What is up everybody? Welcome back to Capital University the top five business podcast in the world. If you're listening on a podcast, we seriously appreciate it helps us more than you think if you're listening right the podcast 5 Stars leave a review unless it's shitty and subscribe. Seriously, please we need it. If you're watching on YouTube. Don't forget to like comment subscribe and today. I'm super excited for the guests pomp you introduce them. What's going on guys today? We've got Dave asprey. He's the founder of bulletproof
nutrition. He had one.
It was 300 pounds. He made every business mistake possible. But now not only is he in shape but also financially set so hopefully you guys enjoy this one.
So Dave let's just start with you kind of
giving us a rundown of your background. And how did you eventually get to the point where you found it bulletproof nutrition when I was in college, they made my tuition go up by 900% and I couldn't I couldn't pay for it. So I said I'd my job scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins isn't cutting it. So I'm gonna have to start a company.
And I started a company that made a t-shirt that said caffeine my drug of choice and I sold it to 16 countries over this thing called the internet before the web browser was created. It turns out that was the first product ever to ship commercially using the internet as its marketing tool before there was a word for e-commerce and I was an entrepreneur magazine when I weighed 300 pounds
is like hey, there's this kid is like selling things over the center
something or another back when entrepreneurship was different. So I was all about being an entrepreneur about time. I was 26. I realized I sucked it selling T-shirts actually.
Pretty good at it but I suck to put them in boxes and bags and I ended up going to work for the company that held Google's first server when it was two guys in a computer. I was a co-founder of a part of this company that became worth thirty six billion dollars what they call an intrapreneur and then I was inside inside starting a company inside another company and man. I learned so much during that time. I made six million dollars. I was 26. It was awesome. I lost when I was 28. So
oops oops, six million and
man talk about
trauma. Like if you think you're set for life in your early 20s, right and my calves I'll get a PhD in psychopharmacology or something. I'm just gonna screw around so it's my life is gonna be awesome. And then just as a diamond to go. Oh my God, I'm gonna have to work for the next 20 years and I look at that how to get started with bulletproof 360. I already had made a career and I was a VP at a big company. I made a quarter million dollars your head stock options and I started a Blog to tell people how to not make the mistakes that I made. I spent a million dollars upgrading my biology. I'm
On the percent body fat, but all the mistakes that I made works. I didn't have good information and I just believe that when we're young if we could get good guidance, we could avoid a lot of pain and so I lived way more that pain that I wanted to and that's what we're bulletproof. We started. It was a Blog to help a few people who didn't want to go through the crap. I went through and it turns out more than a few people cared and I've been 200 million downloads of the podcast and people lost a million pounds on the bulletproof diet and surprisingly. What do you want?
When you're young you actually want enough energy to do everything you want and you want to do everything the teachings that came out of starting bulletproof and all this. It was interesting it first took off with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley because I was writing for people who wanted to do big things and then it took off in Wall Street because those are people were like working their asses off and they never sleep and all this and then it took off in Hollywood because it
turns out being
an actor or an actress on camera. You have to look at all the time you have to have energy
in a working brain all the time and then I went into pro athletes and it turns out College.
Judges are a place where Bulletproof Coffee is just crazy because it lets
you have more energy. Even if you stayed out way too late drinking the night before you can still turn your brain back on. And so what you want is different when you're young and
kind of walk through that like what kind of the psychology that yeah, you can sure. Okay, so I figured this out all
life whether human or not has to follow the same algorithm and there's just a set of rules and because we are powered by ancient bacteria. They're the ones setting these rules.
Al's here's what life does the first thing you do with ten times more attention than everything else you run away from kill or hide from scary things because if something eats you it's game over right? It's just obvious. So even a bacteria a cactus everything has a little defense system and all that and when you're in your 20s, like okay, like your body hasn't quite figured out everything that's really scary not but the thing that feels scary scariest is actually rejection because if you don't have a tribe, you're all alone. You're all alone. Some is going
You
know, that's not true. But that's what we were wired because we're animals to right and that's why we're so focused on our friends our community being influential but the second thing that all life-forms do is they eat everything because famine has killed us and this is why you're going to have two orders of pizza Friday night. All right, and you like I probably ate some stuff I should eat but it tasted good because that automated systems like five times more energy goes into making sure you don't starve eat everything right? But here's where you get trapped where I get trapped.
In my 20s as well. The third thing all life has to do so Bryce. Let's see. The first one is fear. The second one's food the third one. What would that be? That's also an f word
light fear. I mean no. No,
it's no way we have fear. We have food the third thing all life does to make sure it continues on the earth the thing you think about the most
Four letter word starts with that
fuck. There you go. I was thinking fertility, but we can go there find yeah, it's fuck. So I thought you were you were you were insinuating the fight or flight response. So that's why I said
flight, you know, it's totally reasonable answer but it's like it's a fight or flight is that first one? So like like okay. Is there something dangerous right now and then it's like, okay I need eat and then it's like I gotta get some or I'm going to die, right and so I got to ask you have you ever done something you're ashamed of that is
One of those three things
I could I could fucking go on and on about all the
things that I regret. But but all the things you've done either came because of fear because of hunger or because you wanted to get laid,
right? Yeah in all the good stuff that's left over like that. I wanted to help my friends. I want to do all this stuff that's stuff. That's the real you that's the good stuff in a lot of entrepreneurs, especially me when I was a young entrepreneur.
What we're doing is we're running away from rejection. So I you have to prove yourself because you were bullied because I was bullied most people get some old.
These days right? And
so now you're an Impulse. I got all this attention. I'll tell you straight up. I was in all these magazines 80 magazines when I was
23 years old and it made me happy for about a day and then I was like, I'm still not happy. Goddamn it right and then okay, I'll
make all this money. I mean six million dollars. Okay. I lost that. I'm still not happy and when I had six million dollars I kid you not
I looked at another friend at the same company when we were all you know buying BMWs and everything and I said, you know, I'll be happy when I have 10 million. That's my
number. Okay, what kind of a douchebag who has six?
Dollars to me 26 years old like I'm still not happy. I need 10 million dollars. It's a stupidest thing I've ever said actually it's not but it's pretty close to that. What's going on here is we think when we
get something as an
entrepreneur as an
influencer as a sports figure that it'll bring happiness, but it doesn't bring happiness. What brings happiness is the
fourth f word. So if
the first one is fear, the second one is food. Third one's fucking the fourth f word is friend and if you can take what you're doing as a
leader on the field as an influence on social media and you can say I am going to do
something that is of service to others it immediately puts you into a flow State and now
instead of running away from
something with your success, you're running towards something towards doing more and as an entrepreneur you can take what you've earned on the field what you've earned in
the really rough
field of becoming an influencer and actually doing something that's a value to people and entertaining and you earn the right to start helping other people.
Start their companies get attention on their brand to invest in their brands to start new companies. I'm to the point now bulletproof is it's raised 80 million dollars in Venture Capital. It's doing very well. It's growing. We just launched in 7-Eleven
and on top of that. I have
five other companies like upgrade Labs like 40 years of Zen where I teach entrepreneurs how to hack their
brains. I can do that because I earned
it but what I did that was stupid is when I
Young at the same time. I'm still in t-shirts out of my dorm room. There's another guy named Marc Andreessen. You probably heard of them big investor. He wrote the first web browser right at the time that I was using this stuff to sell things. He had the wisdom to go over to Silicon Valley and find an entrepreneur with 20 25 years more experience again in Jim Clark
and he said hey teach me you
look at what Mark Zuckerberg dead. It's like wow, I've got the same taken off. I'm 25. What did he do? He went over and he found other people who had already taken all the hits and he said teach me
what did I do? Like I could do it all myself.
Off. So Marc Andreessen you like a multi-billionaire. I'm not I'm doing all right, but the difference there was
having they had the wisdom and the self-awareness that I didn't have to say. Could I get some guidance here? And I was like, I don't want any guidance because then I would owe them and that all these weird messages in my head.
So that would be my biggest my
biggest blessing along bulletproof was I had to fail I had to lose some money and had to learn to get a hold my own ego so I could actually ask
for help. So that was beautiful by the way. I love the speech
So you found it bulletproof 360 and bulletproof nutrition. You said you were over 300 pounds at one
point just 300 pounds. I wasn't over 300 pounds. But
yeah so exactly on the dot 300 pounds. Yeah. Okay that
technically if you really want I was 297 but when I had pants on I was 300 so I just say 300. Okay. So 300 pounds right?
I was going to ask were you always into Health but obviously not what inspired you to I was right. It's like 3 and when when we're
young we are wired it soon.
We turn about 13 our job is to run away from our tribe so that we don't keep we don't have like a gene pool that gets shrinking. So you have to like dislike where you are enough that you're willing to Brave lions tigers and bears and go find another tribe where you can go get some okay. This is like built-in and it's a big thing and this is why teenagers are teenagers like it's all normal and healthy and good. I look at that though, like just two more directly into your question. I didn't even know that I was out and help
them. I got a few extra pounds, but look, I've played soccer for 13 years. I ride my bike.
Bike all the time. I try to eat healthy, but the bottom line is a lot of the crap they tell you to do it just is wrong. It's someone playing you for a commercial gain, even like the vegan diet. You can do it when you're really young it just burns you out and it breaks your cells over time. I was a raw vegan. I've done all the
diets and they did writing a new diet that undid the damage from all the other ones.
So the idea is you can say you want to be healthy. You might even be one of
the rare people who's like willing to go to the gym instead of on a date or maybe you make it a gym day. That's all.
Ed right but if what you're doing is bad advice you'll just end up burning the candle out and you are capable when you're young of staying up all night and stay up all night starting your company recording content partying right maybe doing all three at the same time. It's all good. But what you think you're doing for health probably isn't actually Health what you really want is stuff that gives you more energy and I don't mean like Red Bull kind of energy. I mean like real like any engine yourselves when you that health comes naturally.
Nice, by the way,
I sell coffee so it's all right. Okay. Yeah any energy is the new energy drink. We just launched got it done in like what's in it tell me what's in it. I mean, it's 75 milligrams of caffeine. It's V. It's not much. That's the totally healthy caffeine is actually good for you at normal doses. Yeah. I know it's way less than a Red Bull. It's I think I say it's an energy drink but it's more lifestyle drink. You could literally drink it on a Monday morning right before you're about to go to work or you can see that that's a fix that
that is.
Actually with the world needs in order to be able to do things sustainably and you don't need to burn yourself out. So what else is in
there? It's gluten-free. There's only 30 calories per can it is not full of sugar. So you're doing things in a good direction. You've built something.
That's way better than what's out there and that's how you make money as an entrepreneur. You do something better like the the company whose like Red Bull number two. I don't know it is but they basically copy the same thing and try and create a Cool brand. It's not cool. You have to do something.
Better than what's on the market? Otherwise, you're a bad person.
So when you were creating bulletproof, what was your intended market? Like who what was your
audience? You know, you might say I'm a bad entrepreneur. Here's what I did. I said, you know what I'm so tired of drinking coffee that gives me Jitters and makes me cranky after I drink it and gives me a crash. I figured out how to make just a black coffee that was free of the toxins that cause the Jitter in the crash and I couldn't reliably find it. So I put a post up and was like, hey, I think the market size.
This is zero. But maybe there's a hundred people who want coffee. That just makes them kick ass and doesn't make them crash. So do you guys want to like go in with me? I'll run all the lab testing all sorts of really clean coffee and we'll put an infrastructure change it and it turns out the demand was much higher but it was it's now a multi-hundred million dollar category the functional
coffee category. It didn't exist people like I drink coffee for flavor. I mean I drink
coffee to kick ass. I know about you guys. So that was it. It was literally didn't exist.
And then you look at collagen protein wasn't a category
now. It's probably a billion dollar category. I did that because
cuz I wanted a protein that didn't cause inflammation and then I went on I'm like, okay, what's this MCT oil thing? Like it does very specific things in the body that are epic and no knows about it the market size though. It's probably like 20 million and if you like 1980s bodybuilders use it now it's a massive thing that everyone knows about
I did that why because I was tired of being fat. I was tired of being tired
and wanted to get protein that work for me. It was
all selfish like products. I couldn't buy that would do something. And so
what you want to do you like I'm going to make an energy drink that's not bad for me. So you did something better than the
And market Standard and that that's what entrepreneurs do to make the world a better place. And
if you have that mindset and you look at other people like oh that's someone is doing something special. It's not a me to
Brand. It's a it's a
better than what's out there. That's how
we Elevate the whole world. That's what entrepreneurs are so important in society and there's other ways by
teaching and by giving back
and being a Community member, but if you have it in you to create something and to make it it creating it
doesn't even really matter
unless you can get lots of people to use it and they're better off when they're done and I can tell you just from the
audience you've listed people are better off when they choose your energy drink then they choose the number one thing on the market. Therefore
you have a moral
obligation to get people to drinkers because it's in their best interest.
So with that being said, you have a lot of products within
bulletproof about 200 skews I
think so how many more products do you think bulletproof can expand
to it's a tough call. I'm at this point chairman. I've hired a CEO for the company and we just launched our canned cold brew, which is really good and we
Chocolate dipped bars when you're in a start-up normally what you do is you say I'm going to pick a category and I'm going to go execute in that category. And so the The Playbook The Venture Capital Playbook and I've worked on Sand Hill Road at a VC. I've listened to the partner meetings and all that and I went in and said guys you're never gonna invest in my company because I'm in five categories and no startup has a business doing that. Like, who do you think you are? That's what big brands do and it said my categories around Human Performance, but personally, you should give me 50 grand for inventory and I'll pay you a lot more money back, but
Like this isn't this isn't for you and they came back with nine million dollars in venture capital and said it is what we're doing now is were in five big categories bars supplements oils powders and coffee and cold brew coffee. And and you know, the list goes on so building a platform around like that is a very big bar and that's why I raise 80 million dollars what I would have probably done differently if I could go back and I could you know replay things I would have said, let's build a coffee company and let's build a protein.
Our company and let's build a you know a supplement company because each of those companies has a lot more potential acquirers and they can really focus. But what I did do that is very unusual is by putting all them together it and by doing it. Well, it's earned us the right to go into new categories. So if we wanted to go into another kind of food or supplement the brand is strong enough to do it, but it's taken 10 years and 80 million dollars to do it your best bet as a younger entrepreneur is to pick something and stick to it. Most entrepreneurs including me we break.
A car companies by making too many products like make one two three products that are related and sell the shit out of those and you become world-class it getting people to use those
and it's funny that it's funny that is very valuable. It's funny you say that literally every single entrepreneur successful entrepreneur that I've talked to they say create three, they say three things that you can focus like all your time and you think that they can scale on so that's like that's funny that you say that
what saved me Bryce's I had a board of directors of really experienced people.
Had seen hundreds of companies. That's why you professional investors, even though they come with their own evils because they want part of your company and they want some control and all that. They also come with knowledge. So they sat me down. They said Dave you're making too many products are going to break your team. And this is something that happens to all of us. I'm a pretty experienced entrepreneur, you know, what happened what I couldn't hear them because to me it was so like it wasn't in my universe where they said so my own brain my own ego filtered that out. They had to tell me that about 20 times before one day. I look at them. I'm like, why don't you tell me and like
we've been telling you for the last
Six months dumbass man. I couldn't hear you. Sorry about that. Right like literally this happened and then the
next two weeks. I went through the team we did ask you rationalization. We cut half the
products that were because they were the products that were taking a lot of my team's time,
but they weren't the ones that were bringing in enough money to fund the team and to fund the growth and to do the right things. And so that's why this why it's so important to have if it's not a formal Board of investors a board of directors just to have experienced entrepreneurs will help you the good news is if you're
First-timer young entrepreneur. Nothing makes entrepreneurs happier than keeping other entrepreneurs from going through all the shit that they went through. So that's why I'm on a lot of advisory boards. I'm an investor in bunch of companies and I can have those phone calls with people that really it's sometimes it's one hour phone call and it changes the whole trajectory of a company and it's just I'm just grateful. There are people willing to listen more than I was willing to listen
Dave as we go to wrap up Bryce obviously is a
21 year old who's starting businesses, I think
A lot of people have come on and been very helpful to Bryce around is just like what's that one piece of information or that one big mistake that you're like look if I could go back and do my entire career all over again. This is the one thing that I wish I knew when I was 21 years
old. I think I already know the answer. It's listen.
Well, the one thing and you probably picked it up because I think I've alluded to it Bryce. It's that people want to help you. Right and it doesn't always feel that way. The reality is the people who are
The givers not takers the Creator's I've had so many people who are you know, an order of magnitude more successful than me. Like hey Dave you want to fly with me on my private jet and I'll share I'll share some knowledge with you while we're going somewhere anyway, and I'm like, of course I want to do that like thank you and they're not they're not doing it. So I'll owe them a favor and that was my problem when I was younger. I didn't understand that they're doing it because it feels good to help someone else not go through a bunch of
crap. And if I had just been if
I just known people actually want to help you and they don't
want anything in return at least most of them and was want something in return. You can give it to him or not, whatever but it's not always transactional. It's often times just about seeing someone succeed is its own thing for someone who's already successful? So just ask for help. It's my biggest piece of advice and acknowledge it and then put it to work for you and man if I had done that I would be a multi-billionaire. Absolutely. I love that piece of advice
Bryce any last questions, no more questions. I actually have a meeting in six minutes. So
Me too. So thank you dude. Thank you so much for coming on it means a
lot. Seriously you had some great advice really appreciate it Bryce. You're you're breaking the rules you're starting for most people start and you're doing it right in multiple ways. And I love with the already helping other people. So keep that up and the sky's the limit man. Thank you so much did
thank you guys so much for listening all the way to the end. That guy is really interesting guy. You guys are listening on a podcast remember don't forget to rate the podcast.
If Stars leave a review And subscribe and if you're watching on YouTube, we seriously appreciate it like comment subscribe and we'll see you guys next time police.
