day to go go see one of my kids' school events, or my oldest is asking to show her how to work out. And I'm like, I really want to watch the Bears game, but I'm like, all right. So I flicked it on so I can catch some plays, but like, okay, I'm teaching her how to train because she really now wants to train. So it's prioritizing that. And the funny thing is, on Thanksgiving, I took my turkey out 2 days and it was still in the freezer. Before I had to prepare it. And that level of stress broke the whole wheel. So I'm always trying to, once I see where the ceiling is and what I can handle, anything that's above that, that's not important, I don't even pay attention to it because what's important in my life is my family, making sure they have a roof over their head, making sure they're fed well, they're loved, they're taken care of. And then my Burski family and then my clients. And so these are the kind of things that I prioritize. And if I can't take care of me, I can't take care of anyone, which is why I carve out an hour and a half to 2 hours a day to train and make sure I drive my daughter to school and make sure I have enough time for activities. Like last night we were putting together her desk or her vanity table for like 2 hours and kind of hanging out together. Spending time together. It's like stuff like that is how I stay sane.

That's awesome. So I'm sure people are wondering, where does the Burski name come from? What's the origin of that?

So fun story. We had a different name and so we submitted it to trademarks and someone challenged our trademark. And so even though I did all the research and I'm like, it's different than this other company, they challenged our trademark and we had to pay for lawyers and And so we sat around and we're like, do we want to start off a company like this? And so we're like, no, let's throw that off the table. And so we spent like a week, 8 hours a day coming up with names, seeing if the website is available, the social media is available, the trademark is available. Is it used yet on the market? Because most people don't know the trademarks are first to use, not first to Publish, so that was really interesting. So then eventually we landed. We threw out like what if we smush our names together? And so Ricard's last name is Blomberg, B E R G, and then my last name is S K I Y Ripchinski, and we kind of smush them together. We're like Bergski, and then we're like okay that has a ring to it. And then we dropped the last letter and we got Berski. So then we're like no one because we're about to do a huge packaging run. And so right as we were about to send it out for packaging, we got this letter saying, hey, you can't do this one. So then we're like, okay, we made up a word. And then before it got fully trademarked, we ran our packaging and we're like, this word doesn't exist. No one's using it. It's not a dictionary word. And so they're like, there's no one that should be challenging this, period. So we took a chance and We wanted to get this product on the market so bad that we risked a lot of money running packaging to do it. And then it worked out, we're trademarked now, so it's great.

Did you literally just, on the packaging, did you, all you changed was the name? So everything else that you had already designed was the same?

No, no, no, no.

You had to go right back, you had to go back to the drawing board.

We've probably done easily 1,000 renditions of packaging.

Oh, okay.

like a 9-month period of like this, then this, then this. And then within that rebrand of a week, we probably went through also like 700 different renditions, probably close to 1,000 there alone of landing on Burski and then wearing Burski around and then kind of touching some things up here and there and then like asking friends and, and yeah, it was, yeah, it was a very stressful— Yeah.

Obsessing over fonts and all that. Yeah, totally. It's it's it's a it's a like you said a stressful and arduous process. So what's what's in the future for you guys? Are you guys so you said Cajun is the next flavor? Are you guys gonna stick with meat sticks for a while, or are you gonna branch off? Do you already have ideas for other products? Because I feel like when we first met, you talked about like a bunch of different products.

Yeah, so there's— we call it the parking garage. There's a lot of things in the parking garage of how I want— what kind of products we want to see in the world, what kind of products our kids would eat and other people we recommend eating to improve their health. Because the whole point of Burski is to find on-the-go foods that will actually help you with your health instead of bring you backwards, and also help the farmers and help them have a be able to have a living and support them and change grass-fed finished pasture-raised farming. Because most farmers are afraid to do that because they have customers that will buy the grain-fed. But we want to change that because it's not a— I mean, they save on feed, all sorts of things. But yes, we have a ton of different products that are in the parking garage. And as we grow and scale, we're able to release more because we're self-funded. So it's also a very stressful situation having to fund all of this pretty much yourself.

Yeah. And it's, it's not cheap either designing a product. I mean, it can be upwards close to $100,000 a product. You know, it's, it's, it's a lot of money.

Yeah, I, I, I, yeah, we, we got different flavors, we got different meats, we got different products that are in different categories that are better for you and on the go that will improve and change the landscape of how people produce food and on-the-go food.

Are you available in retail yet or just on your site?

So, we have about— we're in about 50 doors. Our only national chain that we have that we're selling in is SunLife Organics. Right now, but we have talks with buyers from Sprouts and, uh, Gelson's and some other, uh, talking to Walmart too.

Wow.

Um, yeah, so we're, we're, you know, being, being only 9 months on the market, we're, we're moving in. We're, we're, we're gonna take growing and spots on the shelf.

That's awesome. Well, where can people, uh, connect? Like, so you guys are giving a generous gift to the winner of Organuary, but for those that Uh, just want to purchase now or, or use the Bursky Bar as one of their organ meats that they eat for the week, uh, because their, their task is they have to eat organ meats one day a week for 4 weeks, and the Bursky Bar, uh, or it, it qualifies. So, so where can people purchase the bar to use it for Organuary?

So they can go on Amazon right now. And pick it up. You can go on eatbersky.com and pick it up. And I wanted to drop something in here real quick that I forgot to mention. So we have our big stick and we also have a smaller stick, which is about half the size. So this is, this one's about the size of my forearm.

Yeah, the big one is big, but I gotta say my, my 9-year-old ate the whole thing. So it's, it's a good size. And, uh, I don't know, dare I say a meal replacement? I mean, I know it's, you know, for particularly a kid, it's, It's, yeah, it works.

If you, when you, when we give this to kids and we don't tell 'em what it is, like you want a beef stick, they, their, their face is always, they bite into it and they kind of think about it and then they go, oh, this is good. Every single one of 'em, you tell 'em there's organs in it, then they start thinking about it.

Yeah.

But you give it to a kid and you're like, here, try this. And they're like, whoa, this is really good. This is my favorite thing. Something I wanted to mention. So most beef stick, most beef supplement companies that sell beef liver, They will have 600 to 30, about, about 3,000 milligrams of beef liver in their capsules, which is about 6 pills. Our big sticks have 7 grams, so 7,000 milligrams. So 2 servings of beef liver in relationship to the pills. And in our 1 ounce, we have 3,500 milligrams. So not only are you getting your beef liver supplement, but you're also getting your beef stick all in one. Cool. And yeah, and when you, when you run the price comparison to both, which is we are a slightly more expensive stick, when you run a price comparison that we are actually less expensive if you are a shopper of supplements and beef sticks, if you smush 'em together and you have both, then you can get your monthly dose of beef liver and heart And macronutrients and micronutrients all in one shot.

Incredible. Well, so happy that you're joining us. It was—it's been a pleasure getting to know you, and just keep up the great work. I—I love hearing about companies that are supporting our farmers, that are—that are focused on people's health, not just profit. I love that as well. And I—I can't wait for people to try the bar because. Truly, my daughter loved it, and and that's you know we we eat a lot of meat bar. We've tried a lot of meat bars. So for her to say that that was the one she loved, given that it has liver, says everything. It's it says so much that that to your point that don't tell your kids what's in it. Just let them taste it. Let their body be the judge, not their mind, and they will love it. So super excited. Where can people find you on socials if they want to? Be a part of the community.

You can look us up on @eatbersky on all social channels. We're working on our YouTube, it's still a little low, but on TikTok, on Instagram, we're mostly active on Instagram. So you can find me at health.performance.engineer and body_building_institute if you want the community. That's what you're— I think you were asking for. Excellent.

Well, thank you again, Alex. And, uh, thank you all for joining us for January 26th. Check out the Burksky Bar and get those organs in at least minimum once a week. If you want to be like Alex and eat it daily, go for it. But we're just— for those that are newbies, let's just focus on one day a week. Get your Burksky Bar, get your pluck, get your organs, do what you can, just get them in and see how good you feel. Thank you so much.