Iron Man Athlete and Founder Mark Sisson

And particularly for an entrepreneur. Look, if you can't take the bad times, then you're not cut out to be an entrepreneur because there are a ton of a bad time.

Welcome everybody. I am Jeff Duden and we are on the home front. As always, this podcast is brought to you by Homefront Brands. Simply building the world's most responsible franchise platform. Encouraging entrepreneurs to take action and transform their lives, impact communities and enhance the lives of those they care the most about. All the while delivering enterprise level solutions to local business owners out there on the home front where it counts. So if this sounds like you, check us out@homefrontbranch.com today and start your next chapter of greatness, building your dynasty on the home front. I will be looking for you here. And we have a incredible treat today on our podcast. Mark Sisson.

Hey Jeff, thanks for having me.

Oh, 100%. I'm going to speak a few words about Mark. Mark was born in Maine and is the oldest of four siblings. He attended Williams College where he was a pre med candidate and earned a biology degree. Mark is married to his wife Carrie and they have two children. And he is a follower of the Paleo Diet and markets his own version of it called the Primal Blueprint Diet as a part of this initiative. He started the food blog Mark's Daily Apple in 2006 and has almost written a number of diet and exercise books, including the best selling book the Keto Reset Diet. Reboot your metabolism in 21 days and burn fat forever. And who doesn't want that that? Mark finished fourth in the February 1982 Ironman World Championship. In the 1970s, he was a record setting runner. Mark served for 15 years as chairman of the International Triathlon Union Anti Doping Commission and as the ITU's liaison to the International Olympics Committee. Mark, we are honored to have you on the home front today.

Pleasure. It's great to be here.

That's about a tenth of the stuff that you've done. So would you mind giving us your background? Maybe some family stuff, how you grew up, your athletic career, Just anything you care to share about that?

When I share my story, it, you know, I have to preface it by saying it's a very circuitous route. I never set out to become what I became. I had a lot of goals and a lot of, a lot of aspirations, but I let life take me in whatever direction seemed most appropriate at the time. I was always passionate about what I was doing, but, you know, willing to pivot when necessary. Just grew up in a small fishing village in Maine. 2,200 people in the town, most of whom went on to become, you know, fishermen or work in the tourism trade. I was interested in becoming a physician, was pre med. I left the small town to go to a. To a private school. I was fortunate enough to get accepted into the Phillips Exeter Academy. Had a great time from there. I went on to Williams College. Real athletic pursuits I took on were. Were running. Partly because I was growing up in Maine and going to school in Maine. I lived a mile and a half from school, and I found it just easier to run to and from school than to take the bus or to. To walk. I embraced the idea that running was a great form of transportation. And lo and behold, when the track season rolled around and I went out for the mile and the two mile and we win them both, I realized I'd found my calling. So I wound up doing cross country and track. Even though I was pre med and thought I wanted to be a doctor, I continued to pursue an athletic career, if you will, and postpone medical school while I was training for the Olympic trials. Going up into 1980, was always interested in performance, human performance, and not just athletic performance, but just people in general. How could people become stronger and healthier and leaner and fitter and without so much pain and sacrifice and suffering and everything that we thought we needed to have to do in order to achieve those goals? And so, even as I was winding down my athletic career due to injuries and a few other roadblocks in my way, I shifted. I pivoted to doing research on health and fitness and writing books on how we could achieve greater health. And that's what really became the impetus for the primal blueprint, which was my version of the paleo diet and all the keto books I wrote. As a result of my investigations into, and the research into human performance and, and how food impacted performance, I realized that there was a major omission in the food that was offered in the retail to consumers in general. And that was a better for you, whether it was a sauce or a topping or a dressing or a marinade, sort of had this breakthrough. They were sort of not very good for you. You know, you were told you had to use mayonnaise sparingly, you had to use salad dressing sparingly. Don't use too much. It contains too much fat, contains too much oil, it contains so much sugar. Well, we wanted to kind of knock that out of out of the way because I felt like these things that you put on food to make them taste better ought to be imparting some health benefit to the food, not just not making it worse for you. And so we created a whole category of better for you foods, which launched in 2014. And so the company, Primal Kitchen grew quite rapidly. You know, we were in all the Whole Foods and Sprouts and Publix and within two years of, of launch, which was very unusual for a nascent food company. Four years after I started the company, I got a great offer to sell it to Kraft Heinz Corporation. Not because I necessarily wanted to leave it, but because that was really the best way to scale it to make these things available to the masses. I'm still very much involved. I sold the company, but I'm the face of the brand. I'm on the label. I involved in the creation of new products. Yeah. So that's that part of my life that led up to health and fitness and performance and food. And then most recently I've pivoted into footwear. So I'm making a, a better for you shoe now.

Well, let's talk about building credibility as an entrepreneur. You had a vitamin company first and you were selling supplements on TV I think back in 95. I think you were an early partner or supplier to Beachbody, which is a very, very successful over, over many decades organization. And you did a television show also after that. You're coming out of a career of running and I think you were early on, you like right out of school. I think you were a painting contractor as well to kind of fund you.

I put myself through the last year of Exeter, all, all of Williams and then the next seven or eight years I painted houses to support my running habit and then ultimately to support my writing habit and my acting habit and whatever else came along.

Yeah. And I think that's, you know, for our listeners that's particularly interesting because you don't start building, you know, a several hundred million dollar value business right off the bat. As a matter of fact, you were 61 when you started that business. Back in 14.

That's it.

Yeah.

So overnight success.

Yeah, well, exactly. And everything we do in our life is accretive. So, you know, once you decided you were an entrepreneur, which is all the way really, you're painting houses. How did you keep going from one thing to the next thing? What was your mindset when you were going through that and did you have a clear destination or was it like, I'm just going to do the next big thing that makes sense for me based on what's in front of me.

Really the next Big thing. So, you know, I really took you through basically 40 years of my history. But the things that happened, the little point to point, connecting the dots, only make sense in retrospect.

That's right.

At the time made, made almost no sense. So I went from being a painting contractor to starting a frozen yogurt shop. In 1981 I built a frozen yogurt shop with a partner of mine. And from there we decided we were going to expand into a frozen yogurt shop with a salad bar emporium and muffins and soups. You know, we were I guess fortunate to be able to get to borrow money at 17 and a half percent. There was no way we were ever going to be successful with that sort of debt. We, we went bankrupt. From there I, I moved down to become, I want to become a sportscaster. I moved to Los Angeles, but I never really got the, the sports casting gig that I wanted. But while I was doing that, painting houses, always making money, always, you know, having something, some gig going on that was providing me more than a decent life. As things transpired I just, I had retired from competing, but I was coaching and I was coaching professional triathletes as a coach. And then having my pre med background, I got co opted, if you will, onto drafting the anti doping rules for the sport of triathlon in the US Based on my participation in that, I was asked if I would be the executive director of the U.S. triathlon Federation. The federation was in tatters and I fixed it and did everything I set out to do. But I certainly wasn't going to be a career non profit public servant. From there I went to work for a friend of mine who had a vitamin company. I had really no equity in that company so I wasn't interested in staying very long. So I left to start my own and that's when I started my supplement company. And that was 1997. I found that being a guest on these little talk shows that talked about health and fitness throughout the country was a great forum for selling my vitamins. And it was great. My company grew. 2004 a couple of things happened that were sort of again a sea change in merchandising in E commerce where the Internet actually became a thing and people were actually buying on the Internet. So they no longer picked up a phone and call now in order from our operators are standing by.

So shipping and shipping and handling, it's.

All of that stuff. So the Internet became a thing. Then there were 300 cable channels and Dish, Dish Network. The concept of an infomercial no longer was sort of unique and intriguing. Now they were everywhere and I had to scramble to figure out what my next move was going to be. Well, my next move, as you alluded to, I did a TV show. I actually produced and directed and starred in. We shot 52 half hour episodes of a show called Responsible Health. And I bought time on Travel Channel. So every morning at 8:30 on Travel Channel you could see Responsible Health. I blew, you know, a million and a half dollars that I didn't have and learning that lesson that I could not make a self liquidating TV show being my own sponsor. So I was scrambling in those days, like what's next? I had built this amazing vitamin company and, and it was starting to dwindle because I wasn't getting new customers. I had a lot of existing customers. But over time those customers lose interest, they go elsewhere, they get intrigued by someone else's product. So you have to keep filling the tank with new customers. And I wasn't able to do that. So I said, well, I'll tell you what, I'm going to start a blog. So I started Mark's Daily Apple in 2006 with the idea that it would be my platform on which I would. Oh, by the way, I sell vitamins over here. And, and it worked for a while and I, and the, and the blog became a massive success. It was a top ancestral health blog.

Were you writing all the content on the blog?

Initially I was, but quite quickly I realized I needed a writing team. And so that's, you know, one of those lessons that I learned early on that you need a good team of people behind you no matter how smart you are. And really when you really drop your ego, you need a team of people who are smarter than you are.

Yeah. You know, I was just going to say early in my career, in some of my early business builds, I needed a good team of people behind me. We're awarding more franchises in a month than I used to award in an entire year. In my best years, when I had my previous business, I need a team of people in front of me.

Yeah.

Because what I found out is, man, I am a big blocker. I'm a huge constraint. I sense that you can probably do every job in the building, but there's always somebody better at a job. When I learned that, that's when my career really took off. Did you find that as you transitioned from the blog up to the primal line and the 1415.

I'm the best painter I ever met. Right. And so When I went to paint houses, I would be frustrated because I'd have other people, you know, who were not as fast as I was or not as skilled as I was. But I'm just me. And I can, you know, I'm not worth $2,000 an hour painting houses. So I had to learn, you know, how to train other people to do what I do. And that's what I do with my writing team. I train them to do what I do. So when it came to food, I really had no business being in the food business. I just had an idea that I wanted to transform it. I was naive enough to go in and say, I think I could disrupt this.

So I'm on a health journey. I'm 55 years old. I'm probably. I am at my lowest weight since college, and I'm in the best shape since college. Now. That was instigated by about 18 months ago. I had both of my knees replaced. So that was a huge constraint for me. I wasn't mobile, I couldn't walk, I couldn't train. So that gave me the opportunity to get healthy. You know, I can't believe what a difference that nutrition has made in my life over the course of this year. But still, I'm constantly surprised by things that I learn and mistakes that I'm making. So you said seed oils. So I went home last night, and I've got this. I love this Asian poppy seed dressing that I have, and I turn it around because I had. I mean, I go through a bottle of this a week, and the first two ingredients on it are like soy oil and another oil, and it's the first two ingredients.

Yeah.

So, like. Well, I'm like, that's out. Where do people make mistakes? Or where are some of the hidden things in food that people in nutrition that people don't understand? And then also back to the original question was, when you. You started doing these types of products, like the mayonnaise, were you at the beginning of a trend?

Oh, yeah. And. And so that brings me to another point I want to raise, which is timing is huge when you start a business. Had we started five years earlier, certainly not 10 years earlier, it might have failed because we did not have the acknowledgment by the public and certainly by science that industrial seed oils are harmful and are bad for you. I was one of the early guys that said, look, these are. These are the oils that are killing us. It's not even sugar is bad and processed grains are bad, but industrial seed oils are worse. And they're probably the most insidious of, of all of the things that we eat because they're, as you found out, they're in your favorite foods and they're. And they're hidden in there. People assumed that because they were derived from vegetables, they must be okay for us. And for the longest time, corn, oil, canola, soybean, these were all considered heart healthy. And, and they're not. And it now it turns out that science is finally catching up to the, to the notion that, you know, not only are they not good for you, they're bad for you. And so it was. It took some acknowledgement in the marketplace by the consumer to understand that when they pick up a label like you just did with your favorite dressing and go, holy crap. I like, like, I had no idea. And I was just assuming these guys have my best interest at heart. No, what they had at heart was making a great tasting dressing with the least expensive ingredients so that they could deliver at a price that you would be willing to pay. How we disrupted it was we said, what's the best possible product we could build in this category? And then once we've built it, then we arrive at a price like, you know, how can we price this to. So that we can stay in business, but so the consumer doesn't get pissed off because of how much money's being charged. The real aha moment for us was when we launched a jar of mayonnaise that was 999 at retail in whole Foods, when most of the competitive mayonnaise for the Same space was 295 to 495. But we were proud to bring it in at 9.95 because our margins were not as good as, as big food that Was making the 3.99 mayonnaise? Right. So we were willing to do that, and we were able to do that because we wanted to deliver a product that the consumer could feel really good about buying and say, look, it's good for me. It's got great ingredients, it doesn't have any of the offensive ingredients, and it tastes great. And, and once I've checked off all those boxes, the real question was how price elastic was, was that, how price sensitive was that going to be? Had we done that 10 years earlier when there was not the recognition, and I had this idea a long time ago, I just didn't act on it, and I'm glad I didn't, because the timing would have been, would have been wrong and it would have been a much, much harder slog. We've Already identified several of these things. Jeff, we've got, you know, you got to have a great team. You obviously have to have a great idea. But also timing plays, plays a critical role in all of this.

Yeah. Have you seen those robotic lawnmowers running around everywhere?

Well, I, I live in a condo in South Florida, so I don't see any of those, but I've heard about them and I've seen pictures.

Yeah, well, so, yeah, I started the business around that.

Okay.

At least, at least 10 years to.

Okay.

You know, and it's. Everything was there, full support. But I mean, the dog wouldn't eat the food. The customer just was not ready. But it's, it's, it's really challenging to decide like what's aligned, like what's inside of, of of your wheelhouse, what's outside of it. And I think your point of building credibility, you know that the 10 years that you've invested and you're creating this content, you're building an audience, you're gaining trust. I mean, everything that you had built you to a point where over a four year period, you created something that was truly incredible and brought it to market just on time and were rewarded for it. So you never know. At 61 or 55 with me launching our platform, it's the greatest thing we've done yet. And I don't feel like I'm over.

Yeah. And I would tell young people also, because people are afraid of failure. And even more so now, I think young people, for some reason, whether it's the ecosystem on the Internet where all you see are Lambos and mansions, people don't see a lot of the effects of failure. Failure is an integral part of, of building a business and learning and understanding, you know, what not to do. The next time when I tell young people is you only need one home run in your life. You know, like you could grind it out working for the man. I am one who was not. And I was willing to roll the dice on everything I ever did. Now, not inappropriately, I never jeopardized my family, I never went into huge debt, but I went to zero a bunch of times, right. I had, I went to no money in the bank. But when you have no money in the bank and you're still living a life and you still love your kids and you still feed your family and you still put a roof over your head, that's a legitimate way of going about your life. As long as you are constantly moving forward, as long as you are doing things, when you do that if you continue to swim like a shark and, you know, you got to keep moving, if you continue to be aware of the opportunities, if you continue to pivot when it's appropriate, if you continue. Continue to keep your. Your focus on doing things, there will come a day when all of a sudden, the money piles up. It doesn't just accrue a little bit at a time. It's freaking. Piles up. But I didn't really have big money until I sold Primal Kitchen, you know, and that was. So that was my home run, right? And I would have been fine for the rest of my life doing what I was doing. But I kept wanting to, like, I want to create something different, really big, something bigger than I've done before. And that was. That was the drive. Not so much the money it was to build is to do something big. One of the things that happened as a result of our entering this space and being a disruptor is that we spawned, I don't know, 50, 100 other companies who now do what we started doing eight years ago. Well, when my mission was to change the way the world eats, if now there are all these other companies doing that, then I succeeded in my mission. Whether or not I made any money off all the competitors, I don't care. My mission was to change the way the world eats.

Well, you created accessibility, and that's, you know, for. For busy people who are interested in their health and nutrition. Accessibility to accurate information is tough because everybody's selling you something. You just look at the packaging and they make it look as healthy as possible, but then you flip the label around and it's not. Or you could say, I'm going to pick the most expensive thing on the shelf, because I think that's probably better quality, which is what I did a lot of times because I didn't know. So I'm like, well, it says organic, and it's. It's twice as expensive as the store brand.

Must be good.

It must be good. So that's. That's irrational. And then accessibility to these products now in a wider array of things. And I think Whole Foods. I eat lunch at Whole Foods almost every day to tap on what you said about entrepreneurship. Look, Dave Ramsey, we love you, and I've read your books, but look at what's happened with inflation. So if you're trying to save your way to prosperity and you're putting away a little bit of money and it's in a. Sit in your. And everything's in a safe place, or you're in your 401k at work. And that's great, but, you know, there's a lot of fees associated with that. You really need to have some asset classes, you need to have some businesses, you need to have some real estate. You need to have a diversity of things in your portfolio. And personally, what I've seen lately, especially with the rise of private equity since the mid-90s, there is always a buyer for a good business. There is always a buyer for a business that is first, that has cash flow. It's only fearful, really, the first few times, because after that, like you, like you said, like I've been. So when I bought my last partner out of the company that I built for 24 years and 11 months, and we had 240 locations and I sold it the day that I acquired, bought my last partner out, I was $4 million in debt. There was some real estate debt in there, and there were some. We were in the middle of some big projects and we owed some subcontractors $1 million. So it wasn't bad debt, it wasn't unhealthy debt. But I mean, at the end of the day, if something happened, I owed it. That was a big, a big deal for a guy in his mid-30s just to, to shoulder that burden, you know, so from there, I don't get fearful much anymore over things.

You know, it's because if you, if you keep control of things, you know, you know, you, you can, you might go back to zero. And, you know, if you go back to negative 4 million, you can declare bankruptcy, but. But nothing, right? You're not going to die. You're not going to. You, like, like, what's the worst that could happen, right? I start over again. Well, I've done that. Whether or not I intended or whether or not I knew it. I started over again a lot in my life. And I'm. And I'm fine with that. It's like. Because there are a lot of times when I said, now this looks like a better opportunity, or this looks like a different version of what I thought was the opportunity, and I'm willing to go to zero because I'm still living my life. I'm still spending time with my kids. I'm still loving my wife. I'm still taking a hike and enjoying the beauty of it. I'm still in the gym working out. I'm still doing all the things that I would do. Even if I had a billion dollars, I would be doing the same things I'm doing. So what's so bad about that? Right. It's just this thing that we layer over that we have to. You got to grind, as Gary Vee says. Right. You got to get out there and you got to grind it. Well, I don't even think you have to grind. I just think you have to be smart and, and stay focused, get a good team and, you know, assemble the component parts to build a business.

Yeah. So I retrospectively. So I never plug my book, but I have a book called Discernment the Business, and it's the business athletes regimen for a Great Life through better decisions. So what I did was, you know, in 2019, when I sold the business that I had built for the majority of my adult life, I looked back on it and I examined the inflection points and the decisions that I made that led me to the outcome that I had. And I realized that inflection points had a. Had. They always involved people, they involved a new opportunity, and they involve risk of loss. And so when you, when you can balance those things, like, what motivates me, what. What matters the most to me is my family, the people around me that, you know, I, I like to give to charity, but I also like to really help the people that I can touch that are in my, you know, with. Right in my orbit there. So, you know, when I, When I look back at it and I. I kind of deconstructed everything, you know, I found out that the ability to stop doing something was almost as important at certain times of my life as what the next thing was going to start. Because I've always said, look, if. If I'm going to be broke, I don't want to be tired too.

Yeah, exactly. Love that. Yeah.

Yeah. So I want my time back. Because what I want to do is everything you learn in your life is an. Is a, Is an asset. So I want my time back to be able to leverage all my contacts, all my assets and everything into that next new thing. And sometimes you've got to stop doing something material to be able to reconstruct it in a new, better way. And as I look back across your life, it's meant you just went from one thing and you leverage that to the next thing and you leverage that to the blog and you leverage that to Primal. And it's just a. It's a really a beautiful example of a business life. Well lived.

Well, and thank you. And you know, I tried to be retired. I sold a Primal Kitchen 4 1/2 years ago, and I tried to play golf. That didn't like that. It's I tried to, I tried to be retired and just, it's not who I am. And so I embarked on yet another journey. I started a, a footwear company with my son. We're having a blast. It's something that I've been passionate about my whole life. And again, I'm like, no one's making a shoe that, that, that encourages foot health, that encourages contact with the ground, encourages using all the small muscles of your feet. And so I'm like, I've got this renewed sense of like, retired, seriously, like. And my wife's going like, is this your last one, Mark? Like, like, when are we going to be able to, you know, really retire and travel? But I'm like, I'm leaving in two weeks. We're going out of two and a half months, trip around the world. That's our vacation. And I'll be working the whole time, you know, but I'll, be, I'll be enjoying it, but I'll be in the trenches on the calls, on the zoom calls. And so when I say you can have best, best of both worlds, right? I'm with my family, I'm traveling and I'm working and I'm getting stuff done. So I, I just, I, I love that about, about being an entrepreneur.

You know, I have a certain philosophy on that. I have a health and wellness platform with a fitness and a, an infrared sauna concept in it. I've got this home, home services platform with six companies into it. All of this stuff has been built over the last three to four years, you know, and it's like, why are you doing it? And I have a philosophy or a view that it's irresponsible to take our gifts and go away with it because it's not really about the money. To your point, when you have zero in the bank or you got a lot in the bank, you're still living your life and doing these things. And if I took everything that I learned, I wouldn't get to share everything that I learned. So I wrote a book and I put it all in there and, and doing all that. So I respect what you're doing. And the answer to your wife is, well, it depends how I'm feeling. When. When.

Yeah, accepted. I met my wife when she was. She. She and I were. Have been together 35 years. Among many things that I was doing in those days, I was, I was consulting with a clothing company, sports, a sportswear clothing company as part of my coaching duties. My wife was with her sister, had a women's Athletic Fitness Wear, a clothing company. And so I literally met her at a trade show and she was making leotards and you know, dance aerobic wear for women. So she stopped doing that when we got married. But all of a sudden now she's now the designer of our clothing line in the, in the paluva world here. So we have the shoes and then we have, you know, work out where to go with it.

Yeah, man, taking, finding great people and taking them with you.

That's it.

Can I ask a few questions about the, the, the shoe company?

Yeah.

What did the design process look like for you? Is it, is it, are, are you the main designer as to, you know, look, look and feel if these things. When you, when you knew you wanted to do this, like what was the first step in, in developing this product?

The first step was I knew what I generally, what I wanted to create. I wanted a five toed shoe. Not a regular shoe, but I wanted a five toed shoe and there was only one other company doing that. So I went and found a, a shoe dog. My first hire was a guy who's been in the shoe industry, in the athletic shoe industry for 45 years. Happened to be a teammate of mine on a, in a running club in 1979. And when I called him up, he not only remembered me, he's like, oh, you remember that day we went at the track and we did, you know, six repeat miles and you averaged 4, 25. And I averaged, he, he, he had every workout cataloged in his brain. So anyway, he'd been with Nike, he'd been with Reebok, he'd been with Hoka. So he was my original shoe dog, as they say in the industry. And, and he had all the contacts so he understood what we wanted to do. And he put me in touch with a designer who specializes in athletic footwear design and has worked with all the major companies, had some samples made, you know, put them through the wear test, went back. It's a, it's a, it's a lengthy process. I mean we started this company two and a half years ago when we just launched a few months ago. So it was over two years in the R and D phase with the design, with sourcing the materials, with getting all of the thicknesses right, with getting the torque right on the shoes. We have like six different styles in this, in this footwear brand. I was wear, testing them throughout Europe. I put 650 miles on a pair of these, hiking and running and working out the gym and they, you know, they exceeded all of my expectations. And so I really, every time I put them on, I had a smile on my face because, like, okay, this is exactly the shoe that I had envisioned. I can't wait to get this on the market and have people, you know, experience it and experience what a comfortable shoe feels like when you're out on a, on a, on a hike or in the gym or running or walking or even at work. Because for the most part, almost every shoe today, every modern piece of footwear is too restrictive. Even if you have a wide toe box, if even you get a triple E, you know, you're a man with a triple E shoe, the toes still taper at the front and they still squish together so they're uncomfortable and they can cause, you know, you mentioned bunions. I mean, bunions are a result of bad shoes. You're not genetically predisposed to get bunions. That's all about the footwear you've chosen.

Yeah, I was, I was self conscious of my feet as a young child and I shoved them into small shoes and I've got these bunions right now.

There you go. Yeah, yeah, so, so I think, you know, 77% of people complain of foot pain at some point in their life. And that's just, that's just wrong. I mean, feeders, there are main contact with the ground. Like, we got to take care of them. That's the organ that senses every, every time we make contact with the ground, it tells our brain how to, how to bend the ankle, how to bend the knee, how to torque the hip, how to flex the muscles to absorb the shock. And when you wear thick, restrictive cushioning shoes, all of that input is, is bypassed. And, and it's, and it's really sad that people wind up with low back pain because of their shoes. They wind up with knee pain because their shoes, they wind up with, you know, all of these other things that, you know, you're, you're a biomechanical marvel as you walk, as you're born. And then you just, we screw it up by, by, you know, eating bad food, eating the wrong kinds of food, wearing the wrong kinds of, you know, footwear, not exercising. All the things that we can talk about that, that, you know, we're this incredible organism that we got to take care of ourselves.

So from a marketing look and feel perspective, who, who is the customer that you're really targeting?

Yeah, so I have a, I have a young Disney star. He's got 11 million TikTok followers and he's like, 27 or 28, loves them, he's all about them. He's like, I want to, you know, he wants to invest, he wants to do all this stuff in the company. And I'm like, you know, we're, we're taking that a little bit slow. Meanwhile, I've got people live in my building who knew that. I've been doing this for a long time. One guy has. He's a tennis player. He's 65 years old. He wants to play tennis. His feet are horrible. They've been beat up over the years. Took him 15 minutes to put these shoes on the first time because he couldn't get his toes to, to fit into each of the individual sockets. Long story short, he's bought, he's now bought seven pair of them and that's all he wears, he wears ton of shoes when he's playing tennis because you, these are not built for that. But walking around all day long, going to the gym, going on walks, going on hikes. But he's, he's like, my God, Mark, you've changed. You've changed, changed everything about my life. I mean, I have a renewed sense of excitement about being fit and walking and moving. Whereas I used to, you know, I used to be so trepidatious about going out on a two mile walk in my old shoes because I afraid my feet would give out on me or my knees would hurt.

Yeah. I don't know if you've read Tipping Point, but it was either Vans or Chuck Taylor's or somebody where they had a shoe and they went out and gave it to all the kids that were, you know, in the, in the highly influential markets. And basically when other people saw these kids wearing these shoes, then they all wanted them and it was really, it was pulling into the marketplace, so. Right, right, yeah, yeah.

So to answer your question, I mean, you know, I thought our market was going to be largely male, 25 to 55, but it's all of a sudden, I go to the gym now and I see six hot women in, in tights wearing our neon pink shoes or the black ones working out, doing lunges and squats and whatever and thinking the shoes are like the cutest thing they've ever owned. Look, there's 350 million people here to 40 million people in the country. Everybody needs shoes.

Yeah.

And you know, we're not right for everyone, but I think everyone would be well served trying these shoes.

Yeah. I think you discount the shoes, but you, you jack up the price on the socks because you got to have you got to have a lot of socks to fit?

It's funny because we're giving socks away for free, so.

No, do it the other way.

That's funny. Give it like. Like a printer, right? Yeah. You give a shoe away for free and then they charge for the socks. I love it.

Yeah. Well, Mark, we're coming up on. On the hour here. I want to be respectful of your time, but I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed this. I got one selfish question to ask, though.

Sure.

Please tell me it's okay to drink coffee.

Oh, God, man. Absolutely.

All right.

Absolutely. I. I would say that's one of those things that I just. I just have to chuckle at. What? You know, the. The pundits and the medical professionals swing back and forth on that pendulum all the time. And coffee has never been bad for you. You know, they thought, well, it's caffeine. Is it good or bad? Look, coffee is one of life's great pleasures. It's. I would not condone my own personal life without coffee. I would say it's. Even if they found out that coffee was slightly bad for you, I keep drinking it. It because I think it's such a. It's such a part of my routine. It's, you know, I wake up in the morning, have a cup of coffee. I do the crossword puzzles. I read two newspapers. You know, that's my. That's my time. And coffee is such an integral part of that. Of that. Of that ritual for me. I couldn't imagine not drinking coffee.

That's exact. I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that answer.

That's right.

Oh, fantastic. So we have a question we like to wrap up with. If you had one sentence to make an impact in someone's life, do you have a go to. That you share with people or your kids or.

Yeah, those little things. I get asked those every once in a while and I forget what I said last time, but. Because they changed for me. But what's top of mind today is this too shall pass. And what is meant by that is no matter how bad things are, it will pass and things will be better. And particularly for an entrepreneur. Look, if you can't take the bad times, then you're not cut out to be an entrepreneur, because there are a ton of bad times being an entrepreneur, but it's like being bipolar, man. There are bad times being an entrepreneur, and then there's like, oh, my God, we just closed a deal for $275,000. You believe that, right? And it goes up and it goes down. So if, if you can keep in your mind that no matter how bad things are, this too shall pass, I think that's probably what I would leave people with.

Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much. I am going to be heading directly to palova.com p e l u v a.com and ordering myself socks and shoes today. And I assume that we can order online?

Yes, absolutely. I highly encourage it. Yes.

That's great. And then, Mark, where else can people find you or where would you like people to have your. To direct people to my blog for.

The longest, for, you know, 17 years has been marksdailyapple.com on Instagram. I'm Mark Sisson, primal. And you know, I mostly post shirtless shots of me working out there, but whatever. Oh, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be 70 next. I'm gonna be 70 next month. So at some point I, I said I want to show people what 70 is supposed to look like. So that's where I'm headed.

I. I think you, I think you should. Mark, it's been incredible having you on. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Thanks, Jeff. Good to be here.

Yep. So this is Jeff Duden with Mark Sisson and we are on the home front Homefront Brands building the world's most responsible franchise platform, all the while delivering enterprise level solutions to local business owners. So if this. Check us out here@homefrontbrands.com today and start your next chapter of greatness on the home front, I will be looking for you. Thank you.