#182 Mark Sisson – The Secret Sauce Behind a $200 Million Dollar Brand

Before we get into this video , please make sure to subscribe , like and comment down below so we can get bigger , better guests for you every single week . Let's get straight into the video right now . All right , mark , let's kick off . Okay this is a big honor for myself , big privilege , really admire of your work .

We could go down many different verticals , but today we're gonna be talking really in entrepreneurship space . We'll have a second podcast . I've gone longevity and no doubt right , but what have you found to be the main similarities and parallels between your ironman days and entrepreneurship ?

So there's a , there's a fair amount of discipline involved in engaging in these activities at first , and that discipline then becomes part of a habit , it becomes habitual and it becomes , you know , almost habitual to a fault .

So in the endurance community , that their days you probably should take off and you don't , because you , you know your mind is sort of driving you to get the work done and and to prove to yourself that this day was worthy of Getting out of bed and and getting something done .

How that translates into Business and particularly entrepreneurship , because being an entrepreneur is a self motivated pursuit . Right , if you have a job , you're , you sort of have a , a description of what you're supposed to do every day and guidelines , and maybe you have someone Mentoring you or telling you what to do as a , as a boss , or someone over you .

As an entrepreneur , you are self-directed and self-motivated , and so you sort of have to be the one setting the guidelines and and getting up every day and deciding . You know what it is that needs to be done to be the success that you want to be .

And the training , the training in endurance activities particularly that part about managing discomfort really becomes a Great asset . If you're an endurance , excuse me if you're a entrepreneur and I suspect it in bodybuilding , it's a similar kind of thing right , it's , it's . You're on your own , you're . As an endurance athlete , you're on your own as a bodybuilder .

You're on your own , you're . You know . You know where the pain points are . And if you translate that over into Entrepreneurship , it is very similar . And there are , you know , the entrepreneurs journey . It's a hero's journey . I mean , there's ups and downs and there's , you know , amazing aha moments and then there's , oh shit , what did we do ? Now ?

We screwed it up . And then there's , you know , oh my god , we got a great , you know , we just got a great purchase order . How are we gonna fulfill this ? And then there's , oh my god , we can't fulfill it and now we're gonna lose our business because we took this order and we can't . I mean , you know , it's on a , it's a story of my life .

Story of most entrepreneurs life and it's that's not happening , then you're not doing it right . So I would you know ?

So I think the once again getting back to that original premise , which is the ability to Manage the discomfort of that and not get bogged down in the poor me or the victim , or or you know , you know my competitors , you know they out outdid me on this last you know RFP , or on this last proposal , or on this last bid for a , for a job .

You know I must be doing something wrong . You gotta be able to stand that and get up the next morning and Reframe and rethink and , and you know , hit it again and go alright . This was not a failure , this was just a learning experience . And and how do we move on from that ?

And same with bodybuilding for shows , same Is even for now , even for diets , and it was managing that discomfort and then getting the reward for it . So it's kind of like people pack you in the back for starting , like well , don't you start your first business , or when you finish , when you sell a business for 200 million .

But in the middle , this is the no man's land , where it's you either running on a road or in your business building a 200 million Other business , but in the middle that's where most people give up . Right , it's like we are too far away from the beginning , too far away from the end , and they don't understand those different variables .

Now , of course , I'm first wrong in a ladder in comparison to someone like yourself , but he's an interesting observation how sport , and particularly individual sport , can set you up so strong in that regard .

You know go for it and then , and at the end , you know if it's successful and if there's an exit or if you've , you know , arrived at a point where you can , you know , hand over the reins to somebody else and then enjoy the fruits of your labor a little bit . There's also that congratulatory Slap on the back .

But you're right in the years in between and sometimes I was , I was lucky .

In the case of Primal Kitchen , we launched our first product in March of 2015 and by the end of 2018 , I had a firm offer to purchase the company and in the you know , and it sounds like it's not that much time in between , but it was still three and a half years of of me being the only signer on loan guarantees , where I was pledging my house and

everything I'd ever spent my life building to guarantee a line of credit On on products that had yet to be made and had yet to be sold , and it was . You know , that's one of you know 100 different things that weigh on your shoulders as you're , as you're plotting through this . The delayed gratification part of it is a great example as well .

There were years when , you know , in my Formative years , as I was , I had another company . I've had several companies , but the other , the company I had , that led into Primal Kitchen . I was . It was a nice business . I mean , I was .

I was making , you know , three million dollars a year some years on nine million in sales , and I had seven employees and I had it very Closely corralled and it was just a nice . I could count on it and it was . You know , it was a . It was a good business Enough that I could have lived the rest of my life on it .

But I started thinking about the other things I could do and I started thinking about how I could build a food company and I was quite , I would say , passionate about it . But I was also just , it was a . It was a problem that existed in the world .

There was just not enough Options in the store for people to go buy healthy sauces and dressings and condiments and things like that . So I wanted to solve that problem . So the delayed gratification part of that was now I took all the money I'd been making before and now I was rolling it over into this New company .

So I was , in addition to not making that amount of money , I was remortgaging my house and doing a number of other things to raise the capital to invest in this new building and it's just , I mean , in this new enterprise , and it was a .

It was a very , you know , scary time and the delayed gratification part of that , I Guess in my case I , you know , I didn't really because I live , I Can live a very frugal and simple life .

It didn't bother me that we couldn't do the lavish vacations and we couldn't , you know , do the things in those years , because I was more focused on on Building this new company that I just knew what my , in my gut , was going to be successful .

Because for someone like yourself , you know You're going into your 60s , 50 , 60s . At this point you could have done anything but make that leap . So , like , how do you do that mentally in yourself ?

I don't acknowledge my age as a factor in Sort of as any limiting factor , and again almost to a fault , like I still do shit Physically that I should be doing and I just turned 70 .

So I have that drive to to , I Guess , a rise to the absolute level , top peak level that I could that I can achieve given the current variables , which in my case now are time accumulating . So . But I never felt like , okay , I need to just back off and stop , stop working . It's not in my nature . I probably get that from my father , who was a painter .

He was a fine artist and Sold his first painting when he was 16 , raised a family , supported a family , a wife and four kids with his art , painted every day of his life until he died at the age of 85 . And you know , always it was just he painted , not because I Mean certainly loved it , but he was obsessed .

He was just like obsessed with getting that right . The one Work of art that he knew lurked in the back of his mind but had , but according to him , he had not yet Put out , he had not yet Created . And I feel the same way . So I have this , this compulsion . I feel compelled to do things more than some Any any other .

I guess Motivational drive , it's really a compulsion . And so the food thing was Bothering me . For years and years I'd written a lot about Healthy . How do you make your own mayonnaise because none exists in the store ? How do you make a catch up ? How do you make a salad dressing that's not full of harmful industrial seed oils ?

And and I noticed a lot of my readers who would come back and say you know , thanks for the recipe , but I'm not interested in making my own . I'd love to purchase it , and so that was a bill that went off in my head . It just said I just said to myself this is , this is a . There's a need for a product like this that does not exist .

There's nothing close , and so that's . That was the impetus for starting Primal kitchen .

Extrinsically , you're winning , You're coming forward in the Iron man World Championships , you're selling this company , selling this company , but intrinsically , you're aspiring for more . So , between you and your fodder , what were the parallels there ? In terms of All right people , we're just gonna take one short little break for a little update about podcast university .

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And in my case , you know , I was a scrawny kid growing up in a fishing village in Maine and I was not built for football or basketball or baseball or hockey . I didn't wanna be a fisherman . They were some tough people . Most of a lot of my classmates from school became , you know , lobster fishermen .

So I was this scrawny kid who turned to running just because it was like the only thing I could do and I got pretty good at it and then that began to define me and I started to think well , I can . You know I was bullied in high school .

I mean , I'm not complaining , that's what people did in those days and I can't imagine growing up in Ireland and you know the whole bully culture was part of everyone's childhood when I was growing up .

Now it's become this you know it's kind of snowflake thing , but so my , maybe my motivation was to prove that I was an Iron man right , that I was gonna kick ass in other areas that I wasn't physically equipped to kick ass in . If that was the proof of who you were as a young man .

If it wasn't in the muscle domain , maybe it was in the endurance domain . If it wasn't in the fishing domain , maybe it was in the business and financial domain . So I just found areas that I could utilize my skills best . But at the heart of your question , you know it was intrinsic . For sure I brought it on myself .

I was the one who was perceiving you know the beat down that I was , that I thought I was getting from other people . I was giving it to myself , like you know .

Prove that you can do this , prove that you're a worthy human being , and without getting too much further into the weeds on that , I do think that every person has an art , has a form of their own art that they need to bring out in order to fully manifest a life that is full of enjoyment and contentment and fulfillment and pleasure , and part of that enjoyment

of life includes expressing oneself with whatever art it is that you have inside you that is longing to get out .

And I was number one example . I was working in finance , I was working in tech . I was young and I was good at it , but I didn't enjoy it . It wasn't for me . And then when I became like playing the entrepreneur , even though it was 10 times harder , I much more enjoyed it right . Same with individual sports versus team sports .

I feel like it's unfulfilled potential is where people feel down versus that right . And I think it's interesting for you because you've been this like person who's just at it , going at it , continuously improving .

But now , of course , you're enjoying life and you're always saying this on podcast too , that you want people to enjoy life and enjoy the moments around them . When did that kind of shift happen for you ? And was there a period during the building of your businesses where you didn't have that ?

You were just so focused on building and you kind of forgot about the other stuff outside ?

So I didn't see him for almost 10 years between the age of 15 and 25 . And then from then on , it was a couple of times a year . So I didn't want that to be the case with my kids . So I was very cognizant of spending time with my kids .

I didn't want to brag about working 90 hour weeks and foregoing time with my family , with my wife and my children . So I was very intent on doing all the things that a dad should do to experience life and as you create a family , that becomes your life , that becomes the focal point of your life .

And so I coached Little League , I refereed soccer , I attended every practice , I went to every game . I taught my kids how to snowboard , how to boogie board and to this day and now they're in their 30s they remember those times more than anything else that I gave them or afforded them in terms of opportunity .

They remember the time that I spent with them , so I try to make certain that , as a mentor to other people in business , make sure you live your life while you're doing this , because so many people think the business that I'm entering into is going to be successful .

I'm gonna make it successful so that one day , when I have a lot of money , I can enjoy my life . And that's so perverse in terms of thought process and it's not necessary . It's not necessary to forego the rest of your life to build a business . The old idiomatic , the adage , work smarter , not harder . There's a lot to be said for that .

And now it's easier than ever . Because of remote working , because of the internet , because of all the connections that we have in Zoom meetings .

It's so easy to craft a schedule that allows you time to work out so you become healthy and spend time with your friends or your family or whoever it is that's important to you outside of this compartment that you've put yourself into as an entrepreneur .

When you were in the quest of building Primo Primo Kitchen , did it ever have a negative impact on your relationships , particularly your wife ? As I know , you're very close now and you've worked out a great podcast together .

And you go back and analyze the metrics how many hours in a day and what can you allocate to these different baskets of goodies ? And so I was working and getting a lot of stuff built in terms of the business .

And then I was going off to soccer practice and so we had sort of a tag team where one of the children was doing one sport , the other one was doing , so she'd go do this , I go to that , and we would .

So my wife and I wouldn't spend that much time together because at the end of the day you put the kids to bed and then there's not much quality time left for that . So we did have a bunch of years there where it got pretty . We just became disconnected as a husband and wife .

We've now , when the kids went off to college and left and then we had you know , it's kind of funny that you hear about the empty nest syndrome and that can go one of the two ways .

Many couples who have children in a similar situation , where you're busy with the kids and you're and that's the focus of your life while the kids are home , and then the kids leave and you literally go . Holy shit , what am I going to do now ? This changes everything . This is like we're not . We've never experienced this situation before .

Are we going to rebond and get back together again , even closer , or are we going to get even further apart because we don't have anything in common anymore ? Luckily for us , we found ways to come back together again and make it better than ever .

But it's a thing Like when I say , as an entrepreneur , you want to make sure that you pay attention to the rest of your life . It's critical that you , you know , examine each of those areas and understand that you have a certain amount of energy to give to each of those areas .

And if you don't give energy to those areas , that can become problematic later on . The stories you hear , you know , of entrepreneurs who built massive businesses and made you know , incredible amounts of money and then , you know , had to either lose it or give it up .

Because they had to , they got divorced and they couldn't , you know they couldn't get , they couldn't resolve the issues that they , that they had created . They literally created as a result of their unwillingness to participate in real time in the in those activities . So I don't want to get too . You know philosophical and airy-fairy about it .

But for me it's always been life is about the moments . It's about what's happening in real time right now , not what will happen in 10 years when I have a successful exit .

But how do you stop and identify the good and appreciate the good times while you're in them ?

This is the , this is the , the sense of effort that I feel that I'm putting into the walk that I'm doing . This is the enjoyment I have listening to my kids or my grandchildren on FaceTime in in real time , to be able to have just a moment of appreciation , acknowledgement and gratitude and just say , wow , this is , this is what it's about .

What we do is a fully fledged end to end management of your podcast . We take care of the strategy , the consulting , we take care of the growth , the management . We take care of all the editing , all the boring stuff that you can focus on creating good podcasts and create and growing your brand .

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It's , as you said , like a skill . You got to work on it , like everything else in life , right , like being an entrepreneur , like sales . You got to work on this stuff , otherwise it's not going to come to you . I want to talk about your evolution as your maturity as an entrepreneur and even as an athlete , because I find it quite interesting , right ?

So I've been an athlete for longer than I've been an entrepreneur , so I know that if I do the right things with my fitness and my nutrition and so on , as a for it , I'm going to be healthy and reach these fitness goals . However , as an entrepreneur , you know majority of your day is low hanging anxiety . I describe it sometimes right In the beginning .

In the beginning , how have you seen yourself like evolve from the frozen yogurt days , the early days of the blog , the prime location , to the footwear ? How have you evolved as an entrepreneur ?

Back to the comment money only solves money problems . When you're an entrepreneur , money solves a lot of problems and , as my lawyer famously says , there's only one reason , only one reason businesses fail they run out of money . And if you distill that down , you'll understand that's exactly what's happening .

And so as I've gotten more mature in business and I've been more confident of my ability to either come up with money or to be able to leverage the assets that I have , that has taken a level of strain off of me that sort of kept me up some nights .

So I'm in the footwear business now and I have a shoe company , palova and we have the luxury of not having to go out and raise money , and I'm an angel investor in about 20 companies , and I love being an angel investor . I love working with entrepreneurs and I love mentoring them .

But one of the things I notice about most modern entrepreneurs is the CEO spend half their time or more raising money , going out and looking for more money . Now that's not only a diversion from the core competency of the business , it's also a huge amount of stress to be asking for money all the time .

So one of the areas in which I've unburdened myself of stress is having access to capital . So that has come with more and more success . I've said from the age of the early 20s invest in yourself . The best investment you can make is in yourself and I've always invested in myself . And I invested in my frozen yogurt store in 1983 .

My partner and I raised $40,000 on credit cards Holy crap to build this place . And that's when $40,000 was a lot of money . I mean , that was a significant amount of money to invest in a business , especially to borrow , especially on credit cards .

So that was a lot of stress to have that debt and no money in the bank and to be in a position where this has to work . Because I got further and further down my entrepreneurial journey , the notion that if this doesn't work I'm screwed . That notion left me . Even though it might have been true , it did not keep me awake at night .

So when I started Primal Nutrition , which is my supplement company , in 1997 , I had a wife and two kids , no money in the bank , borrowed money to start the company .

But I was very confident that I knew what I was doing and that it would become successful over time and part of that was the knowledge that I'd been through enough entrepreneurial fires up to that point to know that the art of pivoting was going to be an important aspect of what I was doing . So I set about to make supplements for athletes .

I made really high-end supplements . I made the highest potency full-spectrum multivitamin , multimineral antioxidant in the world . It was a 12 capsule a day super supplement . It replaced 50 other supplements that you might buy in the store .

It was like literally a piece of art that I created , that was , and I set about to sell it to athletes endurance athletes and I found very quickly athletes . They don't want to spend that amount of money , they want to get sponsored .

So what I realized was and I started doing these little TV appearances on a health talk show where I talk about diet and exercise and how to craft a healthy lifestyle , and it turned out that most of the people watching the shows , which aired about 11 AM local time in most of the markets they ran , were literally little old ladies who were interested in the

anti-aging aspect of what I was doing . And so my market became people over the age of 60 who were interested in whatever products they could take that had sort of antioxidant capacity and some element of longevity .

And again , we're going back 20 , almost 30 years when I started this and that became my market and that became the basis for my success was the opposite avatar of what I was going after .

Initially I was going after supremely fit , healthy people and when that didn't work I could have just fought it and fought it and fought it and tried to make it work , tried to beat myself up over what I was doing wrong or just say you know what ?

My product is perfect for this other demographic , this other group of people , and let me go after that and I did and it was quite successful . So I'm just saying the confidence that I had , that the investment in myself that I was making was also an investment in my ability to recognize signals and shift and pivot and make things right .

He was a CTO of Coinbase and he said everyone's boss is the CEO and the CEO's boss is the market .

And I love that because the market is ripping open , right , and I actually was just speaking similar enough to yourself with supplements to a entrepreneur who's in the e-commerce space and he was making gym supplements and he did the formula , did the logistics , learned the skills , all this kind of stuff and zero , right , it was not working .

He pivoted into dog supplements in Germany and now they're doing over 10 million a year in revenue . So , same skill , same entrepreneur , same person supplements humans , dogs , massive success with dogs , right , and I see that in you , obviously , with a lot of these examples , right ? So how have you been able to roll these skills up ?

Right , because when you were talking on the TV shows , when you're writing your blogs , it all accumulates into Primal Kitchen . From the psychology of the writing , I just see you as one big boulder that's rolling for 60 , 70 years and then you're just able to sell anything with your skill .

I was on TV a lot , and so my skill set was again to take complex scientific ideas and distill them into information that people could understand and utilize , whether it was diet or exercise or any sort of lifestyle factor sleep , sun exposure . So my secret sauce , my superpower , is probably in that educational aspect .

So , in terms of selling this very expensive , very high-potency multi-vitamin product , it took a lot of education . I had to spend it wasn't a small soundbite or it wasn't a gift on some Instagram feed . It was a 30-minute TV show where I explained everything about what was going on and why you need this and why you need that .

When that TV model for me dried up , I pivoted and I said I'm good at creating content , I'll start a blog , and so I started Mark's Daily Apple , and Mark's Daily Apple was always about educating . I want to educate people on the best ways in which to achieve a healthy , happy , productive life .

And my theme was I'm looking for ways in which we can identify these hidden genetic switches we all have and then use our lifestyle choices to influence the turning on or off of those genes . That's a complex scientific concept that I tried to make palatable for the greatest amount of people and it took a long time , but it did .

And then my book , the Primal Bluebird , came out .

So when it came time to create Primal Kitchen and the food company , I was able to launch that business based on 10 years of brand building , prior educating a public as to the danger of industrial seed oils , educating a public as to the utility of certain ways of eating and avoiding certain foods and maybe encouraging the use of other foods , so that when I

finally launched Primal Kitchen I had a market that was ready , willing and able to take that on . But Primal Kitchen was a very unique introduction . It was not a natural evolution of food , because imagine , you're entering a space where big food has played for 50 years , where a jar of mayonnaise is 395 or 295 .

And then I come along with a jar of mayonnaise it's 395 .

I don't listen to the experts , I listen to the research , I listen to the anecdotes , I listen to the marketplace and in the case of Primal Kitchen foods . So I had mentors and advisors who told me there's no way you're going to succeed in this food business . It's a racket , it's too controlled by big food .

My hubris and my naivete got me through the front door of Whole Foods in the US , through Publix , which is a large conventional shopping group in the US , and I prove that there are people out there who are willing to pay extra for whatever product is demonstrably best in that category .

So if there's one through line in my entrepreneurial journey , it is that I've picked very difficult diets to get into but have come up with a solution that I know is not the best . A certain percentage of the public will be drawn to and will support and will want more and more of it , and that's going .

So , of course , when someone walks you whole foods and sees $12 mayonnaise or whatever , they're not going to be able to recognize that . But , at a broader level , how you get distribution , how you got into these companies , how you got advisors , even how you built the relationships People like new and trust you because you put all those years in right .

And that's the gap , though , like you know , kids are trying to get into the space trying to sell $10 mayonnaise , but they haven't learned the work right and you just need to shut up and do the work right .

And I've only done three years of prep for our business and I actually feel like much further ahead than many people who get into the space , and that's only been three years right .

So I just want to say if this is the fact that you can create those amazing offers , those really great prices , when you've been someone like yourself who's put all the R and D in , so as a result , it is going to scale pretty well from that perspective .

And that's kind of an interesting aspect on that too , because you were going for the big company , the big build . Did you run into , like operational issues , even scaling something like this Because , as you know , were you aware of how big your time was at that time Like , how did you think about this ?

It was wonderful , beautiful , unique , demonstrably the best of its kind . We made the first couple of batches successfully , and then we had a period of time where we made a batch and it failed .

And when mayonnaise fails , it's just glob it , just , if you can't get it to emulsify , it just becomes this vat of oil and eggs that just , literally , when I say it goes down the drain , it goes down the drain and we couldn't figure out what was wrong .

We couldn't figure out what we were doing wrong and we had time on the , on a line , on a manufacturing line , because almost all mayonnaise is made by a co-packer . So the next time we could get on the line we tried it again and it failed a second time .

And now we're , and each time we did this it was like $8,000 worth of raw material that we lost , that went down the drain . The raw material was tough to come by , so we had to get more of it . We had to get time on the line , and then it failed again . We finally figured out what was going on , but there was .

I mean , that was one of the times I cried was when my co-founder , morgan , came in one morning on a Monday morning , because we had finally gotten the third time on the line to try and make this mayonnaise and fulfill this large purchase order that we had . And if we didn't do it this time , we were out of business .

And so she comes in and she says guess what I'm like , what she's ? I got engaged over the weekend and we made mayonnaise . So , though , that was a very happy day for me . But but I mean and that's one of 50 , 50 times when we , you know , we thought , oh , we're screwed , we're out of business , that's the end of it .

It was a nice little run while we had it . You know that's business , that's , that's the entrepreneur's . You know that is entrepreneurship .

Because we have to plan for , you know , when you , when you , when you project in any business , you have to raise capital in order to fulfill what you're going to do , when you have to be aware of you know inventories and and you know you got to guard your finances pretty aggressively .

So we thought , well , maybe we can do six million too much to ask for in our second year . And in that second year we hit six million by June . So in that second week , so from a million seven to the first year to 11 , the next year to 20 , some odd .

The next year , in the year we sold , I think we did 40 , 46 million or something like that in sales Doesn't say so after you sold the company .

I put all this energy into the process , into the journey , into getting there . Now , what now ? What do I do ? Do I have to top it ? Do I have to pick up where I left off ? I suspect it's similar in bodybuilding , and so when I sold Primal Kitchen , there was an incredible amount of elation and then , a few days later , it's like okay , now what ?

What's next ? Show me the next thing . Universe , get out there and give me a sign . So I try to be retired for a couple of months , maybe a year , but in that time I was always in the back of my mind . I had had this project .

I had this thing nagging at me about my dissatisfaction with modern footwear that had plagued me since my mid-20s and since I was a Nike runner in the mid to late 70s . So I quickly got over the elation of selling Primal Kitchen and set about to creating a new company , and that's what I have right now . This is the shoe company called Palua .

I spent a couple of months building a team , including getting some people who've been in the shoe business for 40 years and one of whom had been a teammate of mine on the original running team I joined in California in 1978 . He was a running buddy of mine who became a shoe dog and became a big player in the shoe industry over those years .

So I had access to a team and then we had a year or two of designs , of R&D , of wear testing , so that process that began , I guess , in earnest , middle of 2019 , we launched our first product online in March of this year , of 2023 . So it's almost four years in the making before we even had a product .

I have now the luxury of saying let's get this right , let's make sure that we do everything to the best of our ability to read the marketplace , to understand what people want and to provide them what they want , but also to incorporate those aspects of footwear that are unique enough that no one else does it .

And that is again my special talent , my secret sauce , my superpower , if you will , to identify these aspects of a product that's been around for , you know , 50 years at least athletic footwear has and to go in and say , look , you guys have been missing the point on all of this . Like , foot health is the new sleep , foot health is the next big thing .

And here we are , cramming our toes into these narrow shoes and then putting cushions underneath them so we can't feel the ground underneath . And it's you know , it's a misuse of one of the most elegantly designed evolutionary marvels , which is our feet .

So I've been living in Asia for like three years , four years , so it's easy to walk around barefoot . But if I spend some time like away from Asia and I come back , it's like my foot reset . I'm not used to walking on stone or even like sand , or my calves , my Achilles , my feet , are like not used to it .

So talk me even through that aspect of foot health , because I

like that . You mentioned sleep , because sleep is something that 2017 , 2019 , people were getting their head around and now everyone's talking about sleep right , and you're just such a visionary in that perspective . So I taught me through like , the basis of foot health and what people get wrong .

imparted to the tens of thousands of nerve endings in each of the bottoms of our feet , which then sent information to the brain , which immediately allowed the brain to orchestrate how the foot bends , how the knee bends , how the hip torques , how the muscles contract in order to absorb the shock or in order to roll over a rock easily , without twisting an ankle .

All of these are inherent skills that we should be developing . We certainly do as toddlers if I'm walking around the house barefoot , but once we start putting on shoes , we lose that sense . You know , feet are like are like hands , and toes are like fingers and toes can grip , and toes are supposed to be moving individually to accommodate the changes in surface .

They're not supposed to be as . Again , imagine if you're trying to play the piano with oven mittens on . You know it's just not going to happen . Yet we have the ability to play the piano and do that fine work . Or imagine doing a handstand and not be able to use your fingertips because you're wearing mittens .

So if you think of feet the same way and you say well , you know , I want my feet to be strong , I want my balance to be , I want to be agile , I want to be mobile , I want to be well balanced , you need strong , flexible feet in order to do that .

So what we've done is we've created a world in which every surface that we walk on is either pavement , concrete , tile , hardwood floor , glass , maybe carpet , but not much . And we can't walk barefoot on those surfaces for any length of time .

As much as we evolved to go barefoot , we did not evolve to go barefoot on stone , on pavement , on concrete , on hardwood floors , on tile and marble . So there has to be some accommodation for modern society . How can you recreate a barefoot experience where you move the toes individually ? How you encourage the arch to get stronger , not to get weaker ?

You know , when you wear arch supports , it may support your arch , but it means your arch doesn't have to do any work , and so people who have flat feet will have bad arches say well , I have bad arches , so I have to wear orthotics or I have to wear arch supports . In fact , the opposite is true .

If you have bad arches , you should work out your arches the same way you would go to the gym and work out your biceps . You know somebody said Darren , you got weak biceps . You should never go to the gym and do curls , because you know we should support you for doing that . People have to .

I think , look , reframe how they look at footwear and in the context of like , okay , I want to be as mobile for as long as I can . I want to be as active , I want to be able to travel the world and see things into my 70s , 80s and 90s . Well , 78% of people complain of foot pain in their lives .

I guess something like half the people have to have some amount of correction , whether it's orthotics or surgery or some intervention , because of foot pain . That's not right . That's not the way it should be . It should be . Everybody should be working their feet out and enjoying good foot health and certainly be free from any sort of pain in their feet .

And yet the number of heel bunions , plantar fasciitis , stiff ankles , Achilles problems you know , all these things emanate from poor footwear and the inappropriate use of your feet by encasing them in these casts and then clomping across whatever surface you walk across , rather than versus what we're offering , which is a , you know , a glove like experience .

You put these , these shoes on , you feel the ground underneath . They're cushioned just enough so that you could walk long periods of time on concrete and not have get a bone bruise or , you know , get some some problem from being so close to the , to the earth that it affects you .

We , we like to think of creating an experience that's tantamount , or like , walking barefoot on a pudding green Right . So we've created a shoe that we think is going to revolutionize the way people look at footwear and foot health , and what we , what we've done is we've combined comfort , function and style .

So , first of all , they're the most comfortable shoe you'll ever wear . That's that was the biggest issue I have with any shoe . I mean , I wear some of the most I've worn over the years . When forced to some of the most popular you know , athletic , athletic shoes on the market , it doesn't last long for me . After two or three hours my feet get cramped .

I certainly can't walk long distances in some of these modern cushioned shoes because my knees get messed up , because because all of the tactile information , all of this , all of the sensory input that I need in the bottom of my feet , has been bypassed with these cushions , and so it puts all the onus on my knees or my hips , to kind of figure out which way

to bend , rather than know exactly which way to bend as a result of the input from the feet . So so I wanted comfort to be the number one category . Like you , these have to be comfortable . If they're not comfortable , you won't like them and it won't be .

It won't fulfill the purpose Comfortable , number two , number one , number two , functional which is they have to . They have to do what we say they do . They have to move the small muscles of your feet . They have to build and help you build the arches naturally .

So not by running , but by walking around , by going up and downstairs , by standing , even just standing around , without an art support and with your toes articulating individually , you will build up the muscles of your feet . We just got into a bunch of running shoe stores and , and what we're telling the runners is don't run in these but do everything else .

Run in your running shoes , but then spend the rest of the day in these shoes , passively training your feet , working the small muscles of your feet , without any effort , without any strain , without any stress , but gradually building those muscles in that arch , because these are they're .

They're so comfortable and you'll feel like walking in them , you'll want to walk in them . So comfort meets function and , finally , meets style . And we think these , these shoes are quite stylish . I wear , you know , have a black Pat leather pairs that I wear out to , you know , gala events and evenings out and weddings and funerals , and and they look great .

I get compliments on like , wow , those are amazing , are they comfortable ? Yes , they're the most comfortable shoe you'll ever wear . And yet , and yet , having said this , I have a big job of educating right ? So ? this is a big exact it is a leap for the marketplace , it's not .

It's not that the marketplace has demanded this , it's that they don't know that they need it yet . So that's my , that's my , my challenge , as it always has been going back to , you know , the late seventies , when I first , when I wrote my first book I'm on fitness .

And then in the eighty two , when I wrote the bonus world triathlon training book , because I discerned a better way to train for triathlons .

And then , later on , the primal blueprint , when I , you know , came up with these ideas of how to manifest a better life through the choices that we make and turning on the genes that cause us to be strong and lead and fit .

And so everything I've done has been an educational experience , that that requires the customer or the reader or the listener to kind of understand how the human body works . And once they get that , that light bulb goes off and they go . Oh my god , like , how come no one told me this before right ?

And I think this is very interesting , because Finish up in this note is you know , there's everyone has these problems as they're getting older . It's their knees , it's their ankles , it's their hips , it's their back .

Even my brother recently had had an issue with his back for many years and people told him to not go to the gym as a result , to not squat , and I was like . I was like that's the exact opposite , bear in mind he should be doing .

They were pushing him to do like surgeries quite young and I was like dude , you need mobility , you need to be on like a fucking form roller for 20 minutes , 30 minutes a day , training more , be more active .

And you know he is a similar story to many other people who sit at a desk all day and , as a result , you know poor desks and all this kind of stuff .

By just saying it's funny , because when you look at like knee issues , people identified as like lifestyle , whereas it could be more likely is the foot whereby , not when by no one has identified , because everyone's looking at other bullshit ideas .

Right , and you know you've had my mind even firing different directions from like buying cheaper shoes , taking a cheap option every once in a while , and that stuff comes back to bite you because you can't diagnose it unless you have someone like yourself who spent 3040 years putting all this information together like the downloadable version of your brain .

Is what I want to see in a book on this on this in the next couple of years .

Look , I have the lowest of low tech solutions for most people's health problems , which is go out and walk right . So I'm , I'm encouraging you know I mean I . I've been talking for for years now in a running . I was good at it , but I was one of one percent of the population that has the genetic ability to run well without getting injured .

Most of the running boom that happened in the 70s and 80s and continues now Involves people who should not be running . They should be walking , for sure lots , and they should be sprinting , but they probably shouldn't be running because their heel striking , their their gait is wrong , their overweight . They're trying to run as a means of losing weight .

It's , it's one of the worst choices in terms of trying to lose weight .

Diet is the way to lose weight and One hundred percent and so , while running is catabolic and tears you down , walking is is anabolic and builds you up , as long as you're walking with the proper footwear , as long as you're I mean , ideally , I have everyone walk barefoot on the grass , right , if I could , but that's impractical . So here's the next solution .

mean you're . You know I developed when I first moved to Miami Beach . I developed , I developed sciatica because my glue and my Pariform is got so overworked as a stabilizer muscle . Walking in soft sand , you know , I thought I'm gonna move to Miami . I'm a walk sand every day . Well , I walk too much sand , right .

So the soft sand is great , but that's the reason you feel Tired the next day is you're working a lot harder . Now it's in my case , because this is my life . I over did it right .

That wasn't pavement , concrete , hardwood floor , it , but it was grass , it was matted , tamped down , dirt , it was slight roots and shoots and stones and things like that , and it was sand once in a while , but it wasn't an hour and a half of sand , it wasn't you know they weren't trying to get tan on the beach , right that was cool but it's very similar to

myself because , like from my rest days , where I'm like having like low intensity , I'll spend 45 minutes to an hour walking the beach .

Is there's a whole different spectrum on diet , training , food , is there's so much that I could get into ? So I feel that the next one has to be in Miami . But I want to say a massive , massive thank you . I truly appreciate it . No , it's my pleasure .

I appreciate everything you've done for the fitness industry , the food industry , the foot industry going forward and everything , and I want to say a massive thank you .