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Greg Lav · YouTube

You're Not Too Late. You're Probably Too Early.

Bloom Nutrition's CEO and president spend thirty minutes on a yacht in Greece arguing that the real risk isn't missing your moment — it's showing up before the market is ready to understand you.

Posted
1 weeks ago
Duration
Format
Interview
educational
Views
50K
1.9K likes
Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Being early to a platform or niche is often a bigger liability than being late, because early movers pay to educate a market that doesn't yet understand the product while later entrants build on a foundation others already laid.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…
  • You're pre-revenue or early-stage and paralyzed by the fear that your niche or platform is already too saturated to enter.
  • You're running a consumer brand and want a concrete model for growing community and distribution before you have advertising budget.
  • You're weighing whether to sell your brand someday and want to know what actually makes a business attractive to an acquirer.
  • You're a founder feeling the weight of bigger decisions and want language for how experienced operators stay level-headed.
SKIP IF…
  • You're looking for platform-specific TikTok Shop or Amazon tactics — this is philosophy and framework, not a step-by-step playbook.
  • You want a polished interview — this is two friends riffing casually on a yacht, heavy on profanity and personal tangents about cigars and old habits.
TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Two Bloom Nutrition founders argue that being late to a trend rarely kills a business, but being early does — it forces you to spend money educating a market instead of just converting one that already understands the category. They trace Bloom's growth from meme-page arbitrage and niche positioning (a pre-workout for anxious women who lift) to becoming a platform brand that finally launched an energy drink a year later than it could have, on purpose. On money, they're blunt: salary never made them wealthy, selling equity did, and staying grounded under bigger stakes comes from surviving a hundred bad decisions together, not from getting fewer of them.

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Voices

Who's talking.

00:20cohostLeo
Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 00:43

01 · Cold open

A highlight-reel teaser of lines from later in the conversation; Greg introduces Bloom, the yacht setting, and Leo as president of Bloom.

00:43 – 03:06

02 · Meme page arbitrage

Greg explains buying ad space on popular meme pages to grow his wife Mari's community instead of advertising a product, plus a $10,000 buy that returned almost no American followers.

03:06 – 05:30

03 · Measuring beyond views

Leo's framework for content that works: sales, search volume, and website traffic should move within about a minute of a post going live; track hour-by-hour sales, not daily totals.

05:30 – 08:08

04 · Too late vs. too early

The video's central thesis: there's no such thing as too late, but being early costs money educating a customer who doesn't yet need the product.

08:08 – 09:57

05 · Niche positioning and white space

Starting in the niche of a niche — a pre-workout for women lifting weights who also had anxiety — and winning distribution channels competitors ignored.

09:57 – 12:55

06 · What growth looks like now

Fewer daily tactical pivots, longer-horizon decisions stretching to six months or a year, and doing personal 'self work' to become the operator the business now needs.

12:55 – 16:53

07 · Noticed vs. bought

Key-man risk, why platform brands outsell single-product or founder-named brands, and why a bad founder reputation kills an acquisition before it starts.

16:53 – 21:28

08 · Real wealth is equity

Salary never made either founder wealthy; wealth came from selling 30% of Bloom, and money changes circumstances but not how you feel inside.

21:28 – 24:39

09 · Staying grounded at higher stakes

Grounding is internal, not a reward for good decisions — it comes from surviving a hundred bad ones together and realizing nothing was actually catastrophic.

24:39 – 26:17

10 · What to do when you feel stuck

Get outside advisors with different biases into the room, and physically leave the office for a few days to find a new angle.

26:17 – 30:01

11 · 25-year-old regrets and moderation

Greg's old habit of compartmentalizing into different 'Gregs,' using a bong to decompress, all-or-nothing dieting and drinking, and today's more moderate cigar habit.

30:01 – 31:48

12 · Advice for doubters

People who mock a new venture usually wanted to attempt something similar themselves; changing cities was the most effective way to change the surrounding social energy.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

  • Being too early to a platform costs more than being late, because early entrants have to spend money educating a market that doesn't yet understand the product.
  • Bloom's first growth channel wasn't advertising the product — it was paying meme pages to tell their audience to follow the founder and join a community.
  • A single $10,000 meme-page ad buy once returned an audience that was almost entirely non-American, teaching the founders to distrust follower counts as a metric.
  • If a piece of paid media doesn't move sales or search volume within about a minute of going live, the marketing itself is the problem, not the channel.
  • Tracking hour-by-hour sales instead of daily totals reveals spikes caused by competitors' marketing, like a rival's Super Bowl ad lifting an entire product category.
  • Bloom deliberately launched its energy drink a year later than it could have, choosing brand readiness over first-mover speed.
  • The most durable niche positioning targets the niche within a niche — Bloom's first pre-workout was built for women lifting weights who also struggled with anxiety.
  • Winning distribution channels a larger competitor ignores, like retail shelf space Athletic Greens skipped, can be as valuable as any single marketing tactic.
  • A brand named after its founder or its first product carries key-man or single-SKU risk that makes acquirers hesitant to buy it.
  • Nearly all of the founders' personal wealth came from selling equity in the company, not from salary, even a salary under $200,000 a year.
  • Feeling grounded under pressure isn't a reward for making good decisions — it comes from surviving a hundred bad ones and realizing none of them were fatal.
  • Most of the people who mock a new venture are people who dreamed about starting their own and never did.
  • Moving to a new city was, in their own words, the single most powerful way to change the negative energy of the people around them.
Takeaway

Timing myths founders use to talk themselves out of starting.

WHAT TO LEARN

The advantage of being early is smaller than it feels, and most of what makes a brand valuable — audience trust, distribution, and grounded decision-making — comes from staying in the game long enough to build it, not from getting there first.

02Meme page arbitrage
  • Before spending on ads, look for underpriced attention: cheap placements on already-large audiences you don't own can outperform paid product ads.
  • Growing a founder's or community's following first, rather than advertising a product directly, can lay the buying foundation before you ever pitch anything.
  • A cheap channel that works can still fail badly — vet the audience quality behind any 'cheap growth' tactic before scaling spend into it.
03Measuring beyond views
  • Treat any marketing spend that doesn't move sales or search volume within roughly a minute of going live as a signal the creative or targeting is broken.
  • Track sales hour-by-hour, not just daily, so you can separate your own marketing's impact from external spikes like a competitor's ad lifting the whole category.
  • A sales or traffic spike with no clear internal cause is often a sign the wider market or a rival's marketing is moving, not your own work.
04Too late vs. too early
  • Arriving late to a platform or trend often means someone else already educated the market for you, which is cheaper than being the one who has to.
  • Being early forces you to spend money convincing people why they need something at all, before you can even sell them on why yours is better.
  • It can be worth deliberately delaying a launch until the surrounding brand and operations are ready, rather than rushing to be first.
05Niche positioning and white space
  • The most defensible starting position is often a niche within a niche — narrow enough that no larger company will bother competing for it yet.
  • A product built for one very specific, self-aware customer creates faster word-of-mouth than one built to appeal broadly.
  • Distribution channels a bigger competitor has skipped entirely can be as valuable a competitive edge as any single ad or content tactic.
06What growth looks like now
  • As a business matures, the useful planning horizon gets longer — from daily tactical changes to decisions made for where things need to be in six months or a year.
  • Growth eventually depends less on any single new tactic and more on consistently finding the next real lever before the current one runs out.
  • Becoming capable of bigger decisions is itself a skill that has to be built deliberately, not just assumed to come with revenue growth.
07Noticed vs. bought
  • A brand that depends on one founder's name or presence to function is harder to sell, because a buyer is really buying a system, not a person.
  • Buyers of a business want confidence people will keep buying multiple products from it, not just the one product that made it famous.
  • A brand built primarily on aggressive, short-term performance marketing is harder to sell than one built on trust and community, even at similar revenue.
  • A founder's personal reputation directly affects whether an acquirer will even enter a sale conversation, since due diligence exposes everything.
08Real wealth is equity
  • Salary rarely builds real wealth on its own; the larger financial outcomes come from owning equity in something that can be sold or grow in value.
  • Money changes your circumstances but not how you fundamentally feel — expecting a specific dollar amount to create lasting happiness sets up disappointment.
  • Relationships outside the business — a partner, kids, close friends — matter more to quality of life than any amount of money alone.
09Staying grounded at higher stakes
  • Comfort with high-stakes decisions tends to come from deeply understanding every part of the business, not from natural confidence or experience alone.
  • A feeling of being grounded is internal and has to be built by surviving mistakes, not earned as a reward for a string of good outcomes.
  • Having repeatable systems in place for recurring decisions reduces day-to-day confusion more reliably than trying to think harder in the moment.
10What to do when you feel stuck
  • When genuinely unclear on the right move, deliberately bring in people with different biases and perspectives rather than trying to decide alone.
  • Physically leaving the usual work environment for a few days can surface better strategic thinking than staying in the office grinding on the same problem.
1125-year-old regrets and moderation
  • Compartmentalizing yourself into different personas for different parts of life is exhausting long-term; consistency across contexts is the healthier version of maturity.
  • Swinging between extremes — all-in or all-out on diet, alcohol, or work — is often a sign of using those behaviors to manage unaddressed stress or anger.
  • Moderation that comes with age isn't a loss of drive; it can coexist with more happiness and less volatility than the all-or-nothing years.
12Advice for doubters
  • People who privately criticize a new venture are frequently people who wanted to attempt something similar themselves and never did.
  • Even people close to you can openly mock an idea that later succeeds — proximity to you doesn't make someone's judgment about your idea reliable.
  • Changing your physical environment and social circle can be a more effective way to remove negative influence than trying to argue people into support.
Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Meme page arbitrage
Buying cheap ad placements on popular meme accounts to funnel followers to a founder or brand page before that kind of inventory became expensive, exploiting an underpriced attention channel.
Key man risk
The risk that a business's value depends on one specific person, which discourages acquirers who want a company that survives a change in ownership.
Platform brand
A brand built to sell many different products under one trusted name, rather than being defined by a single product or SKU.
Enterprise value
The total value of a business as a saleable asset, built through ownership equity, as distinct from the income an owner draws as salary.
White space
An underused sales channel or market segment that competitors have left open, letting a newer brand gain distribution without direct competition.
Resources

Things they pointed at.

04:38productPoppy
05:08productAthletic Greens
05:40channelTikTok Shop
14:34productRobert Irvine's Oh G protein bar
14:34productGeorge Foreman Grill
Quotables

Lines you could clip.

05:36
“There's no such thing as too late.”
the title's thesis stated flat, no setup needed→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
07:14
“Dare I say you're almost more fucked if you're too early.”
the contrarian flip side of the title that completes the argument→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
01:05
“We arbitraged the chronological algorithm by buying posts on popular meme pages.”
a concrete, swipeable growth tactic named in one line→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
15:16
“It's not really great to name a brand after a product either.”
counterintuitive branding rule stated plainly→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
16:36
“Pretty much all the real wealth in the world is built through equity.”
the money thesis in one standalone sentence→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
24:27
“Don't ever multiply by zero.”
a sharp, memorable risk-management one-liner→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
31:13
“Pack your bags and buy a fucking plane ticket.”
blunt, actionable closing advice with no hedging→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
26:21
“I used to think that the optimal man was somebody who could click a dial between CEO Greg, father Greg, husband Greg, son Greg, friend Greg.”
vivid, self-critical framing of compartmentalization→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
21:58
“I really understand every component to the business.”
names the real source of founder confidence at scale→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
25:13
“We have some of our best ideas when we just get out of the office for a couple days.”
a simple, actionable habit stated in one breath→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
Topic Map

Where the conversation goes.

00:00 – 05:30denseEarly growth tactics — meme page arbitrage and measuring beyond views
05:30 – 09:57denseTiming and positioning — too late vs. too early, niche and white space
09:57 – 12:55Business maturity and decision-making systems
12:55 – 16:53denseBuilding a brand that's actually sellable
16:53 – 21:28denseWealth and money mindset
21:28 – 31:48Personal grounding, habits, and advice for doubters
The Script

Word for word.

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metaphor
00:00If you are trying to build a brand and you are not just trying to sell a product, you need to make a fundamental change about the marketing that you are deploying. My name is Greg Leveckia. I'm the co founder and CEO of Bloom.
00:09We are in a floating vessel aka a yacht. You can convert someone with an ad. You've converted them on a product.
00:15You haven't necessarily converted them on a lifestyle. I really understand every component to the business. We have Leo, the president of Bloom sitting next to me.
00:23We've been steering this ship. How do you actually measure if your content is working beyond views? To speak to somebody very specific is the greatest way to get a jump start from day zero.
00:36There's no such thing as too late. Dare I say you're almost more You're too early. Welcome back.
00:43What's the smartest cheap marketing move you made in year one that you'd absolutely repeat today? When I started bloom or when my wife and I started bloom, the algorithm was chronological. By chronological I mean if I posted if somebody posted their post was at the top of somebody's news feed.
01:00Don't even think there was an explore page at the time. No. There was like suggested posts.
01:04We arbitraged the chronological algorithm by buying posts on popular meme pages.
01:12We did not advertise Bloom. We did not advertise a product. What we advertised was just bringing the community or growing the community and asking people to join the community.
01:22If you are trying to build a brand and you are not just trying to sell a product which is what our whole careers are based around building a brand, you need to just put everything towards growing the community. So we would buy ad space on these meme pages and ask them to post a meme of of really my wife, the founder of the brand.
01:40It's a go follow Mari Llewellyn. And if they followed Mari Llewellyn and they joined Mari's community, we know that would create the foundation for somebody who would eventually probably want to buy Bloom products because Bloom products were very much associated with Mari's community.
01:55So the true initial marketing arbitrage for us to be able to get real reach, real impressions, real eyeballs on our community and get people to join was actually through meme page arbitrage.
02:08The version of that today, I mean, it's basically just that is what influencer marketing is. We were doing brand deals on meme pages. It was basically the early one of the earliest versions of influencer marketing that really worked.
02:17So meme page marketing was the first cheap marketing funnel test that we did at scale. Now I have some horror stories of when that didn't work.
02:26Shit. I I there was a few times I bought I put all of our money into one meme ad. Like if we had 10,000 in the bank, I spent $10,000 on a Thursday night buying like three huge me mads on new pages.
02:39I'd click deploy, I'd send the PayPal, dude every single follower we got was from fucking India. There was not one American follower. And that's where we started to learn about the different ways to evaluate metrics around what makes marketing work.
02:52And that is the perfect segue to the next question, and Leo, think you'll crush this one. How do you actually measure if your content is working beyond views? Well, sales.
03:06I mean, I assume most of you guys are probably selling digital products or products you could only buy online. So if you spend money on something that isn't meta, that's, like, attributable attributable directly back to revenue, you should be able to see a sales pickup when that media gets impressions or views and whatever you've deployed it on.
03:27And if it doesn't, then it's like, it probably doesn't make sense. Like, you should if you're sub 100,000,000 in revenue or sub 50,000,000 in revenue maybe, you should probably have a immediacy
03:40of sales when you do some type of marketing stunt. When we first started to scale the influencer marketing program before it was at tremendous scale, every time an influencer would post, we would see our Amazon search volume go up and see our Shopify website traffic go up live time within the within one minute of that video being posted.
04:00Yeah. If you are not experiencing that with your affiliates posting or with your influencers posting or with your ads going live, your marketing is most likely not quality.
04:10You need to change something fundamental. You need to make a fundamental change about the marketing that you are deploying. You should see live time search volume and website traffic and ideally with a route with a normal conversion rate you'll see sales happening at that point.
04:22If you're trying to think and this is the next question, if you're trying to think of what are some of the key metrics that you should be watching that you aren't necessarily that the textbook doesn't tell you to watch every single day, it is your hour by hour sales.
04:33More granular than just daily sales and the reason I bring that up is because we would see huge spikes sometimes come out of nowhere. That was not a result of our marketing, it'd be because of our competitors marketing.
04:45So for example, Poppy ran a Super Bowl ad two years in a row the last two years. Our better for you soda, Bloom pop lifted in sales as a result of their Super Bowl ad. So like no one on our team was responsible for that sales lift, but us just being in the right place of distribution as a result of our competitor lifting that entire category resulted in our sales increase.
05:06So similarly, back before beverage when we were selling a greens powder when athletic greens would run a Joe Rogan ad or buy the front page of the Wall Street Journal, we would see a sales lift on Amazon at Target. So it's like trying to make a correlation between to every single spike in sales that happens and understand why it's happening is one of the best things that you can do as a as a as a leader of your business.
05:30Alright, Leo. What's a growth lever you pulled too late and what's one you pulled too early? There's no such thing as too late.
05:37We're we're never the first to the race. No. We were not the first greens powder, we were not we were definitely not the first energy drink, we were not the first soda, we were not we were not the first on TikTok shop, we were not the first on Instagram, we were not the first on Amazon or Shopify or at Target.
05:52There's nothing wrong with being late. In fact, we have harnessed or we have garnered so much strength in this industry by letting the foundation get laid before we arrive.
06:05You could say, alright, Greg and Leo, you could have been earlier on TikTok shop, but I don't think the consumer was ready to see a brand as prominent as we were on TikTok shop yet. And we we strategically needed to just change some elements about our business and do that properly before we struck before we struck TikTok shop, we needed to change some things about our business fundamentally, and if we just launched on there without preparation, we would have been sloppy and you don't wanna do anything sloppy.
06:31Get there right. In hindsight, and I think probably
06:35people in the $1,020,000,000 revenue range, this is relevant. We could have launched our energy drinks sooner. Right?
06:41We had built the brand, but I think we were so it it when you're building a brand and you have one product or a a small set of products, it becomes way easier to market and get the brand out there than if you have a huge assortment of products. It adds a lot of complexity.
06:55So in hindsight, you could say, we built the brand, we could have launched the energy drink maybe six months a years earlier or a year earlier,
07:02but there's no such thing as too late. There's no the the biggest takeaway is there's no such thing as too late. It's not TikTok shops been around for three years, you're still not late for the gold rush.
07:11And there'll be another one. Facts. Dare I say you're almost more fucked if you're too early because if you're too early, you need to spend money on educating the consumer which we never want to we need we we come from a bootstrap background with no outside investors.
07:26Every dollar needs to work and I don't wanna waste money on educating a consumer on what an energy drink is. Everyone already knows what an energy drink is. We just need to communicate to them that ours is better and it's worth switching to or trying an energy drink for the first time.
07:38But I don't need to tell anyone why you would need introduce this to your life. Okay. What's a positioning decision early on that looking back was worth more than any single tactic you ran?
07:50You start niche. You start in the niches of niches of large categories. So when Bloom launched pre workout, we found the niche of women and then within the niche of women which was, you know, even more niche than it is today of women who wanted to take a pre workout, we found women who wanted to lose body fat while weight lifting and this was a pre workout for them and had anxiety issues or or were dealing with trying to keep their anxiety at bay.
08:16That is such an outrageously niche product that can never scale past maybe 5 to $10,000,000 a year, but it is a it is a space that no corporation will take the time of day to give specific attention to. So this wasn't like a market guess this was a tactic.
08:31Everything is a tactic, but like Yeah. Starting with niches and positioning your product in that way to speak to somebody very specific is the greatest way to get a jump start from day zero. The decision to start an influencer marketing program on TikTok,
08:46the it's not as I guess that could be considered a tactic. There's a tons of micro tactics within there about how do you get the influencers and what influencers do you choose, but just
08:56starting an influencer program was probably one of the more powerful things we did Yeah. Put aside the specific tactics. Yeah.
09:03And I would alright. The last thing I would add is finding white space through more than just the product itself. So we noticed a lot of our competitors were only available in certain sales channels.
09:14So we so for example, our largest competitor to our greens powder was Athletic Greens. They were only a direct to consumer. You could only buy at athleticgreens.com or whatever the hell their website was.
09:24They weren't available in Target. They weren't available in Walmart. They weren't available on Amazon.
09:28We launched in these distribution channels where our competitors weren't available and that was a white space in itself that gave us a huge competitive advantage and we rode that wave for years until Athletic Greens started to become an omnichannel business and now they're on the decline because their entire marketing mix doesn't work from an omnichannel operation but that's a story for another day.
09:46Shout out athletic greens. Then alright.
09:49Next question. What does growth actually look like at this stage when you're no longer learning the basics but refining the man? Growth at this stage is instead of making tactical pivots on a daily basis,
10:02it's just longer higher quality decisions I would say. Yeah. Simply put.
10:06I think it it for at least in the marketing arena, it's gone from you know like wanting to change something. There's still you still need to do stuff immediately, but the goal I'm thinking or worth thinking about is not the end of this month.
10:20It's actually like, alright, what this thing looks like at the end of the year. And so that's been that's been a big change and it used to be monthly, then it moved to quarterly, and now it's kind of like we're we're looking at things six months, but it doesn't remove the work you need to do to get to wherever you want to go at the end of the You just reminded me of a good one.
10:39I think the big difference is that the work we're doing today, we won't see for six months. Back
10:45in the day, the work we did today was work that we could possibly deploy as an ad or deploy as a website edit or deploy as an email marketing blast that day.
10:56Yeah. That's the difference. Yeah.
10:57Well, actually just to jump on that again. When you get a brand this size, you you all the marketing you're doing today is actually not the thing that's driving sales. It's like the snowball has been rolling so big down the hill at this point.
11:09We could probably shut off all marketing for six months and we'll still continue growing based on all of the marketing and brand awareness and, uh, displays and retailers we have. But it's like at our stage it's now trying to get ahead of that and always try to find the new the new growth pillar which ends up being six months out because you need like it requires more investment, more people Lawyers.
11:30More work. Yeah. Yeah.
11:31That's what it looks like. And then I think you mentioned refining the man. I don't know I don't know if that was a typo, but yeah.
11:37I think it's like the first step to becoming an amazing entrepreneur
11:42and continuing to grow as an entrepreneur is becoming the man or the woman who can be that entrepreneur. So in the last twelve to eighteen to twenty four months, Leo and I have been doing more self work than ever.
11:55And sure, maybe we're new fathers and you know our some of our relationships are a different priority level than maybe they used to be. Whatever it is, it's also because we're trying to become fucking leaders in this space and we didn't think twenty four months ago when we looked in the mirror that we are billion dollar operators.
12:12So we needed to do self work to become a billion dollar operator so that we can become a billion dollar operator. What's the difference between a brand that gets noticed and a brand that gets bought tactically? We have seen brands rip through a $100,000,000 in just a year or two.
12:33That shit happens in 2026. It's fucking incredible and sometimes it's like founders who aren't even legally allowed to drink yet. They're below 21 years old.
12:39It's fucking crazy. But no acquirers will buy their brand and this is why you can't do things sloppy.
12:47This is why sure. Could you run an impulsively charged Facebook ad that just convinces somebody that your product cures some fucking disease and they'll buy your and they'll buy your shit? Probably.
12:59But nobody wants to buy a brand that was built off of negligent marketing or or in irresponsible marketing. I think the difference between a brand that gets bought and a brand that just gets noticed, it's tough to sell a brand that's just built off of performance marketing.
13:14It is.
13:15Yeah. Because you gotta think like in today's day and age, and maybe it wasn't it's actually, you know, there used to be a big mail order industry in The United States before there was online shopping. And you can convert someone with an ad, but it doesn't you've converted them on a product.
13:31You haven't necessarily converted them on a lifestyle or or a brand association. And so in terms of style or approach of marketing, that could be an issue tactically. I think also where you can run into trouble is if you're just fundamentally not a profitable business.
13:49And so if you're scaling, let's say, a supplement business your cost of goods is already maximized and you've scaled it past a 100,000,000 and you can't get over a 45% gross margin, it's not necessarily gonna be an attractive business for an acquirer to be interested in. And so some of those, like, when you go to sell a business, those finer details become very important because an acquirer wants to know people are gonna buy the products this company puts out, not just one product.
14:14And then two, they're gonna wanna know there's a path to increase the profit on this product. Right? Or on this on this product line.
14:21So another one would be key man risk. There is a reason this brand is not called the Mari's supplements or Mari's energy drinks. You do generally do not want the brand associated with somebody's name.
14:32Right? There are a lot of brands.
14:34I mean, you're Robert Irvine with that fucking protein bar Oh g. Or George Foreman Grill, like, course, there's a not there's there's exceptions to every made he basically made a technology. The George Foreman Grill.
14:45He's also like He's like the iPhone. Yeah. Like like he is the Jordan Forman is the iPhone.
14:51It is a grill. It's it's equally as culturally relevant.
14:54Yeah. I think So key man risk is a huge one whether that's you literally name the brand after yourself or like no one would wanna buy Bloom if they felt like myself, Mari and Leo were absolutely integral to the success of that company for whatever reason. And you know, notwithstanding it's like we didn't call it the company you know, Forever Greens or something like that.
15:14Right? Like
15:15it's not really great to name a brand after a product either.
15:19The best brands are platform brands. Bloom is a platform brand that started with pre workouts, went to recovery powders, protein powders, greens powders, energy drinks, now better for you sodas, and all of our marketing from day one if you go back years to our original TikToks about the bloom greens, it was bloom greens and superfoods.
15:40It wasn't just like go buy this greens powder. Powder. We always made sure the brand name was mentioned in the video.
15:45Well, I think people were even referring it to as like let me drink my Bloom. Yeah. Might have not even said Bloom Greens.
15:51You just said let me drink my Bloom. It was just greens. Good point.
15:53Yeah. I'm gonna throw on that isn't as obvious. If you as the founder have a bad reputation, you need to be very careful about trying to sell your brand.
16:01If you have a bad reputation, why would anybody trust you in a diligence process? If you enter a diligence process with a potential acquirer for months on end where they're going to try to figure out all of the skeletons in your closet and you aren't trustworthy or have a trustworthy reputation, they just won't entertain the idea of a transaction.
16:20You need to have a good reputation in this game. I think that's five good takeaways of huge watch outs for potentially selling your business.
16:28Okay. Next question. What do you think people fundamentally misunderstand about what it takes to build real wealth?
16:36Most of no. Pretty much all the real wealth in the world is built through equity. Yeah.
16:41Not much of it is built through, like, a company that one person owns and they just pay themselves a shitload of the profit. A lot of it is built through this equity is worth something. I'm gonna reinvest all the profits back into the business.
16:54And at some point, I might sell a portion of my business. I might sell a portion and go public, and my equity value can grow. So I think that's a huge, huge factor.
17:04You're and that goes back to building not a conversion machine, but building a brand. It's like you wanna build something that you can give to, like, some guy has no idea what you're doing.
17:16It's a set of systems and a a a way to show up in front of consumers. That's what's valuable. And that's what that's how you would make selling whatever that is is how you make real money.
17:26And then I'll do a just a contrarian take on this.
17:30I think I thought it would take fifty years. I think society growing up told us that you don't become wealthy until you're fifty sixty years old, and in 2026 that just is 100% not true.
17:44We're ten years into this journey, and relatively speaking we have financial success. So
17:51I definitely did not believe that in my earlier twenties. Hell no. No.
17:54You would think, like, you'd make it at 50 or 60. Yeah. And I think that just goes to you have certain areas of the economy.
18:02In in the nineteen nineties, it was Wall Street. In twenty twenties, it's TikTok shop. Right?
18:07Like, there's there's certain areas of the economy's and the and the and the the reality is is the the society set up to tell you that finance is still the opportunity. It's fucking not. It is TikTok shop.
18:19At 19 years old, you can make a million dollars, or at 16, you can make a million dollars. You can't do that anywhere else. And so I think focusing on the new age economies where where where where the growth is happening is is ultimately where you wanna end up.
18:36It's fine if you get experience in corporations because they'll teach you best in class practices, but you have to remember when you work for a corporation, that is something that is scaled already.
18:46So, like, let's say you work for Microsoft. That business is like ultimate scale. If you go and learn sales there, you'll learn sales of Microsoft, which may be very relevant if you go apply that to a small company, a startup, which hasn't necessarily applied that best in class practices.
19:03And I'm not saying that the Microsoft sales skills are necessarily applicable to a startup. That might not be a good example. But, like, there's a lot of great stuff you could learn working for someone else in a established industry that you could then apply to
19:19new age areas of the economy. Alright. What is something you believed about money when you were broke that turned out to be completely wrong?
19:26Wealth is not accumulated accumulated through enterprise value. So we didn't make a lot of money from Bloom.
19:36We didn't we I think my salary is still under $200,000 a year from Bloom. Leo makes more money than me at Bloom.
19:41It's really fucked up. But he signed off on that document and didn't tell me.
19:46That's
19:47all you need to know corporate structures. So
19:51you you you don't make I didn't become wealthy relatively speaking from my salary.
19:58We became wealthy when we sold 30% of Bloom and that's enterprise value and that is true to 90% of the people that I meet of extreme wealth.
20:08I don't wanna give a cliche. Please. Yeah.
20:10Give a cliche. I'll give a cliche. You can set up in your head that money is the goal of whatever whatever you're whatever you're trying to do business wise, and you will get that money and it won't be that for you.
20:22And I think you you you idolize it when you you don't have money that, like, you know, you're gonna you're gonna make all this money and it's you're gonna feel like the top of the world, you will feel the same.
20:34The way you feel will not change. Bro, could you imagine if we were on this boat by our by yourself right now? Well, that's yeah.
20:41I mean
20:43to to to build on that, it's like we have wives, we have children, and and like you have to invest in those relationships.
20:51And and for you to have a good life, put throw away all the money. Like, if you just had a good relationship with your wife and a great relationship with your your child, you're going to a good life.
21:01And so to think, like, you just insert x 8 figures amount of money into your bank account and, like, suddenly, like, fucking joyful, it's it's great, but, like, it won't make you happy.
21:13It's part of the equation but it's far from the whole equation. Yeah. How do you stay grounded as you grow and the stakes get higher?
21:22So not how do you stay grounded with success but as the dude, we're making some scary fucking decisions these days like 9 figure decisions. We actually got a text this morning about a pretty significant 8 figure decision.
21:34Yeah. I think and this has been my experience. As we've gone through our career, you begin to understand what you have.
21:44And so with Bloom, I think I have a very good understanding of the business and the fundamentals and the value under underlying. And so as the stakes have gotten higher, I've actually felt more comfortable in our positioning because and maybe this is a good one.
21:59I really understand every component to the business. I'm not saying I'm a wizard, but, like, I understand the operation, I understand the legal, I understand the marketing, I understand the retail sales, I understand the corporate structures, I understand pretty much all of it. And so that I was more stressed at 50,000,000 than I am now, and I think that has just been a journey of learning.
22:22All that entrepreneurship is or all that becoming a great entrepreneurship or not a great entrepreneur is is accumulating wisdom, and you don't accumulate wisdom through reading books about corporate structure. You learn corporate structure through working with your lawyers and creating an incredible corporate structure.
22:39You learn this shit in the arena. And so if you're 25 feeling chaotic and not and and just feeling unaware of things that are happening, you're supposed to feel that way. We felt that way.
22:48We felt worse with the lower stakes because of our lack of wisdom and experience than we do now. Yeah. And maybe to add on to that,
22:56I think generally when you feel confused or you don't know the path to go in, it's probably because you don't have a system.
23:04And so one of the systems we first created was the influencer marketing program, which like really was correlated to sales, going back to marketing to sales. And that system led us to a big revenue number, and then we needed to launch a new product.
23:20There's now a system for launching products. There's a system for how we go about doing retail sales, and we have more partners. But, like, the more systems you have in place and structures of like repeatable actions leading to bigger outcomes,
23:33the less confused you're gonna feel. And like the less lack of direction you'll the the more clear you'll think. To remove the stakes from this, just to like how to stay grounded when things get fucking huge, the feeling of being grounded is intrinsic.
23:47It is internal. No matter how big your decisions get or if you make 10 amazing decisions in a row, you're not going to feel more grounded because of your success rate. You're going to feel more grounded because you're realizing after you make a 100 really bad decisions, the world didn't end and Leo is still my best friend and I'm still married to my wife and we're having fun regardless and we laugh about the mistakes afterwards and we've laughed about every one of those 100 mistakes afterwards.
24:18So just realizing that like nothing is world ending, nothing is catastrophic unless it's truly catastrophic, don't do that. But There are a few things don't ever multiply by zero.
24:27Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
24:28But just realizing like dude, it's all gonna it's all gonna be okay and you just need to treat this like a game that has no finish line and that giant mistake will just end up making you better. That's how you stay grounded when that stakes are high. What do you do when you feel stuck?
24:41Not motivationally, but genuinely unclear on what the right move is next. You could you need to have people around you to consult.
24:50At this stage in the game at least and earlier on like when it was just my wife and I, you need somebody else to bounce ideas off of who have incremental points of views, different point of view as you on how to bring different biases to that decision making.
25:07Today, there's several people in the room when we're making large decisions. Also, we have some of our best ideas when we just get out of the office for a couple days.
25:16Yeah. We get out of the office, we go on some hikes, we go on a little bit of a trip like this, and we just chat about things from an outside lens looking in on how are things operating back home when we come up with some of the best ideas we ever have when we're away from Austin, Texas. Yeah.
25:31Yeah. I
25:32think you can in business definitely, you can you there's so many different areas where you can get stuck, operations, logistics, etcetera.
25:44I think as long as you are focused marketing or sales and looking, like, constantly thinking about what is the new angle, and that new angle might come to you from a podcast you listen to or someone you speak to, or maybe a completely different industry.
26:01And, like, that if you have a a systematic approach to always looking for the new angle,
26:07you should you will feel stuck less. Yeah. What's a habit, mindset, or behavior you had at 25 that would embarrass you if you still had it today?
26:17I used to think that the optimal man was somebody who could click a dial between CEO Greg, father Greg, husband Greg, son Greg, friend Greg.
26:31I think what it looks like today is somebody who is the same Greg in all situations and I took that to the extreme when we were 25 when we lived in Boulder, Colorado. I was probably 24, 25.
26:42I would by the when I finished the workday, I would be incredibly stressed and wanting to unplug from CEO Greg.
26:49So I'd rip a fucking bong the size of my size of my left leg. Bong life. Bong life.
26:55Because I was like, this is how I will turn off and turn into relax hang out in the house Greg. And it's like, there was no need for it was it was so outrageously unproductive. I I don't even I'm so embarrassed.
27:06You asked what I'm embarrassed to look back at, that'd be something I'm embarrassed to look back at. At 25, what were you? You were on Wall Street?
27:11No. You were you were starting No. No.
27:13Yeah. I did the same shit.
27:15Yeah. I mean, I I I think maybe at that age you're a little bit immature or maybe we just didn't have the right guidance where you you think you wanna disconnect.
27:24And I felt like also I was angrier more, like a lot of the work ethic was driven by some type of anxiety or anger, which looking back I was like, I wish I was just more neutral to optimistic about everything
27:39just I volatile. Yeah.
27:42I was either dieting or binge eating. You know what I mean? Wasn't just like a Greg who lived a healthy life all the time.
27:48Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?
27:49Like I was either not drinking alcohol or drinking alcohol heavily. Yeah. Like I practiced absolutism on both sides of the spectrum going all in or all out.
27:58And it's like now, I drink tequila sometimes, I smoke cigars sometimes, I eat some I eat whatever I want sometimes but it's not like a binge eating. You know what I mean?
28:07Yeah. So it's just like a less volatile life and I am so much happier than I used to be and anybody watching this, your thirties are better than your twenties. We're at we're 31 now and I think we can they're so much fucking better.
28:20It's pretty good. Confirmed.
28:25Confirmed. Confirmed good. Okay.
28:27Alright. Speaking of feeling good, how many cigars a day is most optimal to be firing on all cylinders? That's a real question so don't fucking I didn't put that in there.
28:37Is that real? Depends the size of the cigar. Right?
28:40So in front of me, have three different size cigars. Sorry. There's ash flying everywhere.
28:44You have a small Cigarello. You have a medium sized cigar like this when it was longer.
28:51Then you have a little bit of a fatty like this. That's a bit yeah. Size of a medium sized dog's poop.
28:56That's an Italian sausage. Yeah. This is larger than my thumb.
29:00Cigarellos, can probably get away with six a day. Six.
29:03This fatty, this is really only a couple times a week I'll bring out a fatty.
29:08But yeah, I'm a big fan of nicotine. I think nicotine has been something that I've been able to replace a lot of pharmaceuticals with to help me with my ADHD.
29:16I don't touch pharmaceuticals for the last probably twenty four months plus and a reason for that is nicotine. Now obviously I have mints that I chew too almost like Zins but I don't like Zins and yeah I think I think think a cigar a day is fine.
29:30It seems to be doing just fine for me. Advice for someone whose family and close friends don't believe in what they're building. 90% of the time, nobody doing better than you will speak down on you.
29:44A lot of people will feel jealous at the idea that you are even going after your moonshot or going after your own your own venture because they've just daydreamed about it from their through their twenties and thirties and they never actually did it and they don't wanna watch you go after your fucking dreams. I'll be honest.
30:02When I started this YouTube channel, when I started this Instagram page, there are people in my not immediate network but outside network who I know for a fact talk down to the idea that I was starting this personal brand page. Even at my level, people speak down to new idea Dude, people who I know in my immediate least, in my immediate circle said that the soda was a horrible idea and like made fun of the fact that we were making a better for you soda especially when I told them the flavor was Shirley Temple.
30:28They they they like mocked the idea of it. It's now the number one selling better for you soda in off Target or Walmart. It's a necessary part of the game but going back to its intrinsic and extrinsic, these outside voices don't fucking matter.
30:41And what my wife and I did and eventually Leo joined us on this journey, moving where you live is the single most powerful way to change the negative energy around you and starting in a fresh pond of people.
30:57We were in Brooklyn, New York after Mario and I came from Boulder, Colorado. We linked up with Leo in Brooklyn, New York, and then we went to LA. We lived in LA for a few years, that circle was not motivating as much as maybe it did in the early days, and then now we move to Austin, Texas.
31:12And the simplest answer I can give you is just pack your bags and buy a fucking plane ticket.
31:17Yeah. I I would not get focused on what other people say or think. I think if you you will know in your heart or in your brain that like you're able to do this and you have if you have the conviction you're able to do this, disregard everyone else.
31:32They're not on the same journey as you and they'll never understand.
31:35Click subscribe. I'm posting something like this at least once a week. We're fired up to be making them.
31:40Leave some comments below or questions below or shoot me a DM on anything you want us to address next. We're here to help. We really are.
31:46Leo, thank you, bro.
The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Greg Lav opens with a highlight reel of the answers to come, then spends the next half hour on a boat in Greece making the case that whatever platform, niche, or trend you think you missed, you were probably never actually late to it — you were just afraid of being early to the next one.

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

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Watch next

More from this channel + related breakdowns.

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Greg Lav · Talking Head

You're 6 Months Away From the Life You Want

The CEO of a top-five energy drink brand argues that six months of monomaniacal, undistracted focus is the only thing standing between you and an unrecognizable life — and traces five real six-month windows that got him from a bootstrapped pre-workout to a $90 million buyout.

July 12th
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