February 24, 2025 • 44 mins
Join us for an exhilarating episode as Ian Horowitz makes his third appearance, steering us away from real estate and into the vibrant world of Buffed Energy drinks. Discover how a light-hearted text group among friends skyrocketed into a viral phenomenon, Brotherhood Buffs, captivating audiences worldwide with thrilling videos of fire trucks and emergency scenes. This camaraderie and unexpected fame laid the groundwork for Buffed Energy, a product inspired by the spirited community of "fire buffs" and designed to support first responders during their grueling shifts.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the precise craftsmanship behind Buffed Energy. Instead of opting for a generic white-label approach, Ian reveals their commitment to a true formulation process, infusing their drink with B vitamins, CoQ10, and blueberry extract. These ingredients cater to the demanding needs of first responders, ensuring sustained energy and mental clarity without the dreaded crash. The journey wasn't without its challenges—finding the right balance between taste and health, navigating industry hurdles, and ultimately receiving unexpected validation from peers in the energy drink landscape.
But the story doesn't stop there. Buffed Energy's rapid success came hand-in-hand with unforeseen challenges, such as trademark battles that led to a strategic rebranding initiative. By embracing the name "The Energy Drink," Ian and his team pivoted creatively, securing a unique URL and social media presence. Beyond business hurdles, the brand's dedication to supporting injured first responders through philanthropic efforts adds depth to their narrative. Listen in as we explore the intersection of friendship, innovation, and community support, transforming a simple idea into a burgeoning business.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, guys, we got Ian Hurowitz back today.
Normally we talk about realestate because that's what all
of us do.
Ian is our first three-peat.
This is his third time being on, but we're not going to
hyper-focus on real estate thistime.
We're actually going to focuson the official Buffed Energy
drink.
They started a new product lineand we're going to kind of get
(00:22):
into how, why and, uh, what thegoal is for this thing.
So, ian, welcome back bro, goodto see you.
It's been a while since I'vetalked to you and yeah, what's
up boys, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Um, I'm glad to be back.
It's way too cold, uh, but yeah, dude, uh, I'm back.
You know we could talk aboutreal estate, but I think this
will be more fun.
I think a lot of people knowabout real estate, but I think
this will be more fun.
I think a lot of people know,uh, about brotherhood buffs, and
you know our quest to figureout what to do with it and how
we ended up on an energy drinkall right so those that don't
(00:54):
know what.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Hold on.
But what is?
What is brotherhood buffs?
And, uh, who is behind thecurtain of said brotherhood
Buffs?
Because there, for a while itwas a big mystery.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It was a big mystery for a long time.
We started Brotherhood Buffs.
It came out of a text groupthat a few of us me, dan and a
couple of our other friends fromBaltimore, when we were doing
real estate we would drivearound the city all the time and
this was the early days andyou'd see a fire truck go by and
(01:27):
someone made a joke one time.
They're like, oh, go get them,brothers.
And you know, it turned into athing inside of our text group
and one day we showed our onebuddy and he's like dude, this
is internet gold.
I'm like, yeah, you're an idiotand whatever.
So we were like, all right,let's put it on the internet.
We put it on the internet andit just caught on like wildfire.
The whole Go Get Em Brothersthing comes from Brotherhood
Buffs and we did keep it asecret for a long time.
(01:50):
If you got the joke, you got it.
If you didn't, you were usuallythe one saying, oh, you could
get arrested for filming a firetruck.
It became a little bit of ajoke Actually we wound up, know
(02:11):
we're now out there.
It's it's daniel and myself anduh, actually firehouse magazine
did an interview with us, umabout and it's uh, you know it's
, it's fun, it's cool, it's um,we we've grown the audience and
you know all the social media,viral video stuff.
You know we we have a couplevideos with several million
views on it, uh, getting paid byall the social platforms.
So it's been a fun journey.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
So you have got paid from them.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, we've gotten money on YouTube, instagram,
facebook.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I mean a couple hundred bucks a month, like it's
not life changing, but it'senough to it's still funny that,
like you know, they always saylike the new currency is
eyeballs and attention.
Like, yeah, it might only be acouple hundred bucks, but like,
still, it's like who, who wouldhave thought you know, sitting
there filming some Harrisburgfire Expo video?
(02:55):
Like you know, hardcore wouldbe getting you paid, right yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well, funny thing, like we're at dinner.
Me and Ian were at the bar thiswas years ago and I was like
look at this shit man.
And I showed him the video.
He's like, yeah, that's me.
I was like what he's like,listen, listen closer.
I was like the hell, oh my God.
It's you.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
And he told me yeah, he's like the whole backstory
was kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
But was kind of cool.
But I've got a kick out of thatfor years because now people
are like it's international,right, ian, oh, dude, it's all
over the world.
We get a lot of submissionsfrom australia, germany's a
popular one, italy, a lot ofwest coasters.
Um, you know it's, it's, it'sdude, it's, it's a, it's a
movement, right.
Like.
Who doesn't get excited to seea fire truck going by, q-pin
power call, going lights andsirens.
It's just fun.
Actually, when you guys outthere in LA had all the
wildfires, I love the videos ofthe lowboys with the dozers
(03:51):
going by, people buffing them.
It's so much fun.
You guys know, firemen, we seethe real buffs that come out and
do it for a sport.
They come and take pictures.
They're so serious about thefire trucks, the firemen, the
fire scenes, I mean yeah, I knowfoster and I know a guy from d
oh, I guess, retired now from dc, legit fire buff, and, uh, he's
(04:14):
into it, whereas I'm like, well, I'm into it but I'm not like,
if I see a fire I'll go and likecheck it out, but I'm not
spending my friday night at, youknow, the corner of like monroe
and wilkins, waiting for ablaze to come in and trying to
beat the first thing companies.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
It's just it's like dudes that take pictures of
trains, man, they take it soserious.
They're just set up ready forthis train man, but anyways, all
right.
So now that we got brotherhoodbuffs out of the way, like if
you're not following it, ifyou're looking for a good laugh,
like I, I thought it wasfreaking hilarious, but anyways,
(04:49):
um, so how did that kind ofmaybe be the the lead domino, or
did that have anything to dowith you starting?
Uh, buffed energy, obviously,maybe.
I did notice a subtle namechange, so I don't know, should
we still be calling it energy?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
no it well, it's going to be called the, the
energy drink, and we can talkabout our little trademark issue
and everybody that you know hasa business.
I see uh tyler's uh name upthere.
I know foster, you know web.
I see yours in the background.
Yeah, we can talk about thetrademark issue, but it did
start out as buffed energy.
We wanted like something thatwas an homage uh to us, right,
(05:28):
like we wanted to like make itabout, like egotistically about
us, and it was an easyconnection from our brand.
Because here's the problem likewe did have this big social
media following, like we had.
We had 30, 40 000 followers inlike the real and the uh fireman
space.
Meanwhile, like we're legitreal estate investors, we still
(05:51):
had this social media page goingon, but we could never figure
out how to monetize it.
And video views, yo, it's like,yeah, I want to do it, but at
the time, youtube was onlypaying for long form content.
They weren't really paying forshort form content and it was
about, like, viewer minutes andretention, uh, and they didn't
have shorts then.
And like we've we've messedaround with merch, you know, I
(06:13):
see Foster's a hat machine backthere.
You know we messed around on onprintful and all the other stuff
, and just like we never hadluck with it, we never really
wanted to be in the forefront oflike we're selling a product I
mean, we all know, and I givethese guys credits like the guy
from fire mall tools, like he'sout there selling tools but he's
doing demo videos all the time.
Or like an eckerd fire tactics,like selling training, and like
(06:37):
you got to be the forefront ofit.
We never wanted to do that, um,but I never really wore like
firefighter branded clothing.
So it was kind of like thisweird, like what do we do?
Right?
And we tried some clothing, wetried some hats, we tried
stickers.
Firemen, guys, firemen, lovestickers.
Actually there's a dude, I know, black sticker engine, to the
(06:58):
rescue.
A couple of these other guysare doing millions of dollars a
year in stickers.
We just never had any luck withour audience, probably because
we didn't love it.
And to give you the full story,as like we hired an intern to
come work with us here to helpus with our real estate content,
with our video.
He was studying um videocontent up at um or whatever
(07:20):
film school, whatever the crap'scalled at temple and he was
working with me for the summerone of them artsy things not,
not really my jam.
As soon as you said college, I'mout, um.
But you know I had to ask himwho he voted for before he
started working here.
You know I had to make surehe's not going down that college
route thing, um.
So anyway he uh.
So he came here, worked with uswe're doing real estate stuff.
(07:41):
And one day I didn't really haveanything for him to do I was
like, oh, by the way, dude, Iknow you're good at growing
social media accounts.
I have this account, Brother ofBuffs.
His brother's a firemanActually I'll tell you about
this afterwards, Foster, he'sdown your way now.
Anyway, he's like I can growyour page.
(08:02):
I said, okay, man.
I said we were stuck at like30,000 followers for the longest
time and in one summer he tookus from 30,000 followers to
100,000 followers.
And he was going back to school.
And I said all right, Sean, yougot us a following.
If you want to come back hereand work for us when you
graduate college, you need tofigure out how to monetize our
audience.
And I said look, figure out howto monetize our audience.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
And I said look, we never had luck with I don't know
why I got a square on my face.
Um, I was wondering that.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I thought maybe it was just on my screen, but no, I
think it's a camera setting.
I don't know I said you need tofigure out how to monetize uh,
the audience.
And I don't know what to do.
I don't know how to monetize it.
And I said we've tried merch.
So he's like, look, we're gonna, we're going to do a merch drop
, we're going to do it just likeNelk, we're going to do all
these things, we're going tomake all this sick merch.
So he did all this sick merch,paid all this money for all
these designers, did all thiscrap and we sold like $2,000.
(08:53):
And we had already had him comeback, we kind of already
offered him employment and wesaid, dude, you got like 90 days
to figure this out.
So one day I was going to buy aCelsius and I said, yo, he goes
.
Hey man, you guys should startan energy drink.
I was like you're like you areofficially a dumb ass.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
No, so let's hear more.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah.
So one night I was like hey,man, I said I was talking to Dan
cause we you know, he was stillliving in Baltimore.
I was up here in Philly.
We would talk basically everynight.
I was like, hey, oh, by the way, sean's got this idea that we
should start an energy drinkcompany.
And he's like dude, that'sactually like a really good idea
.
And I was like, okay, I didn'tthink you were actually bite on
(09:42):
this.
He's like dude.
He's like think about it.
He's like think about it.
He's like we would sit at work,we would drink coffee in the
morning and then the afternoonand shift change.
All the guys would like drinkenergy drinks.
Some guys would drink coffee,but nobody.
Everybody's like there's firedepartment coffee, there's how
many different like firstresponder coffee brands.
There's no first responderenergy drink brand.
And I was like, shit, you'reright.
(10:06):
So I was like, well, what doyou want to do?
He's like tell him, tell him tofigure it out.
So I came back, said, sean, yougot like a very limited budget.
I got like 10 grand set aside.
Go figure out how to make this.
And originally we were going towhite label it and I know I'm
giving you a lot of info um, butwe originally wanted to just
white label like what is, hey?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
what is?
What is white label?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
just for those not familiar with that term so
essentially you could just take,like you know, like, imagine
our energy drink, like theenergy drink, you would go to us
and say, hey, like I love yourformula, you know, can I put it
in my own can and basicallyyou're paying for their stuff.
So like you're just kind ofhacking it and just rebranding,
like great example, kirkland,kirkland's, costco's brand, but
(10:47):
they went to Grey Goose orTito's or whoever.
So when you buy Kirkland vodkayou're actually buying Grey
Goose vodka, but they're, theyalready have the mass production
, so now they're just co-signingtheir benefits and their white
labeling that and then peoplethink they're getting a value,
but in reality all you'regetting is the same thing In
(11:09):
real estate a lot of people doit with like, especially with
the different types of CRMs ordata softwares.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Like yeah, I go through this coaching program
and they got their own softwareDude.
It's the same software thatcoach b is using over here.
They just kind of tweak it soit looks like their brand, but
yeah, our re simply is one ofthem.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Like I know, they do a lot with coaching groups, so
it's like the big wholesalingplatform you know, they came on
our podcast like hey, you wantto white label it.
I said I don't have that kindof audience.
But thanks, but think about it.
It's the same an affiliateprogram.
It's no different than I waslike, hey guys, here's an
affiliate link, versus saying,hey, I'll white label FRF.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It rolls right off the tongue.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, it's not a good one.
But FRF energy drink right, andit's like okay, you guys got
your own energy drink.
Now you guys go sell it, but Isold the production and that's
all I care about.
Why do I?
Got a white box on here andanyway, I'm going to try to get
our tech guy, the ideas guybehind the energy drink, here to
fix my white box now that it'sgone.
But anyway, so we went outthere and we formulated it and
(12:20):
we actually went down the trueformulation route, which was an
interesting process.
We got to taste, test it andthat's really how we ended up on
.
Buffed Energy was because wedidn't think anybody else was
selling this in the marketplace.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Let's talk about that real quick, because I know I
texted you about a month ago.
I saw one on Instagram orYouTube.
It was Lost and Found Energyand you're like oh, yeah, yeah
we're at the same productionfacility.
We're just we have a differentcompound in our drink.
So how did you guys determinethe difference and what you
wanted and what you didn't?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
yeah.
So for us it was like wethought about it.
We said, well, if I'm going todrink it, well, what's the
commonality?
Again?
Because we're thinking we'regoing down the road of buffed
energy, right, official buffedenergy.
We're sitting here thinking,all right, what do we want to do
?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
can I stop drinking this and save it as a
collector's edition?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
you, you might want to.
Uh, we do have one six-pack setaside that we will never uh get
rid of.
But, with that being said, itwas we wanted to design an
energy drink that was quotehealthy, that was, that tastes
good those are the two things,because healthy and taste good
don't usually go together.
But we also wanted something.
That is like we told the guy wesaid listen, man, our audience
(13:34):
are guys that work 24 hourshifts, 48 hour shifts.
They come off, they got to gobe present for softball, they
got to go work out, they got togo work a side job for the next
10 hours and go back to workthat next night.
Like we want somebody to comeoff, drink it and feel like
they're locked in.
So he said, okay, I can do that.
And you know it's the B12, butit's all the B vitamins.
(13:57):
Um, we use a higher quality Bvitamin, vitamin CoQ10.
Uh, there's a lot of studiesbehind the ability for mental
clarity.
Um, that come from coq10.
Blueberry extract also helpswith mental clarity.
Like we've gotten a lot offeedback from guys are like, I
feel like I just popped anadderall, like I'm locked in
(14:18):
because again that's your newadvertisement well, I can only
advertise to certaindemographics.
So that one.
But yeah, it's um.
We wanted the mental claritypiece, because that's one of the
things that I struggle with.
Like there's some days I comeoff of work and I just stare at
the computer screen.
Um, that was a big issue for me.
But then the other one was theenergy piece.
And when it comes to energy, alot of these energy drinks they
(14:40):
give you caffeine, but then theydon't match it with theanine.
And what happens with theanineand caffeine when you match them
is you come up like this andthen the theanine carries you
across and it doesn't allow youto crash.
And so we said look, the lastthing we want someone to do is
drink this at three o'clock andshift change, and by 9 PM
they're like, they feel likethey're going to die, right,
(15:01):
like we don't want that either.
The other nice thing aboutputting caffeine inside of an
energy drink versus coffee isyou're getting a prescribed
amount of caffeine.
It's 200 milligrams, that's it,like it's locked in, whereas
coffee depending how it's beenbrewed, how it's been harvested,
you can get anywhere from 10 to200 milligrams of caffeine.
(15:23):
You have no clue what you'regetting.
So that's the other nice thing.
And then obviously you'regetting all your good minerals
and all the other fun stuff.
But we really wanted to make itas healthy as we could but also
tastes good, and there's just afine line that you got to go
with that.
So so you're the.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
B6, b9, b12, B3, like those are your vitamin energies
and the other ones.
So if you look at some of theenergy drinks, it's high in
sugar, more syrup, so you havethe spike.
You wake up and then you havethat crash shortly after.
So it seems like you guys kindof designated yours to have a
long-term effect.
There's a lot of these are likeI think it's a monster rockstar
.
They're like high sugar, um,high calorie.
(16:03):
Uh, there's, there are ones thatare not going to carry you over
like there, and a lot of timesit's because you're not
replacing the energy vitaminsyou have in your food.
So this is why you get thespike of the energy drinks,
because you are now filling upon the vitamins that you should
have been getting through yourfood.
And when you said that thequality of the vitamin is
important so my cousin is adoctor in nutrition, we talk
about this fairly often and shesaid that you know you can get a
(16:26):
bad vitamin, it's still avitamin, but your body's not
going to absorb it or retain itbecause it's, you know, not a
quality vitamin, and I don'tknow how to break that down a
little bit better, but maybe youdo.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
So here's an example if you go, obviously we're all
going to listen to, uh, thefirst responder financial
freedom podcast.
But if you were to listen toanything else, the other day
paul saldino was on pbd'spodcast and he was like there's
not an energy drink out therethat doesn't use a good b12 and
the bad one is the go.
Look at your Celsius monster.
Any one of those drinks, it'sCyno, whatever.
You'll see it next to the B12.
(17:04):
C-y-n-a whatever theabbreviation for B is there.
After he said nobody usesmethylcobalin.
So I'm sitting here listeningto this podcast and I said, sure
as shit, there it is, it'sright, there we use the good B12
.
And what's funny is when we weredown in North Carolina
producing this at the co-packer,there was another drink brand
(17:25):
there.
They do like vitamin typewaters and she's reading our
ingredients and she goes oh myGod, wow, wow.
You guys really put thoughtinto this and like I don't know
like I got I got this guy whohad a massive production plant
who formulated this drink thatwe paid six grand to Um.
I don't know Like I got I gotthis guy who had a massive
production plant who formulatedthis drink that we paid six
grand to Um, I don't really havea relationship with the guy.
I assumed he did best by us andI'm just like, okay, well,
(17:48):
everybody likes how it tastes,everybody likes how it makes
them feel locked in, and I don'treally know the formulation per
se.
And to hear this lady from thisother drink brand to be like wow
, like that's impressive, I waslike, oh shit, we got something.
And you know, we ordered 12 000cans on the first run, like a
thousand cases, dude.
(18:10):
We had no clue if we were goingto sell this.
Like we bring it back and boom,here we are and you know, off
it goes and a lot of it comesback to taste and brand and
having the audience.
But then some of it comes backto the cleanliness and the
ingredients, like foster I knowwe talked about it for a while
about you like when you firstlooked at it, you're like, wow,
dude, you actually use real goodingredients and you know, I
(18:31):
think that's the biggest thing.
So it's been a fun process yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
So there's always.
I was gonna say we shouldprobably say we're not doctors
or nutritionists.
Maybe we should have said thisat the beginning, but we are
EMTs, which is basically thesame thing and like so, street
doctor, if you will.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah.
But there's something calledplanned obsolescence where, like
, you want something to to tofail, so like.
I'll give you two examples.
Like lip balms right now arepopular because it's winter time
, everybody's dried out, so alot of these lip balms right now
are popular because it'swintertime, everybody's dried
out, so a lot of these lip balmsactually dry your lips out more
, so you use more of the product.
So it's planned obsolescence.
Same thing for, say, um underarmor, so under armor.
Uh, long story short, kevinplank is the guy who's the
(19:09):
founder um.
He played football with mycousin both in high school and
in college and then he startedunder armor up in baltimore
where ian worked at um and theoriginal product, like it lasted
, for you know, 10-15 years andthen he started Under Armour up
in Baltimore where Ian worked at, and the original product, like
it, lasted for, you know, 10,15 years.
And then they do start doingplanned obsolescence.
What's the wear and tear test,the scrape test, and they
started getting it down.
It's like, okay, he can use itfor I don't know, just
(19:30):
spitballing here that he can useit for a year or two and it'll
start to fail, so you have toreplace it, cause you.
So you have to replace itbecause you don't want something
to fail to being.
You want something to fail toreplace it because they buy more
of your products.
So you'll see this in almostevery single category of product
across the US.
Is is planned obsolescence andyou can look it up.
It's a real term.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Look at appliances.
What was the last time?
You know Exactly.
All right, so you're down atthis place.
You find it like I don't evenknow how you go about.
Like you just googled like howdo I get?
A place to find like how do youeven find that dude?
Speaker 2 (20:07):
the co-packer was the absolute hardest thing to do.
And I mean, I'll be transparent, right, like we, we were doing
this on a dime.
Like this came out of me anddan savings we're like, all
right, we'll try this out.
We spent six grand on aformulator.
We this came out of me andDan's savings we're like, all
right, we'll try this out.
We spent six grand on aformulator, we spent a couple
grand, like Sean dialed in theoriginal logo, right, but then
we had to pay, like they call it, cpg, consumer Product Goods
(20:30):
Designer to come in and makethis thing like legal, right,
like this whole thing has to belegal.
So that was a whole thing.
And then we had to talk abouthow's it going to sit on the
shelf.
We're doing all this and we'rethinking the production is going
to be the easiest part.
Dude, try calling around theco-packers and being like yo, I
only want to run a thousandcases and it sounds like a lot.
But, dude, it's like whatever,250 gallons or whatever.
(20:54):
It was like three, so six skews.
I think it was 50 gallons ofskew a skew.
So we are only running 300gallons.
Dude, these guys are runningthousands of gallons at a time
and I can't even there's toomuch piping.
Like, I had to do 500 gallonsto get 300 gallons of net
because there's so much pipingto do this.
And that was the biggest painin the ass until the point where
(21:17):
we found a co-packer who waslike look, we work with a lot of
social media brands.
We get your story, weunderstand why you're starting
small, we'll take a risk on youand that was like a huge help
and we do.
The first run cost us like 250 acan and I mean we're selling
these.
I mean we're selling thesethings.
(21:38):
We're selling these things at24 a case, right, like it was
like two dollars.
We basically broke even on thefirst run.
Like we didn't make a dollar.
Um, we just wanted to recoupour capital from, like, the r&d
standpoint.
Um, so this guy, like dude, hehad like the lost and found
brand in there.
He had some other.
We were walking around hisplant and um, the Sean, our
(22:00):
intern guy, he mentioned somehot model off of Instagram and
he's like dude, she does anenergy drink here and I'm like I
don't even know who you'retalking about.
Like, so it was pretty wild tosee all these brands in there
that are literally just socialmedia brands selling energy
drinks I was like, well, theycan sell, we can sell.
And that was really the hardestpart.
And now that we went back andwe're running 9,000 cases, it's
(22:24):
a real order.
The book opened up and they'relike look, if you do this,
here's your pricing.
If you can do, if you promiseme, 50,000 cases a year, here's
what I can do for you.
If you can do a million cases ayear, here's what I can do for
you.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
And that's like anything the more the more you
run like.
You buy one shirt from Vistaprint.
It's $95.
You buy a thousand of them.
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Same concept and plus they start giving you the
shortcuts.
You know, uh, there's a bigdifference between cans Like
they're in the canning businesstoo.
These are all heat shrinkwrapped cans.
You wouldn't know that if Ididn't tell you, or maybe you
can feel the label.
I don't know, it's just alittle pet peeve of mine.
But a Celsius cans printed.
Well, if I can go to a printedcan, I can save another 20% on
(23:06):
my can production costs.
But the problem is I need300,000 cans stored in a
warehouse somewhere so we needto make sure we have the product
run to get there.
But yeah, finding a goodco-packer, the quality of the co
packer, the ability to run yourproduct, understand what it is
(23:27):
Like.
The cool thing about this plantis they run a lot of your
flavored waters and a lot ofjust your plain vitamin waters
no flavoring, no, nothing in it.
So you need really reallyreally clean water and a really,
really clean plant because youcan taste, obviously, if there's
any really really clean plant.
Because you can taste,obviously if there's any
impurities in water, you cantaste it.
So that was the advantage ofgoing with this co-packer fresh
water right out of lake norman.
(23:47):
They reverse osmosis, all this,whatever they got all these
standards.
And they don't do alcohol,which is nice, because that's a
completely different thing thatcan affect what the flavor of
your drink is inside your can.
All things that I've learned.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Did you have to go through any sort of like FDA or
like health department approvalto like sell something that's
consumed?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
So you do, you need to go to a.
So again learning lesson isthis thing called a process
authority.
Everyone thinks you go to theFDA to get approved.
What you actually do is you goto a process authority, they
take it, they test it and thenthey tell you how you need to
pasteurize or preserve it.
Right, so we don't have anyliving ingredients in ours.
(24:31):
Ours really comes down towhat's the half-life of your
ingredients that you're puttingin.
How long are they efficaciousfor and how are you going to
preserve it to make sure thatthere is nothing.
I didn't need a processauthority letter if I would have
just put chemicals in it, likeyour.
What is it?
Potassium, azorbate, whateverit is.
You see in a lot of thesethat's a chemical preservative.
(24:53):
You actually don't even needthat letter because you just put
the chemical in there.
It's preserved.
You're good, we tunnel,pasteurize ours to remove that
chemical out of there.
Um, so I needed a processauthority to say they, this will
survive the heat degradation,this will be sterile when it's
done, this process.
So then you get that processauthority letter and you put
(25:15):
that in your file and this wayyou're now quote unquote
protected well now that you goahead.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
I was gonna say so we've gone all the way through,
like idea production, packing,all that kind of stuff, and then
obviously that final point ornot the final point, but sales
is a big thing.
Did you guys talk about how youwere going to sell it?
Did you have a certain strategy?
Is that going to shift asyou've increased your scale?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah.
So this thing started out asjust like a fun side project.
The same way, brother Busted,it's like, oh yeah, it's cool,
but you know, like it's notabout the money.
We always thought it was like acool thing.
So we knew one thing Firemenare contagious, right.
So if we got this product inthe hands of firemen, who are
primary audiences, we would dofine.
(26:05):
And we knew that we were goingto give out free cases.
So we started putting togetherBuffed Energy, put it out there.
People started buying it.
Put a couple of social mediaposts.
People immediately bought it.
They thought it was cool.
Well then, off of that, whathappened was I sent our buddy
Bob we were at the time, we werecalling him buffed energy Bob
(26:25):
and we said Bob, your son goesto Loyola.
You got to go down there.
Here's all the firehouses Iwant you to go to.
On this day, date and time, Ihad someone print out Telestaff
on our old shift and I was likeall right, here's everybody I
know.
Go swing by all thesefirehouses in Baltimore city.
So he swung by, do the next dayit.
Just, it just lit up and likeafter that, then we, we started
(26:47):
going out and finding the socialmedia influencers, um, and then
, off of that, we startedbuilding the Tik TOK brand.
But then we, we sold out.
We sold out in four weeks.
Like I thought we would befighting for, um, I thought we
would be fighting for, like, howto sell this.
It's actually the completeopposite.
It's like I didn't think wewould sell out so fast.
Uh, and now how do we get tothe next run?
(27:09):
Because now that this hasturned into a legitimate
business, now it's like okay, weneed the demand to get to
create the distributors who wantit, to put it in the grocery
stores, your convenience stores.
Like I'm not a planner, like Iwould never buy energy Me
personally, I would not buyenergy drinks offline, but Dan
does.
Like he keeps them stocked inthe office.
(27:30):
I'm a hey, I need to pay.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
the very first LFG meeting had a frigging cooler
Stop.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Right, that's right.
That's right.
Who did it?
It was foreshadowing but, likeum I'm usually on the side of,
I'm going to swing by Wawa andgo grab one, or whatever your
convenience store is.
Um, but there's a lot ofplanners out there and we knew
that.
Like if we could tackle thefirehouse skins, if we could
tackle the firehouses, we knewthat they were consumers of
energy drinks and that would beour path forward.
(27:57):
So it's been a really gooddemographic to attach to.
And the other thing behind thebrand is and you guys know this,
this is no bullshit Proceeds ofEvery Can is going into a
foundation that we control todonate back to the guys who get
injured off work that can'treturn to work, or the
volunteers that get hurt at afire that can't return back to
(28:18):
their job and provide for theirfamily.
I mean, as Webb knows, you knowyou get hurt at work.
Everybody's there to help you.
But if you don't get hurt atwork and you can't make it back
to work, everyone's like, yeah,whatever, that idiot was playing
basketball, messed up his knee,you know.
So that was like a big passionof ours and a lot of people
support that cause that aren'tfiremen and they understand
(28:40):
supporting first responders as awhole, and I think that's
really been the sales pitch andthe sales model is we have a
quality product, we have acult-like audience, we have a
great demographic that we knowhow to tackle and speak to.
We should be able to sell thisproduct long-term.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
So do you think that I'm sure you've ran the numbers?
Do you think it's almost betterbecause it's not necessarily
niche-y but you're going after acertain demographic?
Would it be better to almostjust stay direct to consumer
model versus trying to get thatmiddleman where, yes, instantly
(29:18):
you think about growing it?
But if you go into Wawa You'recompeting with shelf space From
Monster and all these places.
So this is going to be at thebottom and it may not have the
same draw To somebody justrolling through the store,
versus if you can get it directTo the market.
It might actually Keep yourmargins healthier.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
DTC.
There's obviously a lot ofthings to do because, again,
it's scale.
To get on Amazon end up in thewarehouse, you know you need
hundreds of skids of product,right, you know.
So there there is challenges tothe direct to consumer.
There's benefits to being inthe, you know, in in the, in the
convenience stores, and it'svice versa.
Yeah, the margins are better.
We control our audience, weunderstand who we're selling to
(30:05):
and I think being niche allowsus to have a launching pad to
get to the next level.
Right, it'd be no differentthan you know.
Maybe tyler is a mortgage guy.
Well, my primary audience isfiremen and first responders to
sell mortgages to.
Well, that's a demographic youspeak to and then it branches
out from there and I thinkthat's been the biggest thing
for us.
(30:26):
You know, long-term being inthe distributors that's like
this is about.
The margins are are small,comparatively speaking, just
based on the product costs andwhat it is and the MSRP of it.
So the distributors and themass volume is what it is and
the MSRP of it.
So the distributors and themass volume is what makes it
like the real business.
(30:46):
But on the same side of that, Ido think that you know there's
benefits to both worlds,obviously.
There's manpower, there'spackaging issues, there's
storage issues, there's a lot ofthings that come with DTC and
there's a lot of issues thatcome with convenience store
returns, sales credits, allthese things that I don't really
understand.
And actually, for the first timein our lives, we actually took
(31:07):
on a strategic partner, the guywho formulated the drink.
He had a protein, a nutritioncompany.
He was actually a producer ofnutrition, worked with Celsius
and Gatorade Nestle.
In the early days he was doing$20, $30 million top line, sold
his company and when heformulated this for us, he's
(31:30):
like I like your message, I likewhat you're doing, I'd like to
come join you guys.
And we actually negotiated adeal for him to come in and run
the company and be theday-to-day guy.
And that's the first time everwhere we were like wow, we have
something here.
We have someone who is reallyskilled at this.
Let's work out a deal with himand let him run it and we will
(31:52):
do what we do best.
I'll do this.
I'll do these conversations.
We know the audience is toattack you work on the
distributor, you work on allthat stuff.
Let us do the DTC.
You run the day-to-day and youwork on the distributor route.
So it's, I guess we're maturing.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I just remember when I got that first case and you
and I talked on the phone, dude,my brain was going a hundred
miles an hour with like it wasalmost like the micro brew type
marketing thing.
I was like, dude, you couldhave like the, you know that, uh
, just, you could have the eightengine guys or the job town
version can like limited edition, like get all these artsy
(32:28):
things going on and like it waskind of nuts.
But so I know we're rolling upon some time here.
But what, what made it changefrom now buffed to the Energy
Drink?
You mentioned that.
I don't know how much you cantalk about it, but the.
Energy Drink.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
This is actually a good way for us to kind of
rebrand and re-release theinformation.
So everything was at officialBuffed Energy.
It's now TheEnergyDrinkcom.
It will be the Energy Drink.
So there's an interesting thingabout trademarking.
There was a group that filedliterally 30 to 60 days before
(33:05):
us out of Utah and they sellpowdered basically powdered
energy drinks and theirB-U-F-F-E-D whatever.
At this point they can get afree shout out and they file
their trademark.
But they weren't actuallylisted on the PTO website until
we got our letter that said, no,you're not going to get that
because it takes a minute topopulate.
(33:26):
We would have never went downthis route.
So here we are, thinking we'regoing to get our trademark,
we're good to go.
Turns out that you know it's asimilar product type and a
similar category type and theydon't give a crap that you're
talking about guys that aregoing to take pictures of fire
trucks.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
What it?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
is is buffed, sounds like buffed, even though it's
phonetically spelled different.
It's a similar product type.
You need us to get a hold ofsome boys in Utah, go take care
of business, or what we actuallywe actually sold.
We actually sold a case in thetown that they're in, because
it's a really small town, and Iwas like, oh my god, dude we're
about.
They probably heard no he wasactually a legitimate fireman
(34:03):
out there.
I actually asked the dude.
I was like, hey, really weirdquestion here.
Uh, because I like I keep trackof the orders, I like to see
where we're selling.
We sold nationwide, um,including hawaii, and it was
interesting.
So we said we can fight theseguys, we can ask for permission
with these guys.
But there was an issue 98 rockeveryone's like, oh, your shit
(34:25):
was on 98 rock.
And I was like, well, how?
And it turns out when I wentback and listened to the clip,
they bought the, the powderedenergy drink, the other guys,
and they were talking about thatand I was like, well, shit, we
already got brand confusion.
So talking with James, the guywho we hired to come in and
basically run the company, hesaid there's a real unique
proposition out there.
And I said what's that?
He said you don't want totrademark.
(34:47):
He's like, and we don't want tofight these guys.
He's like you could probablyget permission, but there's
always going to be brandconfusion.
One thing you can't trademark isgeneric names, and this is a
category.
Energy drinks are literally acategory that you can trademark
under.
So it could be Aaron Fosterenergy drink that he could
(35:10):
trademark inside the energydrink category, but you can't
trademark the actual category.
So we said, well, screw it,let's just name it the whole
category and we are the energydrink that everybody should want
.
And he told us this story howvitamin water was a category,
but they were vitamin water.
They couldn't trademark ituntil the point they dominated
(35:32):
the category and then they gotthe trademark for vitamin water
and I was like holy shit, what agreat idea.
He said the only thing issomebody else could release an
energy drink called the energydrink, and there is some.
We could send them cease anddesist letters, but we really
have nothing to hang our hat on.
He goes, but we don't need totrademark now.
Our hat on he goes, but wedon't need to trademark now.
We don't need to waste themoney on it.
(35:53):
It's like $300 to trademark.
He's like you don't have toworry about anybody fighting you
, nobody can trademark this.
I said, god damn it, dude, whata great idea.
It actually looks prettysimilar.
It's still clean, it still hasthe same weight.
It's just funny because whenpeople ask about it now, it's
like, well, yeah, we have theenergy drink.
They're like, wait what?
Yeah, no, it is the energydrink, that's what we're going
(36:15):
to call ourselves and I thinkthat'll stand us out.
Yeah, mic, drop right.
So that's our trademark issueand that's how we've rebranded
it, and it's going to betheenergydrinkcom.
All the social handles will betheenergydrink.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
I can't believe that URL was even available.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Dude, I was floored when I pulled it up.
It was $9 or $10 on Namecheap,that's insane.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Some idiot didn't buy it like 10 years ago and hold
it hostage.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
No, some guy owns energydrinkcom and he wants $2
million for it.
Because originally we were like, well, let's just drop the, or
we wanted to just be energydrink.
And then someone was like, well, what if we were like the Ohio
State University, right, or youknow, there you go the U right
Like I was like, oh, dude, whata great idea.
So one of the first guys,foster you probably know him,
(37:03):
spray 9, mccloskey.
He was a Kentland guy there fora long time.
He's one of our best affiliates.
And I said, hey, man, one of ourbest affiliates.
And I said, hey, man, we got alittle issue, we're changing our
name.
So I sent it to him in text andI said it's the energy drink
(37:23):
and he's like so, like the.
And he put t-h-e-e, he's likewe're the energy drink.
I said, exactly, you get thejoke.
It's on like game on right.
And I just think it's aninteresting way to brand
yourself and keep it generic,not over confuse it.
We have some other productskews in the works that it's
like this will lend hand to thatsame super generic like.
Let's just be generic.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
You know, and it helps the police people in our
market understand it a littlebit more.
They try to spell buffed andyou know the is probably a
little bit easier yeah, no, it's, um, it's, definitely it's.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
It's similar.
The thing I liked about buffedjust to cry about it one more
time is like buff, like buffing,and then you got buffed.
Like going to the gym buffed,and then you got guys who buff
their cars and it's like we hadall these fun ideas.
But it's like we had all thesefun ideas but it's like, dude,
you know what?
Like this is probably morefemale friendly.
If I had to ask, um, it'sprobably crosses more categories
(38:19):
in this fashion.
And like plus, trying to tellthis story, like we had a lady
come in here and make us customboxes and she's like, oh, how'd
you come up with the name, boss?
And I was like, well, there'sthis really weird story.
We used to film firetrucks likejackasses, and it's just like
an easy story to tell you know.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Yeah, so you almost need the QR code.
Well, never mind Shit, there isone I was going to say you
could scan it, where it tellsthe whole story, but damn, I
never even noticed that.
In terms of marketing, ian.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
I want to dive into that just a little bit more.
So, curtis Jackson, 50 Cent hestarted Vitamin Water, made
fucking millions off of it.
Then Liquid Death I mentionedit before.
Liquid Death is another drink,but it's actually water.
It sounds like an energy drinkbut it's a water.
They started out kind of likeyou do.
This is where we're going tofocus our ambitions at.
We're going to change it alittle bit.
(39:11):
Now, of course, you're going togo to flavored water.
We're going to do iced teas.
We're going to do this.
Do you think that you guys willdeviate from energy drink world
to do something?
Speaker 2 (39:22):
else outside of that.
No, I think most of our SKUsare going to revolve around
energy drinks and energyflavorings.
I mean, I don't want to put itout there yet, but there might
be an iced tea here in thefuture for the summertime.
We're actively working on somefun things inside the energy
(39:42):
drink space and different ideasaround it.
The guy, our formulator he ownssome really cool old website
names that would lend fun to canwe turn our energy drink
exactly the way the guy theother buffed guys are a dry
powder.
Our energy drink formulaformula relates to a hydration
stick and energy energyhydration stick at that.
(40:03):
So like I just think abouttyler and all those wildfires of
, like all those dudes climbingthe mountains, they probably all
had powder sticks.
The other thing I've beenliquid iv yeah, exactly.
And the other thing I've beenthinking about is bug juice on
the side of all the canteens,because then we can go after
government contracts.
And I mean, look, it's apodcast, I'll talk about
anything.
It is what it is, but like ourproduct flavoring and our
(40:25):
product type would lend well toreplacing the Gatorade.
Just remove the caffeine out ofit.
So now we can go aftergovernment contracts if we so
choose.
And who wouldn't want to supportwhat government agency,
wouldn't want to support theirguys by supporting a nonprofit
that supports one of their guysthat potentially got hurt
long-term?
So that's some fun things we'vebeen thinking about.
(40:48):
But right now it's really justlaunching the brand, getting it
to a point that it's like ahousehold name, and then you
know we can work on these othershoot-offs and just kind of
staying focused and then workingoutside of that.
But if you got flavor ideas,text them to us.
We're we're working on some newones.
Uh, grapes been getting tossedaround, iced teas have been
(41:08):
getting tossed around, peach hasbeen getting tossed around I'm
hearing medic melon is gettingtossed around.
So we'll see if we can come upwith a melon flavor and uh, and
go from there awesome.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Well, that's probably like a good uh stopping point
where, if somebody wants toorder I know we've probably
alluded to, but where's the bestplace they can get in touch and
order directly from you guyswell, I gotta set you guys up an
affiliate link, but, that beingsaid, it is theenergydrinkcom
and you guys can use code FRFFfor 10% off your order, cause we
(41:47):
appreciate everybody in thisaudience.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
You guys have been huge supporters of us and we
appreciate that and we wouldlike to sponsor your podcast
going forward.
So I'm going to get you guyssome drinks out there.
And I got to give a shout outto webb's wife because she was
probably one of the first 20customers I get a random message
from, uh, alicia webb, and Iwas like, oh shit, what's webb's
wife want?
(42:09):
You know and she's like I wantto get this for him for his
birth was your birthday, orchristmas, or whatever christmas
yeah.
And then I was like well, howare we gonna get this to your
house and him not be likebrother her boss is sending me
like?
So I was like all right girl.
And then she just tried andshe's like I love it.
So that was cool to be a firstsupporter of it.
And then the next text I gotwas I need support for your boy.
(42:30):
And and I was like well, I loveWebb, Of course he needs
support.
And then I was like all right.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Well, so there you go .
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Either way, thank you .
We love to support FirstResponder Financial Freedom
Podcast so we can set you guysup an affiliate link and make
sure that we're out there on allthe shows.
And you guys got any ideas,please send them in.
And again, it'stheenergydrinkcom and use code
FRFF for 10% off your order andappreciate you guys.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Awesome, man.
Well, we appreciate it and welook forward to having you back
on when you guys sell.
What was it?
90,000 cases or something crazy?
Speaker 2 (43:05):
The next run is 9,000 cases that we want to get sold
in roughly 12 weeks, if not less, and we want to be ordering and
going, so we're excited.
If your firehouse skin needsanything, reach out to us.
We can work some stuff out whatis skin Firehouse?
Skin, don't you guys havevending machines?
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Commissary, vending machines House funds.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
We call it commissary , that's fine.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Whatever, whatever it is, you know if you guys keep
it, you want to put it in yourvending machine.
Reach out to us and, moreimportantly, I know we're
sponsoring that.
Uh, frederick training one.
You guys are key city city fireconference.
Yeah, you guys got fireconferences, let us know, send
it out, we'll see what we can do.
And, uh, you know we're here tosupport awesome.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
well, Well, that's definitely something like if I'm
going to drink, it might aswell be somebody that supports
this line of work anyways.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
So I get that and get that other thing you talked
about from your doctor in a in aletter form, so I can put that
on my website.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Yeah, I don't want to put that out here just yet.
I go.
I go tomorrow actually to DCfor my first uh neurology
appointment, so, hopefully,maybe I'll just bring them one.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Yeah, low standard to start, so you can only improve,
right.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
All right guys.
Well, we appreciate it and helpa brother out and get yourself
a six pack of these and let themknow how it is.
So thanks for coming on andtalk to you guys soon.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Thanks boys.
Thanks See, you buddy See youguys Be safe, see it.
All right, guys, we got Ian Hurowitz back today.
Normally we talk about realestate because that's what all
of us do.
Ian is our first three-peat.
This is his third time being on, but we're not going to
hyper-focus on real estate thistime.
We're actually going to focuson the official Buffed Energy
drink.
They started a new product lineand we're going to kind of get
(00:22):
into how, why and, uh, what thegoal is for this thing.
So, ian, welcome back bro, goodto see you.
It's been a while since I'vetalked to you and yeah, what's
up boys, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Um, I'm glad to be back.
It's way too cold, uh, but yeah, dude, uh, I'm back.
You know we could talk aboutreal estate, but I think this
will be more fun.
I think a lot of people knowabout real estate, but I think
this will be more fun.
I think a lot of people know,uh, about brotherhood buffs, and
you know our quest to figureout what to do with it and how
we ended up on an energy drinkall right so those that don't
(00:54):
know what.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Hold on.
But what is?
What is brotherhood buffs?
And, uh, who is behind thecurtain of said brotherhood
Buffs?
Because there, for a while itwas a big mystery.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It was a big mystery for a long time.
We started Brotherhood Buffs.
It came out of a text groupthat a few of us me, dan and a
couple of our other friends fromBaltimore, when we were doing
real estate we would drivearound the city all the time and
this was the early days andyou'd see a fire truck go by and
(01:27):
someone made a joke one time.
They're like, oh, go get them,brothers.
And you know, it turned into athing inside of our text group
and one day we showed our onebuddy and he's like dude, this
is internet gold.
I'm like, yeah, you're an idiotand whatever.
So we were like, all right,let's put it on the internet.
We put it on the internet andit just caught on like wildfire.
The whole Go Get Em Brothersthing comes from Brotherhood
Buffs and we did keep it asecret for a long time.
(01:50):
If you got the joke, you got it.
If you didn't, you were usuallythe one saying, oh, you could
get arrested for filming a firetruck.
It became a little bit of ajoke Actually we wound up, know
(02:11):
we're now out there.
It's it's daniel and myself anduh, actually firehouse magazine
did an interview with us, umabout and it's uh, you know it's
, it's fun, it's cool, it's um,we we've grown the audience and
you know all the social media,viral video stuff.
You know we we have a couplevideos with several million
views on it, uh, getting paid byall the social platforms.
So it's been a fun journey.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
So you have got paid from them.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, we've gotten money on YouTube, instagram,
facebook.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I mean a couple hundred bucks a month, like it's
not life changing, but it'senough to it's still funny that,
like you know, they always saylike the new currency is
eyeballs and attention.
Like, yeah, it might only be acouple hundred bucks, but like,
still, it's like who, who wouldhave thought you know, sitting
there filming some Harrisburgfire Expo video?
(02:55):
Like you know, hardcore wouldbe getting you paid, right yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well, funny thing, like we're at dinner.
Me and Ian were at the bar thiswas years ago and I was like
look at this shit man.
And I showed him the video.
He's like, yeah, that's me.
I was like what he's like,listen, listen closer.
I was like the hell, oh my God.
It's you.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
And he told me yeah, he's like the whole backstory
was kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
But was kind of cool.
But I've got a kick out of thatfor years because now people
are like it's international,right, ian, oh, dude, it's all
over the world.
We get a lot of submissionsfrom australia, germany's a
popular one, italy, a lot ofwest coasters.
Um, you know it's, it's, it'sdude, it's, it's a, it's a
movement, right.
Like.
Who doesn't get excited to seea fire truck going by, q-pin
power call, going lights andsirens.
It's just fun.
Actually, when you guys outthere in LA had all the
wildfires, I love the videos ofthe lowboys with the dozers
(03:51):
going by, people buffing them.
It's so much fun.
You guys know, firemen, we seethe real buffs that come out and
do it for a sport.
They come and take pictures.
They're so serious about thefire trucks, the firemen, the
fire scenes, I mean yeah, I knowfoster and I know a guy from d
oh, I guess, retired now from dc, legit fire buff, and, uh, he's
(04:14):
into it, whereas I'm like, well, I'm into it but I'm not like,
if I see a fire I'll go and likecheck it out, but I'm not
spending my friday night at, youknow, the corner of like monroe
and wilkins, waiting for ablaze to come in and trying to
beat the first thing companies.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
It's just it's like dudes that take pictures of
trains, man, they take it soserious.
They're just set up ready forthis train man, but anyways, all
right.
So now that we got brotherhoodbuffs out of the way, like if
you're not following it, ifyou're looking for a good laugh,
like I, I thought it wasfreaking hilarious, but anyways,
(04:49):
um, so how did that kind ofmaybe be the the lead domino, or
did that have anything to dowith you starting?
Uh, buffed energy, obviously,maybe.
I did notice a subtle namechange, so I don't know, should
we still be calling it energy?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
no it well, it's going to be called the, the
energy drink, and we can talkabout our little trademark issue
and everybody that you know hasa business.
I see uh tyler's uh name upthere.
I know foster, you know web.
I see yours in the background.
Yeah, we can talk about thetrademark issue, but it did
start out as buffed energy.
We wanted like something thatwas an homage uh to us, right,
(05:28):
like we wanted to like make itabout, like egotistically about
us, and it was an easyconnection from our brand.
Because here's the problem likewe did have this big social
media following, like we had.
We had 30, 40 000 followers inlike the real and the uh fireman
space.
Meanwhile, like we're legitreal estate investors, we still
(05:51):
had this social media page goingon, but we could never figure
out how to monetize it.
And video views, yo, it's like,yeah, I want to do it, but at
the time, youtube was onlypaying for long form content.
They weren't really paying forshort form content and it was
about, like, viewer minutes andretention, uh, and they didn't
have shorts then.
And like we've we've messedaround with merch, you know, I
(06:13):
see Foster's a hat machine backthere.
You know we messed around on onprintful and all the other stuff
, and just like we never hadluck with it, we never really
wanted to be in the forefront oflike we're selling a product I
mean, we all know, and I givethese guys credits like the guy
from fire mall tools, like he'sout there selling tools but he's
doing demo videos all the time.
Or like an eckerd fire tactics,like selling training, and like
(06:37):
you got to be the forefront ofit.
We never wanted to do that, um,but I never really wore like
firefighter branded clothing.
So it was kind of like thisweird, like what do we do?
Right?
And we tried some clothing, wetried some hats, we tried
stickers.
Firemen, guys, firemen, lovestickers.
Actually there's a dude, I know, black sticker engine, to the
(06:58):
rescue.
A couple of these other guysare doing millions of dollars a
year in stickers.
We just never had any luck withour audience, probably because
we didn't love it.
And to give you the full story,as like we hired an intern to
come work with us here to helpus with our real estate content,
with our video.
He was studying um videocontent up at um or whatever
(07:20):
film school, whatever the crap'scalled at temple and he was
working with me for the summerone of them artsy things not,
not really my jam.
As soon as you said college, I'mout, um.
But you know I had to ask himwho he voted for before he
started working here.
You know I had to make surehe's not going down that college
route thing, um.
So anyway he uh.
So he came here, worked with uswe're doing real estate stuff.
(07:41):
And one day I didn't really haveanything for him to do I was
like, oh, by the way, dude, Iknow you're good at growing
social media accounts.
I have this account, Brother ofBuffs.
His brother's a firemanActually I'll tell you about
this afterwards, Foster, he'sdown your way now.
Anyway, he's like I can growyour page.
(08:02):
I said, okay, man.
I said we were stuck at like30,000 followers for the longest
time and in one summer he tookus from 30,000 followers to
100,000 followers.
And he was going back to school.
And I said all right, Sean, yougot us a following.
If you want to come back hereand work for us when you
graduate college, you need tofigure out how to monetize our
audience.
And I said look, figure out howto monetize our audience.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
And I said look, we never had luck with I don't know
why I got a square on my face.
Um, I was wondering that.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
I thought maybe it was just on my screen, but no, I
think it's a camera setting.
I don't know I said you need tofigure out how to monetize uh,
the audience.
And I don't know what to do.
I don't know how to monetize it.
And I said we've tried merch.
So he's like, look, we're gonna, we're going to do a merch drop
, we're going to do it just likeNelk, we're going to do all
these things, we're going tomake all this sick merch.
So he did all this sick merch,paid all this money for all
these designers, did all thiscrap and we sold like $2,000.
(08:53):
And we had already had him comeback, we kind of already
offered him employment and wesaid, dude, you got like 90 days
to figure this out.
So one day I was going to buy aCelsius and I said, yo, he goes
.
Hey man, you guys should startan energy drink.
I was like you're like you areofficially a dumb ass.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
No, so let's hear more.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah.
So one night I was like hey,man, I said I was talking to Dan
cause we you know, he was stillliving in Baltimore.
I was up here in Philly.
We would talk basically everynight.
I was like, hey, oh, by the way, sean's got this idea that we
should start an energy drinkcompany.
And he's like dude, that'sactually like a really good idea
.
And I was like, okay, I didn'tthink you were actually bite on
(09:42):
this.
He's like dude.
He's like think about it.
He's like think about it.
He's like we would sit at work,we would drink coffee in the
morning and then the afternoonand shift change.
All the guys would like drinkenergy drinks.
Some guys would drink coffee,but nobody.
Everybody's like there's firedepartment coffee, there's how
many different like firstresponder coffee brands.
There's no first responderenergy drink brand.
And I was like, shit, you'reright.
(10:06):
So I was like, well, what doyou want to do?
He's like tell him, tell him tofigure it out.
So I came back, said, sean, yougot like a very limited budget.
I got like 10 grand set aside.
Go figure out how to make this.
And originally we were going towhite label it and I know I'm
giving you a lot of info um, butwe originally wanted to just
white label like what is, hey?
Speaker 3 (10:23):
what is?
What is white label?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
just for those not familiar with that term so
essentially you could just take,like you know, like, imagine
our energy drink, like theenergy drink, you would go to us
and say, hey, like I love yourformula, you know, can I put it
in my own can and basicallyyou're paying for their stuff.
So like you're just kind ofhacking it and just rebranding,
like great example, kirkland,kirkland's, costco's brand, but
(10:47):
they went to Grey Goose orTito's or whoever.
So when you buy Kirkland vodkayou're actually buying Grey
Goose vodka, but they're, theyalready have the mass production
, so now they're just co-signingtheir benefits and their white
labeling that and then peoplethink they're getting a value,
but in reality all you'regetting is the same thing In
(11:09):
real estate a lot of people doit with like, especially with
the different types of CRMs ordata softwares.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Like yeah, I go through this coaching program
and they got their own softwareDude.
It's the same software thatcoach b is using over here.
They just kind of tweak it soit looks like their brand, but
yeah, our re simply is one ofthem.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Like I know, they do a lot with coaching groups, so
it's like the big wholesalingplatform you know, they came on
our podcast like hey, you wantto white label it.
I said I don't have that kindof audience.
But thanks, but think about it.
It's the same an affiliateprogram.
It's no different than I waslike, hey guys, here's an
affiliate link, versus saying,hey, I'll white label FRF.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It rolls right off the tongue.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, it's not a good one.
But FRF energy drink right, andit's like okay, you guys got
your own energy drink.
Now you guys go sell it, but Isold the production and that's
all I care about.
Why do I?
Got a white box on here andanyway, I'm going to try to get
our tech guy, the ideas guybehind the energy drink, here to
fix my white box now that it'sgone.
But anyway, so we went outthere and we formulated it and
(12:20):
we actually went down the trueformulation route, which was an
interesting process.
We got to taste, test it andthat's really how we ended up on
.
Buffed Energy was because wedidn't think anybody else was
selling this in the marketplace.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Let's talk about that real quick, because I know I
texted you about a month ago.
I saw one on Instagram orYouTube.
It was Lost and Found Energyand you're like oh, yeah, yeah
we're at the same productionfacility.
We're just we have a differentcompound in our drink.
So how did you guys determinethe difference and what you
wanted and what you didn't?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
yeah.
So for us it was like wethought about it.
We said, well, if I'm going todrink it, well, what's the
commonality?
Again?
Because we're thinking we'regoing down the road of buffed
energy, right, official buffedenergy.
We're sitting here thinking,all right, what do we want to do
?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
can I stop drinking this and save it as a
collector's edition?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
you, you might want to.
Uh, we do have one six-pack setaside that we will never uh get
rid of.
But, with that being said, itwas we wanted to design an
energy drink that was quotehealthy, that was, that tastes
good those are the two things,because healthy and taste good
don't usually go together.
But we also wanted something.
That is like we told the guy wesaid listen, man, our audience
(13:34):
are guys that work 24 hourshifts, 48 hour shifts.
They come off, they got to gobe present for softball, they
got to go work out, they got togo work a side job for the next
10 hours and go back to workthat next night.
Like we want somebody to comeoff, drink it and feel like
they're locked in.
So he said, okay, I can do that.
And you know it's the B12, butit's all the B vitamins.
(13:57):
Um, we use a higher quality Bvitamin, vitamin CoQ10.
Uh, there's a lot of studiesbehind the ability for mental
clarity.
Um, that come from coq10.
Blueberry extract also helpswith mental clarity.
Like we've gotten a lot offeedback from guys are like, I
feel like I just popped anadderall, like I'm locked in
(14:18):
because again that's your newadvertisement well, I can only
advertise to certaindemographics.
So that one.
But yeah, it's um.
We wanted the mental claritypiece, because that's one of the
things that I struggle with.
Like there's some days I comeoff of work and I just stare at
the computer screen.
Um, that was a big issue for me.
But then the other one was theenergy piece.
And when it comes to energy, alot of these energy drinks they
(14:40):
give you caffeine, but then theydon't match it with theanine.
And what happens with theanineand caffeine when you match them
is you come up like this andthen the theanine carries you
across and it doesn't allow youto crash.
And so we said look, the lastthing we want someone to do is
drink this at three o'clock andshift change, and by 9 PM
they're like, they feel likethey're going to die, right,
(15:01):
like we don't want that either.
The other nice thing aboutputting caffeine inside of an
energy drink versus coffee isyou're getting a prescribed
amount of caffeine.
It's 200 milligrams, that's it,like it's locked in, whereas
coffee depending how it's beenbrewed, how it's been harvested,
you can get anywhere from 10 to200 milligrams of caffeine.
(15:23):
You have no clue what you'regetting.
So that's the other nice thing.
And then obviously you'regetting all your good minerals
and all the other fun stuff.
But we really wanted to make itas healthy as we could but also
tastes good, and there's just afine line that you got to go
with that.
So so you're the.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
B6, b9, b12, B3, like those are your vitamin energies
and the other ones.
So if you look at some of theenergy drinks, it's high in
sugar, more syrup, so you havethe spike.
You wake up and then you havethat crash shortly after.
So it seems like you guys kindof designated yours to have a
long-term effect.
There's a lot of these are likeI think it's a monster rockstar
.
They're like high sugar, um,high calorie.
(16:03):
Uh, there's, there are ones thatare not going to carry you over
like there, and a lot of timesit's because you're not
replacing the energy vitaminsyou have in your food.
So this is why you get thespike of the energy drinks,
because you are now filling upon the vitamins that you should
have been getting through yourfood.
And when you said that thequality of the vitamin is
important so my cousin is adoctor in nutrition, we talk
about this fairly often and shesaid that you know you can get a
(16:26):
bad vitamin, it's still avitamin, but your body's not
going to absorb it or retain itbecause it's, you know, not a
quality vitamin, and I don'tknow how to break that down a
little bit better, but maybe youdo.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
So here's an example if you go, obviously we're all
going to listen to, uh, thefirst responder financial
freedom podcast.
But if you were to listen toanything else, the other day
paul saldino was on pbd'spodcast and he was like there's
not an energy drink out therethat doesn't use a good b12 and
the bad one is the go.
Look at your Celsius monster.
Any one of those drinks, it'sCyno, whatever.
You'll see it next to the B12.
(17:04):
C-y-n-a whatever theabbreviation for B is there.
After he said nobody usesmethylcobalin.
So I'm sitting here listeningto this podcast and I said, sure
as shit, there it is, it'sright, there we use the good B12
.
And what's funny is when we weredown in North Carolina
producing this at the co-packer,there was another drink brand
(17:25):
there.
They do like vitamin typewaters and she's reading our
ingredients and she goes oh myGod, wow, wow.
You guys really put thoughtinto this and like I don't know
like I got I got this guy whohad a massive production plant
who formulated this drink thatwe paid six grand to Um.
I don't know Like I got I gotthis guy who had a massive
production plant who formulatedthis drink that we paid six
grand to Um, I don't really havea relationship with the guy.
I assumed he did best by us andI'm just like, okay, well,
(17:48):
everybody likes how it tastes,everybody likes how it makes
them feel locked in, and I don'treally know the formulation per
se.
And to hear this lady from thisother drink brand to be like wow
, like that's impressive, I waslike, oh shit, we got something.
And you know, we ordered 12 000cans on the first run, like a
thousand cases, dude.
(18:10):
We had no clue if we were goingto sell this.
Like we bring it back and boom,here we are and you know, off
it goes and a lot of it comesback to taste and brand and
having the audience.
But then some of it comes backto the cleanliness and the
ingredients, like foster I knowwe talked about it for a while
about you like when you firstlooked at it, you're like, wow,
dude, you actually use real goodingredients and you know, I
(18:31):
think that's the biggest thing.
So it's been a fun process yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
So there's always.
I was gonna say we shouldprobably say we're not doctors
or nutritionists.
Maybe we should have said thisat the beginning, but we are
EMTs, which is basically thesame thing and like so, street
doctor, if you will.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah.
But there's something calledplanned obsolescence where, like
, you want something to to tofail, so like.
I'll give you two examples.
Like lip balms right now arepopular because it's winter time
, everybody's dried out, so alot of these lip balms right now
are popular because it'swintertime, everybody's dried
out, so a lot of these lip balmsactually dry your lips out more
, so you use more of the product.
So it's planned obsolescence.
Same thing for, say, um underarmor, so under armor.
Uh, long story short, kevinplank is the guy who's the
(19:09):
founder um.
He played football with mycousin both in high school and
in college and then he startedunder armor up in baltimore
where ian worked at um and theoriginal product, like it lasted
, for you know, 10-15 years andthen he started Under Armour up
in Baltimore where Ian worked at, and the original product, like
it, lasted for, you know, 10,15 years.
And then they do start doingplanned obsolescence.
What's the wear and tear test,the scrape test, and they
started getting it down.
It's like, okay, he can use itfor I don't know, just
(19:30):
spitballing here that he can useit for a year or two and it'll
start to fail, so you have toreplace it, cause you.
So you have to replace itbecause you don't want something
to fail to being.
You want something to fail toreplace it because they buy more
of your products.
So you'll see this in almostevery single category of product
across the US.
Is is planned obsolescence andyou can look it up.
It's a real term.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Look at appliances.
What was the last time?
You know Exactly.
All right, so you're down atthis place.
You find it like I don't evenknow how you go about.
Like you just googled like howdo I get?
A place to find like how do youeven find that dude?
Speaker 2 (20:07):
the co-packer was the absolute hardest thing to do.
And I mean, I'll be transparent, right, like we, we were doing
this on a dime.
Like this came out of me anddan savings we're like, all
right, we'll try this out.
We spent six grand on aformulator.
We this came out of me andDan's savings we're like, all
right, we'll try this out.
We spent six grand on aformulator, we spent a couple
grand, like Sean dialed in theoriginal logo, right, but then
we had to pay, like they call it, cpg, consumer Product Goods
(20:30):
Designer to come in and makethis thing like legal, right,
like this whole thing has to belegal.
So that was a whole thing.
And then we had to talk abouthow's it going to sit on the
shelf.
We're doing all this and we'rethinking the production is going
to be the easiest part.
Dude, try calling around theco-packers and being like yo, I
only want to run a thousandcases and it sounds like a lot.
But, dude, it's like whatever,250 gallons or whatever.
(20:54):
It was like three, so six skews.
I think it was 50 gallons ofskew a skew.
So we are only running 300gallons.
Dude, these guys are runningthousands of gallons at a time
and I can't even there's toomuch piping.
Like, I had to do 500 gallonsto get 300 gallons of net
because there's so much pipingto do this.
And that was the biggest painin the ass until the point where
(21:17):
we found a co-packer who waslike look, we work with a lot of
social media brands.
We get your story, weunderstand why you're starting
small, we'll take a risk on youand that was like a huge help
and we do.
The first run cost us like 250 acan and I mean we're selling
these.
I mean we're selling thesethings.
(21:38):
We're selling these things at24 a case, right, like it was
like two dollars.
We basically broke even on thefirst run.
Like we didn't make a dollar.
Um, we just wanted to recoupour capital from, like, the r&d
standpoint.
Um, so this guy, like dude, hehad like the lost and found
brand in there.
He had some other.
We were walking around hisplant and um, the Sean, our
(22:00):
intern guy, he mentioned somehot model off of Instagram and
he's like dude, she does anenergy drink here and I'm like I
don't even know who you'retalking about.
Like, so it was pretty wild tosee all these brands in there
that are literally just socialmedia brands selling energy
drinks I was like, well, theycan sell, we can sell.
And that was really the hardestpart.
And now that we went back andwe're running 9,000 cases, it's
(22:24):
a real order.
The book opened up and they'relike look, if you do this,
here's your pricing.
If you can do, if you promiseme, 50,000 cases a year, here's
what I can do for you.
If you can do a million cases ayear, here's what I can do for
you.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
And that's like anything the more the more you
run like.
You buy one shirt from Vistaprint.
It's $95.
You buy a thousand of them.
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Same concept and plus they start giving you the
shortcuts.
You know, uh, there's a bigdifference between cans Like
they're in the canning businesstoo.
These are all heat shrinkwrapped cans.
You wouldn't know that if Ididn't tell you, or maybe you
can feel the label.
I don't know, it's just alittle pet peeve of mine.
But a Celsius cans printed.
Well, if I can go to a printedcan, I can save another 20% on
(23:06):
my can production costs.
But the problem is I need300,000 cans stored in a
warehouse somewhere so we needto make sure we have the product
run to get there.
But yeah, finding a goodco-packer, the quality of the co
packer, the ability to run yourproduct, understand what it is
(23:27):
Like.
The cool thing about this plantis they run a lot of your
flavored waters and a lot ofjust your plain vitamin waters
no flavoring, no, nothing in it.
So you need really reallyreally clean water and a really,
really clean plant because youcan taste, obviously, if there's
any really really clean plant.
Because you can taste,obviously if there's any
impurities in water, you cantaste it.
So that was the advantage ofgoing with this co-packer fresh
water right out of lake norman.
(23:47):
They reverse osmosis, all this,whatever they got all these
standards.
And they don't do alcohol,which is nice, because that's a
completely different thing thatcan affect what the flavor of
your drink is inside your can.
All things that I've learned.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Did you have to go through any sort of like FDA or
like health department approvalto like sell something that's
consumed?
Speaker 2 (24:11):
So you do, you need to go to a.
So again learning lesson isthis thing called a process
authority.
Everyone thinks you go to theFDA to get approved.
What you actually do is you goto a process authority, they
take it, they test it and thenthey tell you how you need to
pasteurize or preserve it.
Right, so we don't have anyliving ingredients in ours.
(24:31):
Ours really comes down towhat's the half-life of your
ingredients that you're puttingin.
How long are they efficaciousfor and how are you going to
preserve it to make sure thatthere is nothing.
I didn't need a processauthority letter if I would have
just put chemicals in it, likeyour.
What is it?
Potassium, azorbate, whateverit is.
You see in a lot of thesethat's a chemical preservative.
(24:53):
You actually don't even needthat letter because you just put
the chemical in there.
It's preserved.
You're good, we tunnel,pasteurize ours to remove that
chemical out of there.
Um, so I needed a processauthority to say they, this will
survive the heat degradation,this will be sterile when it's
done, this process.
So then you get that processauthority letter and you put
(25:15):
that in your file and this wayyou're now quote unquote
protected well now that you goahead.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
I was gonna say so we've gone all the way through,
like idea production, packing,all that kind of stuff, and then
obviously that final point ornot the final point, but sales
is a big thing.
Did you guys talk about how youwere going to sell it?
Did you have a certain strategy?
Is that going to shift asyou've increased your scale?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah.
So this thing started out asjust like a fun side project.
The same way, brother Busted,it's like, oh yeah, it's cool,
but you know, like it's notabout the money.
We always thought it was like acool thing.
So we knew one thing Firemenare contagious, right.
So if we got this product inthe hands of firemen, who are
primary audiences, we would dofine.
(26:05):
And we knew that we were goingto give out free cases.
So we started putting togetherBuffed Energy, put it out there.
People started buying it.
Put a couple of social mediaposts.
People immediately bought it.
They thought it was cool.
Well then, off of that, whathappened was I sent our buddy
Bob we were at the time, we werecalling him buffed energy Bob
(26:25):
and we said Bob, your son goesto Loyola.
You got to go down there.
Here's all the firehouses Iwant you to go to.
On this day, date and time, Ihad someone print out Telestaff
on our old shift and I was likeall right, here's everybody I
know.
Go swing by all thesefirehouses in Baltimore city.
So he swung by, do the next dayit.
Just, it just lit up and likeafter that, then we, we started
(26:47):
going out and finding the socialmedia influencers, um, and then
, off of that, we startedbuilding the Tik TOK brand.
But then we, we sold out.
We sold out in four weeks.
Like I thought we would befighting for, um, I thought we
would be fighting for, like, howto sell this.
It's actually the completeopposite.
It's like I didn't think wewould sell out so fast.
Uh, and now how do we get tothe next run?
(27:09):
Because now that this hasturned into a legitimate
business, now it's like okay, weneed the demand to get to
create the distributors who wantit, to put it in the grocery
stores, your convenience stores.
Like I'm not a planner, like Iwould never buy energy Me
personally, I would not buyenergy drinks offline, but Dan
does.
Like he keeps them stocked inthe office.
(27:30):
I'm a hey, I need to pay.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
the very first LFG meeting had a frigging cooler
Stop.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Right, that's right.
That's right.
Who did it?
It was foreshadowing but, likeum I'm usually on the side of,
I'm going to swing by Wawa andgo grab one, or whatever your
convenience store is.
Um, but there's a lot ofplanners out there and we knew
that.
Like if we could tackle thefirehouse skins, if we could
tackle the firehouses, we knewthat they were consumers of
energy drinks and that would beour path forward.
(27:57):
So it's been a really gooddemographic to attach to.
And the other thing behind thebrand is and you guys know this,
this is no bullshit Proceeds ofEvery Can is going into a
foundation that we control todonate back to the guys who get
injured off work that can'treturn to work, or the
volunteers that get hurt at afire that can't return back to
(28:18):
their job and provide for theirfamily.
I mean, as Webb knows, you knowyou get hurt at work.
Everybody's there to help you.
But if you don't get hurt atwork and you can't make it back
to work, everyone's like, yeah,whatever, that idiot was playing
basketball, messed up his knee,you know.
So that was like a big passionof ours and a lot of people
support that cause that aren'tfiremen and they understand
(28:40):
supporting first responders as awhole, and I think that's
really been the sales pitch andthe sales model is we have a
quality product, we have acult-like audience, we have a
great demographic that we knowhow to tackle and speak to.
We should be able to sell thisproduct long-term.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
So do you think that I'm sure you've ran the numbers?
Do you think it's almost betterbecause it's not necessarily
niche-y but you're going after acertain demographic?
Would it be better to almostjust stay direct to consumer
model versus trying to get thatmiddleman where, yes, instantly
(29:18):
you think about growing it?
But if you go into Wawa You'recompeting with shelf space From
Monster and all these places.
So this is going to be at thebottom and it may not have the
same draw To somebody justrolling through the store,
versus if you can get it directTo the market.
It might actually Keep yourmargins healthier.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
DTC.
There's obviously a lot ofthings to do because, again,
it's scale.
To get on Amazon end up in thewarehouse, you know you need
hundreds of skids of product,right, you know.
So there there is challenges tothe direct to consumer.
There's benefits to being inthe, you know, in in the, in the
convenience stores, and it'svice versa.
Yeah, the margins are better.
We control our audience, weunderstand who we're selling to
(30:05):
and I think being niche allowsus to have a launching pad to
get to the next level.
Right, it'd be no differentthan you know.
Maybe tyler is a mortgage guy.
Well, my primary audience isfiremen and first responders to
sell mortgages to.
Well, that's a demographic youspeak to and then it branches
out from there and I thinkthat's been the biggest thing
for us.
(30:26):
You know, long-term being inthe distributors that's like
this is about.
The margins are are small,comparatively speaking, just
based on the product costs andwhat it is and the MSRP of it.
So the distributors and themass volume is what it is and
the MSRP of it.
So the distributors and themass volume is what makes it
like the real business.
(30:46):
But on the same side of that, Ido think that you know there's
benefits to both worlds,obviously.
There's manpower, there'spackaging issues, there's
storage issues, there's a lot ofthings that come with DTC and
there's a lot of issues thatcome with convenience store
returns, sales credits, allthese things that I don't really
understand.
And actually, for the first timein our lives, we actually took
(31:07):
on a strategic partner, the guywho formulated the drink.
He had a protein, a nutritioncompany.
He was actually a producer ofnutrition, worked with Celsius
and Gatorade Nestle.
In the early days he was doing$20, $30 million top line, sold
his company and when heformulated this for us, he's
(31:30):
like I like your message, I likewhat you're doing, I'd like to
come join you guys.
And we actually negotiated adeal for him to come in and run
the company and be theday-to-day guy.
And that's the first time everwhere we were like wow, we have
something here.
We have someone who is reallyskilled at this.
Let's work out a deal with himand let him run it and we will
(31:52):
do what we do best.
I'll do this.
I'll do these conversations.
We know the audience is toattack you work on the
distributor, you work on allthat stuff.
Let us do the DTC.
You run the day-to-day and youwork on the distributor route.
So it's, I guess we're maturing.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I just remember when I got that first case and you
and I talked on the phone, dude,my brain was going a hundred
miles an hour with like it wasalmost like the micro brew type
marketing thing.
I was like, dude, you couldhave like the, you know that, uh
, just, you could have the eightengine guys or the job town
version can like limited edition, like get all these artsy
(32:28):
things going on and like it waskind of nuts.
But so I know we're rolling upon some time here.
But what, what made it changefrom now buffed to the Energy
Drink?
You mentioned that.
I don't know how much you cantalk about it, but the.
Energy Drink.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
This is actually a good way for us to kind of
rebrand and re-release theinformation.
So everything was at officialBuffed Energy.
It's now TheEnergyDrinkcom.
It will be the Energy Drink.
So there's an interesting thingabout trademarking.
There was a group that filedliterally 30 to 60 days before
(33:05):
us out of Utah and they sellpowdered basically powdered
energy drinks and theirB-U-F-F-E-D whatever.
At this point they can get afree shout out and they file
their trademark.
But they weren't actuallylisted on the PTO website until
we got our letter that said, no,you're not going to get that
because it takes a minute topopulate.
(33:26):
We would have never went downthis route.
So here we are, thinking we'regoing to get our trademark,
we're good to go.
Turns out that you know it's asimilar product type and a
similar category type and theydon't give a crap that you're
talking about guys that aregoing to take pictures of fire
trucks.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
What it?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
is is buffed, sounds like buffed, even though it's
phonetically spelled different.
It's a similar product type.
You need us to get a hold ofsome boys in Utah, go take care
of business, or what we actuallywe actually sold.
We actually sold a case in thetown that they're in, because
it's a really small town, and Iwas like, oh my god, dude we're
about.
They probably heard no he wasactually a legitimate fireman
(34:03):
out there.
I actually asked the dude.
I was like, hey, really weirdquestion here.
Uh, because I like I keep trackof the orders, I like to see
where we're selling.
We sold nationwide, um,including hawaii, and it was
interesting.
So we said we can fight theseguys, we can ask for permission
with these guys.
But there was an issue 98 rockeveryone's like, oh, your shit
(34:25):
was on 98 rock.
And I was like, well, how?
And it turns out when I wentback and listened to the clip,
they bought the, the powderedenergy drink, the other guys,
and they were talking about thatand I was like, well, shit, we
already got brand confusion.
So talking with James, the guywho we hired to come in and
basically run the company, hesaid there's a real unique
proposition out there.
And I said what's that?
He said you don't want totrademark.
(34:47):
He's like, and we don't want tofight these guys.
He's like you could probablyget permission, but there's
always going to be brandconfusion.
One thing you can't trademark isgeneric names, and this is a
category.
Energy drinks are literally acategory that you can trademark
under.
So it could be Aaron Fosterenergy drink that he could
(35:10):
trademark inside the energydrink category, but you can't
trademark the actual category.
So we said, well, screw it,let's just name it the whole
category and we are the energydrink that everybody should want
.
And he told us this story howvitamin water was a category,
but they were vitamin water.
They couldn't trademark ituntil the point they dominated
(35:32):
the category and then they gotthe trademark for vitamin water
and I was like holy shit, what agreat idea.
He said the only thing issomebody else could release an
energy drink called the energydrink, and there is some.
We could send them cease anddesist letters, but we really
have nothing to hang our hat on.
He goes, but we don't need totrademark now.
Our hat on he goes, but wedon't need to trademark now.
We don't need to waste themoney on it.
(35:53):
It's like $300 to trademark.
He's like you don't have toworry about anybody fighting you
, nobody can trademark this.
I said, god damn it, dude, whata great idea.
It actually looks prettysimilar.
It's still clean, it still hasthe same weight.
It's just funny because whenpeople ask about it now, it's
like, well, yeah, we have theenergy drink.
They're like, wait what?
Yeah, no, it is the energydrink, that's what we're going
(36:15):
to call ourselves and I thinkthat'll stand us out.
Yeah, mic, drop right.
So that's our trademark issueand that's how we've rebranded
it, and it's going to betheenergydrinkcom.
All the social handles will betheenergydrink.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
I can't believe that URL was even available.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Dude, I was floored when I pulled it up.
It was $9 or $10 on Namecheap,that's insane.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Some idiot didn't buy it like 10 years ago and hold
it hostage.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
No, some guy owns energydrinkcom and he wants $2
million for it.
Because originally we were like, well, let's just drop the, or
we wanted to just be energydrink.
And then someone was like, well, what if we were like the Ohio
State University, right, or youknow, there you go the U right
Like I was like, oh, dude, whata great idea.
So one of the first guys,foster you probably know him,
(37:03):
spray 9, mccloskey.
He was a Kentland guy there fora long time.
He's one of our best affiliates.
And I said, hey, man, one of ourbest affiliates.
And I said, hey, man, we got alittle issue, we're changing our
name.
So I sent it to him in text andI said it's the energy drink
(37:23):
and he's like so, like the.
And he put t-h-e-e, he's likewe're the energy drink.
I said, exactly, you get thejoke.
It's on like game on right.
And I just think it's aninteresting way to brand
yourself and keep it generic,not over confuse it.
We have some other productskews in the works that it's
like this will lend hand to thatsame super generic like.
Let's just be generic.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
You know, and it helps the police people in our
market understand it a littlebit more.
They try to spell buffed andyou know the is probably a
little bit easier yeah, no, it's, um, it's, definitely it's.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
It's similar.
The thing I liked about buffedjust to cry about it one more
time is like buff, like buffing,and then you got buffed.
Like going to the gym buffed,and then you got guys who buff
their cars and it's like we hadall these fun ideas.
But it's like we had all thesefun ideas but it's like, dude,
you know what?
Like this is probably morefemale friendly.
If I had to ask, um, it'sprobably crosses more categories
(38:19):
in this fashion.
And like plus, trying to tellthis story, like we had a lady
come in here and make us customboxes and she's like, oh, how'd
you come up with the name, boss?
And I was like, well, there'sthis really weird story.
We used to film firetrucks likejackasses, and it's just like
an easy story to tell you know.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Yeah, so you almost need the QR code.
Well, never mind Shit, there isone I was going to say you
could scan it, where it tellsthe whole story, but damn, I
never even noticed that.
In terms of marketing, ian.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
I want to dive into that just a little bit more.
So, curtis Jackson, 50 Cent hestarted Vitamin Water, made
fucking millions off of it.
Then Liquid Death I mentionedit before.
Liquid Death is another drink,but it's actually water.
It sounds like an energy drinkbut it's a water.
They started out kind of likeyou do.
This is where we're going tofocus our ambitions at.
We're going to change it alittle bit.
(39:11):
Now, of course, you're going togo to flavored water.
We're going to do iced teas.
We're going to do this.
Do you think that you guys willdeviate from energy drink world
to do something?
Speaker 2 (39:22):
else outside of that.
No, I think most of our SKUsare going to revolve around
energy drinks and energyflavorings.
I mean, I don't want to put itout there yet, but there might
be an iced tea here in thefuture for the summertime.
We're actively working on somefun things inside the energy
(39:42):
drink space and different ideasaround it.
The guy, our formulator he ownssome really cool old website
names that would lend fun to canwe turn our energy drink
exactly the way the guy theother buffed guys are a dry
powder.
Our energy drink formulaformula relates to a hydration
stick and energy energyhydration stick at that.
(40:03):
So like I just think abouttyler and all those wildfires of
, like all those dudes climbingthe mountains, they probably all
had powder sticks.
The other thing I've beenliquid iv yeah, exactly.
And the other thing I've beenthinking about is bug juice on
the side of all the canteens,because then we can go after
government contracts.
And I mean, look, it's apodcast, I'll talk about
anything.
It is what it is, but like ourproduct flavoring and our
(40:25):
product type would lend well toreplacing the Gatorade.
Just remove the caffeine out ofit.
So now we can go aftergovernment contracts if we so
choose.
And who wouldn't want to supportwhat government agency,
wouldn't want to support theirguys by supporting a nonprofit
that supports one of their guysthat potentially got hurt
long-term?
So that's some fun things we'vebeen thinking about.
(40:48):
But right now it's really justlaunching the brand, getting it
to a point that it's like ahousehold name, and then you
know we can work on these othershoot-offs and just kind of
staying focused and then workingoutside of that.
But if you got flavor ideas,text them to us.
We're we're working on some newones.
Uh, grapes been getting tossedaround, iced teas have been
(41:08):
getting tossed around, peach hasbeen getting tossed around I'm
hearing medic melon is gettingtossed around.
So we'll see if we can come upwith a melon flavor and uh, and
go from there awesome.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Well, that's probably like a good uh stopping point
where, if somebody wants toorder I know we've probably
alluded to, but where's the bestplace they can get in touch and
order directly from you guyswell, I gotta set you guys up an
affiliate link, but, that beingsaid, it is theenergydrinkcom
and you guys can use code FRFFfor 10% off your order, cause we
(41:47):
appreciate everybody in thisaudience.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
You guys have been huge supporters of us and we
appreciate that and we wouldlike to sponsor your podcast
going forward.
So I'm going to get you guyssome drinks out there.
And I got to give a shout outto webb's wife because she was
probably one of the first 20customers I get a random message
from, uh, alicia webb, and Iwas like, oh shit, what's webb's
wife want?
(42:09):
You know and she's like I wantto get this for him for his
birth was your birthday, orchristmas, or whatever christmas
yeah.
And then I was like well, howare we gonna get this to your
house and him not be likebrother her boss is sending me
like?
So I was like all right girl.
And then she just tried andshe's like I love it.
So that was cool to be a firstsupporter of it.
And then the next text I gotwas I need support for your boy.
(42:30):
And and I was like well, I loveWebb, Of course he needs
support.
And then I was like all right.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Well, so there you go .
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Either way, thank you .
We love to support FirstResponder Financial Freedom
Podcast so we can set you guysup an affiliate link and make
sure that we're out there on allthe shows.
And you guys got any ideas,please send them in.
And again, it'stheenergydrinkcom and use code
FRFF for 10% off your order andappreciate you guys.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Awesome, man.
Well, we appreciate it and welook forward to having you back
on when you guys sell.
What was it?
90,000 cases or something crazy?
Speaker 2 (43:05):
The next run is 9,000 cases that we want to get sold
in roughly 12 weeks, if not less, and we want to be ordering and
going, so we're excited.
If your firehouse skin needsanything, reach out to us.
We can work some stuff out whatis skin Firehouse?
Skin, don't you guys havevending machines?
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Commissary, vending machines House funds.
Speaker 3 (43:30):
We call it commissary , that's fine.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Whatever, whatever it is, you know if you guys keep
it, you want to put it in yourvending machine.
Reach out to us and, moreimportantly, I know we're
sponsoring that.
Uh, frederick training one.
You guys are key city city fireconference.
Yeah, you guys got fireconferences, let us know, send
it out, we'll see what we can do.
And, uh, you know we're here tosupport awesome.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
well, Well, that's definitely something like if I'm
going to drink, it might aswell be somebody that supports
this line of work anyways.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
So I get that and get that other thing you talked
about from your doctor in a in aletter form, so I can put that
on my website.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Yeah, I don't want to put that out here just yet.
I go.
I go tomorrow actually to DCfor my first uh neurology
appointment, so, hopefully,maybe I'll just bring them one.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Yeah, low standard to start, so you can only improve,
right.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
All right guys.
Well, we appreciate it and helpa brother out and get yourself
a six pack of these and let themknow how it is.
So thanks for coming on andtalk to you guys soon.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Thanks boys.
Thanks See, you buddy See youguys Be safe, see it.
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