Entrepreneurship, Supplements and Success | Brian Littlefield On Building JOCKO FUEL | #105

Hey everybody, this is Jeff Duden and we are on the home front with Brian Littlefield. He is the co founder of Jocko Fuel with Jocko Wilnick energy drinks plus other products coming out with clean and natural ingredients and also Origin, an American made clothing manufacturer nestled in the woods, deep in the woods of Maine. That's where they come from. And we have a lot to talk about today. Brian, welcome to the home front.

Thanks for having me on, Jeff. Looking forward to it.

Yeah, 100%. Hey, would you mind sharing a little bit about how you grew up just real quick because you have a very interesting story how you got to martial arts and eventually how you got into business just real quick.

Yeah, well I'll try and, I'll try and do it quickly, but yeah. I grew up in Maine, part of a pretty big family split between two different sides. I was the only one actually between my parents, the only, the only child. My, my parents were both married once prior and both had big families. So five half brothers, two half sisters really. I was really close to three brothers on, on my mother's side because they were, when I was younger, they were older than me, but when I was younger they were still in the house. Right. So you know, growing up, you know, they were 10, I think 10, 12 and 14 years older than me. So all boys. So I went through it and it was fun.

That's why you got into jiu jitsu.

Yeah, right, exactly, yeah. And you know, I had a very close first cousin who was a competitive athlete as well, professional in multiple sports and all. Also was a professional fighter. So he had a lot of influence on me as well. So I played like regular athletics I would say up until my freshman year. Then I kind of fell off, went away from it, went to college. I started becoming pretty out of shape my probably junior, senior year of high school. It was exacerbated the first year I went to college, freshman year eating you know, dollar menu back then and you know, just really blew up and just kind of had an epiphany. Went on my own personal, personal health and wellness journey. Really fell in love with the nutraceutical side of things. Like I've always, I've always had a knack for the sciences and also really a big appreciation for leverage, all forms of different types of, of leverage. And I loved the idea of applying these things to what you're doing. They're not a replacement but I loved being able to apply them to what I was doing. So which is also how I fell in love with Jiu Jitsu because it's all about leverage and tactics, so. And not. Not as much strength and speed. So I started training Jiu jitsu in. In college as part of that health and wellness journey. It led me to. I was running a school. I was running a. I went back to school for business and you know, I read out of college I started a small brick and mortar supplement store. So I was running this supplement store I was running in a jiu jitsu academy. And you know, and that's. That's how I got my start in business.

Awesome. And you're. You evolved into a manufacturer and I think I heard you say one point that you recognize that in great product placement. By the way, in, in. In Maine as where you grew up in Maine. And there was all this manufacturing that was going on up there. And so you decided to make gies originally with a company called Origin. How did you start that business?

So I joined Origin. Actually. I didn't. I didn't create. Yeah, I didn't create Origin. Origin was founded by Pete Roberts. Pete is my business partner in a few different businesses, one of my best friends. And he. He founded Origin in 2011. He decided to start manufacturing around 2012. Really kind of manufacturing kicked off in 2013. And so, and when I say kicked off, I mean, it was literally cutting down forest and sawing out, you know, timbers and, and standing up a building and in. In the woods of Maine and a little town, oddly enough called Industry. And so in this little town of Industry, Maine, we, you know, that's where. That's where Origin got its start. And I joined. I first. It was in 2013 when. When Pete and I linked up. But it was in 2014 when I really jumped on board. And you know, it was a total of five or six employees at the time. And we quickly. When I jumped on board with Origin, closed down my business. It was actually in Ohio, the supplement store and the academy that I was running when that shut down and I moved back to Maine. I had been helping Pete with Origin from a distance for about two years. So it was 2016 when I moved back to Maine where I grew up. And that's when things got. Got pretty serious. You know, we decided to. We did a couple things scaled quickly. Went from seven employees to 35 employees and you know, in 12 months and, and really went all in on. On the business. Relocated from the little facility that we were in and industry to downtown Farmington, Maine to a much larger facility at that time. And. And it's just quickly grown from from there, when the companies got really big. Origin and Jocko Fuel, which Jocko Fuel also started around the same time that I moved back to Maine. Being that that was my background, we kind of got into that space at the same time. Originally it was an Origin division and ultimately in 2017 when Jocko came on, it became Jocko Fuel. We really rebranded it and really leaned into him and the vision he had for what he wanted to do with products. And you know, Origin was on a rocket ship and Jocko Fuel was on a rocket ship. And in 2018, I transitioned transitions exclusively over to Jocko Fuel. And so I've been helping just grow that thing as much as possible and having a really good time doing it.

Origin has a broad product line. Tops, bottoms, jeans, boots. Are all the products sourced and, and made in America or as the supply chain become more diverse?

Yeah, we like to say everything is, everything is made in America and sourced in America. Now there's a few exceptions. It's, there's a term called Barry, which is my understanding. And it's. And, and we like to say I think it's better than Barry. And so on the origin side of things, there's like, I think it's less, I think it's less than 1% of raw materials that come out from outside. From the, from outside the U.S. yeah, it is truly like you can follow the cotton farmer all the way to the factory in Maine or now North Carolina. So the company really expanded, ended up having three facilities in Maine, then it ended up going to North Carolina and we, we, we grew there. Yeah. Yeah.

You got a hunting line coming out now, it looks like. So definitely a very kind of a man's brand, wilderness type feel to it. Look and feel.

Yeah, it's, it's definitely male centric, for sure. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, you know, male dominated brand, that's for sure. It started roots in jiu jitsu. It'll always have roots in jiu jitsu. But you know, it got into, from, from there it got into lifestyle and workwear. Denim, you know, blue jeans, you know, Core and Heart of America, you know, and, and from there went into a number of other things, but yes, now into hunting and activewear, like workout type, you know, gear. It's do. Origin is doing a lot. Yeah, yeah.

And I searched the website, couldn't find the skinny jeans. Didn't pop up.

Yeah, yeah, no, you'll find some. I think they're, I think they're called fighter fit. Okay. All right, well, so they, they, they're not skinny. I wouldn't say they're skinny. I'd say they're slim. I'd say there's, there's, there's definitely no skinny, Skinny jeans.

No, you're. I'm not going to look European jumping on the site there.

Yeah.

All right, well, cool. Well, look, so, so you got this great business going with your partner, and then how did it come to pass that you got connected to Jocko?

Yeah, like I said, In 2000, late 2016, there was a woman by the name of Sarah Armstrong who is, you know, amazing woman, a friend of ours now, and she was actually a listener and a friend of Jocko, but a listener of the podcast. And she got tired of hearing Jocko talk about this little geek company up in Maine. When people would ask him, he convinced a lot of people, you know, to start jiu jitsu through spreading, like, what it was all about. And so they would always ask, what kind of gi should I get? What kind of uniform should I get? And he would always say that, hey, there's this little company up in Maine. If anybody ever talks to the guy, let him know I'm trying to get a hold of him. I want to, I would like to partner with those guys. And so finally he ended up getting on the phone. He ended up getting on a long zoom call with Pete. And I remember the phone call, listening to them talk to each other. It was like that. It was like talking in a mirror, you know, it was, it was pretty funny. There was a lot of alignment, ton of synergy, and it was just a, it was like a perfect match right out of the gate.

So, so he had a product or a product concept. He was already in market. You guys had marketing chops. He had a growing business. It made sense to put the two together, I guess, or to partner and maybe some new ventures together. And, and there's a lot of interplay between the brands, especially if you go to both of the websites and stuff like that. So what was the concept for Jocko? Fuel, clean, healthy ingredients. But originally, the taste. You, you, you, you didn't get the taste right out of the gate.

Yeah, I mean, so what happened was, you know, Jocko had come on the origin side of things, and he was super stoked to be part of this American manufacturing. But he also, you know, we, we, we talked and. Because when, when he realized we had a small nutrition thing going on, obviously it came up in conversation. Kid and I started to talk and He's a, as you can imagine, like, he's just a. The ultimate high performer. So, of course, someone like himself and as you listen to him talk about his past, like, he's, he's had good and bad experiences with, with supplements. You know, as a former seal, like, they would, of course they would use, you know, supplements and energy drinks or whatever they needed to. To perform. And so he had the ability to try all kinds of different ones, see what he liked and, you know, know and see the ones he didn't like. And he had an idea of what he would do if he was to do his own. And so when we started talking, we had the same thoughts. Like, we were very much aligned. It was like, let's keep it as natural as possible. Let's make it, you know, with, you know, no snake oil. Just use tried and true ingredients that have great clinical literature that show efficacy and nothing, nothing in gray area. Stick to natural flavors and sweeteners. And at the time it was sweetener, we, you know, back in 2017, you really, if you were naturally sweetened, you had monk fruit and you had, you know, stevia, and so you'd pick one. And, you know, neither of us really cared for stevia that much, so we went with monk fruit. And monk fruit's an amazing sweetener. It's great. Has a ton of health benefits as well, which is very rare for a sweetener. And. But as a sweetener, it actually has a ton of limitations. You know, It's. It's like 400 times sweeter than sugar by weight, but it also just has a. Has a threshold. And when you get past that threshold doesn't. It doesn't taste very good. So, you know, to match the sweetness of the general consumer, you know, often what we found is we were having to push it above that limit. And so for the first few years, we were really just kind of capped on how sweet we could make the product versus what people needed. And so we were teetering on, like, using too much and getting, you know, a weird taste or using too little and not being appealing enough to the masses. And so until other sweetener and flavor technology came out that allowed us to do it better naturally, we were. We were kind of shackled to those limitations. And so we just, we ran with it and we made changes as we could, and we've made many changes along the way.

You're continuing to roll out new products. I think Mulk is a product that I've heard about coming out. Proteins and things like that. Can you talk a Little bit about your product development process and maybe when you come to a go or a no go decision on a product.

Yeah, it's a good question. So in the early days, it was almost exclusively like Jocko wanted to make what he wanted to take. So he would say, hey, I, like, I really need a joint product. Like, you know, I've put my body through, you know, everything and I, you know, feel the wear and tear. Like, let's build a joint support product. Okay, done. Check. And then we would, you know, feed the needs of really in the design and what he wanted and then take it to the, take it to the people. You know, he obviously had this massive audience, you know, through the podcast. And he, you know, of course he said, well, we'll just make what I want to take and if people want to buy it, that's great. You know, obviously we quickly learned people would want to buy it, but we truly made what he wanted. And so eventually that transitioned to, hey, what would, what would make sense for the brand? Because we've never been all about just jumping into categories that are just hot. Like, we don't just, oh, hey, there's a new, you know, you know, when, when, for instance, when BCAAs, you know, branch chain amino acids came back in a big way, we didn't jump on that train. We didn't jump on the collagen train. We didn't jump on a number of things just because they were hot. We, we, we did what we wanted to do when we wanted to do it. And that's been really nice. And so part of the evolution was me bringing to him the idea of, hey, what do you think about doing this and doing it our way and putting a different spin on it. And for me, the product development cycle sort of like, I would really say the mindset is a lot of companies, what they'll do is they'll, they'll go into, if they're even going to try and innovate. Right? There's a lot of companies that will just launch a product that's just like Copycatter and me too. But let's say they're going to innovate. There's usually two sides to change. I guess that's the best way for me to explain it. And so there's the side of like, hey, we're going to give people more of what they want, or hey, we're going to take out things that people don't want. But they almost. Companies almost never check both boxes. They almost never say, hey, we're going to give them what they want and take out the things they don't. And so anytime we go into a product, what we try to do is we try to do both of those. So with an energy drink, it's like, okay, we didn't just say, hey, we're going to give them caffeine, but we're going to take out, you know, the, the, the chemical preservatives of sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate that people try and avoid nowadays. We're not just going to take out the, the artificial sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame, SK and, and whatnot, and then put in a natural sweetener. So we didn't say, hey, we're just going to exclude the things that they don't. Which, by the way, we could have done and been perfectly successful because people would have bought it just because they're like, oh, I got an energy drink and I don't have to sacrifice my health. But, you know, what we said was, hey, we're going to also say, hey, we want to replace excessive caffeine with adding other nootropic ingredients. What we're going to do is we're going to add other compounds that can help caffeine actually work better. And so we're looking at both sides of it. We're not just looking at it very linearly. And so that's a, that's a really defining factor for us when we're looking at bringing a new product to market. And it's, again, you know, done very well for us.

What is a nutraceutical?

Yeah, for me, I like to use the term nutraceutical because supplement has such a negative connotation to so many people. Right. It's really what it is. And, and to me, there's a difference between, there's, there's a, to me, nutraceutical is a step further. So a supplement is like, hey, I'm going to supplement. Like, let's say you have vitamin D deficiency. You're going to supplement with vitamin D so you can replace that deficiency. That's awesome. With the nutraceutical, I look at it like, okay, there's other things. There's, there's compounds, there's botanicals, there's things in nature that we can use as medicine. So if you're dealing with some sort of underlying issue, whether that be joint pain, whether that be memory loss, whether that be low testosterone, you know, a number of these things that you might encounter in living because. Right. You're basically getting Attacked on all fronts all the time. Right. And so there's these nutraceuticals, much like there are pharmaceuticals and these natural things in nature that we, we can take and we can extract and we can use to oftentimes turn on the body's natural biological mechanisms to improve that portion of their health. And so that, to me is where the difference between just saying, hey, I'm going to supplement with something and hey, I'm going to use nature to heal.

These products generally would be focused on recovery, restoration. What about anti aging?

Yeah, that was.

Or is that more peptides and things like that?

Well, we do have an anti aging product. Okay. Actually, so yeah, so there's.

How does that work?

Yeah, so there's a number of ways to, to target aging. Right. And so a lot of people don't know this, but you know, not to, to shoot ourselves in the foot, but the, the one thing that people can do that's been clinically tested that has had a more profound effect on biological aging markers. The Dunedin Pace is really the problem. Probably the gold standard of clocks they use to measure your biological age, there's a number that they've used over time, and this Dunedin Pace is probably the, the best. And so what they found is there's a number of nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals and therapies that people have done like, like oxygen therapies, you know, cold shock, heat shock, those types of things. They've all, a lot of them have had great effects. There's actually nothing that has had as profound as of an effect as a reduction of caloric intake over time. So what we know is the thing that's actually going to help increase lifespan is eating less calories over time. That's the thing that's going to help the most. Now, to take it a step further, of course, you know, you have things like peptides, you have other pharmaceutical drugs that are, that are used to target different genetic actions. But the one thing that we found that we really leaned into was, was the NAD side of things. So obviously we have NAD3. So which NAD3 is actually a little bit different. So NAD itself isn't ultra bioavailable when you just consume it. So people take these precursors like NMN and nr, which, which both work literature seems to be more recently supporting the NR side of things. But we took a different approach. Although I'm a big proponent of nr, we took a different approach and we ended up using a trademark, very expensive, trademarked ingredient. It's actually a compound of three ingredients and what they found was like in this combination, in this ratio, it actually made your body create more nad and you didn't have to use the precursor. And so the, the anti aging compound, the, the actual, there's multiple capsules in this packet that we have. It's called time war. And so the anti aging blend in There is, is NAD3 and it's a, it's got two other ingredients. One is called PQQ and the other one is called spermidine and the trademark version is youth. And that one's really interesting because spermidine is, it got its, you know, it's got its name because I believe the compound was originally found in sperm. And so of course scientists at spermidine and so I believe that it's predominantly extracted through wheat germ now. And this spermidine, it doesn't take much. There's actually only 3mg which is considered a high dose. And so this spermidine, what it does is it what would normally take, you know, exercising or fasting to trigger autophagy process in the body to rid the, think about it is like kind of ridding the body of dead or damaged cells. This fermidine will do it by just ingesting it. So it'll actually turn on that body's mechanism. And so this anti aging blend is pretty powerful. And so that's one of the ways that we're targeting aging aside from best thing to target aging is exercise. So what do we do? Support exercise?

Well, and you say caloric intake. So you look at, Yeah, I, I, I was listening to, I don't know who it was. Maybe Jordan Peterson was talking about the reduction over time and grip strength in males due to our diets increased processed foods and things like that. And our grip strength is decreasing as our testosterone is decreasing and much at a much faster rate than women's grip strength is decreasing. So look, don't take that as a fact because I heard that on the Internet. So but, but I can tell you.

I agree, I understand the grip strength thing is 100%. I didn't know the statistic around the men versus women, but it's probably correct. You know, we're surrounded by the, really what it is is it's a sedentary lifestyle. It's ultra processed foods. I don't like saying processed foods because everything's processed right. I mean just like grinding. Like I had, I had, you know, I'm a partner in a direct to consumer ranch to table beef company and you know, I had some of their Burger for, for lunch. Technically, it's processed, it's run through a grinder. So. But when you're talking about ultra processed foods.

Yeah, like there's no food actually in it.

Yeah, there's. Yeah. I mean it's, you know, what it is, is it's, it either has a ton of preservatives, has a ton of food additives, or it doesn't have a ton of nutritional value or it's, it's just so far from its origin source. You know, this, there's a big, you know, there's a lot of disagreement on this subject. You know, people will say food is food and I won't get into all that. But in my opinion, sedentary lifestyle, the ultra processed foods, along with the endocrine disruptors that we have in our lifestyle, the, the, the phthalates, you know, being constantly, I mean, surrounded and wrapped in which it's, it's hard to get away from. You know, I'm drinking out of a plastic bottle.

Right.

You know, so what I say is you just try and minimize that stuff. Like you're not going to get away from it in, in our, in our current society. Like we're not going to go back to drinking out of glass only. You know, I know some guys that sleep in only cotton boxers and cotton sheets and they won't sleep in polyester. And I get it. What I would say is limit, limit it as much as you can, but you're not going to be able to get away from, from all of it.

Yeah. And the product that you were talking about is called time warp Time.

War time. War. War on time. Yep.

War on time. Awesome. So you're constantly innovating, you're coming up with great products. You obviously practice what you preach and you're very responsible in the way that you're bringing the stuff to market. What is the current distribution of the product line? Major retail locations. Can you buy it online? Where are people buying this?

Yeah, so we still do a lot of sales through our website and Amazon, but our retail footprint is growing rapidly. You know, we first launched into, our first national retail partner was vitamin shop in 2020. We launched in February. So, you know, March hit and, and you know, things got crazy, but it was good. We were the fastest growing new brand. Excuse me, fastest growing new brand of 2020. We were brand of the year last year for Vitamin Shop and, and this year they, they ran it by product and we were, you know, I think product of the year out of three out of five categories, I believe so you know, we've really had a great relationship with them, but it grew, you know, we really excelled in regional grocery. So places like Hannaford Brothers up in the Northeast, Meyer out in the Midwest, you know, Heb down in Texas, those regional grocery partners have been phenomenal for us. But we are launching into Walmart later this month and so that'll be nationwide Walmart launch for a couple of our products. And that's the big one, you know, that's the big, that's the big next step. That's the big test. And it's always been our goal. It's always been Jocko's goal, like his biggest. He said it, I remember since day one. So what's the long term plan? What's the goal for, for the company other than, you know, let's make great products and hopefully make a profit? From a business standpoint, it was, what do you want to do? And he said, I want to like, I want these products to be accessible at someone's fingertips, like on the ready. Like, you know, if they want to drive to the store and get them, then I, I want to make them available. And so this launch into Walmart will essentially do that with a couple of our products. It's not the full product line because we have a lot of products, but a couple of our products will, you know, be nationwide in Walmart, which I believe covers, I think it's 80% of the United States as far as like shoppers. So that's really checking the box for us and you know, we're just going to keep going, keep growing.

Sergey from Google said that they spent 70% of their time on their core business, 20% in adjacencies, which are businesses that are related to the business, and then 10% just out of the box innovation as you look to the future and obviously one plus one plus one continuing to add distribution, incremental adjustments to the product line, continue to bring great resources to people that are interested in health. What are, do you have a mechanism in your team to get away and just think about what's possible and maybe what's missing from something that can just be a, you know, out of left field type thing for you guys?

Yeah, do we have a mechanism? Yeah, we do. I mean we, we do a number of off sites with, with some really bright people. You know, one of our, you know, he's a partner of the brand now but he, he started off as a board member. His name's Kip folks. And so he's strategic advisor to my partner Pete, as Well, and so Kip was the co founder of Under Armour. And so having someone that started day one with, you know, Under Armour grew it to, you know, multi billion dollars for, you know, had done every role imaginable through the organization as it, as it grew has just been insanely beneficial. And we have great investment partners, we just have such a great team. So I'd say there's no shortage of outside of the box idea conversations, that's for sure. It is never vanilla.

Brian, what do you do when you're not working, man? How do you keep the balance between fast growing, high profile business and then keeping yourself sane, keeping yourself balanced and, and making sure, sure that you're feeding those aspects of your, of your soul as well?

Well, I would say, I think the, it should be a, I, I would say this like, it should be like a pursuit of balance. But if you're on a rocket ship like this.

Yeah.

You're often not balanced. You're just, you're just not. And, and you know, I have some people that, I have some friends in, in business that you know, probably do a better job than me balancing that. And I have some that do, you know, I know for a fact do a worse job. For me, it just comes back to you gotta service the machine, you know, you can't let it break down. So you, it's okay to push it though, in my opinion especially I, I also know, like I'm not a spring chicken anymore, but at the same time I'm probably feel a lot better right now than I will when I'm 60, 65, 70. So take advantage of the, the, the energy and the, the way I feel now and you know, and you know, postpone a little bit of that freedom and satisfaction and, and just put it down now so I can reap the benefits later. So I would say I, I definitely still prioritize getting to the gym, doing my, you know, like it particularly Jiu Jitsu. Like I've been doing Jiu jitsu for, you know, 15 years. I still make sure I get on the mats once a week and you know, and then, you know, I still, you know, when I find time, I'm doing the sauna. I don't do the cold plunge nearly as much as I used to.

Yeah, I don't blame you for that.

It's, it's.

I got a sauna and a cold plunge right next to it. And the cold plunges, it's lonely, it gets neglected.

Yeah, you know, I, I got really, I was really heavy in, in the cold Cold exposure thing. And I think it has a ton of benefits. What I actually found was I went through a period of about, I don't know, probably three months, four months where I did it like every single day in a row. And what I actually found was you grow just like anything, you grow a conditioning to it. And the cognitive benefits that I was getting from that stimuli kind of faded. And so what I found was like, and that's where I got the most benefit from it, like as far as like cold shock proteins for longevity and stuff. I'm sure you're still, you're probably still getting those benefits even with conditioning. But I was using it for like the cognitive benefit. Like I just felt so much more alert and on, on, on point after using it. That when that started to fade I was like, well this doesn't make sense. So then I started using it kind of on an as needed basis. Let's say I was jet lagged or I had to go into a big meeting or something. It's like hitting that before something really important where you're going to perform. Like that's a hack. And when you have that conditioning built up, I noticed that the return was a little bit diminished. So yeah, I, I kind of pulled back on that. But the sauna, like I, I wish I got in the sauna every single day. I mean we know the health benefits to that are profound, so. But yeah, I mean trying to eat healthy, trying to eat clean, working out, trying to prioritize sleep, that's the hard one, right? You know, when you got a lot of, to do, it's. I'm thankful that I have, you know, I have a two year old daughter who is amazing and thankfully on the, on the regular, sleeps really, really well, you know, after some sleep training. But you know, there was a period of six months to a year that, that, that was, I didn't know what sleep was so you know, it was, it's fun, a lot of fun.

Well, congratulations on that. I mean with the cold tub, I mean our bodies adapt and you know, contrast is key and conf. Body confusion helps and anything you do every day, man, we are adaptable and our bodies are just going to adjust right to it. So you got to keep it like any relationship with yourself. Like you got to keep it fresh and you got to keep changing it out. And congratulations on your daughter. What you were an entrepreneur from an early age. What advice would you have to young people today that are just thinking about cracking into business?

I would say, I mean it's, it's changed so much over the last few years too. When I've done, done more of these types of interviews or started working with other entrepreneurs, like my answer has, has changed. I would say the best piece of advice I could give that currently, right now, snapshot of my mindset because it changes, it evolves. The best piece would be you. I think that you have to embrace the sacrifice. And so a lot of people will say, you know, the key to success is, you know, a great idea or timing or heart. We always hear like hard work. But for me it's like think of it as sacrifice. And when you can do that and you can be okay with it, you're, you're, you're gonna be able to sleep better because it's not going to weigh on you as much. You understand? It's a conscious decision. So if you're not okay with it, it's going to eat at you. And so you have to say, okay, I'm going to sacrifice this time with my family or my loved ones or doing something I'd rather be doing, whether that's hiking or maybe it's biking or maybe it's swimming or whatever it is. It's okay to sacrifice a little bit now for something more later and it's probably necessary. But the difference is, I think with a lot of entrepreneurs is they understand they need to do the sacrifice, but they never get right with it. They don't understand, they don't really get comfortable with it. And so it eats at them. And so that's one thing I'd say is just get comfortable with it, man.

That's a, that's a great point. You know, and back to the balance thing. Balance is a fallacy. If you're going to do something great, then you're going to sack the more it's. You're going to sacrifice greatly for it. You don't have to do it your whole life. People that worked for jobs said it was the hardest but greatest 18 months that they survive. They're working 120 hours a week cranking out those iPhones. But man, I got a little hack and I don't, I don't think I heard it anywhere. I just think it, I just came up with it one, one morning and it was change the meaning. So anytime that I find myself dissatisfied with something or upset or, you know, even going into negative self talk or, you know, maybe I don't feel sorry for myself anymore, I think I've overcome that. But like just, you know, like feeling like I would rather be Doing something else, even though I know this is what I need to be doing, or when something goes bad, I just change the meaning of it. I'd be like, okay, what's the universe trying to teach me right here? You know, what a great opportunity that, you know, the size of an entrepreneur is directly related to the size of their problems. And if I didn't have five things that were just weighing down on me right now, then my business would probably not. Would be small. And so, you know, you can. You can pretty. I can snap myself around in half a second by just changing the meaning of something, which shows how programmable we are and in a way, kind of how stupid we are, how malleable we are, how gullible we are. I can trick myself into almost anything.

I like that. It's similar to. I like it a lot, actually. It's a mindset thing, right? I mean, it's just mindset. That's what it is. And my buddy JP Dinelle, he. He always says, like, I get to do this. So the moment that he gets tasked with something that he maybe wouldn't normally want to do, he says, oh, cool, I get to do this. You know, because he lost, you know, as a former SEAL himself, you know, he lost team members, and he. He changes that mindset to, like, I could not have the opportunity to do anything. So what I'm gonna complain about, you know, having to do this paperwork. I'm gonna complain about having to, you know, have this meeting with this person that I don't really want to meet with. It's like, no, I get to do this. So I like that. It's just. It's just a. It's a really. It's a maturity of mindset. Right. So obviously you didn't have that always.

No.

And so I like that. That's cool.

Think about when you're, like, 3/4 the way through a workout, and it's not too hard, but you're bored, and you're just like, okay, I want to get through this. I got, you know, I got two more sets. Two more sets of this circuit to do. Yeah, I know I'm going to get through it, but, like, my mind is already halfway through my day, and I'm not focused on it. And because of that, you know, I'm not really given the effort. And then, you know, just change the meaning to something. Hey, what? Not. Why would I. What an opportunity to do this and not waste this time. And next thing you know, your trainer or your workout partner's like, dude, what Got into you, you know, like all. You just. You just did. You just did twice as good as you did the last set, and it was just like. Well, I just. I. I just changed my mind and it just takes a second, but, well. Awesome. Yeah. Brian, this has been great. I really appreciate you being on. Congratulations on all your success. Appreciate you bringing these great products to bear. And I really learned some things and the notes I took. But the benefit is I can go back and listen to this again about some of these compounds and stuff in your time war product, because I think for me and so many of us out there, we're just looking to finish impeccably. We want to be our best self. We want to have energy. And there's so much noise out there about, you know, what. What do you need and what. What don't you need? So I'm definitely going to dig deeper into the product line here, order a couple of things, and I'll. I'll let you know how it goes.

Awesome.

Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Last question, though. Brian, for you, if you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life today, what would that be?

Oh, man.

What's your go to? What do you. What would you tell your daughter?

I'd say take the chance.

Awesome.

Yeah. What's it. I mean, that's. That. That. That would be. It is. Just take the chance. This. You can probably always go back to whatever it is you were doing before. So what's the. What's the. What's. What's the risk? Right. Just take the chance.

Most of the things we do as entrepreneurs aren't fatal.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

This has been Brian Littlefield with Jeff Duden. We have been on the home front. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.