Jeff Byers: NFL to CEO - Momentous & A Systematic Approach to Human Performance

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Stop by future of fitness.co to subscribe and learn more. This episode of the Future of Fitness is brought to you by our good friends at the Brand X Method. Kids deserve our best. Period. Full stop. Brand X has dedicated themselves to doing what is best for kids for over two decades. Here's the facts. All major pediatric organizations agree that youth strength and conditioning and fitness programs must be specifically designed for children and coached by those specifically educated in working with children. This seems like a no-brainer. Successful programs come from educated coaches who have all the tools to best serve youth. Brand X offers unequaled ongoing support through ever-growing relative content delivered monthly, plus the mountains of information leveraging their 20 plus years of experience. As the developers of the original Kids Functional Fitness Program certification with over 100 state and national record holders and recognize the world's leaders in youth fitness, Brand X not only offers the fully digital, take it-your-own pace professional youth coaches certification, but has recently added to their suite of custom education products to best serve educators and parents as well. Because kids deserve our best. So whether you are a gym owner, coach, educator, parent, or simply anyone who cares for the future of our children, Brand X is offering a 20% discount on all digital education products for a limited time. Go visit thebrandxmethod.com forward slash future to get your code today. Again, that is the brandxmethod.com forward slash future and claim your code. When you do what you love, running, racing, or simply enjoying the great outdoors, you want to do it for life. InsightTracker can help. InsightTracker was founded in 2009 by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics. Using their patented algorithm, Insight Tracker analyzes your body's data to provide you with a clearer picture of what's going on inside you while offering highly personalized, science-backed recommendations for positive diet and lifestyle changes. Okay, time for straight talk. It's time that each single one of us takes responsibility for our own health. Personally, given the results of my Insight Tracker DNA and blood tests, I now have a clear and simple game plan to lower my cholesterol and stave off my family's genetic history of heart disease. The best part is that the plan doesn't include any kind of pharmaceuticals, just personalized nutrition and natural supplementation. Possibly my favorite feature of Insight Tracker is the inner age score, a singular metric that shows me how my biological age compares to my chronological age. They just gamify longevity. It's crazy cool. For a limited time, you can get 25% off the entire Inside Tracker store. Just go to InsightTracker.com forward slash future. But wait, there is more. If you're a coach, trainer, registered dietitian, or any other health and wellness practitioner, you can now leverage Inside Tracker services to help your clients perform better than they ever have. And you can offer them discounts while you earn revenue. InsightTracker Pro is your gateway to offering your clients Inside Tracker, the science-backed, ultra-personalized performance platform trusted by elite athletes and top coaches. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future to get more information and enjoy deep, deep discounts. That is insight tracker.com forward slash future. Please go check out our wonderful sponsors. And if you get value out of this show, I ask you to do three things. Please go subscribe, give us a favorable rating, and share this episode on social media or wherever you like to go chat with friends. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and once again, welcome to the future of fitness. Jeff Byers, welcome to the future of fitness. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Eric. Very excited to have you, man. I I can tell pre-recording, I like your vibe. You are a busy man. You got a fast growing company. You had a merger that just happened. So I appreciate you making the time to chat with me and my audience this morning. I know your time's in high demand. So, man, uh, you are the CEO of what used to be AMP human performance, right? Now Momentous. But you have a great backstory and all that. So I would love to just before we get into everything you're doing from the business side, man, give us kind of your origin story. How'd you get to be the CEO of this company?

Oh man, that is a tremendously, a tremendously long story, but I'll keep it short. So yeah, uh, we used to be called Amp Human. We still kind of are. We just merged in the this month with another company called Momentous, and we are actually taking that name going forward. But how I got to be the CEO of Amp Human slash Momentous was about five and a half years ago as an early stage biotech, and they had developed a pretty incredible technology, and we had this crazy idea. What if we could use the tech outside of pharma medical and use it in human performance, human optimization? And ultimately that led to the creation of Amp Pumin and the business. And so three years ago, we founded Amp Pumin on this crazy idea that there's a ton of white space in human performance and that we could bring a revolutionary technology out of a biotech that has applications for humans to write Excel and it was an athletic performance to really create something special in human performance. But we we had this broad vision of creating uh a human performance platform, and it's all coming to life now, just with the merger, et cetera. Um so yeah, it all kind of started with roots in the biotech, my background, as I'm sure we'll get into, Eric, as a pro athlete of just really figuring out how human performance worked for me and that there are so many touch points, but always trying to find the next thing, and then wrapping that all into kind of my passion, which created a company, which is here where we are now today.

Yeah, right on, man. So you were and you glossed over very humbly, but yeah, you you were an athlete, a pro athlete that competed at the highest level in NFL. Tell us about like what was your how did your athletic career start? Like, where were you, where did you, where were you born, where were you raised, where did you go to high school? Where did you go to college? All of that. Give us your your career. The full the full background.

I love the stuff. I was born in Fremont, Nebraska, and I lived all over kind of the Midwest growing up. Just my dad was in corporate America and bounced around. Ended up kind of my most formative years, I'd say, in Fort Collins, Colorado, where I went to middle school and high school. So I went to high school at Loveland High in Loveland, Colorado, which is probably about 30 minutes north of Denver, played all the sports imaginable, loved it, but also became really good and talented at football. I have a lot of God-given abilities. I'm a quite large human being and was fast, et cetera. And played played high school football there and had a tremendous opportunity to go play football beyond in college. I was one of the top ranked high school athletes when I was when I was in high school, which was a long, long time ago, it feels like, and went to University of Southern California where I was an offensive lineman. I started a bunch of games, but I had a really interesting career at USC. I played and started a bunch of games as a true freshman on a national championship team when we beat Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, but I got hurt really, really bad at the end of the year and actually had two hip surgeries post that season to repair my hip and what I did to that. And I was pretty much told, hey, likelihood, you're never gonna play football again. And if you do, you know, you're not gonna be who you were, type of thing. And I got kind of, you know, knocked back down to the ground level or the basement level, and had lucky I had great people around me to kind of say, Why did you go to school? Like, you're at one of the best universities in the country. Like, don't feel sorry for yourself, figure it out. Like, that's a very very nice way of saying what some people told me. More flavorful language, maybe yeah, lots of flavor. Uh and ultimately I got to know the dean of the business school really well, ended up getting on track to graduate undergrad in three years while still in a scholarship, so that I could have the university pay for some of my master's degree. Anyway, so I missed my whole second year because of my my two hip surgeries. I was coming back from that and I ended up destroying my back essentially, L4, L5. I had two back surgeries my third year in college, so I missed my second and third year in terms of playing, not from a school perspective. I did a lot of school in that time and ended up graduating after three years. And I got accepted into the Marshall School of Business as a you know 21-year-old kid, which was which was pretty incredible, and and I'm very humbled that that happened. And ultimately came back and was able to play and started my started three more years at USC was a two-time captain. We won a ton of football games. We were like very, very good, and I was very fortunate to be a part of that team. But also had this tremendous opportunity after I got done playing to go play in the NFL. And because I had a pretty long rap street of injuries and some big, bigger, serious injuries, I went undrafted, which is the hard way, not the hard way, it's a way in that a lot of people go, but it's not the glamorous, glorious way into the NFL of getting drafted, et cetera. But I had my MBA. So when I, you know, first snap in the NFL, I already had my master's in business, which is is uncommon and and really set me up, but also made me think about life after ball, which was always super, super important to me. I I really had this strong belief after getting hurt that I never wanted to let the game take more from me than I could take from it. And I feel like I danced that line pretty, pretty closely towards the end there. And so I played four years in the NFL, was an offensive lineman, started a handful of games, played in a bunch more, but I was a you know kind of a serial backup. I spent my first year really on what they call the practice squads, just you know, do a lot of practicing, not a lot of playing. And it was a tremendous opportunity. It gave me a great head start, it allowed me to bet on myself and you know, be an entrepreneur and get to where I was, but really make some great relationships and and connections in in in the world that kind of surrounds football. So and I played most of my time for the Carolina Panthers. Like I said, I was a center and a guard. I weighed about 310 at my heaviest. Yeah, I'm about 225, 230, depending upon what I'm doing. So I'm a much smaller human being than I used to be. But football, football taught me a lot about life. It's a tremendous team game, but I I do really believe that I danced that line of taking more from me than I took from it. And I'm very fortunate to have walked away with with pretty good health and an incredible head start in life.

Yeah, I mean it's such a brutal score, man. And you know, it's funny if you ask me like where where is an NFL lineman born, it would have been Nebraska, right? That just seems like just it's there's probably some born out there.

Yeah, there's probably some statistic that more offensive linemen come from the state of Nebraska than any other state by population. I'm sure that's out there somewhere. I would not be shocked at all. Uh especially if you look at like the 90s and early 2000s when Nebraska was just turning out incredible teams and it was all kind of the big uglies up front that made it happen.

Yeah. So one more football question, then we'll move on to your business life. Because I, you know, I'm a big fan of football, always have been. You know, not a big guy, 5'8, 185. But the describe like that when you line up as an offensive lineman, right, and you're going against it's huge people versus huge people. I've heard so many stories, read books about what that experience is like. But what do you guys do? Are you guys talking smack? Are you like, you know, what what what's going on as you line up and through that, you know, six seconds of a play?

Yeah, that's a good question, Eric. It it kind of all depends on the person across from you, et cetera. You're all kind of in the same brotherhood fraternity, whatever, whatever you want to call it. And so there's like this very much a mutual level of respect, and like after the game, most of the time you're hugging and you know, you might have played with them in college, etc. So there is there is right, it's a performance-based business, period. Like you're paid to win and paid to win every play. And so there is a sense of I'm going to win and I'm going to dominate you. And there is some smack talking and all of that. And it's but it's also really strange because like these guys might have been your teammates last year or three weeks ago, or in college might have been your roommate, etc. And so there's there's this weird dynamic that you you're lining up and it's right, it's it's like a will against a will, and how do you just make sure that you impose your will on that human, which is a very strange thing to say, but it is that winning mentality that you have to have to get that to that level of that I am going to win today, right now, against this other person, whoever they are, whether they're my best friend, roommate from college, or never met them in my life. Like that is my job is to do my assignment. And so, I mean, obviously, sometimes it gets real feisty and angry anytime you're right, you know, I grew up with a brother, and anytime you're like, you know, your brothers, you're wrestling, and right accidentally you get an elbow in the head, and next thing you know, you're like punching each other, and then five minutes later you're hugging, and you're like your best buddies, right? Like that's kind of the easiest way to describe as like there's this fraternity, and like it's all fun and game. Somebody gets you know a cheap shot in, and now, right, we're sucker punching each other, and then you do it again, and it's like we're brothers, anyways. It's a very weird mentality.

Yeah, yeah, and it's it's just so there's so very few of you, right? Like people who get to that level and play there, and it's always interesting for people who like me who never ever get anything close to that, just to hear the stories and try to get a glimpse of what that experience is. So kind of segueing in, I mean, you mentioned that you know, your athletic career was is it's like all athletes, really, is it's directly it's all about performance, right? No one cares how really, I mean, people care how nice you are or how many friends you have or whatever, but you they you're there to perform, that's your job. So then now you're in a company that's all about you know getting the most out of someone's performance. Let's get into that. Like, what is AMP now Momentous? So what is what is what does the company do? Who do you guys serve and how do you serve them?

Yeah, so Momentous, we're a human performance company, and what we're saying is we're building the the next great human performance company out there. And what does that mean is really we serve athletes who train with a purpose or humans who are trying to seek to level up. So anybody who's dedicated to getting better on a daily basis in their life is really our core consumer. And that's really how we're focused and pretty corely focused on that athlete who trains with a purpose. And that might be a pro-athlete, or that may be a pro-minded athlete, or that might just be right guys like you and I, Eric, that are right, we're training with a purpose because it releases endorphins and it allows us to be better human beings, and we love to be fit. Like there's so many different components of that, but we're serving those those humans. And so we are a human performance company. We have a portfolio of products now, and really where we're going is we're we're passionate about building a systematic-based approach to human performance. So when we think about human performance, when I do, it's a it's a this crazy puzzle. And back right back in my NFL days, I would think about, you know, I was I was before like Aura Ring and right, like we didn't have a dietitian at at some of the teams I played with in the NFL, like, which is crazy to think about now because everybody has a dietitian. And but like I would think about how do I think about sleep, right? Am I prioritizing sleep? What am I eating? How am I thinking about cardio, right? Cognitive, meditation, yoga, training, playbook, right? Like there's all these things, and then there's rehab, resiliency, and there are all these things that I was doing on a daily basis. And yeah, I had personal coaches helping me, I had trainers, et cetera. But it was this systematic-based approach. But human performance is a puzzle. Any one of them alone is just a piece. It means like maybe you can see something, maybe you can't. But but we as humans are a puzzle, and there's so many pieces that are out there that are important to actually live like to your fullest potential, right? To reach your limitless potential, how how we say it. But very few people are putting together those puzzle pieces or or why, why we're putting together these puzzle pieces or right? Eric needs a different set of puzzle pieces than Jeff, or we need to put them together in a different order, or some are different priorities. So we think of human performance of this puzzle. How do we take, you know, the upper left corner of the puzzle and start building it out, right? So that we can create a systematic-based approach, a solution-oriented approach based upon your goals, your needs, your wants, your drives, right? Maybe longevity is really important to you. Maybe just bench pressing a thousand pounds is really important to you. I don't know. But that means two very different things on how we should be thinking about what we do in that puzzle. And so, how do we take some of that puzzle, put to put it together, reduce some of the noise in the consumer's mind, and provide best in class products with best in class knowledge built by the best people in the world? As that's really how we're thinking about what is the future of Momentous. We now we have we have the best products on market. We have an IP-driven product that came from Amp Human that came out of the biotech that I mentioned. We've got a patent, we've got six clinical trials now. We sell in to the Department of Defense, we've won a large innovation contract around that product. And then with Momentous that we just merged with and going forward, they have a large portfolio of sports nutrition supplements, right? And what makes them so special is they are the cleanest, purest, safest products on the market. They're banned substance tested, they have they understand the supply chain, we know the supply chain, and therefore really, really high quality. And you mix that together to say, all right, Eric, if cognitive performance, right, recovery and sleep are the most important things to you. Here is uh here's why you should take these products. Here's some education around cognition, right, and and being a cognitive performer. And here's some great info on sleep, leveraging what we have really unique access to, which is right, the experts at you know, the 49ers or in the DOD or like head of high performance at Nike, how are we pulling that knowledge in and dispersing it out, right? In a pretty easy systematic-based approach. So, right, when we think about what what we're building, it it's just that of like, how do we create you know, a couple puzzle pieces for Eric and take some noise distraction, right? Hey, you're gonna get the best quality products in the world, might as well get great knowledge um and access through that.

Yeah, man, so you got some great products out there. You know, I've had the pleasure. I also like your swag. I know it's gonna change now uh with a new brand, but it's really cool too. So I mean the PR lotion and some of the other things that you've had, kind of your flagship products, but it sounds like your vision is much bigger.

Yeah, I, you know, we when we started Amp Human, we never thought we were gonna be so back up. PR lotion is what came out of the biotech, right? And and PR Lotion is the patented, right? We have clinical trials from a handful of universities now proving it. One was funded by the Department of Defense, like I mentioned. But PR Lotion is so unique. It unlocks one of the most core basic electrolytes for us as humans. And this electrolyte's called bicarbonate. And bicarbonate, most people probably never heard of it, never thought of as an electrolyte, but an electrolyte simply just helps your muscle function, right? More efficient. But bicarbonate's role is super simple. It reduces acid in the muscle. When we train hard, we produce acid. Public calls it lactic acid. It's technically two things lactate and hydrogen ions, which is acid, and they travel together. Anyways, acid is bad. It builds up in your muscles when you go hard, ultimately is one of your limiting factors. Your muscles fatigue, shut down, you have to wait, flush that acid out, then you can go hard again. And so bicarbonate is one of six things the International Olympic Committee recognizes as very safe, practical, and effective ergogenic AIDS. The problem is you take it orally, huge gut bomb, right? Like you you and me, Eric, like I'm not gonna go hit it hard and potentially crap my pants. Like that just is not beneficial, like to anything. But one of my daily goals is just don't crap your pants.

Yeah, yeah.

But if you're right, if you're gonna go race the mile at the Olympics and you're like, well, bicarbon, it has should To increase performance two to eight percent, right? Historically over the last five decades. And if you time it right, if you time it right, you might get to the toilet. But if you time it right, you also might win a gold medal. Um like it's those are things that like really elite athletes are willing to do. But you and me are not willing to do. But that also means we've put a limit or a ceiling on our performance. So we've unlocked this really incredible natural electrolyte in the form of a lotion that you know it looks like a lotion, like a thick sunscreen, but it delivers sodium bicarbonate into the body and actually reduces or buffers that acid. So we can train harder, recover faster. And ultimately, right, it's about the consolidation of training gains. If we can go harder today, we can make more gains. We can go harder tomorrow, right? You just you climb like the the lines, the lines begin to separate. No different of, right? If we went and worked out or trained, we were not hydrated or we didn't have the right other electrolytes in our body, we would have not as high of quality of training day. Now we're just making your training days even higher quality and your performance days even better. It's a really incredible product. It is one of the flagships under it. And so that's that's really how it all started. And we, you know, early on at the biotech, it was like this passion project, Skunk Works. They're now completing phase two clinical trials, like doing incredible things. But when we spun it out and acquired it ourselves, um, we wanted to build a human performance company, like I mentioned. But we have this great roots in in in biotech, in clinical research, in pushing the limits of what's possible. That's so, so exciting.

Yeah, it's it's always fascinating to me how really, in the grand scheme of things, how little we know about the human body, right? I mean, we're in it all day long, and we're we're still discovering how these systems work. They're so complex. And like little things like that, you know, are just little tweaks that we can use to, you know, to boost this performance. And one of the things I want to ask you, because you you mentioned it, so the Department of Defense, you guys got in there, you're working with them. Where else have you guys started to see traction early on?

Yeah, I would say, you know, we've been pretty lucky on that front. We've we've had great track. So when we were at the biotech, call it three and a half years ago, right? When we were just starting to like spin this thing out, we saw great traction with, we had interest in the within the Department of Defense. We had Super Bowl champion teams courting us. We were working with Tour de France winners because they we had good science. We we had good some good data back then, not the data we have today. We have incredible data now. We just finished some some big clinical trials, but we had enough for them to start right pulling that threat and saying, Oh, okay, this makes sense, this makes sense, this makes sense, okay, blah. And they started putting it in practice, and they're like, oh, wow, this is incredible. So so we've, you know, early on we had really unprecedented traction within, I would say, uh, the elite endurance sports. So Tudor France teams, a handful of the best triathletes in the world. And then within, I would say the NFL, NHL, and and soccer has have been really, really core to us. And then we've had traction within track and field and those others, but they're not as as big of uh a big of name there. So we've had some really great, great traction in that space. But we've also had a pretty good consumer push, but we've really focused on the endurance athlete and right just out of focus a bit. And where, you know, where do we want to win and where do we want to win to start? It was you know, cycling triathlon, and we've trickled into run now because we've had a ton of success there. But but that is expanding pretty rapidly.

Yeah. Well, the endurance world is so, I mean, the performance is on their mind all the time. You know, you you don't see too many high-level endurance athletes that eat McDonald's or aren't you know completely in tune with every little detail of how they feel that down in their sleep. Like they're dialed in for the most part, you know, compared to the city. They invest in their performance. They invest on a daily basis.

And that's part of the reason why the market's really great, is when you can tell a performance and recovery story, right? Backed by data, you can you can blow through some of the noise and BS that's out there.

Yeah. Yeah. So you guys are hitting in this high level, right? The DOD, professional athletes, really, you know, high performers. How is that? And you mentioned the consumer market is doing well. Is that like, is it a trickle-down effect? Is that kind of the strategy? Like, hey, we'll get we'll prove it out at the highest level, and then people will take notice, we'll have the research, we'll have the case studies, the stories behind it, and that'll that'll dictate how the rest of the market unfolds.

Eric, that's that's pretty spot on, right? We we really believe that if we want to be the next great human performance company, you can't just start a direct-to-consumer brand. Right? Like that doesn't like that doesn't work, right? You have to actually win where the best in the world are, from athletes, from practitioners to scientists. Like you have to win there if you want to create the next great human performance company, right? You just don't you don't create it and just sell the consumers. You better be working with the top because the top is is buying and using what is the cream of the crop. And so our take was we want to be at the forefront of human performance. We want to be pushing the limits, we want to be helping spread knowledge around human performance and create education and content, right, as we go into the future. And to be able to bring a patented revolutionary product that is like PR lotion is unique. Like some people are like, oh, it can't be that hard. It's like getting somebody to think about putting on lotion before they train and it's gonna help them train harder. Like, yeah, there are a good number of people that would be like, I'll I'm willing to try anything, right? And those are the endurance athletes, et cetera. But there's also a lot of people are like, bullshit. Yeah, that's not for me, et cetera. And so that validation from the top down really, really supports supports us. But also, I believe, like, if we're just another, right, call it supplement company or topical supplement, then you're just competing with how much money can you spend in marketing, right? Let's build the best products, use that as validation to trickle down. And that really, in my mind, creates a very, very sustainable brand over the long term. Because for for me, this isn't the flash in the pan. Like, I really, we, I, the business and the people around me believe that we have this opportunity to really impact human performance, right? From uh athletic performance, from a recovery to a sleep to a longevity perspective. Because all those things are wrapped, and we're just happening to be focusing on kind of the athlete in in that in that span. But to do that, I like I'm not a marketer by by background. Like, I believe that winning at the top is the only way we can credibly build this system, right? We can build out a system and have, oh, we asked you all these questions, and here are our recommendations, or we can build out a system and say, we built this system with the best people in the world, and we want to treat and we want to how do we boil down what an NFL player or an NBA player gets access to and how are they getting recommended certain products and think through that. We're using those experts, the top people in the world to help us think through this. But also, we have not just products that are just made, we have the products that the best use because they are the best, highest quality products for humans. Now, that's not for everybody, but it is for a lot of people that care about their body and longevity and what they put into it. And so if we can create that pull and push at the same time by being at the forefront, I think it really creates us to be a sustainable brand. But also we're gonna be at the front of where the market's going. Because human performance is we're in the infancy of understanding what it is. And as we continue to push forward, right, where there is going to be so much more opportunity as we grow. And when we think about personalization and customization and how are we using all these tools, we're just at the very start of that. And we're just at the very start of understanding also right how the brain operates and like why this versus that. And so I do believe by being at the forefront doing clinical research on your hero flagship products are incredibly important. Not being like, they work, trust me. Right? Like that that like that that that's I'm a good guy. Trust me. Yeah, but that's what's happened in this space, right? It has for a very, very long time, right? There are very few companies that play in elite pro sports, and and the consumer doesn't know that, right? Part of the problem is like those companies that play in pro and elite sport, they are not great at branding or marketing or disseminating information, like, and so they just stay up here, right? And how do we bring that down? Because consumers want that. Like it is, we are at the point where consumers are looking to say, I want to treat myself. I like I've right, I only buy organic food, I only shop at Whole Foods. Well, why are you buying crappy protein that, right? It's manufactured in the same facility that manufactures banned substances, right? And things like that, of like, if it's not right for an athlete, why would it be right for you? If an athlete can't take it because it might be tainted, why should you take it? So, anyways.

Yeah, no, it's a great it's a really good point. And I think when people, especially those who are listening to this who have been in the fitness health industry for a while, you know, we think about the supplement industry, and it's always like, I just you just don't trust it. You just don't. Like you don't know. Even what it says on the label, you still don't know that that's exactly what's in it or where the stuff is sourced. So, but we do know is that, you know, professional athletes, especially in the endurance world, they are extremely careful with what they put in their body. And if they trust a brand, if they trust a product, then you know the consumers are gonna be, at least the savvy ones are gonna be, you know, aware that that's the case and they can trust it. So that I think it's a the top-down approach is is beautifully done. Um I want to talk, I'm gonna give some time to Momentous and talk about this merger and how this worked out. Like what what was the impetus of it? What does it mean for the company? What does it mean for the future of what you guys are doing? And how's it been personally?

Yeah, it's been, I mean, it's been incredible. So the founder and CEO of that company is uh a fellow by the name of Matt Wan, and he is an incredible product guy, and he built an incredible company. He's now our chief product officer, and right. I am so excited, so so excited to have him on board as we think about the system, which is a product, building that out, but also how do we build these best products in the market? Because that's what they did. They went out and built the best products, understanding the supply chain, so that they could break into the pro sports market and build something super special. So Momentous built, right? They're probably four years old now, maybe, maybe a little older. They basically said there is this huge gap in the market. In pro sports, right? They they can they are only buying the best things where people can actually certify their banned substance free, understand the supply chain, where they're coming from, highest absorption, highest quality, everything, right? Because guess what? It's not some random, it's not the random offensive lineman buying it. It is somebody whose job is to look, understand, and buy the best things on the market for the athletes so that they can perform on a day-to-day basis. And so they kind of built that. But they also said there's this huge gap in the market where there's a handful of brands that are in this elite sport, but they've done a terrible job going into the consumer space. And so they believe that they could build a meaningful brand, right? An aspirational brand built upon the best, highest quality supplements and nutrition on the market and bring it to the consumer. And they've done that pretty effectively. They're about a 50-50 business, give or take, pro sales to individual consumer sales. But how it kind of came about is at Amp Human, we've been we were a one-product company for our first, you know, two and a half years, call it. And we knew we weren't going to be a one-product company. That was not why we founded the business, as we talked about. We wanted to create something more. We had attracted an incredible consumer. We were at the forefront of human performance. How do we further leverage that? Right. With a niche product, PR Lotion is an incredible product, but it's not, it's not a staple. It's never going to be a staple product in everybody's lives. But it is a flagship because it's so unique. It puts us in a very, very unique class. And so we had started to build, right, kind of a nutritional supplement line in product portfolio to say what naturally fits with PR lotion. And we we had this vision of the system probably two years ago of really how do we build it out. And supplements and nutrition were a very, very core part of that. And so we were starting to sprint it out. And one of the board members of Momentus, I had gotten to know over the years, and I'd gotten to know the CEO, and we just started talking. And I said, hey, we're we're gonna go into space, just FYI. Like, don't wanna don't want you to wake up one morning and be like, that guy's a, you know, he was he was asking me all these questions, and he was gonna be my competitor. And and so we just started talking, and you know, kind of we what are the we strengths of amp human? What are the strengths of momentus? And it just kept like, wow, we're gonna be stronger together, we can go faster together, we can do like we're in the same places, and it's like, do we want to compete against each other or do we want to win together? And right, it's all about the team you have on the field. And it's like, all right, well, this is looking what like okay, you're gonna start, oh okay, product pipelines look good, okay, okay. You know, like team looks good. What are you passionate about? Where are the gaps? Where are we going? Like the system personalized approach is right kind of where they were going. And we had this great success in teams, and we wanted to be at the forefront and advisory board access, you name it. And it just kind of came together. It's like we should we should push really hard to try to make this happen. We're both venture-backed companies, which help tremendously. We have great kind of external teams around us from boards to help support, build it, and it came together really quick. And it came together. I mean, you know, like we we officially announced merging, I think like 15 days ago. And like uh we signed the paperwork 20 days ago, maybe. And so, like, it's really new, but the teams already integrated because we're smaller, right? We have small teams, I think we're 26 people now, and just how do we integrate really fast and actually come together? Because part of the hypothesis for for the merger was we can build this system faster, which it's like the teams already like that, that's the future. But also we can how do we really think about capital efficiency and capital utilization, as well as how do we maximize the value and better serve the core consumer, right? Because we have big, like we we have big customer bases, and now how do we make sure that they're educated on Momentus or PR lotion and bring that in and extract that out? So we ultimately, as a business, we're able to maximize that lifetime value of the customer, but also maximize that relationship with the customer because that's ultimately if all you're doing is talking about PR lotion so cool, check it out. Like people are like, ah, I'm so sick of hearing about PR Lotion, right? But so how do we deepen that relationship and provide more value to that consumer on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis than just being a lotion company or just being a supplement company. So that's kind of how it all came together. It's it has come together fast, like really fast. It's been for me personally, it's been an incredible, incredibly humbling uh experience, but also like massive growth. And I say that for the rest of my exec team as well. It's this is something that like we've all right, we are passionate, we love the space, we have incredible experience kind of across the board, very unique, and we want to go really fast and we want to grow. And this allowed us to skip maybe 18 months on both sides, and that you know, when you skip 18 months, it like you skip a huge amount of of learnings and growth, and and so now it's like, hey, we're full gas. And putting two teams together, it's interesting. Like, we're already dealing with that. And and any like, I don't know, I had a great mentor that kind of told me he's like, nobody asked for this besides your the executive team and the board, right? Your team didn't ask for it, their team didn't ask for it, right? And you gotta be you gotta you gotta understand that like nobody has to have payroll switch, nobody has to have a different name, a different email, like have to come to a different office, and nobody has to have these other people on the team, you know, and so right, like people, you win and lose with people. You do that in sports, you do that in life, you do that in business. And so it's how do we get and integrate two teams, very similar values, but also right, there's overlap. It's like there's gonna be hard decisions on all sides, right? And so, how do we really think about that over the long term, but make sure we have the right team on the field, right? Running the same play and all focused on winning, right? Because we are in a performance-based business, period, right? Like we're venture-backed. Expectations are not low, right? Like we're not a garage startup, right? Or right, we aren't bootstrapped, like we've taken cash from people who have, right, they do this for a living, and the expectations are to win, to grow, right, and continue to grow and win and grow and win. And that's a great thing. And we've had that opportunity as kind of a sports performance company to do that because we have success in the DOD, we work with pro teams, like we have grid metrics, all those things. So it's uh it's an incredible journey we're on for sure.

Yeah, that's great, man. I like so out of curiosity, so are you guys in Park City or where are you guys located now? Oh, and the other question is what are you called momentous?

Is that we are called, we are called momentous going forward. So formerly known as Amp Human, but Momenta it right. I mean, we're so new in this in this thing, right? It's we're recording this and it's July 15th, and right I just met everybody for the first time on Monday from from the team. Uh huh. Today's series. So we're we're still trying to figure we're like right, we have an integration plan, and and you know, I I think we'll kind of keep a lockup logo like amp human times momentous for the next six months or so, right? So we keep some of that, but we are switching the full company name or the brand name to Momentous, right? It is an incredible aspirational, incredibly aspirational name. It speaks to who we are as a business. It's great for human performance, it's very, very ownable long term, which we're super excited about. And it's broad enough to allow us to play in different spaces, you know, where it's not just pro sports or you know, amp human is very we've gotten it's very elite, but it's also two words, two common words. So it gets, hey, amp or human or human amp. And anyways, it's momentum going forward. And then where are we based? Officially, corporate HQ is in Park City, Utah. We've got six people based here. And nice choice. Yeah. Yeah. We my co-founder and I, my of the business, we were we were at the biotech, it was based in Los Angeles, and we both had no desire to be be based in in LA. She was actually a community from San Francisco. We both kind of love the mountains, and Park City just kind of spoke to us. It's success accessibility to Salt Lake and the airport, made it super simple. There's good talent in Utah. Utah is a great thriving business, business community as well. So yeah, we we moved to, but the team is pretty remote. Like now we've got people, you know, we've got somebody in Vancouver, we got, you know, LA, San Fran, Austin, Texas, Dallas, Boston, Philly, you know, we got people everywhere now, which which is nice. It allows us to get the best talent and recruit the best talent, which I think is important. And for me, the biggest challenge is how do you continue to create culture and creativity, right? And team, right, with a remote, with with a pretty remote team. And right, that just means we got to come together, find ways, get creative, etc. Because not everybody wants like, let me tell you, not everybody wants to live in Park City. I love Park City, but I like the snow, I like the mountains, right? Like, guess what? You don't get to walk to dinner every night. You don't get to, you know, like it's not a city. And people like, you know that, like there are incredibly talented people passionate about human performance that live in Boston, that live in LA, that live in New York, right? And that's okay. And so how do we get them? But how do we also create this incredible culture? And I think that's off sites and team building and all that. That's uh a great opportunity for us to continue to grow.

Yeah, man. It's uh I think that's a challenge a lot of CEOs and leaders are are facing right now is how do you maintain this community for for lack of better word within your culture, I guess is another good word to say it within your company with all the remote. As you look forward, you know, we're we're talking about this ever-evolving world and your vision of human performance and a systematic approach to doing it. And when you look at like things outside of your lane in this field, you know, the recovery science, the wearable devices, the biometrics tracking and all these things, what what has you what has your attention, what has you excited about the field that potentially could be like a partnership for you guys down the road?

That's a really good question. Here's the thing I don't think human performance is any one of those things. And the only way we as humans are going to continue to excel, and I go back to like, we humans have all we've been trying. How do we run faster? How do we live longer? How do we stay healthier, right? Like, that's how we evolved to where we are continuous focus on being better, right? Being better than the last generation, living longer, being healthier, you know, like that's who we are. Uh like it's in our DNA to continue to strive like that. And so I don't think I think what gets me most excited about this human performance segment and all these different pillars is not any one of them, it's how do we bring them all together. And I don't think that's gonna happen this year or next year, maybe in five years or ten years, but Because ultimately, right, when we think about the recovery tech, we think about sports nutrition, we think about something like PR lotion, you think about diagnostics, wearables, all of that needs to go together, right? And how do we work together to create um to create something impactful for athletes? Because ultimately an aura ring or a whoop, they show incredible, right? They're giving us incredible data. How are we using that data to think about sports nutrition or different sleep things, right? Like how do we continue to close that loop? Because ultimately, data is really, really valuable and it becomes even more valuable when you can have actionable, execute, executable items and then close the loop to say, hey, this is how it's affecting me, right? And this is the impact it's having on my life, rather than, oh, you you slept like shit, or you slept great. Okay, great. Here are the action items. Did they help? Did they not help? Right. And so we can all start doing an end of one testing. And I think that's ultimately what gets me most excited about human performance. It's this collaboration and coming together to be like, rather than everybody working in silos, because if we all work in silos in five, 10 years, we've gotten nowhere, right? We just still have great products out there, great data, et cetera. But the consumer doesn't know how to use, think, et cetera. And they got to go to all these different places for sources of truth. And they're just super noise. But really, how do we bring everything together and think about human performance as a puzzle? Because I'm only going to be able to solve a small corner of that puzzle. Or Roop probably can solve another corner of that puzzle. And right, some of these recovery tech can solve another corner. Who the hell knows what's in the middle right now? Right. That's probably cognitive and brain that we're just kind of tapping the surface into, right? So like there's all these little things out there that happen, or like wellness, mindfulness, right? And then you have this whole training aspect of it is like train train, fitness, like how like how does that work? And but nothing, if if we work in silos, nothing is magnified, right? We we're never right being limitless or pushing the limits, truly, if we're only thinking about one thing. So that's what gets me most excited about human performance. It's just how we're going there. But I also think we're in this because of Aura, because of Whoop, right? We now can track things on a much broader scale, much more easily. So we have kind of this baseline data. So when you start putting in interventions, you can actually start seeing things. And so we're able to cut through a lot of the whether it be bro science or right, or just things that people thought for a long time this is great. And it's like, actually, this is not great, right? Like we thought it was, and that was awesome, but now we have you know an N of 20,000, 100,000, based upon everybody wearing wearable data or everybody getting so many people getting DNA or blood work done on a consistent basis, say, actually, this is not, we thought it was best practice, which is awesome, but now we've learned more. Let's move beyond and say this is actually the best thing. And having companies that are willing to say, like, well, we like based upon the knowledge, science, and data to date, this was right. It's no longer right. This is not right. And being able to continue to move in that upward fashion. So that's what gets me excited. It's the integration of everything. And I think that's a long, like five, 10-year thing. And maybe, maybe a couple spacs will come up and roll everything up and like create a human performance conglomerate. I don't know, but it's something that happened. Yeah, could be could be, could be. Uh we got I got a lot, we gotta, we gotta be charging really hard. But anyways, I I think that's an incredible space because there's just so many things out there. But I I do uh we get to see some really cool stuff, so for sure.

Yeah, it it is you you brought up the the the key point, and I I put a name on, I call it the okay, well, what now? Right? Like you get all this people are getting all this data, all these insights. And so I love too the partners on my podcast here are Morpheus on the recovery lifestyle data, and they funnel it through uh a coach and they also give insights and the people like, well, what now? Okay, I got all this stuff, I know, but what do I do with it? Right. So they're funneling it right through the right person and an insight tracker on their side with the DNA and the blood work, they boil it down to a very simple five things that you can do to actually take that data and make it actional and meaning, meaningful, right? So I think that's the big step. I think you nailed it is is you know, like I said, what now? Okay, great. We got all this data. What do we do? And for the consumer, it's very confusing. Even for coaches or professionals, it can be overwhelming. So it's a huge opportunity to do something with it. I want to respect your time, man. I mean, you got a lot of people to manage nowadays, but if people want to get a hold of you or, you know, or you want to send them in particular somewhere online, yeah. Where where do you send people, man? Give us the kids.

Yeah, my best best for me personally is LinkedIn. There's probably some like really old profiles out there on other social media platforms that I don't know the login for accounts and things like that anymore too. So, but LinkedIn, I'm I'm decent at that for sure. And then from a company perspective, this is a good one. What website? So we have two websites right now. Ultimately, everybody should be going to amphuman.com right now. That's kind of where we're calling our base. It's it will be we'll eventually transition. But amphuman.com is the best place to find out about us. And then if you have any questions kind of for the broader company, best web best email address is help at livemomentous.com is the best website, right? Or the best uh email address for the business. Cool. Well, people will find you. I guess you can always find us. It's super easy. Check us out, it's pretty cool.

Man, really insightful, really fun conversation. I really enjoyed it. And you are, I can tell you're someone who thrives on a fast-paced uh life, I guess, in business. And uh you found yourself in a really good, uh really good position, man. It's uh it's really I'm really happy for you. So thanks for coming on and sharing all the great information, really great insights, great stories. It's it's very well appreciated on this side of the mic. So, ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Byers. Thank you, Eric. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Feminists. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it. iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I'd love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.