DTC Health: Unlocking Tax-Free Money To Fight Chronic Disease With Justin Mares

Justin Mares is the Co-founder and CEO of Truemed, a payment tool that allows health and wellness brands and providers to harness consumer tax-free funds. He is also the Founder of Kettle & Fire, the Co-founder of Surely and Perfect Keto, and an investor at Long Journey Ventures. Justin strives to make health accessible and sustainable and create a food system that heals rather than harms.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:28] Justin Mares’ experience building and scaling an e-commerce brand
[8:46] Why Justin transitioned from bootstrapping his brand to acquiring an investor
[10:59] The process of moving from DTC to wholesale and becoming a top seller
[16:54] Justin shares his inspiration for starting Kettle & Fire — and the challenges he incurred
[23:19] What is Truemed?
[28:30] Success stories of companies utilizing Truemed in the DTC space
[31:02] How tapping into tax-free consumer health funds drives conversion rates
[36:20] Truemed’s method for scaling and gaining brand awareness
[40:09] Growth-driving tips from Justin
[56:46] How Justin became a serial entrepreneur
[1:01:37] Justin’s quirky office traits — and his journey to improve his health

In this episode…

Nearly 90% of the US population is at risk of chronic disease. While health accounts like HSAs and FSAs give consumers access to tax-free healthcare, they can only use them to cover qualified medical expenses. DTC wellness brands can offer the option to pay for products with these funds. How can these brands optimize this payment method to drive conversions and growth?

Health and wellness serial entrepreneur Justin Mares capitalized on a market need for affordable chronic disease prevention. Health, wellness, and supplement brands can integrate one-click HSA and FSA payment options into their Shopify sites. Consumer drop-off rates between add-to-cart and check-out are 30-50%, so when provided with alternative payment methods, consumers can save 30-40% a year on wellness products, increasing brands’ AOV, LTV, and conversion rates. Consumers can even make interest-free monthly payments on more expensive products.

Join William Harris in today’s episode of the Up Arrow Podcast as he interviews Justin Mares, the Co-founder and CEO of Truemed, about his tax-free solution for consumers with chronic illness. Justin also talks about his experience bootstrapping a brand, including transitioning from DTC to retail, his methods for scaling and gaining brand awareness, and how he became a serial entrepreneur in the health and wellness space.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"Every year that went by, you basically got the ability to plan another one to two quarters ahead."
"I'm a pretty sloppy, non-detail-oriented person, and that was reflected in the company."
"Progress on your business is intimately tied to how developed you are as an individual."
"The biggest issue in the US is the chronic disease crisis, bar none."
"Business is all hard, but you want to be solving the right kinds of problems."

Action Steps

Focus on growth strategies: Identify the outcome you want for your business and work backward to create a growth strategy that fits your goals and the market's potential.
Prioritize health in business decisions: Implement wellness products in your offerings or business operations that contribute to preventative health care.
Leverage influencer marketing: Collaborate with influencers who resonate with your target audience to build brand awareness and credibility.
Embrace agility in fundraising: Stay open to the idea of raising capital if it means accessing resources necessary for scaling.
Integrate HSAs and FSAs: Consider offering customers the option to use HSAs and FSAs for your health-related products.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:00

Music. Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders, sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show. Hey everyone.

William Harris 0:16

I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million. 100 Million and beyond as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Excited about the guests that I have today. Justin Mares. Justin is a seasoned entrepreneur. He's the founder of Kettle & Fire as well as Truemed. There's a lot we're going to talk about, both on the brand side as well as provider side here. Justin, excited to have you here.

Justin Mares 0:40

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

William Harris 0:42

Yeah, I was trying to think about who introduced us. And I know we talked about this before, and the best that I can remember is that it was perhaps a Slack channel with either it was either Benji Heim, Wilson hung or Sujin Patel. I don't know which one of it is. I'll thank all three of them, because I'm sure at some point in time we've crossed paths with all of them.

Justin Mares 0:59

Yeah, I used to work with Wilson at Kettle & Fire. And then, yeah, no, the other two all,

William Harris 1:04

yeah, yeah. I know, thinking about the first time we actually hung out though you came to Minnesota, we were working together, so we were actually helping rerun ads in the early days of Kettle & Fire. And you came to Minnesota, we went for a walk around Lake Harriet. And I don't know if you remember this, but I think I had just torn my meniscus at that time, and I didn't know it, but I was kind of hobbling around the path as we're walking around the lake. Yeah, that

Justin Mares 1:31

was my first time in Minnesota. I remember thinking it was like a beautiful place, and I still have not been back, actually, and really, all

William Harris 1:37

right, we gotta get you back out.

Justin Mares 1:39

I know that's a shame. Yeah,

William Harris 1:41

so before we dig into the good stuff here, I do want to announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that i pod recently. You can learn more on our website@Elumynt.com which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com, that said, onto the good stuff. I want to start off with the background and journey specifically on Kettle & Fire, because I think it leads into Truemed. Well, the idea here being that you've been there, done it, you've you've worked on, you know, brand side within e-commerce, you actually scaled that, I believe, to over 10 million in the first two years. What was it like building an e-commerce brand?

Justin Mares 2:28

That was my first time doing it. And so it was hard, you know, not that it's easy now, but it was certainly, I was making a lot of mistakes that you make just in the early days of starting a company. And so, you know, we, we also were not well funded. We bootstrapped for the first almost two years of the company, and then we only raised about a million dollars from there, and for for at least until, like, year three and a half, when we raised much more. But, yeah, it was, it was hard, man. I mean, I was I and, you know, my my brother, my co founder, we were just figuring out everything for the first time, like how to do marketing, how to do supply chain, how to do growth, how to do everything that goes into building an e-commerce brand, which I had no experience with and no one on the team had any experience with. So it was, it was a tremendous learning experience.

William Harris 3:16

I don't think I realized that you bootstrapped that for

Justin Mares 3:20

the first 18 months, yeah, well, I

William Harris 3:22

mean, that's a very crucial bootstrapping time. How did you go about building a business when you are very much cash locked? What was your, let's just say, those first 18 months. How did you get customers? Yeah, it's

Justin Mares 3:36

a good question. We we did a couple things at that time, this was late 2015 we launched, and we had a bunch of we were the first, like shelf stable bone broth product to launch at that time. And so we were fortunate in that we spent a lot of cycles making a product that was good in a category that had very little innovation. And because it was like a new thing. There were all of these influencers, especially in the Paleo world, which, you know, I knew and was sort of involved in that we're talking about bone broth, gut health, like the sort of different things that, you know, when they talk about it, people listen and they want to end up buying it. And so, because we were literally the first product on the market. We just went out to a bunch of these influencers and said, Hey, can we send you a free box? Do you like it? Like, if you enjoy the product, then talk about it with your audience. Like, you've already made 100 different posts on why bone broth is great, and you're getting paid none of them for none of them. And so, you know, work with us, and we'll actually make sure that you monetize and get paid for these and that, that plus SEO were like our two biggest channels at first, like we were able to very quickly rank for bone broth recipes, bone broth, you know, X, Y and Z things. And then had influencers start to talk about Kettle & Fire as sort of like the go to brand in this emerge. In phone broth space.

William Harris 5:01

Yeah, so that's interesting. I love the influencer stuff, and I want to come back to that one. But the SEO is interesting to me, because I don't hear a lot of brands say that SEO is their like, go to market strategy. It's a tough thing to sometimes get traction with that. Is it something that you already knew there was opportunity there. And so you said, like, I mean, like, you said it's bone broth, if somebody the right category, there's just nobody really competing at first for that is that it was, yeah,

Justin Mares 5:29

definitely. And I mean, our biggest risk from day one was basically that the market was just not going to be there, that it was going to be too small, it wasn't going to be meaningful. And that was, like, by far the biggest risk that we are taking as when we decided to start the company was just that the market never evolves and bone broth never becomes a thing that a lot of people want. And, you know, the downside of that is obviously, like you could be running a subscale business for an indefinite period of time. Sure, the upside of that is like no one else is competing for the SEO stuff. And so with, with like, 10, you know, links, basically, like a couple promotions and stuff like that, we were able to very, very quickly rank for a bunch of key terms that that then started driving sales, like, within the first couple months. So that was, that was unique. I mean, it wasn't a lot of sales. We weren't doing, like, a crazy amount of sales. And then we also, like, another thing that helped out a lot is very early on, we started working with Thrive Market, which was just launching. And Thrive Market was like, we became, basically, they were running, at this time, a promotion where, basically, you would get, like, if you sign up for a Thrive membership, you'd also get one free product. It was called a gift with purchase. So buy a membership, you get a free product. And our product of, you know, Kettle & Fire, bone broth, that gift with purchase was the best promotion that they were running around that. And so they were doing a bunch of education around, like, what is bone broth? Why is it good for you? And giving people literally, like buying product from us and giving it for free to, like, hundreds, 1000s, 10s of 1000s of people that were trying a Thrive membership and so that that also helped, just from like, awareness and driving, you know, getting people like, getting on the radar of many different customers that that wanted to try our product. Yeah,

William Harris 7:21

so that was almost one of your first, maybe forays into wholesale, I assume, or at least something a little bit more, versus DTC, is that when you got the itch to do more, because I know that you eventually got into other channels, into, you know, the actual stores, did you plan on going from the very beginning, saying, Hey, we're going to do this DTC, then get into stores? Or was that it after that? No, that was

Justin Mares 7:43

definitely the plan. I mean, if you look at grocery especially, which is, you know, we're obviously a grocery product, you look and like, 90% of grocery dollars are still spent within a retail store. And so, yes, there's stuff that you can do on e-commerce. You can certainly grow like a material Coffee Company, you can grow like meaningful all these sorts of things. But at the end of the day, for almost everyone, you just have to go into retail. And so if you want to get any sort of scale, you know, selling a low like a relatively cheap grocery item, like a bone broth, you know, today, then we were selling like 13 to $14 a box. Today we're about seven to $8 a box. The only place that you can get that scale is not online, it's just in retail. And so we kind of knew that we had to do that at some point.

William Harris 8:31

Yeah. So what was that transition like? Is that when you decided to take on an investor, because you're like, okay, in order for us to buy the amount that we need to do this. Or, let me say, before we go too far, why did you take on an investor? What changed?

Justin Mares 8:46

So the thing that changed is, I kind of thought, I felt very strongly going into starting the business, that the biggest risk of the business would be that the market doesn't materialize, that, like the, you know, it ends up being a $5 million business or something like that. And having a profitable online $5 million business that you, like, own 100% of with your brother, is like, an incredible outcome. The only way in which it's not a great outcome is if you raise, like, $20 million and everyone's Sure, I think it has to be $100 million business, and so kind of, like, because I had skepticism, or wasn't, like, totally confident that the market would get as big as it as it has. We were pretty conservative from a fundraising standpoint, and so once we got to little over 2 million in revenue, I was like, Okay, we've gotten a 2 million in revenue. We have one product line. No one knows who we are. We've spent almost zero on paid ads. Like, I'm pretty sure that we can take this to a 10 or 20 million in revenue over the next couple years. And so we raised a little less than a million dollars. We did a lot of that from influencers and who helped, like, build the category and talk about bone broth and, well, it's great for you, and all these things, and that kind of helped get us to, you know, to 10 million in. Revenue. And at that point, then I was like, Okay, we got 10 million in revenue. Like, do I think we can get to 50 or so or so? And I was like, Yes, I actually now see a clear path to getting to 50 million. And so we ended up raising, you know, 16 more or 18 more

William Harris 10:17

awesome. I don't want to gloss over what you said, too, which was that you built the category. And I think that's an interesting thing. A lot of people go into categories where they're going to just capitalize off of what's already there, and so they have to take from somebody else or something along those lines. But you're building the category. It's essentially limitless. You don't know what your tam is, and so you're creating it from scratch. I appreciate that. What about getting into wholesale then, so moving into the grocery stores? What was that process like? Like, what made you what was it like to be able to make the first call you make the first call? Like, walk me through this process.

Justin Mares 10:59

It's, it's really hard. I mean, at the time, Whole Foods was our first retailer, and so they basically reached out. They don't really do this anymore. They're a much larger, like Amazon owned institution at this point. But at the time, basically they saw one of the buyers saw basically that there was an influencer that was talking about Kettle & Fire, that was a big fan of it, saying how they they liked it. And he saw us, you know, this influencer talking about our product, he reached out and was like, Hey, can I bring this in into like, 50 Whole Foods, 48 Whole Foods in certain regions in the country. And we said, Yes, we went in. You know, the average price point for a product in our category was around 450 in Whole Foods, we went in at a $10 price point just because, like, our stuff has really, like, it costs a lot to make, frankly. And you know, even though we were twice the price, even though we were selling a brand that no one knew, even though there was, like, one facing and one product on the very top shelf of, you know, of a whole foods we started to sell in like, the top 25% of all products in that category. And that's awesome, seeing that like, our our buyer, who brought us in, basically, was like, Okay, you all can move, you know, like, I'm actually seeing, like the sales are coming in. So let's, like, talk about a national rollout. And so after we did about nine months of selling and 50 Whole Foods, then we got into, like, a whole foods national rollout the following year. Amazing.

William Harris 12:34

So what did you do to become the top seller there? Was there? Like, you doing tastings at places. Did you have some kind of setup or whatever, like, or was it just because people saw you online and then just started seeing you there? What was that like?

Justin Mares 12:48

It's a good question. I mean, frankly, I think that I was dumb about it, but I was very this was like, totally the wrong reasoning. But at the time, I was like, I only want to go into retail if the product is going to see decent traction with us doing like online marketing influencers and some email stuff, I don't want to get into this whole game that some brands play, which is, you know, paying for samples and doing demos and doing all this stuff that especially compared to online like, where you can spend money the ROI on these things is just really, really brutal. And so, you know, it can work, but I think it mostly works because retail brands don't have other, like, good channels to put money in and to grow sales. And so I basically made the decision. I was like, we're not really going to invest that much in demos and the like. And so we did a pretty heavy push online. We did some like, geo targeted marketing. We emailed influencers. We talked to like, small paleo and CrossFit boxes and stuff like that in different regions where Kettle & Fire was carried and just like, made them aware of, you know, through cold email and other social posts, made them aware that KNF was sold in their whole foods nearby, but that was about the extent of it. Frankly. Like, we are a much better retail marketing team now than we when we started, and I think that I probably should have taken that much more seriously. And, like, we kind of got lucky in a way that that the product still sold. Sure,

William Harris 14:20

yeah. I think that's encouraging, though. Like you said, if you have a good product, did you do a lot of product research? Is this something where you were involved early on with, you know, a core group of alpha testers who are telling you if it tastes good, or if it's helping, or anything like that?

Justin Mares 14:37

Yeah. I mean, we, we did this with myself, my brother, my co founder, we were, like the taste testers for a lot of years. We also had some friends and people that were involved in the early, like taste testing, who were at my CrossFit gym. I like gave it to people that, you know, that I worked with in San Francisco. And so there were a lot of people that were trying, kind of the early, the. Early versions of the product, but, but that was kind of it, yeah. The

William Harris 15:04

reason why I brought it up is because it's something that I talk about with a lot of people, especially if it's something that is, like a you need to try it. So if this is like, you know, food and beverage, or, you know, I don't know, a candle where you need to smell it, or whatever this might be, but things where there's a heightened use, once you actually have it in your hands and you can see it smell, see it, smell and feel it, taste it, that can't be overlooked. I've talked to a lot of brands, and they almost all started with some kind of like this out of your trunk kind of thing where you're like, I gotta get this in the hands of real people and get some feedback.

Justin Mares 15:36

Yep, totally, yeah. I think it's important. I mean, I also do think that we had one advantage with this, with starting Kettle & Fire, which was, like, ultimately, like, I was the customer. And so, you know, I do think that if I was to start a, you know, like, a women's health drink or something like that, like, definitely, I would want to sample that a lot, and do focus groups and, like, talk to people at the end of the day. You know, I had no expectations for how big the business would get, and I was kind of building this for me. And so I was, I, I made the, again, maybe not the wisest decisions, but was just kind of like, if this is something that I'm going to like, if it is sourcing that I think is important, if it's like, the ingredients are good, and like all of my healthy, fanatical friends that I knew at that time in San Francisco, that I was friends with, also are like, this product is good and it fits my, my nutrient sourcing, you know, profile, I was like, I'm pretty sure other people will buy this and that, you know, That turned up to be correct?

William Harris 16:41

Yeah, you said you didn't go to this with the biggest expectations, because you didn't know what to expect. Why did you start it in the first place? What was the epiphany moment where you were like, Hey, this is the thing that I want to do. Yeah,

Justin Mares 16:54

I think it was an emerging thing, if I'm being totally honest. Like, I think sometimes that, I think sometimes entrepreneurs, they tell a story of, you know, I like, and this is true of some, some entrepreneurs too. There's like, this thing has to exist in the world so badly, you know, Keith or boy and a bunch of others talk about, like, building a startup is like filming a movie. You like, know what you want to build. You like, hire the people to build it, you cast it, and it's like, this is the vision, and this is what we're building. For me, I felt much more like I wanted to start a company. I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial, but I wasn't sure that it was something in consumer I wasn't sure that it would be even something in health. Like I was, I was basically looking at three different ideas that I was testing and thinking about and the one that tested the best ended up being Kettle & Fire. And so when I, when I tested it, I was like, Oh, this is, this is a really interesting idea. In retrospect, I think that the reason it tested the best was, like, I was the most interested in health and wellness at that time, like it was taking up all of my spare cycles. It was like my passion. I was reading about it. I was talking to people about it. I was learning about it on my own. And I think because of that, it was the space that I had the best ideas in was because I had gone the furthest to the edges of health and wellness, you know, and I had it in, like real estate and I hadn't in software, which were other two spaces that I was looking at or thinking about idea, having ideas in and so those were kind of my, yeah, those were, like, really my, that was my approach. Is, I wouldn't say that I lucked into it, but I think I had an idea in a space that ended up working, partially because I was already living on the edge of that space. And, like, had friends that were very into health, and I was very into it myself, and I knew I wanted to start a business. Was kind of good enough for me. And so when, when my brother was like, Yeah, I'll work with you, and I'll skip college to start this company together, you know, he, he and I, kind of like, worked and got it off the ground, and did, did, yeah, just as soon as it started working, it became very obvious that this is what I should be spending all of my time on, not just like some part

William Harris 19:05

time thing. Yeah, everybody runs into obstacles as they're building something like this, especially when it's fast paced. Is there any obstacle that stands out that you can remember thinking, this sucks. I don't know if we're gonna survive this as a business. Yeah, good

Justin Mares 19:20

question. I mean, we had a lot of things like this. I would say that one of the biggest was we had, we had a period where we were building and making some investments in supply chain, and we had raised money to do this. We had hired someone that that that had, like a background in working with scaling CPG brands and doing supply chain and operations and stuff. And we had a plant, basically or not, a plant, just like a manufacturing line that was seven months behind schedule, and it was like costing us a. That it being behind schedule. You know, we had raised $8 million into the business at that time, and it was basically costing us, like, three to $4 million to be that behind on schedule. And we, like, didn't have any guarantee of when the thing would actually be back up. And so there was definitely a time where I was pretty nervous that we were gonna go out of business, you know, and just be like, totally unable to get the plant up and running. I was worried that we would have to go raise a like crazy dilutive funding round, or something like that to try and keep things alive. And I ended up parting ways. You know, me running my first company with no experience in consumer ended up firing our COO, that I was much more pedigree than like, he was a big reason that, you know, that our investors, I think, believed in us when it came time to the funding round. And so it's one of those things that looks okay in retrospect, because we obviously got through it. But there was definitely a period of time where I was like, I don't, I don't know what I'm doing in this business, and this guy seems to and, you know, yet the results are not there. And I'm kind of betting on my own, my own decision making and my own intuition that this, this guy, is not the right fit for the job that needs to be done. And I'm going to make a move, even though it goes against, goes against, you know what I think my investors and what other outsiders might perceive is the right thing for the business? So that was really hard.

William Harris 21:28

That is hard, but good for you for doing that. I think that that is something that we don't talk about enough as founders, is there's a an amount of intuition that founders can have that can't necessarily be easily quantified in a rubric, but is just there, especially if you've already found that early success, to say, I can't quantify why this is the right decision, but I feel it's the right decision I need to act on. And I think that's something that sometimes we get so data focused, and there's nothing wrong with it, I'd say we need to be data focused, but there are some times where you need to say, I don't, I don't necessarily understand why, but I feel like this is the right decision, and I need to do it. Yeah,

Justin Mares 22:05

it is really hard, though, because especially me, I felt like my first company, you know, Kettle & Fire was like such a I was a learning machine. And the the stance of, I don't really know how to grow a business. I don't know anything about CPG, I don't know anything about any of this stuff that I'm doing was broadly a very useful place to come from, because it was so true. And so when it came to making many decisions about, should we accept Whole Foods, like, what's our pricing strategy, what's our margin, what's our like, sourcing on all these things, I had no intuition around what we should do, and I was just relying on smarter people than me with more experience telling me, like, what they thought. And it was very challenging for me to operate both from the standpoint of like, I'm gonna trust my intuition, but only in this one area, and every other area is going to also listen to people that have been, you know, been there and done that before, yeah, um,

William Harris 23:04

this is not your only company, though. Now you are a serial, serial entrepreneur. Uh, you've got Truemed. And so your intuition led you into studying another company. For those who aren't familiar with it, give me a quick synopsis of what Truemed is, yeah, great

Justin Mares 23:19

question. So, so, basically, what it is, is there, and this is a problem that I came across with Kettle & Fire, is there are $150 billion in these tax free accounts called Health Savings Accounts and flexible spending accounts. All of these funds today basically go towards, you know, treating people once they are already sick, so they go things like pills, prescriptions, other random procedures, surgeries, stuff like that. What we found is that we found kind of two things. One, health and wellness brands like Kettle & Fire want to grow and they want to reach new customers, and at the same time, you have this whole class of customers. Unfortunately, like almost 90% of the US is at risk of one or more chronic diseases. And you know, they're like the obesity rate in the US is almost 80% 93% of Americans have at least one metabolic marker of dysfunction, like we're in the midst of a of a literal chronic disease crisis. And it's in that backdrop where the IRS has said very explicitly that if you are working to address or prevent obesity, if you're looking to like, treat, prevent, cure or alleviate a certain disease, condition or chronic disease, you can use tax advantaged dollars in HSA and FSA accounts to pay for things that help treat or fight chronic disease. And so what we realize is that there was a really big opportunity to start a company that handled a lot of the compliance and other infrastructure and made it so that an individual could spend these tax free dollars, which effectively saves you, you know, 30 to 40% on items and interventions. Think like, you know, a peloton, an eat, sleep, like. A class of supplements that studies show are actually effective at treating or preventing chronic disease. Like one of the things that I think is so crazy is and a recent study came out where it looked at treatment resistant depression. It was a meta analysis of about 140,000 people looked at treatment resistant depression and like, what works to treat very serious depression. And can you guess what? Like the top results were, they looked at everything.

William Harris 25:28

Well, okay, I mean, outside of we're talking outside of traditional medicine,

Justin Mares 25:31

no, no including, like, including pharmaceuticals and SSR, I assume

William Harris 25:35

people are probably going to go towards like, medication. But outside of that, I'm leaning

Justin Mares 25:39

towards cold plunges. Include, include medication. Well,

William Harris 25:43

medication, I would say, is at the high height, let's say, like some type of cognitive therapy would be in there. You know, going to say psychologists, or something like that. And then the new one that's at least emerging. I don't know if it was at times. I feel like cold plunge is being talked about a lot in that, yeah,

Justin Mares 25:59

for sure. So, so the actual ranking after this analysis that looked at treatment resistant depression is they found that there were a host of interventions, basically like, let me, let me see if I can find it quickly, but effectively, they found that things that worked better than SSRIs for treatment resistant depression better than drugs were dancing, cardio, yoga, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, running, lift, training, aerobic, anaerobic. It was like every lifestyle intervention basically outperformed SSRIs when it came to treating depression, and yet, if you talk to a doctor, or if you look at how much is the US spending on depression a year, almost every dollar that goes towards treating depression in the country today goes towards an SSRI or pharmaceutical approach, which, like, effectively does not work better than many of the lifestyle like interventions that that people you know could be using instead and so like what we decided and realized, and what I very strongly believe is just that there's a whole host of these lifestyle interventions that work effectively and work better than our current sort of stance of pills and procedures that are prescribed to you by a doctor. Yeah,

William Harris 27:17

I love that. I want to call out to because I agree with that, but meta analysis, there are some pitfalls to some of those things too, right? It shows correlation, not necessarily always causation, and so making sure that people are aware of that, that, you know, being careful with some of these things. There could be a correlation with some random things that may not necessarily always be good, but I love lifestyle stuff, yeah, but, I mean,

Justin Mares 27:40

a meta analysis is, like, sort of the, the highest standard that we have. I mean, they're meta now, like analyzing a bunch of RCTs.

William Harris 27:49

Oh, like, okay, so analyzing the RCTs then too, not just a

Justin Mares 27:52

meta analysis. So this is not, this is not a correlational or observational study. It's a, it's a meta analysis of a bunch of RCTs that included 140,000

William Harris 28:01

people. That's awesome. That's really good. Then, if you so, you've unlocked the ability for people to be able to use these funds their HSAs, their FSAs, for buying some other things that are going to improve their health, versus just, you know, treat symptoms or whatever that might be. What are some examples of companies that are using this effectively in the DDC space right now?

Justin Mares 28:30

Yeah, so, you know, we have a bunch of partners that that are using Truemed to drive 10 to 15% of their total revenue. So eight sleep is a partner higher dose, which has a suite of red light therapy products, which are incredibly effective as a partner. The plunge is another partner. You know, the whole suite of like cold plunge companies we also work with different supplement brands that the across the board, momentous is one of them. Pendulum is another. And that, I would say that those are sort of many of the big categories of company that we work with is companies that have products or services that are doing root cause lifestyle interventions. We also work with a whole host of gyms like CrossFit boxes, 24 hour fitness crunch. You know, a bunch of these places that that help people improve their health,

William Harris 29:19

yeah. Okay. What about how does this integrate into their website? If somebody was going to use this to turn this on, is this at checkout? Or how does somebody best use this?

Justin Mares 29:33

Yeah, so we're sort of like an affirm for HSA. FSA, I would say. So, you know, it's a we integrate. If you're a Shopify site, it's a one click Checkout sort of or it's a one click integration, and effectively, like after an integration that takes fewer than 20 minutes, your customers can use their HSA or FSA funds assuming they qualify, to just check out. So they select Pay with Truemed at checkout, and they go through that flow.

William Harris 29:57

You said, assuming they qualify. Where does that qualify? Take place. Is that going to be like, why wouldn't they qualify? Is it because the product doesn't qualify, or that person doesn't qualify to be able to use it for those products? Yeah, so it would

Justin Mares 30:07

be that the individual doesn't qualify. So this is only for qualified individuals that are effectively working to treat, reverse or prevent chronic disease. And so if you're an individual that is perfectly healthy, has no family history, has no risk factors, anything like that, you know, you are not eligible, according to the IRS, to use your tax advantage money to buy something that treats or prevents a chronic disease because you don't have one, you know. And so this is basically only for the class of American that is working to prevent, treat, or like alleviate, an existing or potential chronic disease condition. You know, the unfortunate thing for the country is that that is a lot of Americans today. It's like almost 90%

William Harris 30:49

of Americans, yeah, if, if somebody wasn't qualified, how fast is this turnaround? I just worry about, like, Does it ever impact conversion rate? Because it's like, Oh, I've got to wait for five minutes to find out whether I qualify or not. Yeah,

Justin Mares 31:02

you can go through it. I mean, it's, it's, effectively, it is very similar to a firm we've done a ton of testing, like on our side, with our brand sides and everything, from an AB testing, conversion, everything standpoint. And it seems to, like, improve conversion, because you're basically getting a bunch of people in checkout. Like, every merchant knows. I know this from running Kettle & Fire, Perfect Keto, everything like that. That even if someone adds something to cart, you know, on that checkout, like, just before you hit pay, that drop off rate is anywhere between 30 and 50% it's great. So people are like, all the way to the end, and then they're like, ah, they see the price. They think about it, they're like, I don't know that I can make this purchase by using tax free money, these customers are effectively getting a 30 to 40% discount, and brands often are only discounting 30 to 40% once a year on like something like Black Friday, and that's when they see their highest sales numbers ever, right? And so what we're trying to do is give brands a tool to help lower the effective price of their products to the end customer who is working to fight chronic disease. And you know, many of who might be like more price sensitive. And so we basically see that this is bringing in a new customer and a new sort of customer profile that it doesn't have any it does like nothing negative. And we see, like many, many improvements to both, like AOV, conversion rate, card size, things like that,

William Harris 32:26

yeah, and that makes sense, because you're, you're increasing the amount of people that have the ability to purchase exactly they weren't where. So yeah. I mean,

Justin Mares 32:33

it is, it is very much like a firm, like you add a firm to checkout, and you know your your overall conversion rate is not going down, but in fact, you are unlocking a set of consumer that maybe they can't afford a $4,000 peloton bike or $2,000 peloton bike to put it on a credit card. But if you stretch that those payments over 12 months at an interest free rate, all of a sudden, like that becomes affordable to a whole new class of individual. And that's why, when you know, a firm went public, peloton was something like 40 or 50% of their their total revenue, because this, like, easy underwriting thing, what basically made it, made it so that a whole new class of consumers could afford this, very similar to Truemed, you know, like a firm, someone enters in some information, they get an underwriting and a sense of like, do They qualify or not for a firm within 60 seconds? Truemed people fill out, like, a very brief Health Survey, and it takes fewer than, like, 60 or 90 seconds, and they basically get told at the end of that whether or not they're likely to qualify for receiving a letter of medical necessity. And then for those that qualify, they'll basically get an email within 12 hours that just includes their letter of medical necessity, and they can submit that to their HSA or FSA administrator at some point in the future, when, when, or if they're sort of asked for it, or if they have to submit for reimbursement. It's amazing. I'm trying to think of just, we're on the same page. I'm trying to think of a reason why somebody shouldn't use it, and you're obviously going to be biased because it makes sense, but I can't think of a good reason. So that's why I'm trying to poke holes in this. What about, man, I'm truly drawing a blank on this. Is there any reason why this isn't good for somebody? Is there any brand that this isn't good for? Well, I mean, some brands won't qualify, right? Like, if you're selling, you know, some outside of the

William Harris 34:21

brands that don't qualify, right? Yeah, you qualify. I can't think of a reason why a brand wouldn't want to do this. Is there? Okay? Maybe this, if you end up having 15 different things in your checkout, then it's like, you need to at least streamline this. Maybe it's not that you wouldn't use this, but you're like, Okay, you've got a firm, you've got, you know, PayPal, you've got every other like, there's 15 now different payment buttons, and so that potentially decreases conversion rate. It's not that you shouldn't use this, but you know that could potentially impact it. I can't think of any good reason, and I'm wondering if you can think of anything. Yeah,

Justin Mares 34:53

I mean, so we've literally never had a customer like churn, and honestly, we started this company. Me, you know, my partner Kelly and I, he kind of came at it with a lot of passion and depth of knowledge about the Chronic Disease crisis. I came at it from the standpoint of having run merchant and direct to consumer brands and built a product that that we think works for companies like ours. And, you know, like I wanted to build a product that a brand like Kettle & Fire could use and would use excitedly at some point, and so we're very focused on making sure that it doesn't impact conversion. It's like a huge win. And so far, we've been able to architect a value prop and build a product that we just haven't had. I think almost any customers end up leaving. Because I do think that the value prop, like, once a company gets it, it's just free. It's like a free access to a new type of customer for them. Yeah,

William Harris 35:53

and I think that's completely fair. What about what's your growth journey looked like for Truemed so far you you got this up and running. You've you've grown this. You've got some killer customers. I think I saw ag one on there as well. You've talked about eight sleep some like, really fun brands that everybody knows. What has been the thing that has helped you grow this the best. How are you getting the word out?

Justin Mares 36:20

We have not spent any money on advertising yet, and so you know what, what we are doing from a growth standpoint, is, I'd say we have a couple advantages, like a lot of people from my and Callie's network, we have pretty strong relationships in the health and wellness world. You know me from doing Kettle & Fire, Callie, he and his sister, Casey, means they wrote was that what is actually currently the number one book in the country, called good energy on like the Chronic Disease crisis. His sister co founded levels health. And, you know, Callie has just been kind of an advocate in this space for a while. And so knows a lot of people, influencers, you know, brands, companies in this space. And so between the two of us, we were able to pretty quickly get a bunch of influencers on board and sort of like rallied around the cause. We also, and then once we got, like a beachhead, our first, you know, 1020 merchants, we basically were able to go from, you know, our first 10 or 20 merchants, build case studies around what Truemed was doing for them. You know, what did it do for AOV? What did it do for retention? What it do for conversion rate? You know, how much revenue were they making from it? And take those case studies and talk to more, more brands, more companies. The other thing I would say too, is that we have a tremendous advantage, which is we're solving like a tier one problem for brands, which is their growth like, How can I grow more? Is a key question that every CEO, everyone is asking. And I think that in the very early days, we had a lot of companies that would see Truemed on one of their competitors, or on some big brand, and you know, because they're just kind of watching, like, what is eight sleep doing from a growth standpoint? And they would end up reaching out to us. You know that that was a big one, and I think that as a founding team, we had a lot of credibility too, when we could say that this is something that we use and believe in for our own companies. And then Callie also has been doing for the last, like year, plus he's sort of been doing, like a tour of a bunch of health and wellness podcasts. So he's been on pretty much every health podcast. So you can imagine, you know, talking to influencers doing all these sorts of things, talking about the Chronic Disease crisis, the metabolic disease crisis, and how Truemed plays a role in that. And I think that all of those things together just sort of added up to an add up to this marketing, sort of like we've just gotten a lot of attention and interest in what we're doing basically since we launched the company that has especially picked up in the last year or so.

William Harris 38:54

So very similar game plan to Kettle & Fire. Similarly, was SEO a part of the early growth for this or not?

Justin Mares 39:02

No, we're so bad at SEO we, like, should really fix that at some point. Yeah,

William Harris 39:06

that's fair. It's a different game, though. Now, right, like, SEO has, it's changed a lot what SEO means Now, oftentimes means SEO on Tiktok or SEO on Reddit and SEO and a lot of other places. So

Justin Mares 39:19

yeah, and also, like, I think that Kettle & Fire, there were some small number of people that were Googling around for, like, how do I make bone broth? What do I do with bone broth? All these things for Truemed, it's much less clear. Like, our target customer is running, you know, growth at a brand, or, you know, the CEO of, like, a health and wellness company. It's much less clear what they're Googling around for, and they're probably not searching for, like, can I accept HSA, FSA payment gateway for, you know, like, it's just, like, a, sort of a harder thing to rank for as well. Yeah, yeah. It's

William Harris 39:50

completely fair. When you think about growth now, you've, you've successfully grown two businesses very well, outside of the tactical things we talked about from. Influencer and stuff like that. What are the other things that you think are important for a business to understand or get right, to be able to grow?

Justin Mares 40:09

I think that so much of I think it's so often people, people think of like marketing channels and getting good at marketing channels. Or maybe I'll rewind, I'll say, I think about marketing channels from like, a conversion rate standpoint, and if you are selling a commodity product, like, you know, the world's next normal protein bar that is, like, not special on any dimension, it is really hard to make a marketing channel work that, like, breaks out and drives a ton of growth just because, just because, like, you're selling something that's not differentiated, the conversion rate on whatever marketing efforts you do are just not going to be that high. If you're doing something differentiated, then I think that it makes converting and growing through various channels. It vastly increases your odds of success. Now that's not to say that, like, things can't work if you have a massive audience or a massive marketing channel and a massive megaphone, you can kind of sell whatever you want, even if it's commodity. Like, Mr. Beast is selling hundreds of millions of dollars of feastables Chocolate and, like, that's not because his chocolate is, like, way better than the stuff that you can buy it, you know, off the shelf today, but he does have one of the biggest microphones in the world, and so when he like puts something in front of his audience, it's going to work, or the odds are much higher. And so I do think that a lot of it starts with product, and depending on the product, that's sort of I think that so often you just have to like back into okay, what is the product that I have? What are the conversations I need to have with potential customers? Because all of marketing is just a conversation happening at scale, and then where do I reach these you know, where do my like potential customers hang out? And where do they get their information from? For us with Kettle & Fire, you know, we were pretty certain that our potential customer was someone that is interested in making bone broth and or making it on their own, but finds it a hassle, and doesn't think that, like, sourcing is good, but is investing in their gut health and in their health generally, in 2015 when we launched, that was mostly of people in, like, paleo, whole 30, like, those sorts of, those sorts of worlds. And so we just went on an all out Blitz to try and meet a bunch of like the influencers and affiliates and like players in these worlds. We did an all out Blitz to try and rank for SEO, for people that were looking for bone broth recipes, that were looking for these various things. And like, our first retailer was Whole Foods, which is like, where that demo primarily shops with with Truemed. It was, it was a very similar thing. It was like, who is our end buyer? It's merchants. How can we get to the first, you know, 50? Well, turns out network was the answer to that. And then after we had a network of people that that were using Truemed, we built case studies. And then we started, like, sending them to some people. We started asking for intros. We, like, asked our investors and the rest of our network for, you know, referrals to people that were like, building or running brands that were selling these products in our sweet spot and that, and we just kind of grew from there. And so, I so often think that marketing and growth is like, very product dependent, but it all feels like hand to hand combat, and it's never something that you're like, oh, man, we've totally got it nailed. Like, Kettle & Fire. I thought we were pretty good at this stuff. And, you know, last year we basically had, we had a situation where Dana White, the founder of UFC, went on a bone broth fast and, like, did this viral video where he had 30 million views, and he's like, Kettle & Fire. This is the best stuff. Like he holds it up to the camera. He's, like, everyone should use this for fasting and like that. Blew our sales up. And, you know, we're years into getting good at marketing bone broth and selling bone broth and like that one shout out, probably added, I don't know, $20 million in revenue this year, something like that, maybe more 1010, 20, and that was pretty wild. And so, so now I'm like, you know, I've been pretty skeptical of influencer marketing for a long time, but I do think that if something hits like that, like, wow, you can really drive a lot of awareness and a lot of growth doing that.

William Harris 44:20

So this reminds me of your book traction, which I need to call out, because this is, man. You wrote this a long time ago, but when, when you and I were walking around Lake Harriet here in Minnesota, we talked about this book and and at the time, my business was me and some contractors, and I was working out of like, a Starbucks, right? So it's like me on my laptop, but you talked about traction. And one of the things in your book is not that there's necessarily a set time, but maybe it's five years. Typically, it seems like there's around, like this five year mark. It could be earlier for some businesses, but you reach a point where you've now got, like you said, that. Network. You've got some traction. You've got a lot of things in place. And to your point, it's like if Dana White would have said that year one, it wouldn't have added $20 million it would have added a little bit. You wouldn't have had the inventory to support it. It would have been a botched effort. But because of where you are, because of the reputation that you've created, because of the distribution you already have now, when he says it, it's this significantly different thing you had traction, and I think that's an important piece. Completely.

Justin Mares 45:24

Yeah, I completely agree with that.

William Harris 45:27

Yeah. What about you talked to me before about market penetration versus EBITDA? What do you think about the difference between those in the companies you had? Obviously, you've got one that you scaled up. Originally, Kettle & Fire. You bootstrapped. But where do you see the line between, let's say, longer term wins within business?

Justin Mares 45:52

Where do I see the say that last part again? So

William Harris 45:54

like, let's say like, overall, when you're thinking about like the business and building the business, looking at market penetration. A lot of times, people are going really hard after that. And we see this in a lot of DTC companies, where they're spending, you know, 2x their, you know, first purchase AOV or something like that to acquire a customer. Or, you know, they're 1/3 of their LTV. And they're really getting after market penetration versus scaling from an EBITDA focus. Is there one that you align yourself more with definitely. I

Justin Mares 46:22

mean, this both strategies can work. It depends on what you're aiming for. For me, I tend to be much more on the like, build and grow a good business, because a good business has a much higher chance of being around the following year, sure, or of selling at some point. But this isn't always true. I mean, like, I think that there are categories, like in 2015 if I started ollie pop or Poppy or, you know, like a competitor to one of these sort of new, pretend healthy soda brands, then probably I would not. I would have lost to them, because they're just going to outspend me. Build a bigger brand, build more revenue, raise a bunch of money, and, like, I would have a nice, a nice good at the time business, but, you know, would have missed out on all of the stuff that comes from scale, and just would have lost to a group that was going to outraise and and, like, outscale me. And so I basically think that as a founder, you have to make the decision of, how imminent do I think competition is? How big is the prize at the end of the day? And do I think that it's truly a winner take all scenario, and if it's a big prize, you think people are going to compete with you very soon, and it's a winner take all scenario, or like, there's going to be one or two winners, like this new soda thing, like ollie pop and poppy are probably the one of the two winners. I think if you have a situation like that, it makes sense to raise money, or it could make sense to raise money and try and grow extremely, extremely aggressively, if you are not in one of the situations, if you're like, building a market that's emerging where you're not sure how big it'll get or where you, like, want to sell the business at some point. You know, I think it makes, it makes sense to be much more conservative and think about, think about, like, Okay, I always thought basically that as a as a company, or as a founder, every year that went by, you basically got the ability to plan another, like, one to two quarters. And so after our first year, I'm basically deciding, you know, is this a real business at all? After the year one, I'm like, okay, great. We have made some progress. We have some revenue. We have some customers. Let's think about areas that we should invest. Let's hire people. Let's think about supply chain. Let's think about new products to launch after two years, you know, you have few more products, a few more people. You have maybe more cash in the bank. You know, we had raised money at that point. It was like, great. Let's think on like, a two to three quarter horizon. Like, what are the bets that we want to make for later this year? Where do we want to go? You know, do we want to go into retail? Do we want to do all these things and now, after the company's been around for for eight years, you know, we're actually thinking in terms of, like, two plus years ahead. Like, where do we want the company to go? Do we want to have an exit at some point? We want to keep running it profitably? Do we want to, like, expand internationally? Just the set of questions kind of changes. And I think that, you know, I I often think that your strategy as a founder should, at the end of the day back, depend on two things, like, what is the outcome that you want? Do you want to start a billion dollar business and be like a guy that goes after that super hard and all of the sacrifices and things that entails, but also, like a lot of the upside? Or do you want to build a different type of business and then what will the market support? And I think the intersection of those two things sort of dictates how you should be thinking about the type of business you should like, build and scale. Yeah, that's

William Harris 49:46

brilliant. I like the way that you called out that the more history you have, the more you can start thinking about longer distances into the future. It's very interesting. The way that we even perceive time as human beings is similar to that. And. Um, if you're five and you ask somebody what they want to do next year, it's like they almost even don't have a concept of what a year is, right? Yeah, you can maybe say, like, what do you want to do tomorrow? Yes, but, but, you know, when you're 15, you have the ability to start planning out maybe five years, but you have no clue what you want to be doing when you're 50. Like, it's just too far away. You can't even conceptualize what 50 is to a point. Thinking about that from a business perspective makes a lot of sense. Yep. Is there anything else that you can think of that you've run into, that you've maybe changed position on, or you've learned as you've grown two businesses successfully say, Hey, I went into it thinking this is what was necessary for growth, I backtrack. I think realized now this is very important, or it's not necessarily something that you change, but you've just realized you're like, This is something that I've learned now in growing a couple of businesses that a lot of business owners maybe are getting hung up on, and they need to shift their focus, or their attention, or they need to shift the way they're thinking about something in order to unlock that next level of growth, wherever that plateau might be. Yeah,

Justin Mares 51:08

yeah, things I've changed my mind on. That's a good question. I think, I think like there was a time where I was very like in the camp of never raise money, just don't do it. It's not worth doing. And I've changed my mind on that. I think that I used to have, like, a just deep seated aversion to raising money and like losing control. And I think that now I have an appreciation for raising money is just like one of the many variables in the game of like, building a company. It can be good, it can be bad. It just really depends how you structure it and who you partner with. And I'm much more open to to raising money to, like, accomplish certain goals. Now true. Med, we're now venture backed. You know, Kettle & Fire has raised money, yeah, non alcoholic wine brand I started has raised money. And so really, the only brand that I've started that has never raised any money is Perfect Keto on the brand side. And then, like, a business that I acquired called FOMO that hasn't raised any money. And yeah, so I become much more flexible in my thinking around capital allocation and like, how to, you know, how and when to raise money, and then how to approach it, if you decide that funding, you know, raising money, is like the right idea for you,

William Harris 52:31

yeah. And what changed your mind on it, aside from, from doing this, was it like a mentor that helped you see this? Is there a book that you read that helped you to understand this? Yeah.

Justin Mares 52:41

I mean, definitely some mentors were helpful here, I would say, I think that a large piece of it was that I just saw I felt like more businesses and others that were, you know, that were kind of thinking about fundraising. They were thinking about, like, the opportunity in front of them. And it just became, like, a little bit obvious to me that if you're like, in a race, the company with the most resources can sometimes win. And you know, at the end of the day, I think that I ran Kettle & Fire very bootstrapped early on. And what that meant was that we were resource constrained on everything like and what that really means is that we hired very inexperienced, cheap people that, like we hoped were great. Many of them were exceptional, also some of them, like didn't work super well. We it meant that when something went wrong, which things go wrong in business all the time. This is doubly true if you're, like, starting your first or second company and you or in a space that you've never operated in before, like I was, when things go wrong, it goes from shoot, that's like, we burned more cash than planned, to the business, and like all of the equity value, the jobs, the everything, is literally at risk of going to zero. That becomes a risk. And then the last thing, which I which I've started to appreciate now, running Truemed, is just that for many people, many times like, you want to be solving business problems that are hard and challenging, but you want to be solving the right kinds of problems. Like business is all hard, but I think that the type of problem that is not fun to solve is trying to work with someone that like an employee that's way over their skis, who is like, just not, frankly, getting it maybe not like, doesn't have the capacity or talent, or is in the long wrong line of work that you hired to like, save on some amount of salary. Solving the problem of how to make that person productive is not a fun problem to solve. Solving a problem of like, how do we do, you know, how do we build a supply chain that has never been built before? As we're launching like a regenerative agricultural bone broth? Or, how do we build this, like FinTech business that is also a blend of healthcare that with a bunch of people that are mission aligned, is like a fun problem to solve. And I think the reality is that for me, at least, you know, Kettle & Fire got way more fun when we transitioned after we raised money and we transitioned from pay people as little as we possibly can, but hope that they're like, still really good, which, again, we have some amazing people in the from the early days, but when we brought in our first executives that sure were super expensive, like they were making, you know, two and a half times what the highest paid person of the company was was paying them, what we were paying them at the time. But man, was that worth it, and boy, did the business become a lot more fun when we decided that we were going to invest in bringing really, really good talent into the business. And I think that the reality is, if you are in a market that is big, that's growing, where the opportunity set is is large, and like if you win, you have a you have an outcome that's going to be massive regardless, I tend to think that raising money so that you can surround yourself with like the best of the best talent wise, it increases your odds of building a very valuable business. And I think that that it also tends to be more fun. It's just the totally The downside is that sometimes requires selling part of your company, but,

William Harris 56:21

sure, yeah, but more fun. I totally agree with you. This has been fun. I want to transition into the who is Justin Mayer's portion of this. I want to talk about childhood a little bit. What was it like for you growing up, and how did that impact you being a successful, serial entrepreneur? Um, it's a good question.

Justin Mares 56:46

I think, I think that I, I think like, have very tight, loving family, very fortunate with how I grew up, in general, I think that the things that impacted me is my I have a relatively big family, and I think that my dad was always a little bit constrained, in some ways, by, you know, he, I believe, like, wanted to be an entrepreneur and made the decision to instead, you know, which I'm very grateful for, to, like, have a stable line of work and make sure that, like, we were in a good spot growing up. And so, you know, I think that at the same time, I also had a appreciation for that, not necessarily being the lifestyle or the life that I wanted was one that, you know, where I would have a nine to five, and I would kind of like, have a commute, and I would have, like, all of that sort of thing. And so I think that understanding that from from my like high school years, was a very useful learning and life experience that pushed me towards wanting to be an entrepreneur and being able to like, chart my own path a little bit more. I also really hate waking up early and so, and I did for my entire life. And so I was pretty much very like, anytime I had a job, I was like, the thing I want is, I want to, like, never have to wake up to an alarm when I'm older than that. That was my life goal for many years.

William Harris 58:10

That's hilarious, especially knowing how much you are invested into health. So getting good sleep is good, but there's a lot of research about waking up, let's say earlier than later. Yeah, I

Justin Mares 58:24

wake up early now. I'm just gonna say, How early do you wake up now? Yeah, I'm like seven to 730 now, yeah, exactly. And

William Harris 58:31

so everything that you you didn't want. It's funny how that can change.

Justin Mares 58:34

But not to an alarm. I don't wake up to an alarm now. Oh, nice.

William Harris 58:38

Just circadian rhythm kicking in exactly, exactly that was the best is the best. Dude is the best. It's a big thing. Um, what about any books that have helped shape your understanding that you feel like if, if somebody's trying to start a business, or maybe not, maybe this has nothing to do with business. This could even be personal, but just a book that you think has been very impactful to you as a human being?

Justin Mares 59:04

Yeah, I think that one of the things that has been useful for me has been like I continually think, and I'm surprised by how the degree to which progress on your business is intimately tied to, you know, progress or how like developed you are as an individual. Like, I think it's it's shockingly hard, and it's shockingly common to see that many of your failings as a founder get reflected immediately in how a business is run and how the business shows up. Like, I'm a pretty sloppy, non details oriented person, and in the early days of pretty much any company that I start that is reflected in the thing like my my now wife. You know, I met her a couple months before launching Kettle & Fire, and when we were early in dating, she would just like get the marketing emails that we would send out. And she. Just text me and be like, typo here, copyright, like, this sort of thing. And so you know that that is just like, I'm do a lot of things. I'm like, very fast moving, which can be a strength, but the downside is just sometimes the details suffer. And so as far as books and things like, I think that so often the areas where I have improved as an operator, founder and CEO have also been areas that have helped me a lot as a person. And so for me, like The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer is one reading Mastery by Robert Greene was a big one. You know, developing and rounding out my mental model of ancestral health. And like, getting an understanding of of health and wellness and how that worked from like an ancestral standpoint, was really useful. The Rational Optimist was in, like, another book that was very useful for me. Yeah, so kind of a whole host of things, but I think they tend to be pretty specific to the individual. And like, the ways in which, at least in my case, I was not showing up or not doing my best.

William Harris 1:01:05

Oh, that's fair. We all have those areas, right? And I think that there's important to fix the areas that we're not showing up, but also lean into the areas that we are, let's just say, God given talents that we are exceptional at as well. And it's like leaning into those strengths as well, too. Yep. What about is there anything in your office that you find interesting or fun or quirky or worth sharing with people that you're like, oh, people would enjoy seeing that. I've got this here with me.

Justin Mares 1:01:37

Yeah, I mean, so I have this, like CO two monitor in my office that I have at all times open windows because you're talking

William Harris 1:01:46

too much or what, like, No, I just think,

Justin Mares 1:01:47

like, fresh air is good. Sure. I have these, like, insane blue light blocking glasses that I use at night that are very intense. And then, yeah, and then I also, I got this, I don't know if you know Gary breka, but yeah, so I went on his podcast recently, and he was kind enough to give me an echo. So I've been trying it that. So like hydrogen water, giving a try. We'll see how it cuts.

William Harris 1:02:10

Yeah? Because he talks a lot about what methylated folate or something like that,

Justin Mares 1:02:15

right? Yeah, methyl folate and stuff like that. No, that's very interesting.

William Harris 1:02:18

That's cool. You got to go on his podcast. I've definitely seen him a lot around a lot. I've watched a lot of his stuff. I like it and enjoy I've got a really good Tiktok feed of of just health and wellness that shows up for me. So, yeah, that's amazing, yeah, um, speaking of that, then, uh, clearly, I always like asking what people are up arrowing in their personal life, and you've kind of already hinted at this, but you're working to consciously improve your health. You're, you're you're using blue light blocking glasses. You've got, you know, some really special water, I mean, there's bone broth, like, there's all of these things that you're doing to consciously improve your health. What spurred this incredible desire to biohack

Justin Mares 1:03:05

Yeah, yeah. So I don't think it's like some people are, I would say biohacky types. I don't think that I'm necessarily interested in it from a I don't know. I just don't get into, like the biohacking stuff, as much, I just tend to think, and I really strongly believe that the biggest issue in the US is the Chronic Disease crisis like Barna. And I think that we have such limited understanding of why America and why Americans are, like sick at record levels, like what's going on. And I think that I have just been drawn towards understanding more and more, you know, the negative downsides and the impact that the modern American lifestyle and, you know, food system and toxin exposure and all these things like have have on an individual's life. And so I have just been very, very driven, and personally, just interested in trying a bunch of things, like interventions that I think are useful and that lead to a better quality of life, like when I went paleo in 2015 I went from eating like I was in college, and I went from drinking, you know, drinking beer, eating pizza, Like making pasta almost every night for dinner to a very different way of eating, and I, like, had better energy. My skin cleared up. I felt better. Like almost every aspect of my life changed for the better a very brief period of time. And that experience, I think for me, has really rooted in like, made me feel very strongly that making changes and improvements to your health are some of the highest leverage and most important changes that an individual can make in their lives. And so I'm just very interested generally in what are those changes that I can and should be making, what works for me, what works without, you know, for others, and you know, so I, consequently, I try a lot of stuff. To myself,

William Harris 1:05:01

recognizing, and, let's just say, calling out right now, this is not professional health advice that someone needs to consult with their physician, right? Like we're not taking absolve ourselves from any kind of disclaimers there, and recognizing that things are different for each individual person that there are, you know, genetic changes, epigenetics, that we need to look at. That. All of that aside, what are a couple of the core tenants that you look at that you would say, if somebody's listening and they want to take their health a little bit more seriously, they're a founder, they're busy. They're working a ton. They have gotten out of the way. They're sitting down all the time. What are the four or five things you would say, Hey, I would recommend starting here, at least, because it's overwhelming. We can't all do everything. Yeah. I

Justin Mares 1:05:48

mean, I think that, like, maybe the three things I would say, I would also, by the way, I would push back on the like, consult your physicians have overseen the worst collapse in American health. This is just

William Harris 1:06:01

a disclaimer. This is so that way I don't get sued for

Justin Mares 1:06:06

this. It's not medical advice. But okay, I think that the three lifestyle things that I would do is, I would strongly recommend just trying to get, like, 10,000 steps a day. I think is a very, very simple thing, like move regularly, I think. And you know, if you can get two to three strength training sessions in a week, I think everyone should be strength training, especially women. I think it's insane that people are like. Women shouldn't strike train, because they'll get bulky and it'll make them look gross. It's like that never happens, literally almost never. And so I think basically everyone should be strength training. Everyone should be trying to get at least 10,000 steps a day and just moving their bodies. Just moving their bodies. A second thing is, I think avoiding Ultra processed foods, especially the big three, what I call the Big Three, like corn, soy and wheat. Corn, soy, wheat, are ultra processed. They and as they're Ultra subsidized, and as a result, they're like in all of our foods, they're in a most processed form, like soybean oil. You know, soybeans become subsidized to the tune of around $4 billion a year, and because of that, they go from almost no one eats soybean oil. No one enjoys it for the taste. No one's like, oh, drizzle soybean oil on salad. It tastes amazing, but it becomes like, almost 20% of American, the average American's daily caloric intake is in the form of soybean or other seed oils, not because they taste good, but because they're cheap. This is why I fructose corn syrup is used instead of sugar. Is because it's cheap. And so I would just avoid if you can corn, soy, wheat, it will do wonders for your health, just like cutting these three things out. And then the last thing, I think is becoming increasingly important, and is like going to be the trans fats issue of our time is avoiding toxins. And if you've read about like forever chemicals, you know, things like PFAs, things like phthalates and the like mitigating or removing your regular, repeated exposure to this class of chemicals is just a hugely important thing. And the things that I would do, the ways that I would address that are, get a good water filter, generally reverse osmosis, or buy from a something like a live waters or, like a very clean spring water. The second thing I would do is like, Stop, you know, cooking stuff in plastic, like, you know, use stainless steel pans, like, swap out a bunch of your plastic Tupperware and things like this. And unfortunately, I think that eating out is like a or sorry, ordering in is a very big deal too. Like, almost everything that you order in comes in some sort of Tupperware or cardboard or plastic thing that sheds a bunch of particles and other chemicals, leeches into the food. And I think that that is like an underrated source of toxin exposure for a lot of people. And so if you can cut out your exposure to these sorts of like class of pesticides, chemicals, plastics, phthalates, things like that, it's going to make a substantial difference to

William Harris 1:08:58

your health. These are incredible recommendations. I try to adhere to every single one of the things that you actually just mentioned. I like tracking this very, very well myself. I write down my own, basically, my own protocols, right? If you would even down to what I'm eating, when I'm eating, how I'm eating it, and trying to track that for partly side could, know, you know, a month into a protocol, how, how well is it impacting me? Am I noticing any changes? So that way I can say, basically, like, almost like an AB test, not truly AB test, but just to understand if it's making a difference or not. Yep. What, outside of what the advice that you just gave, if there were people that wanted to go further, dig deeper, are there a couple of influencers outside of Gary breka That you would say I recommend listening to this podcast or reading this book, or anything along those lines?

Justin Mares 1:09:57

Yeah, I mean, I think I would like i. Have a monthly newsletter that I write that I think is a good resource in terms of, like, printing, you

William Harris 1:10:05

know, what is it? I didn't know that you had the monthly newsletter. What is it called? It's

Justin Mares 1:10:09

called the next it's just, Justin Mares on substack. And that's kind of it,

William Harris 1:10:15

perfect. Yeah, check it out. Yeah. Sounds good.

Justin Mares 1:10:19

Yeah. I think, I think that's where I like share most of my best stuff. Okay,

William Harris 1:10:24

speaking of which, then it's been really great having you here. If people wanted to follow you, work with you. What is the best way for them to get in touch? Stay in touch.

Justin Mares 1:10:34

Yeah, I honestly think the sub stack, like, I think is the best place to just kind of follow along with what I'm doing, and, you know, keep appraised of the things that I'm working on, thinking all of that, I would say is the best

William Harris 1:10:48

Well, I love it. You are. You are thinking about a lot of things systematically and putting them to the test. It's been a lot of fun talking to you. I've learned a lot from you. This has been really fun, awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, and everybody else, thank you for tuning in. Hope you have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:11:03

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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