Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, keto savage.com. And today I have a special guest Phillip Meese from Carnivore bar on the line. So Phillip and I have interacted at numerous conferences, we've spoken on the entrepreneurship panels together. We have similar products in the keto carnivore low carb space and we have both kept our operation in house from day one, bootstrapped from the beginning,
which I have utmost respect for. I wanted to bring him on the podcast again, just kind of pick his brain about some of the trials and tribulations that come with owning your own food product business, what he's learned in that journey, what he's excited about going forward, what he's doing in the space and just really kind of hash things out from a business standpoint, from a lifestyle standpoint, and just kind of pick his brain, learn more about his operations.
So I've got utmost respect for Philip, who he is, what he stands for, his moral code of ethics, his integrity. His product itself. And I'm excited to just bring on the podcast and reveal some of that to y'all. So without further delay, sit back, relax, enjoy the conversation with my good friend Phillip. And we are live Phillip. How are you brother? I'm good. How are you, Robert? I'm good, man. I'm good. It's been, it's been a while since I've had you on the
podcast, man. I think we chatted quite a bit last year at the various conferences, but I think it's been probably two years or so since I've had you on the show. Yeah, it's been a minute time. Time has flown by. Time has flown by, but since then we have shared the stage on a couple entrepreneurship panels, which is always fun.
I enjoy talking with you because you I enjoy talking with any company in the space that has done something similar to what we have which is simply stayed true to their roots, bootstrapped their business kept production in house because there seems to be a a declining demographic of companies that do that. Everybody just seems to outsource things. They go the route of like, you know, massive Co Packers, they don't really have full
oversight. Whereas you with Carnivore Bar has always stayed in house, which is what we've done and I really, really respect that man. Yeah, I remember you. You kind of shouted me out for for doing that in the beginning and it was a little bit involuntary. So, you know, I just, I needed the product, you know, to be really, really clean because we serve autoimmune compromised individuals and no one else could guarantee that they're
going to do it the right way. So I kind of was forced into that and I remember you, you pointed that out and complimented me on that. I was like, way to go, man. You don't don't give in. I honestly did not know what I was signing up for. Like it is. I get it now. It is really, really difficult to do something in house. But you know, I I kind of see what you're saying now, 'cause it really is this heroic responsibility you're taking on yourself to do something like you've done. It is.
It is. But like, there's so much like fulfillment that comes from it, man. Like, I love being able to come to the compound early in the morning before any of my employees show up, crank up the music, get some work done, sweep the floor if I want to take out the trash. Just do the little things that people that you know Copak can outsource everything, never really get the opportunity to do. It just makes everything so much more tangible and physical and
less abstract. And I love that, man. Like, I love being able to see the actual physical components and have that 100% oversight. And there's pros and cons to everything, but keeping things in house like it just it feels like I'm building something much more tangibly than it would if I was to outsource everything. And I feel like we only have so
much time on this earth anyways. And I really want to make sure that I'm departing it, having left more value than I took from it. And I feel like if I can see the fruits of my labor first hand because I've kept everything in house, that becomes more and more apparent. Yeah, and there's an intimacy to it, an intimacy and a transparency that I think is, is lacking in the Co pack model that you know, has really been relevant Tory over the years.
In fact, I was on a veteran's day podcast and and they were mentioning your product that you go to all this trouble to make sure that the macros actually are what they say they are. And it's like something so simple but in the keto space that is really, really important to us. It's like if you hand it off to a Co Packer, you know they have these margin of errors that are tolerable. And it's like well our people are weighing and measuring every
gram. If our products have like a 20% margin of error, like what kind of you know what kind of honesty is that? It's like it It's really important to get this stuff right, and having it in house gives you that accountability so that you can actually sell what you say you're selling a. 100%, man. I mean and like a 20% amnesty up or down is pretty significant. Like when you look at my product, which is 1000 calories, there's 200 calories right there.
I mean, when I'm adjusting macros for a prep, I may only be adjusting by 50 or 75 calories a week. So if I was just haphazardly, you know, pouring things in and not really giving any any thought to the accuracy of it I'm doing myself. I'm doing my customers a disservice. And I just, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night doing that. So I like being able to have,
you know, full control. And yes, there's a lot of headaches that come with that, but I can go to sleep at night knowing that I'm doing my best with everything I've got. And yeah, there's going to be some inaccuracies. There's going to be some things that you just simply can't control for at scale. But I've done everything I can possibly do to minimize that and just to refine Polish and get things truly dialed in. Absolutely. It it's, you know, and I I made the I crossed the Rubicon.
I I have a version of my product with a little bit of carbs in it. And for me, like it becomes even more important, like if you're trying to be keto and stay, you know they're different definitions. But under 50 grams of carbs, like you can't, you can't afford to be a few grams off. Like, you know, our products has the one that the honey bar has seven grams of carbs coming from honey, raw honey, mostly fructose.
You know, it's debatable how much harm that is to you, but people feel very strongly about it and I want them to know exactly, you know, you know exactly what's in it so they can make the choices for themselves. Like, I think that's the heart of this. You know, keto take your health in your own hands. Like you got to have that control and being able to offer what you say you offer is crucial if for, you know, for these athletes and these
individuals trying to get a hold of their health. 100% man, 100%. So I want to do a deep dive into all things business, your company, you know, ups and downs. But before we kind of put the curtain back on that for anybody that has not listened to that first podcast that we did, if they have not figured it out yet, you are the man behind Carnivore Bar and you got into the space because primarily of your military background and seeing the need for what you
offer, correct? Yeah, actually my origin story is I was in Afghanistan. I ordered jerky, a really clean jerky. It's spoiled. So I was in an anti tank unit. Taliban doesn't have any tanks so I was sent to the far end of the battle space and had forgotten about. So we ate Mres way longer than you should have eaten, took antibiotics for malaria and we just we got our guts absolutely messed up. So we tried to ship healthy food to the battlefield, couldn't
because it wasn't shelf stable. We tried to like we tried to do everything we could. We just started end up eating the candy out of our Mres because the shelf stable food was so constipated. It was just, you know, sorry to be graphic, but it was just, it was just terrible. It wasn't food. And so it was like, how do we get healthy food to the battlefield?
So I read and remembered this thing called Pemmican, which is a Native American tradition to bring high fat food to survivor ship or travel and they broke camp. They didn't necessarily know if their next hunting spree was going to be successful and and their whole, you know, their whole community is riding on this.
So you know, they had a just in case food and that food was pemmican and I was like, well, that would make it to Afghanistan. Unlike the very clean jerky that you ended up, if you can believe it, molding the condensation, those preservatives are really important. The condensation on that bag, they heat heat cycles of the desert, you know, get really hot, then relatively cold, pulls all the moisture out on the one side of the bag, molded the whole thing a jerky, turned it sour.
I'm just like spending my own money trying to find health. Nothing but caffeine, cigarettes, seed, oils, preservatives, just just wall to wall anti nutrition, no sleep. And I'm like I originally joined the service to pay for collagen to to have a job that pay me to work out and stay healthy. But the diet and lifestyle absolutely wrecked me.
So I thought if I came back I would make something that was shelf stable, extremely shelf stable and that could make it anywhere I needed to go, but have all the nutrition I'd need to survive. So that's kind of the idea of the carnivore bar is the survivor food that's made ultra, ultra clean so as not to have any junk in it.
I love it, man. I feel like whenever you make a product as a way to scratch your own itch, as both you and I have done, there's just this underlying level of passion behind it which sees us through the hard times as entrepreneurs. So I love that you built it out of your own desire to satisfy and fulfill that need that for you and others, because I think it's that's the way to do it. Do you think there's ever going to be a massive investment by the government to improve the
quality of Mr. ES? Because they have not changed for the past 50 years. That I can tell, and they are pretty horrendous. So there's millions and millions of dollars invested in MRE currently, but most of it is into like the packaging. So they'll do like an advanced study of like dropping the MRE off a second story building and then dropping it off the back of a truck in a muddy field and and just dragging it through hell and to see if the bag pops or
not. And so the bag is really well engineered and the food is designed, as stated by their goals, to accomplish nostalgia. And if that's their stated goal, like they're kind of, they're kind of getting it. Like you're getting lasagna, you're getting sloppy joes, you're getting all this peanut butter and like pound cake kind of nonsense, but they're trying to mimic like a home cooked
meal. And you have this little bag you put in hot water heats it up and so you get a warm nostalgia filled full of preservatives that won't explode if you drop it out of the helicopter. And to their stated goal, I think they've achieved that. You know, it's very same, same kind of idea with the USDA food pyramid with 11 servings of grain. Their stated goal is to keep farmers employed, not to keep us healthy.
So if you look at these institutions and you and you go back to their their founding principles, they're accomplishing them. You know the USDA is keeping farmers employed. The MRE is creating a sense of nostalgia or longing this for home. But for me, I think that's a little like taking your rifle and smearing Jelly doughnuts on it. You don't need nostalgia in your war fighting tools. You need clean air, lubricant, protect it. You need CLP on your rifle. You need keto macros in your
food. It's designed to do a like to have a function, you know to have a purpose. Food should be about nourishing you and making you feel your best. It shouldn't be about the mouth entertainment. And I think that's what's really, really wrong with the MRE and its underlying
philosophy. It's like they're trying to get you food to make you miss homeless, whereas I think if you extend that reach towards, how about you feel your best, you perform your best, you think your best, you fight your best, you end the war sooner and actually get to go. Yeah, no, I can totally get behind that ladder messaging.
Much more so than the former. I feel like it seems very obtuse to put our men and women in arms on the front line to operate and perform at an at a high level, but then run the risk of them having to rush off to, you know, relieve themselves due to Constipation or something as a result of poor nutrition. I'm. I'm on a petition right now. Put it on record. We'll talk to our lobbyists about getting all Mr. ES outfitted with one bag of Carnivore Snacks, Carnivore Bar, and then a Keto Brick.
And I have no doubt that the performance of our military would probably increase by at least 57.3%, don't you think? Well, you know, it it is an interesting thing. So as a business person, like I really had to kind of dispense with some of my naivety and my my goals and my dreams because I really wanted the carnivore bar to be really cheap and really affordable. But, you know, drying meat, especially high quality meat, is really, really expensive.
And there are certain things that, you know, affect the shelf's ability, the moisture content. It is really hard to do. I mean, there there are people who are trying to emulate it but aren't doing a very good job getting it actually dry. And so you have charlatans who are willing to sell wet meat for a cheaper price. But you know, that's that's water.
You're paying for the water. So it's kind of this devilish task of, you know, what investment is a soldier's life worth and what kind of health are they starting from? Because if you have an athlete who is in pristine health, you know, they can get away with a little bit of abuse.
But if you have a population that's inherently sick, you know we may be going to a place unfortunately with warfare that we use more drones than we do people because feeding people healthy food is just not economical. And that is a really like harsh thing to say because it it kind of flies in the face of why I made my product. But I think it's probably going to be more towards special
forces. It's going to be more towards elite non replaceable with robots, kind of forces that are worth the investment in body armor that works, worth the investment in food that doesn't rot your gut. The idea of, you know, fueling giant armies on meat, it's really kind of gone by the wayside. Like the last time we really did that was the Revolutionary War. They had a pound of meat per soldier per day, which is not a lot and it's why the US Continental Army spent a lot of
its time starving to death. So it's like man, how do how do we feed people a species appropriate diet in the military? And I think it it's a it's a question that's fraught with challenges in multiple different vectors. It is. It is challenging for sure. Man, like I've dug deeper and deeper into regenerative agriculture and sustainable, you know, food procurement and homesteading for my own, you know, personal and family needs. And I've totally switched gears,
man. Like, I, there's all this debate in the space right now about, you know, grain fed versus grass finished, you know, what the Omega profiles are like, what the fatty acid profiles are like, what the micronutrients are. And like all of that is very
important. But to be honest with you, I've veered away from buying all of my meat at conventional grocery stores simply because I don't want to support the model that exists because of it. Like viewing meat, viewing beef as this commodity system, that's not going to be good for the livestock. It's not going to be good for the farmers. It's not going to be good for the environment. Like, it's just a bad system
through and through. And since then, I mean, I've really like, I've found a local producer for my chicken, for my pig, for my beef, for my lamb. I just picked up several lamb two days ago from a local farmer. I'm doing a lot of. I'm getting my own lamb to raise in a couple weeks. We've got our own cheese, like we're doing everything in house with that now, too. And I feel so much. Better about it. Yes, I'm getting the better quality nutrition.
Yes, I'm I'm taking more of an active role in the whole life cycle process. But I'm also not voting with my dollar to support the commodity food system, which is just horrendous. And I was listening to a podcast the other day, I forget which one it was. It may have been the one with Will Harris on Rogan or something like that. But they're talking about how the percentage that we used to spend on our groceries was about 25% of our, you know, income as a as a American family, for
instance. And that has since dropped down to less than 15%, which at first glance seems like a positive. Oh, I'm saving money, but you should not be able to go to the grocery store and buy a whole chicken for $2.00. Like that should not happen. Because if you are doing, then there is, there is a a short circuit in the system somewhere and it's likely coming at the loss of the local farmers, you know, ability to support their family, the quality of life for
the animal. Like we should be proud to spend more on quality food knowing that it's supporting a better system in and of itself. And I don't say that to, you know, be little or, you know, guilt trip people that don't have the financial means. But at the same time, if you have a hard time spending a little bit extra for your chicken, but you don't bat an eye at spending twice that amount on shots at the local bar or a flat screen TV.
I would say that your priorities are likely needing to be tweaked around and adjusted before before anything else. Exactly, exactly. And the conventional beef model it, it's a race to the bottom like any kind of commodity. It it's it's a really interesting phenomenon like the kind of things that they need to do in order to make their bottom line. It's it's really eroding the very foundations of the business they're participating in. Like the ranchers are really losing in this scenario.
They get less and less for all of their hard work creating food for everybody. And so if they're losing, if the bound, if the foundation of this system is eroding away and it just gets more and more exploitative, you know, $2.00 for a chicken, it's wrong on so many different levels.
But if you take into account inflation, that chicken is in yesterday's dollars less than a buck, You know, So if you start to take into effect that our dollars are worthless because of monetary policy, it's like that that chicken is almost free, and it's almost free because it's mostly water. They're literally pumping water into this nutrient devoid source of protein. It doesn't have any of the minerals or the vitamins that you you need.
Might have the protein but it's going to be extremely low quality and so and it's putting the it's a it's a bunch of de beaked fat sick chickens who you know are stacked right on top of each other going to the bathroom right on top of each other in like the the most disgusting way possible. It's like, and the farmer can't pay his bills. You know, the person raising those chickens stacked together in a giant warehouse can't, can't afford to buy feed.
They're going out of business in this horror show that's only really benefiting the processor. The same processor who in a moment's notice is closing plants. I think it was Tyson. He just closed like several different plants just last year, some in Missouri. And so they're they're closing plants because it's not economical and they're investing in plant based meats and bugs.
So you look at these industry wide moves, it's kind of like the cigarette companies investing in vapes, you know and so if these processors are investing in plant based meats, they don't have any faith in the commodity beef or commodity chicken. It's like these industries are dying. They're horrible, they're bad for the planet, bad for your health, bad for the ranchers and
farmers. So it's like it's kind of tilting the scales towards this regenerative agriculture, you know, for not only the people but also for your health and also for the sustainability of the business model. Yeah, totally, man. And like I said, I don't ever want to you know play the self-righteous card or come across as holier than thou. But I mean if you know better, do better and vote with your dollar and do what you can.
I don't expect everybody to go out and get lambs and their own chickens and homestead I I have that opportunity because I have some land to do that on and I'm excited to do it. But if you're living in a high rise apartment in New York then simply order your meat from somewhere that is doing things the right way. Allocate your resources such that that's where a reasonable percentage of your funds go.
Because, I mean, you think about it like what you eat every single day compounded over a lifetime like that. You can't, you can't afford to skimp on that. And a lot of people just don't know what how big of an impact what they consume on a daily basis has on them until it's too
late. But, but it Yeah man, anybody listen to this Like I would just really encourage you to you know listen to the podcast, read the resources, get the books, listen to the audiobooks that really kind of peel the curtain back on the commodity beef and just poultry pork system.
And then act against it. Because that is probably one of the single best things anybody can do to put the to move the needle in the right direction for not only their own health but the the sustainability of the environment and the economy. Because like that is a system that can scale, that can grow and that can truly benefit much more than just yourself.
Whereas like if you start, you know, spend your money at these fast food grocery stores and honestly even like all the green washing that's going on in like a lot of these more well known and less supposedly bad, you know, conventional grocery stores like the Kroger's and the Fred Meyer's and the Walmart's and the Natural Grocers and Whole Foods to some extent, like really know where your food comes from and make that a significant priority in your life.
Like that would be key. Well, yeah. And it's like your savage Creed. I mean, I've, I bought your shirt or actually, no, you wouldn't let me buy it. You gave me the shirt. But I wanted it because the Creed is like it's my responsibility to live my life to the fullest potential, you know, that's the heart and soul of that it of that lifestyle. And it's like you said, it's all about those priorities. Like you, we've de prioritized our health and Wellness to a horrible degree.
And whether it's military rations or just general person living their life, it's like everybody has de prioritized the health and Wellness of the one and only body they get to live life in. It's like you know you are more valuable than that. You know the systems that support real food are more valuable that people who are trying to make unadulterated on the go products like yourself and many others are are investing in the community who want to know what they're putting in their bodies.
It's like you have a responsibility to take ownership of that and to do something about it. And I think that you know you and I are are kind of in alignment on that that that's why we do what we do. We do things the hard right way so that we can get results that are are not typical, because the typical results are just this soulless, lifeless, slow eroding of everything that we value. Yeah, no, we're totally in alignment, man. That's. Why?
I was excited to get you back on the podcast and chat with you. So let's peel the curtain back on your business. And I don't want to disclose any trade secrets here, so if there's anything you don't want to talk about, by all means. So we'll deflect the question of the conversation. But your bar, So the carnivore bar, it's got several different iterations of it now. The original is just simply beef and salt and tallow, and then you've since come out with the
one with honey. And then I know you've done a collab with pluck seasoning as well. I had him on the podcasting in here not too long ago. Oh yeah. James is great his seasoning, which is an organ blend seasoning, which is delicious. I use it on everything. Yeah, it's really, it's really convenient and he's done the kind of the hard work of the R&D of getting the spice spices to to cover the organ taste.
So when we were first R&D ING the carnivore bar, you know, the idea is everything you need to survive in one single bar. You're using the highest quality protein that we could find, grass fed, grass fitness regeneratively raised as all the micronutrients, you know, Omega threes, things like that. But you know, people were always saying, well what about organs, what about liver, what about heart?
What about, you know, Coq 10 or copper or zinc, methionine, glycine, you know, all these different ratios and if you added organs, you know, we'd have all our bases covered. But when we added it to the plain zero carb bar, man, it was really, really gamey. It was, it was gamey even for me, like pungent, like wet, wet dog soccer shoes kind of smell. And it's like when you dry something, when you dry meat or any kind of animal product, you really concentrate the flavor.
So one of the reasons that we went with Joyce Farms in North Carolina is because they had a program that was big enough to scale and they have a genetics, the heritage version of the Aberdeen Angus that just does so much better on grass and it tastes really, really great even when dried. So everybody that's doing grass, fed grass finished animals that weren't designed to thrive on grass, like they're really at a disadvantage with that gamey flavor.
So when we added organs, we were kind of undermining all of that work without the flavor to kind of be covered with spices. But pluck kind of has best of both worlds. If you can do spices, some of my customers definitely cannot. You know, you don't taste any organs at all. We have a honey barbecue and a zesty garlic and all you really taste is zesty garlic and the and the BBQ. So for us, it was kind of a match made in heaven. If you're doing spices now, you're eating nose to tail, you
got no concerns. And with the honey, we went with a raw honey. It's giant pain in the butt to not overheat it and accidentally cook the honey. But it really does taste better to have it raw, to have it unprocessed, to have it be ancestral. And so our honey salted is honey salted bar, which is just our regular pemmican with a little bit of raw honey. It's like one of our best sellers. It's it's tied between just plain and plain plus honey.
Do y'all. This is a tangent here, but I used to be a bee farmer when I was in middle school, actually my brother and I'm kind of by by design from my dad as a way for us to work together and and just do something unique. He's a biologist. He's like let's. Get some beehives and start, you know, raising bees. So we we did and we had I think 25 hives at one point.
We've got much fewer now, but as I've been getting more into homesteading, I'm like I'm going to bring the bees back and I'm going to get some more hives at my current location and use that as a way to populate or pollinate rather, you know, all the the flora around my. Place. But I I don't really eat that much honey. So I've got all this commercial equipment for processing honey. And I don't consume it, so I might just start shipping y'all my raw honey if that'd be feasible.
Hey, I mean, we'd be open to it. I'd love to try it. Yeah, yeah. That might be. That might be something you have to roll out in the future for sure. But if you, if you're looking at things at, you know, from an ecology standpoint, it does kind of make sense. If you have a room in it that's on the plains and you have all this wildflowers and different species diversity and perennial grasslands actually goes pretty well with raising bees. Oh, for sure, Yeah.
I think having bees is one of the, you know, a great thing you can do as a homesteader, as someone that's wanting to just improve the quality of the land, the biodiversity, I think it's great. I just would never consume as much honey as I'll have once I. Scale that. So I need to find a way to to offload it and not feel guilty about it. So yeah, we'll have to touch on that at some point in the future as I get the bees back for sure.
Sure. With regards to the businessman, so you've you've you started out with a Kickstarter that launched Win 20/19/2019 and then you got the new facility that was what two years ago now? Yeah, 2021, I guess it's closing on three. Yeah, yeah. And the new facility is? A game changer for you. You got more space to grow. You and I kind of both moved into our new facilities at about the same time.
I think I bought mine in 2020 and then we had to go through this year long renovation process and we moved in 2021 as well. So we both got our facilities up and running at about the same time. And when you do things in house as we do, there's like, I don't know, I just love warehouse space, I love commercial kitchen equipment. I love just seeing behind the scenes and just figuring out how things work and how things are made, so I definitely got to come check out your operation.
You're obviously more than welcome to come check out ours at any .0. That'd be awesome. Yeah man, for sure. But with that, like getting a new facility, I know from from my experience I'm sure same is true with you. Getting a new facility, getting it renovating, getting it up to code throughout the 2020-2021 time frame was likely more headaches than you realize you signed up for. Oh, yeah, it was.
I'll try not to curse the new channel, but it, you know, definitely some expletives were involved it the supply chain stuff was just murder. Like, I had pieces of equipment that were promised to me that were nine months delayed. And so, you know, to avoid paying rent in two different places. Yeah, I had a pretty quick move and I had to make do with what I had. And so there were a lot of like emergency fixes and kind of siloing like, OK, well, this part of the building is up to
code. Everyone stay out of that part of the building. We're going to seal that off. And it's like this giant warehouse. I was so lucky to find it. It was such a Goldilocks facility. It had all these freezers attached to it. They used to do institutional food for like nursing homes and prisons and stuff like that, like contracts. So there's this giant hood system, there's all this liquid propane for cooking, there's floor drains and essentially what's just a giant metal
building. And so it's like it's got good bones. It has a lot of the initial horrendously expensive upgrades I'd need and it has freezer space for days. And I was like kind of not unlike your grocery store, you know, it has some of the things you actually needed, but like if you were building from scratch, like it would have been millions and millions of dollars. So I I just kind of got really, really blessed, really, really lucky and put a lot of sweat equity into that move and we got
it done. I love it, man. It's it's always great when things come together, but it's never an overnight success and it doesn't ever happen without a ton of headaches and sleepless nights. I mean, when we moved into ours, our we didn't want to, you know, be paying lease on two buildings as well. And we had everything time. But I told my renovation contractor what time we need to be up and running by.
He went like 50% over budget and he was several months behind, but we'd already moved out of our place, so for several months we couldn't produce any new product. I've got my employees I'm trying to continue to pay, you know, so that their livelihood is met because they moved up with me. So I'm literally paying them to like lay baseboard trim and nail studs in the wall and do contract work while we're trying to help these contractors get things back on schedule.
So yeah, it was brutal. There was, there was sometimes during that window where it's like, I don't know if we're going to be able to make through it because cash flow is not there and expenses are ramped up higher than ever. But we did. And I feel like if anybody has a business that they've bootstrapped and grown organically and they did something crazy like move locations during that time frame, then you're freaking born out of the flames and you're just hardened, man, battle
tested. Absolutely, absolutely. And it it's those creative things like playing baseboard, it's like you you really, you really learn who your employees are, your your rock stars and and they're worth their weight
and goal. Like for me, that's been a real headache, but also a proving ground through adversity, through, you know, adverse conditions, delays, setbacks, needing my employees to do things that were definitely not on the job description and and seeing who you know really had your back because those employees are worth investing every penny you have into. Yeah, 100%, man. I've been blessed with amazing employees. We've got one that's coming up on being with us for five years
now. So he started with us, you know, not long after we had started, which is just awesome. I'm super proud to have. We've had some that we're not worth a darn. You kind of learn. A lot. As a business owner there too and it's it's funny man. Like when you own the company, you know it's always your fault. Like you can't ever point the finger. You have to have this jocko extreme ownership mentality and I've fully and completely
adopted that. I'm always reading leadership and business books and self development books to try and be the best leader I can for my. Crew and I take everything. Person like if if they don't work out, I assume it's my fault. And one of the hardest things that I've learned in business is to recognize that it is always your fault. But when it comes to personnel, some people you can't help, people that don't want to be
helped. And you can't always motivate people to be better and have a good work ethic and to, you know, have a a long term vision like some people are just simply there for the paycheck. And that becomes evident relatively quick. And you can kind of decide if you want that type of person in your inner circle or not.
But you know, teasing out what you have control over as the company owner and leader versus what is just simply innate personality types that you can't control, that's been a challenge for sure. Oh, totally. I mean this last year has been a huge year of growth for me. I've had to fire a lot of people and it's it's devastated me because this last August I tried to lower my prices because I just felt like they were really high but my overhead is is
catastrophic. So I'm not making any money, losing money hand over fist to make this thing that I love and believe in. And you know, having people who are not really on the team is such a life stealing force. I just, I just couldn't tolerate it. And the idea that you can't save, you know, you can't save people it that kind of bucks the face of, like, why I created the product I wanted this my, you know, the carnivore bar to be.
Like a cheap, affordable, ultra clean, ultra shelf stable, have all the bells and whistles and you know, be really, really affordable. But it's like, well, you can't have, if you can't have everything, you know what's really important to you and I. It's kind of been that triage moment where quality peerless quality is my guiding principle and I have to charge what covers the cost of rent and covers the cost of this facility that I've got myself in.
Otherwise I can't continue in the business. And at the same time, those people who are willing to grow and learn new skills and develop and and say, hey, you know, I see this is a great opportunity. I want to be a part of it. I want to develop myself. That person is worth 10 of the, you know, I'm just here for the paycheck people. Because you could, you could go out to, you know, go find a PhD who's perfectly suited for what you're doing, pay them a
quarter, $1,000,000 a year. Or you can find someone who is willing to put in the work to grow. And for our kind of business with, you know, honest pricing and very thin margins, because of that honesty, you really can't afford to pay for an industry professional. You know, you have to kind of find someone who knows what they're doing, who's honest, hard working and open minded so that they're they're willing to take ownership of their
mistakes. Like ultimately, yeah, it is all your fault, good, bad, ugly, everything in between. I believe that Jocko mentality to be 100% correct, but sometimes that comes down to the hiring process. It's like I should have seen the warning signs. I should have noticed that how they responded to this corrective feedback was was a warning sign and I just ignored it because I was too busy or was distracted or I wasn't taking
responsibility. You know it is my fault, but like finding those people who want to grow with you and want to develop into the PhD level quality from a position of maybe no degree at all like that is the diamond and they're off. Like that's the that's the Gold Star you need. You need someone who can become more valuable over time as your company grows and that person you know finding those people
is, is make or break. Yeah, and having the people with the right, I mean, they might have all the skills in the world, but they don't. If they don't have the right attitude, that's that's no good either. I mean, especially when you've got a small team, like we've got eight of us total, how many is on your team? So we recently had to downsize because of the for mentioned pricing snafu, but I think we have 5 now.
Yeah. So when you've got a team that's under 10, people especially like you and I both have, like if you've got one with a rank attitude, it's going to fester amongst everybody. So finding people with the right attitude, like they may not have the skills, they may not have the the know how, but I can teach that.
I can train that if you've got a killer attitude that's positive and upbeat and you've got a student mentality and you're easy to get along with and you accept responsibility like I'll work with that person all day long over the industry expert. Exactly. And you know, the industry experts are all trained to adulterate the product. Yeah, totally. So some of the things that they're they're wanting to do are just bad for you.
Like I got refused from a research and development product like Pipeline incubator thing because my product was too
functional. It's like I'm not willing to add any chemical crap to it. Yeah and so they wouldn't take, they didn't take me, all these food scientists, they wouldn't help me because I I said right off the bat it needs to be incredibly shelf stable and I'm not adding anything to it And they're like that's all they do. You say you make a a great muffin with whole quality ingredients, locally sourced, and they'll they'll give you, they'll print out a sheet of
chemicals that will closely approximate the flavor for one 100th of the cost. It's like, that's the game. It's like, yuck, gross, That's that's not useful. To me, yeah, I'm glad we don't play that game. No. So you mentioned overhead and
margins. I kind of want to touch on that because I feel like you and I both have a lot in common in that realm because a lot of people that don't, I mean most people don't have any understanding of, you know, food manufacturing, prepackaged goods like that's unless you're in the industry, you just don't know. You go to the grocery store, you buy something online, you eat it, you don't think twice about it. You and I have a product that is expensive and that just is what it is.
Like, you and I are not conducting this interview sitting on private yachts somewhere. And you know my product, the brick, it's 12 bucks for a single brick, which is a lot more than a quest bar. Now if you break that down, cost per calorie, ours is actually really cost effective because it's so high in calories. But your product also is not a cheap product. And there's ways that you and I both have integrated like buying in volume to kind of make the numbers work.
But somebody that is not in the know, they just immediately look at the price tag, the number of, you know, the single price item and then compare that to, you know, a Snickers bar or a Quest bar or just some generic jerky at a gas station they're having. They have no idea. They they just assume that we're shovelling in this massive amount of profit. But the the cost of your and my, I'm assuming my my biggest cost is 100% ingredients and then followed by payroll cost.
So those are my two biggest line items on the balance sheet for sure. I'm assuming the same is probably true with you, but ingredients for quality products are not cheap at all. And if you want to have a quality nutrition that's in a prepackaged formula, if you want to have quality nutrition, whether you're sourcing it from a local farm, getting from a grocery store or buying it online, it's just simply going to cost more. And that's just the reality of it.
But again, kind of going back to what we were saying earlier, what are you willing to prioritize? And when you look at what we're putting in the product, when we, when you look at what we're spending in these payroll costs, in these ingredient costs, in the overhead costs, you know the insurance, the facilities upkeep, just everything involved from a a cost standpoint like you and I are not making hardly
anything from margins. Like if we were wanting to get into this business to make a lot of money, we would not be doing what we're doing now. Exactly. And there's this horrible, you know, kind of distance from reality that people have about capitalism in general. They they don't realize who their friends are. They don't realize who's providing value.
Like, the Carnivore bar is similarly priced for half the volume of a keto brick, So you know you're providing twice as much product for about the same price, but you're using really, really quality cacao. You're using really great ingredients, especially with the, you know, the nootropics with Mark's Steak Shake. Like all the different like partnership branding, Co branding, it's like you're using like premium ingredients to make your bricks. It's like, so there's there's like no margin.
If not, I'm sure that during some of these transitions you had negative margins, same as I did. Yeah, we're losing money. You're losing money to provide a a something that you heartfelt. You know you have a belief in that you think is going to add benefit to people's lives and the same is true for the carnivore part. Like I got funded with my Kickstarter $83,000 out of about 10 million. I need it. So like we have a long way to go USDA meat plants.
Like the red tape for meat is, you know, at least twice as hard and at least twice as burdensome for a small start up company like JBS just put in a meat plant in my town for $200 million. So like you know that that's the kind of scale we're talking about that little small Kickstarter is trying to compete with.
It's like, well, I either need an investor who's going to drop millions and millions of dollars on a product that, you know, hardcore carnivores believe in or I kind of have to bake some of that like infrastructure expense into the cost. So as I get bigger, I'll lower my cost, you know. But there's only going to be so, so much it's ever, ever going to lower because of the quality ingredients.
Like, you know, that I'm sure the rent on a $10 million facility is more than the I'm paying now with my can do attitude and sweat equity. So that's kind of the rub. It's like if you want real things that have quality, understand that you're competing against adulterated sawdust. You know, olive oil, that's canola oil with pepper flavor added because people can't tell the difference.
It's like you're you're competing with lies, adulteration, and this cheapening of the actual materials that everything around you is made. It's like everything's on Amazon, everything's ultra cheap, You know, don't worry about the quality. But if you look at the lifetime value of how many times you're replacing everything that you buy it, it's just like there's
this slow erosion of value. And so people really need to take seriously the value proposition, especially when it comes to food you you don't have replacement parts for the human body. And I. Think so? Why wreck it? Yeah, 100% man. And I think the more transparent we are with our customers, the better. Like I, I I can. I just feel incredibly grateful. For the level of. Loyalty and respect and appreciation that my customer base has for the bricks.
And I'm sure the same is true with your customer base for the Carnivore Bar, because we've we've increased prices twice now since we launched. And it's scary, man. Like it's scary to have payroll, to have overhead, to have cost and know that you're about about to increase cost and not 100% guarantee whether people are going to keep supporting the
product or not. And both times, I've just been incredibly honest and transparent and have gotten hardly any negative pushback whatsoever because people trust me. They trust you. They know that we're not doing it for the wrong reasons and it just is what it is. And it's like you either increase cost to make ends meet and continue to offer that as an option for people or you go out of business. It's literally. Very simple, yeah.
And yeah. And it's, it's 100%, it's, it's this moment leap of faith when you're raising your prices. So what we did is we raised our prices last year when we're selling out chronically and we're like, man, I just cannot, I can't get the money to get the equipment to make this product at the volume. It's going out the door and I'm also losing money doing it. Got to change something really
quick. We raised our prices and this year I felt like we could kind of we could go back to where they were, but we didn't mean our volume. So the environment changes, the economy changes your marketing cycle, it's like so then we had to revert back to our prices and which for me trying to be somewhat of integrity, I I foolishly did an opt in to my subscribers instead of an opt out like. So, you know, we ended up canceling a lot of our subscriptions and it hurt.
It hurt a lot. But you know, if we can't meet the volume to support an even thinner margin, you know, we have to just be realistic that, you know, maybe we have fewer customers, but the people we do have really want this product and are with us. So I agree 100%. It is this mixture of like horrible frustration and anxiety and like immense, overwhelming gratitude that makes you that brings you to tears. So it's it's a confusing like, well, what do I put out to the public?
I'm feeling chaos, you know. But, you know, I think you have to lead with the most mature of emotion you're feeling and kind of lead with that gratitude, humility, respect, and and to honor them with that transparency. I think those are the good two moves. Yeah, you can't go wrong with that. I mean, if you're if you're fully transparent and you're not how to how to mask? Like people see through the masks easily and there's so many companies that are dishonest out
there. And if you just simply do what's right, like we could go out of business tomorrow and I would hate that, but if we did, I would feel very good about everything that I've done as a business owner. Yes, I've made mistakes, yes, I've learned things the hard way. But at the end of the day, I can go to sleep at night knowing that I've maintained my integrity throughout this entire journey. And I think you cannot put a price on that And I just want to
continue that man. Like I don't have any desire to deviate from that. Like, I would rather live on the streets again or live in. I mean, Crystal and I lived in a warehouse for three years like we were while we were building this business up. Like, like, I I don't mind going without. I don't mind the sacrifice. I fully embrace it. But if I ever had to do something that would tarnish my integrity, I wouldn't do it. And like that's just the the code that I'm going to live by.
You're definitely someone I look up to in the space. I I don't know how you did all that, especially not at the body fat percentage that you're at. Like, it's just insane, Robert.
I appreciate it, man, that. That's why I like I. Love like it's another interesting topic or tangent we can go on to. There's a lot of people that have gotten into making a product, both digital products, coaching products, consumer products, food products, and they don't stand the test time because they get into it for the wrong reasons. You know, like you've been here, we've been here, we we started at about the same time. And I just have utmost respect for you, what you've done, what
you're creating. And I'm excited to have that sense of camaraderie amongst people that are doing it right. Like, there's this scarcity mentality that a lot of people that are starting coaching or starting, you know, business have in which they try to belittle other companies or throw shade. I just don't have time for that. Like, if you're doing things the right way, I want to build you up because there is 8 billion people on this planet and most
of them are unhealthy. So the more people like you and I are that are offering a quality product for the right reasons, like, I want to welcome you into the space. I don't want to have a scarcity mindset.
I want to have one of abundance. And if there's anything I can do to help you, I want to do it. And that's why I really like doing these collaborations like I've done with Keto Brains and the nootropic icing brick, like I've done with Steak Shake and Mark Bell's brand, like I've known with a few different
brands. And I want to find opportunities to interact and collaborate with other companies that are doing it right, so that I can have this sense of abundance and just build people up. That's what it's all about, man. I totally agree. And and you can kind of like do a gut check. Like any time there's a new product, it's like, man, competition just got a little harder. I'm losing market share. But that abundance mindset is such a power move.
Like when you reach out and kindness to others in encouragement, you're the people. It really means the world to those people. And you know you did that for me. You definitely, you know you had the kido brick before I had the carnivore bar and you know you recommended like the Unifiller, like the the different ways like you can handle all this fat and like doing it the right way. And for me like now we finally
got it working. Like for us putting meat in it was was really difficult like it was constantly clogging. But now like that has like a 60% efficiency Like had you not mentioned that, had you not, you know LED with that, I don't think that we would have we would have ever fixed our margin amidst the you know exponential increase of cost of meat. It's like we needed to find better ways to get more efficient and like you really helped with that. So I mean, thank you. Yeah, My pleasure, man.
My pleasure. I mean, that's what that's what I want to do. That's what I I mean, there's been so many people that I've because people have helped me, like like Ross and Cara from F Bomb. Like, I met them at the first Ketocon and I learned about the packaging components from him. I learned about some of the branding from him. Like, he totally helped me out. And you know, I was able to sidestep a bunch of headaches because of him because he'd already had those headaches.
So if I can pay it forward and do the same thing with you and others, that's what I want to do. I mean, and it's so cool to talk with you now. Hearing that that unifiler recommendation was, was a positive thing for you because it's like it took me no time to recommend that. Like, I've I had so many headaches and sleepless nights trying to figure out that solution and then it just worked.
So if I can save you the same headaches and you can scale up more efficiently than freaking, rock on, brother. Well also too like now with the the Bell's brownie batter like with the steak shake you got organs in that you have really high quality protein. Us carnivores, you know we're a little bit of a protein snob family pea protein was was not going to work for us but like now there's a brick that's
pretty damn carnivore. Like it's completely compliant and I can eat it and I do and I have no adverse reactions to it whatsoever. It's extremely high quality cacao, which has even more stearic acid, which is the most saturated fatty acid we talked about last podcast that I was excited about And the protein has zero reaction and I'm getting organs all on a all on a brick. Yeah, that's what I want to be able to offer man. We got some more exciting products, exciting flavors in
the in the pipeline it's. Killer I I like it so you know it is more affordable than the carnivore bar and and I'm eating it because you know for me like it's really if you have cravings for non non meat based foods, sometimes a lot of carnivores fall into this trap of eating too much cheese. Yeah. And I'm guilty of that. And cheese just kind of. I don't know whether it's mucus or digestibility or the pasteurization. Something about cheese just doesn't sit well with me.
But a brick does. Like if I can get off cheese which is more animal based and eat a brick with steak shake in it, like I have the best of both worlds and I'm eating zero carb. So it's like it's a really, it's a really awesome tool and I think the more that we cross promote and and help people find the solutions that really meet them where they are like carnivore. Plus Brick is working great for me. Yeah, it's pretty much what I've done since I invented the bricks, man.
And it's just it's foolproof. Like I eat one full brick a day and a bunch of meat and it hits my macros perfectly. I have zero GI issues. I got down to sub 4% body fat with a full brick a day. I mean like it obviously works and I mean the carnivore diet is amazing. Like, I've got so many success stories from clients that do that my my prep protocol could be done with a carnivore
approach, no questions asked. But a lot of people want a little bit more variety in the food texture and flavor and if they're able to achieve that with the brick, then more power to it. Like, I will never suggest that the brick should be your only source of nutrition or is superior to animal based products. Like that's just not in my that's just not in my wheel. That's not true. But in tandem you can kind of get the best of all worlds and not have any GI issues and then
rock'n'roll with that. Like I said, that's what I've been doing for the past six years now, so. Absolutely. If you're if you're gone a few days, I feel like the carnivore bar has an advantage. But if you're trying to lose weight, I think honestly if we're being honest, most of us are trying to lose weight. I think the brick has an advantage in the fatty acid profile 'cause I really like this hyper lipid kind of
hypothesis to obesity. Doctor Michael EADS did a presentation on it, basically presenting hyper lipids. It's a blog. Their theory that the the stearic acid has that reverse oxygen pathway that kind of promotes localized insulin resistance. Yeah. In the SO itself, yeah.
Exactly so the fat cell says when you get stearic acid, it says it's done, it's done getting fatter, which is exactly the key to to unlocking your energy so you can use it and stop storing it. So the carnivore bar, which has grass finished beef, has more stearic acid than grain finished beef, but cacao has about twice as much stearic acid. So for weight loss specifically and and staying lean, I think
the brick has that advantage. I don't think I'd want to be on a desert island with only bricks, but if I could have half brick, half carnivore bar I think I'd be. I think I'd be in heaven. Yeah, 100%, man. I mean, meat and bricks is the way to go. And I freaking love the carnival. I had one the other day. I've had one in my pantry just looking at me throughout my whole prep. And then that prep's over. I tore into that bad boy and ate it. And man, it was good. It is good. It is good.
It, you know and I've been really. There's one other brick I've tried. I I've done the I can do the way variants, the way variants. I don't feel quite as good as the Steak Shake, but the way variants. I really like your seasonal 1, the peppermint. Yeah, yeah. That was awesome. Very Christmassy, 'cause there's no way I'm eating any of the crap that my family was eating.
Yeah, 100%, man. I mean, honestly, I think, you know, so many people that get the bricks, like they just want to have that as an option for quality nutrition that's on the go easy. And like a lot of them will use as a way to kind of bypass or sidestep all the junk that's out there because you get something that tastes, you know, like it. Like the Chocolate Peanut Buttercup.
Brick is our top seller. It does not taste like a Reese's Peanut Buttercup, but it tastes pretty darn close if your palates adjusted to being on the phone. Adapted diet. I mean it. Like, I just had one a few hours ago as my brick for the day. And I'm like, man, this thing. Like, I don't need to have a Reese's Peanut Buttercup in my life because I've got this. As a carnivore, it kind of blew me away.
Like at first the stevia is a little bitter, like 'cause I don't do artificial sweeteners either. But like once I got over like the first couple bites of the stevia, like it tastes like candy to me. Like I'm completely, I haven't eaten candy in forever. So you know, being carnivore and going from carnivore to trying a a brick with animal protein in it, I'm just like it. It might as well be a Snickers because I don't remember what a Snickers taste like and it's really, really tasty.
And so if you're having cravings and you're having a hard time staying on the on the boat like, or eating too much cheese, it's just like this is a great solution. Yeah, but you don't get the blood sugar response that you would or the continued cravings of, like the sweet treats would provide, you know, so. Oh no. They wrecked me when I was eating trash like that. Like there there'd be little like binge cycles. They're just so unhelpful from coming back from Afghanistan.
Like I'd try to eat healthy and then, like, fall off the boat. I'd do paleo before I found Keto. Like, I just couldn't, like, hit my satiation signals correctly. And I think that's where the high fat on the go products really shine is like, you know, you, you only have so much willpower and if you spend it on, you know, trying to walk past, you know, sugary crap that is going to wreck you. Then when it comes down to, you know, doing what you need to do for the day, you're kind of spent.
It's like you need something easy that just hits that signal. Then it becomes not a measure of willpower. It just comes a measure of proper planning A. 100% Speaking of High Fat Man, there has been this big push for like incredibly high protein and low fat amongst people in the low carb space, which I find pretty interesting. But you and I both have a product that has quite a bit of
dietary fat. And yeah, it's interesting because I see all these people that are in our space now advocating for minimal dietary fat. And it's like I've done the whole high protein, low fat thing. Like before I got into Keto, that's what I was doing as a bodybuilder.
It was super high protein, low carb at times, low fat throughout, and it's like if you're going the fat adapted approach and you're keto adapted and you're using fat as your primary fuel source, the last thing you want to do is strip your body of all dietary fat. Now yes, there is certainly a point at which you can be overdoing the fat and the calories, but it's interesting to see this this push towards lower fat. So I'm glad that you're not making like a 0 fat Carnivore bar.
Well, yeah, I mean to me that was the whole point like if you're going to survive off this. So you know my whole thesis is Afghanistan day in, day out. I'm eating an MRE and so I need to have all the energy requirements, all the vitamin requirements, all the fatty acids and keto, you know, fat is a better fuel. So if I'm if I'm getting you know, at least you know my protein requirements, you know up into like 3 to 4000 calories a day for a soldier who's being very active.
You know I need the energy component too. Otherwise it's not going to you know, I have to marry those two objectives together with an energy source. So if you're doing all that caloric work and ruck marching, walking around with bullets on your back like it is unbelievably heavy, you have like 80 lbs of armor on and a backpack full of bullets. The AG, the assistant gunner,
sits next to the machine gun. The guy with the machine gun has this ridiculously sized you know 240 that he he's fashioned a a makeshift strap around around the and so he's just carrying this unbelievably big gun and the other person just has this backpack full of solid metal banging around on top of his armor. It's like that person is burning a lot of calories. If if they're not going to be carved, fair enough, they got to have their energy component from
somewhere. Otherwise they're going to bonk and they're just going to fall down. Yeah. And protein is not a great source of energy. So it's like you're either doing carbs or you're doing fat. And if you're operating at a lead level, you need to be consuming ample dietary fat, and that's just allergic to it. Absolutely. And the gluconeogenesis, the the the sugar that your body can make is like 1600 calories a day.
So that's enough to keep your eyes, which are obligate glucose and your erythrocytes, your red blood cells, you know, on board and going strong because people don't realize, like, you know, different cells have different roles. If your if your blood cells used the oxygen that they're transporting, they would deliver less oxygen, you know, and that's what uses the oxygen. It's burning.
It's beta oxidation, it's burning that fat that your body is designed to burn, all except for your red blood cells. They need the glucose because they're saving the oxygen for the whole journey. They want it. You want your oxygen to make it to the very furthest capillaries in your body. If the erythrocyte was using up that oxygen, it wouldn't make it and you would you know, we'd
have to be a lot more compact. So it it's just the biological mechanisms really favor beta oxidation through fatty acids. The more saturated, the more energy, the more efficient, the more ATP, and the better molecular signaling you can get for insulin going where it needs to go and not where it doesn't.
So there's just a lot of reasons why being fat adapted are are the way forward and and honestly you are the single like greatest example of this success that I've that I've seen like the level of performance that you're able to do while being so low body fat it it clearly shows like the metabolic flexibility and fitness there to be able to utilize all of those fatty acids to to you know productive effect. It's not just, you know, who can be lean.
It's like who can be lean and functional and kick butt and then like I think that trifecta is really, really important and I think that you are kind of an example in the entire space for how you can do that. I appreciate that, man. Like, this prep has been the the most successful prep I've ever done, without question. Like, I've gotten leaner than I've ever gotten. But beyond that, like I've functioned better than I've ever functioned.
Like my mental acuity was on point the whole time, My mood and personality was solid, and I maintained all of my responsibilities in all components of my life. Like as a family man, as a business owner, all all these different things, like why you just had a kid? Yeah, I would not have been able to do that had I been sucking down rice cakes, high carbohydrate crap food, and not ample quality dietary fat. Like, like that's just a no
brainer. So yeah, I I mean, This is why you and I do what we do. This is why you and I have a product that has the highest quality ingredients in it with ample dietary fat. This is why I'm not making a low fat keto brick, and why you're not making a low fat carnivore bar. Yeah. For me, I come from the other end of the spectrum. I was terribly, terribly sick. But thanks to this way of eating, I can be exponentially less sick, you know?
And I think that that's OK too. It it's about fulfilling your potential, you know? And if you were meant to be an Olympian or or trendsetter and change the world, it's like, let's unlock that potential. Let's get you the fuel that you need for the life that you were meant to live. Amen to that, ma'am. Well, what? What's in the pipeline for 2024 for Carnivore bar, man? I mean, this is time. This recording is January 4th. We have turned a leaf on a new year.
As a businessman, I always get super excited about that. I don't really do resolutions, but I get like all my office space organized. My warehouse is all clean right now. I've got whiteboards full of planes for the future, and I'm freaking stoked for this year. So what's in the pipeline for you? So I think this year it's all about efficiency. You know we, I really want to get the business in a healthy
space. We've been kind of expanding somewhat recklessly trying to like meet demand, meet demand, meet demand, make more bars. And now I think we've finally reached that goal. We've gotten more efficient with the unifiller, we've gotten more established with our facility.
We've made some serious upgrades space along the year, onboarded the pluck flavors and so now it's about really developing our catalogue, streamlining that, creating SO PS like info infographics for our team, really kind of getting that nailed down into a healthy business. You know, transitioning fully from Kickstarter, like, Oh my gosh, we need to make a lot, lot more of these time now as cheaply as possible to OK, we made it through the pandemic.
We've expanded rapidly. How do we make this business a healthy, sustainable, like part of the future? And I think that's really our next chapter is thinking about being good steward of our time, our energy, our space and just really dialing in that value proposition and develop delivering, excuse me, delivering that high value consistently across time. Like that's what I want the business to become. I want it to be this like gold standard of of quality in in the carnivore low carb space.
I love it, man. It's pretty similar to my my theme for the Year my My manifesto is 2024. The Revolution, Reflect, recalibrate, re engage, and just get things super refined, polished and just functioning at a high, high level. So yeah, we're on the same page there and I can already tell like y'all y'all are killing it on the social media and the newsletter front. Like I get yells newsletters. They're all very clean and crisp. All of your Instagram posts are
very they. They follow a similar structure. They look great. They offer value. They're like, insightful. Oh, thanks. Yeah, you're you're you're doing way better than me on the Instagram. I I am not good at Instagram. Like my Instagram has not grown much at all, whereas y'all's has totally skyrocketed because you got a good system in place
there, man. Well, we've been working with the guys from Meat Mafia. They've been really helpful, you know, so massive credit to them and their hard work and their team they're developing. So they they came out and visited the facility and we you know this whole last year we've been working with them developing that and on on Twitter. And so it it's really it's really challenging sometimes to find copyright copywriters who understand your brand, understand the mission.
You know it is so unique and singular finding people who do this in house, who want to do it the right way, who understand what's at stake and understand how many people are suffering out there because they, you know they don't have time to meal prep or they don't have time to do all the research and and start a business on their own That.
But they have come to depend on the carnivore way of life or the keto way of life and enabling them a a travel shelf stable food in order to do that is really an impactful mission. We hear letters every day. I'm sure you guys do too that you know. Hey, I'm an airline pilot. I eat carnivore bars and I can say carnivore, you know, hey, I'm on this trip or, hey, I was doing this advanced individual training as a soldier and I used your bar.
It's like those messages really keep you going because it really makes a difference in people's ability to take their their health in their own hands, to have an option where they can take this healthy food into, you know, hostile territory. Those messages keep me going, man. Like, those are my 100%. There's been, there's been two times where I literally had to throw away two $25,000 due to a malfunction with our manufacturing. It literally just threw away $25,000 of bricks.
It's happened twice. There's been numerous times where there'd be an issue with, you know, an employee frustration or equipment malfunction or this unforeseen cost or something that I had to change with the website and redo a bunch of stuff and it had downstream effects. Like there's been so many times where I'm like, what is going on? Am I in the right industry?
Is this where my life is going? And then I'll get an e-mail from somebody that says something along those lines of, hey, you know, I I was suffering from XY or Z and now I'm not because of something you said on a podcast or the bricks that I'm consuming daily or whatever the case may be.
And those emails are what give me life to keep waking up and doing what I do. So without those emails, there would be no keto brick, there would be no keto sabotage, There would be nothing like those emails are my lifeblood. So I can totally. Relate with you there. 100% and it and it's it's so devastating throwing away product like you were mentioning. It's like those gut check moments. I had a moment like that where I freezer burned a bunch of meat and it's just like I can't serve
this. Yeah. And you look at it like you look at it again and you're like, Are you sure, Like, do you know how much money that is? It's like, yeah, well, it doesn't meet my standards. So, yeah, Yep. Those are those moments that you know, end up really defining you as a brand and as a as a man. Totally, ma'am. That's why I've got so much respect for you because I know you and I share similar values
when it comes to that stuff. So by all means man, keep doing things as you are, keep being the light that you are and keep making waves. I'm excited for what the the future holds for you, for carnivore bar and for us man, like I'm excited to keep interact with you. We should definitely do some form of collaboration in the future. I think there's something in the pipeline there for sure. Absolutely.
Yeah, I would. I would love to see your facility and you're obviously welcome to see mine too. We should definitely make that happen. Yeah, man, I'm in Missouri is not that far from me at all. Like I I feel bad that I haven't already come up there and checked it out. Oh no, no worries. It's been a crazy, crazy few years, so. It has. Well, this year, let's make that happen. And you hunt too, right? So I don't, but I really ought to. We should totally put it on the calendar.
I didn't do near as much hunting as I normally do this past year because of the competitions, but this year I'm going to hunt quite a bit more. So we should definitely meet up somewhere in the middle, go on an extended backpacking cross country hunt trip, bring some bricks, bring some carnivore bar and then consider it a business trip so that we can get some awesome footage and just battle test these products out in the wilderness. Oh, that would be amazing.
So let's plan on that for sure, man. Cool. Well Phillip, where do people go to get some carnivore bars, learn more about you, and just dive deeper into your world? It's just carnivorebar.com. Awesome, man. It's a carnivore bar and social too. I'll link out to everything. Yep. Well, always a pleasure man. Best of luck with everything. Like I said, I respect you
immensely. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I've got no doubt people will take something from it. So keep being you, man, and we will talk soon. Oh yeah, Respect is mutual. I think you're killing it. Likewise, brother. Until next time, man. Have a good one, Phillip. You too. Bye.