Udaiyan "UJ" Jatar - Tecton & Changing Human Behavior At Scale

[00:00:02] Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over four years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced

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[00:01:47] Go to ConnectedHealthandFitness.com to download the agenda and find out more. Use code F-O-F-10 for an exclusive 10% discount on your event ticket. Use ConnectedHealthandFitness.com code F-O-F-10 and do not wait. Seats are very limited. All right, we are live. UJ, welcome to the future of fitness my friend.

[00:02:12] Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you making the time and you and I for contacts we met at IDEA conference in July of earlier this year. So 2023 and I kept going back to your booth to get some more tech ton.

[00:02:31] When I got tired in the afternoon and both my colleague and I Mitch were like, this stuff's really good man. I feel really good. Yeah, yeah, I was zapped at a conference as you talk so much and you're always interacting.

[00:02:42] It's just very tiring, at least for someone like me. So it was interesting. So finally I went over there and met you, the founder and CEO of the company. We chatted for a while.

[00:02:51] You sounded like a very interesting person to me and the product and it's not something I've covered recently, which is the world of ketones and what we'll talk about exogenous ketones and what you guys are doing.

[00:03:02] So really excited to have you on the show and your experience, your depth of knowledge in particular areas is really valuable and some of the stuff besides tecton and blue earth what you do with that company.

[00:03:18] Your experience at Coca-Cola, your experience at Procter Gamble, your interest in changing human behavior at scale, which I think you and I both agree. I've talked about that a couple times on this show before.

[00:03:29] It's like, that's kind of the core of what we do in the fitness and wellness industries as we need to change human behavior because what's happening right now, at least in the Western countries is not good. So I'm going to stop talking for a little bit.

[00:03:44] Let's get into your background to start, UJ and then we'll go from there. All right. Thank you so much for having me. One correction. I'm a co-founder and I'll talk a little bit about my co-founder as we go into this. I'm co-founder and CEO of tecton.

[00:03:59] My background, I started out, you know, my dad was a fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force and we moved every six months to two years. I went to 13 different schools in six different states growing up in India. One would be a cricket player.

[00:04:14] So I ended up going to college playing cricket in college as well. But I had to make some money, so I did door-to-door sales and started a small company helping some of the biggest global brands that had just started to enter India or reenter India after

[00:04:32] the liberalization of the economy. And PNG was one of my clients and I was helping them to take that new detergent and talk to distributors and one of the first processed foods and talk to housewives and get them to buy something they've been accustomed to making by hand.

[00:04:51] So I got kicked out of a lot of homes because the food was not made that day. They were shocked to hear that some of it was over a year old. But it was great learning and then MBA went to work for PNG then at some point after

[00:05:07] working for an ad agency for a period of time, landed up working for Coca Cola in India. And because of my undergrad experience doing door-to-door sales launching new brands, somehow I got picked into that vertical of new product launches.

[00:05:24] So with PNG we worked on the Pantene launch in India and Asia. Red Coke launched their first water brand in India or in the world but it started in India and then moved to Atlanta, ran a JV between Coke and Nestle selling Nesti around the world.

[00:05:39] So kind of my experiences with creating new products and taking new brands to market from the door-to-door front end all the way to strategic global plans for the JV in Atlanta, I kind of started to learn that somehow if you want to build a brand

[00:05:57] that really stands out, that consumers are going to be loyal to it. They're not going to switch brands just because they have a price discount on the shelf. And there's something obviously wrong that I'm doing because my brands are not becoming,

[00:06:12] they were not able to transcend their competitors. If retailers drop price, retailers are consolidated, co-packers had allowed really low barriers to entry anyone could launch a beverage so the market was getting highly commoditized.

[00:06:25] So I started to find a pattern by studying how some brands like Red Bull had come from nowhere with none of the might and reach and funding of a Coca-Cola Pepsi and still dominated a whole new category. I was fascinated by how that happened.

[00:06:44] I looked at Gatorade, another brand in the sports and fitness industry that came out of unconventional origins rather than a large company. There's nothing, no rocket science in that product but it's still built an incredible brand and how did they do that?

[00:07:02] So then I started looking outside the industry and I looked at Nike and Apple and all of these brands, they pass what I like to call the tattoo test which is do your consumers at least

[00:07:15] a good percentage of them love you enough that they'll not buy anything else and then some percentage of those consumers would they put a tattoo of your brand on their skin. And you see people in Mercedes, Benz expensive cars with a little two cent Apple sticker at

[00:07:33] the back. Think to yourself why would you put a two cent sticker on a $200,000 car? But that's what that's a powerful brand. Yeah it's a really interesting topic and I urge people to you have a great TEDx talk that I watched this morning.

[00:07:51] The seven disciplines for building a transcendent brand and it was you pointed out a lot of this stuff and it just made me think a lot like I think about Harley Davidson like literally you see tachy of people with Harleys right all the time.

[00:08:05] It's not all the time but more than you think that somebody would want to do that and the whole concept of creating a brand as I was talking to you pre-recording it's like it's a hard thing to put a metric on right.

[00:08:21] It's a feeling as you put it's a trust and I had Andrew Sugarman who's now the CEO of Center, Chris Hemsworth company was on recently and we talked about Star Wars as a brand

[00:08:32] and the fanboys and Star Wars and the trust between Star Wars and the fans and like it's just this complicated thing like how do you put a metric on that you can't? It's just purely a sense of feeling it's a concept and it's really interesting and maybe

[00:08:49] with all this experience that you have, UJ of working with all these brands and the study that you put in I mean you're not academic you're very practical in application of what you do.

[00:08:59] Let's talk about tech-tome because I think that would be a great example of how you look at brands and the effort you're putting in to separate from the field there. So what was the impetus for starting tech-tome and then we'll take it from there?

[00:09:16] Yeah great and you know I think the segue between branding and tech-tome is that I always say that the first thing that I look for in an entrepreneur or a brand is why do they do what

[00:09:30] they do you know and it's not just to why in terms of hey do you do this to make money are you doing this to make a difference in the world it's got to be a lot more specific than that.

[00:09:41] Do you truly have a deeply seated motive and intention and true passion to see a certain change in the world and you take a guy like Bill Barman one of the coaches, the coaches of Phil Knight and the two co-founders of Nike.

[00:09:59] Bill Barman just wanted everyone to exercise he wanted everyone to run he truly believed everyone's an athlete they just don't know it yet and that was his passion get people to run and Nike from that motivation improved the quality of shoes they marketed

[00:10:13] it to you know runners across colleges and slowly built what Nike is it truly transcendent brand. So for us you know after I left I worked with Coca Cola as I was mentioning earlier I left in 2008 started an agency to help train people on how to do innovation

[00:10:31] and branding but in the for-purposed or impact sector if you will so landed up training a lot of scientists at the Gates Foundation was working with and through the network I got landed up being introduced to a guy called Mike Chesney who's

[00:10:47] my co-founder he's a double purple heart special forces combat medic the Delta Force you know incredible guy you know got blown up in Iraq a few times and these nonprofits I was working with knew I was you know my dad was a fighter

[00:11:04] as I mentioned he died when he was 59 of PTSD related stuff and so I have a very strong desire to support veterans because of that background so this is going to be a nonprofit project I was going to take on when I met Mike and then I realized

[00:11:22] that what Mike was trying to do was truly purposeful my one question to him was because they wanted me to join because of my beverage background I said why are you doing this and he said listen I got blown up I've got all

[00:11:34] these friends you know veterans have come back from Iraq and Afghanistan and you know they're committing suicide at incredibly high rates much higher than the standard population and I think for brain health we need to do something

[00:11:46] different so I said all right I'm signed me up we'll work together and that's kind of how we started is to really create a solution for people with brain health issues driven by you know either traumatic brain injuries or

[00:12:00] subconcussive hits that can also lead to CTE ultimately so that is kind of the founding motive here to just figure out how we can provide an alternative source of energy for the brain because glucose energy completely gets messed

[00:12:13] up anytime you have subconcussive hits or any kind of brain health issue and ketones are far superior to glucose when it comes to brain health and brain energy the problem is to get ketones the only way to do it naturally

[00:12:29] purely naturally is for your own body to make ketones and that only happens if you completely give up carbs so well less than 30 net carbs a day is what I need to be

[00:12:39] otherwise I get kicked out of ketosis and two pieces of toast or an apple and a piece of bread can throw you out of ketosis so how are you gonna take someone who just got a hit to now give up carbs the next three four days I

[00:12:52] mean you might do it but it's not very practical and so that's why exogenous ketones come in and that was kind of so long story short we thought we could do something with exogenous ketones to help military vets and any

[00:13:06] horse responders with TBI's and then the business morphed completely from there into something much much much bigger now yeah so maybe explain to me a little bit in those early days when you're working with you know veterans

[00:13:21] PTSD and looking specifically at brain health like what were the benefits specifically what were the use cases and the benefits that these early that your early users intentions yeah yeah yeah what was that yeah so what happens in

[00:13:37] the brain when you have a TBI is your post metabolism gets messed up and typically those cells that been injured will not then get adequate nutrition and energy and blood and oxygen whereas if you have ketones those

[00:13:50] ketones do cross the blood brain barrier then they address those cells and so there's a potential you know neuro protective benefit and there's also potential benefit for post concussion or recovery now there's studies that I

[00:14:06] have to happen we you know there is a lot of studies that have been done that show ketones and ketosis both independently exogenous and endogenous both help we have 10 grams of ketones in our drink with that intention but the

[00:14:20] most important thing that took us the longest time to figure out and solve is how if you have a concussion you have 24 hours in the day if you you know most of the exogenous ketones that are on the market other than ours are bound

[00:14:35] to some form of you know either one three butane dial or salt so your keto salt and your one three butane dial based ketones is that they both have dose limits for various reasons and and once rebuting dial cannot be given to

[00:14:54] people below 21 because it has it's kind of like a precursor to alcohol which is the kind of alcohol you have in a beer so my co-founder and I we were really concerned with how do you build a ketone that you can drink all day if you

[00:15:11] need to without any toxic outcomes and so that's that's intellectual property that my co-founders developed for us over the last eight years we spent over 10 million dollars we've hired people feel as a professor from Georgia

[00:15:27] tech we have you know former NASA PhDs working on the business and we found a way after eight years and ten million dollars to build an exogenous ketone that's completely safe even if you have hundred of hundred cans of tecton a day

[00:15:41] so that to kind of tie your question why did we start is to build a perfect product one for people with you know brain health concerns on the other end of the spectrum what I also wanted to do was build a product that I'd be happy

[00:15:58] for my daughter to drink up you know 20 of these a day but like you know I would not let her do that with any of the other product categories I've worked with in the past yes that's so you had this special population right that you

[00:16:12] you're looking to serve it specifically and then you know I am curious like it was there a point where like okay this has a mass consumer opportunity here like it sounds like you didn't go in with that attention but maybe it's

[00:16:24] somewhere along the way you figured that out is that right yes that's right you know so the origins were very you know purely driven by how do we help disabled veterans but as we learned more and more about ketones it started to become

[00:16:42] evident that ketones are a much bigger part of human nutrition than any of us really fully realized and the reason for that is twofold one getting into ketones is really hard I think at any given point in America they may be 12 or

[00:17:00] 13,000 people that are actually following a strict keto diet that's 13,000 people out of 350 million plus so that's a tiny number so how do you get to really get a lot of information and data on that the second thing is

[00:17:16] exogenous ketones as I said earlier have those limits that were in the market for the last 10 or 15 years but now we are reading stuff that talks about how our bodies can make 180 to 300 grams of ketones a day if you think historically

[00:17:32] the human species on earth was the vast majority of our time we have been in ketosis more often than not because we ate one or two meals a day not four as we do now we were not sedentary and there were no processed carbs so you know

[00:17:47] it was not difficult to maintain a quote-unquote keto lifestyle right and your body would make 180 to 300 grams and so when you look at the macro nutrient profile of our consumption of our total nutritional palette if you will their fats proteins carbs and ketones but historically ketones were

[00:18:06] probably a bigger part of our nutritional palette than carbs were and now as the opposite and that's why we have a lot of metabolic diseases where it's really comes down to someone very eloquently said I can't remember who but I can't

[00:18:20] take credit for it but really you know we are keto starved now and you know to camera and carbs you know we are suffering from carb poisoning was his exact phrase that he used as a species so what we've got now to your point is

[00:18:38] we realize ketones are so foundational and a nutrition that we ought to be having 180 to 300 grams a day and if you can't do that through a pure keto diet then we will provide you with a range of innovative products in a meter placement

[00:18:54] gels gummies France beverages that you can consume on different occasions snack bars so that you can get those 180 to 300 grams of ketones a day awesome and what are the benefits to you know kind of a an average American like

[00:19:11] myself like you know both short and long term of getting these ketones the right kind of ketones right that you're talking about yeah into our bodies yeah so the biggest greatest benefits of the tecton ketone exogenous ketone

[00:19:30] is number and then there's several areas right as I said they're foundationally better for your cellular energy creation than glucose glucose goes through 11 steps burns for 80p ketones go through three steps burn 080p to create 80p and

[00:19:46] they create more 80p per molecule than glucose under exertion so it's that foundational that you're just getting better quality cellular energy to start with more if more efficient and more effective the other benefits are it crosses the blood brain barrier so you have cognitive skill cognitive

[00:20:04] improvements are three or four o'clock in the afternoon I can't have my tea or coffee anymore because I'm caffeine sensitive I drink a tecton it kills two birds with one stone one thing it does is it gives me that energy I'm looking

[00:20:16] for without the caffeine and sugar so I sleep well at night but I get the two three hours of focus that I need it also turns off a hormone that your stomach makes called grayling graylings role in your body is just to alert you

[00:20:30] hey buddy you better go eat soon because you're gonna run out of nutrition well in the past that is greatly useful because it would take you you know hours of hunting foraging to find your food whereas now you just go to the fridge

[00:20:43] well ketones turn off that hormone which is incredibly useful because that prevents me from this is what I used to do at Coca Cola let's go get a cookie and has to go get a diet three four o'clock in the afternoon and I

[00:20:57] obviously not the only one right so what that would do is ruin my sleep at night and give me you know cholesterol and whatnot by eating cookies and you know sugar all of that and now I get the energy I get the sweet feeling in

[00:21:12] my mouth that satiate satiates me and I get the energy so that's some really important benefits especially for weight loss that curbing of grayling big deal then for sports and you know athletes and even someone like me I

[00:21:26] college cricket as I said I was a college athlete now I'm 50 53 and now for me to exercise it means in that variable I want to be in pain the next day but with tecton what does what it does is it reduces what would be advantage of

[00:21:42] ketones versus glucose is that ketones do not have a byproduct called lactic acid like sugar does like glucose does so when you have lower lactic acid production you have lower you know soreness the next day and that enables

[00:21:57] me to continue to keep my exercise habit up but for elite athletes now it gives your mental focus is your muscle recovery because of the you know lactic acid thing and it gives you endurance which you know if you manage your

[00:22:11] carbs and your ketones exogenous ketones probably properly you can really get a significant boost in your competitive outcomes so that's kind of the range of you know benefits because it's all foundational sometimes I

[00:22:24] feel like a snake or salesman and oh yeah it does this and it does that and does that but you know if you understand the evolutionary value of it you think why did nature create ketones but it starts making sense well you were hungry

[00:22:38] you're a diet without food so your liver started burning your stored fats now what do you need you don't need to feel hungry so okay let's turn off because you need to be focused okay well focus will also be beneficial with a

[00:22:50] little bit of cognitive boost so improves brain function a bit improves muscle endurance and recovery so you can run after whatever you're chasing for as long as you need to so it's kind of it all makes sense if you understand the you

[00:23:04] know evolutionary context of why exogenous ketones have been you know developed by the military initially then my honest I mean it sounds to me like it's going to take a bit of education right you have to educate the

[00:23:17] market and that's you know something that's probably not new I know it's not new you know over history there's been new products types of products new categories that have taken some education to the markets in order to be

[00:23:31] adopted so you know a like when you look back over time at different consumer products that had to educate the market first there's any any brands or companies or categories that you're looking at for inspiration and education

[00:23:45] and then part two that question is how are you guys going around going about the education component of your marketing yeah really great question and we are looking at and historically if you think about it right anything that was

[00:24:01] really breakthrough required a big transformation of human behavior right so phones for example just using phones is considered why would I ever need to do that and then became why would I ever need a mobile phone and you know so over

[00:24:17] time so that education takes time so there's a book by a guy called Everett Rogers that he wrote in the 60s called the dispersion of innovation or dispersion of ideas and he found the one the one empirically proven

[00:24:31] business model that is truly undisputable is the adoption curve so if you think you know there are lots of guys have written books called crossing the chasm and stuff like that but it all comes down to how do you bring a new

[00:24:44] technology to the market and what you need to do is not get dissuaded by people in the middle of the bell curve or even worse don't ever let yourself get dissuaded by people at the end of the bell curve you've got to figure

[00:24:58] out who's really you know at the cutting edge of the adoption curve and get them on board for us so that's what we're doing we go to the idea show to find people like yourself who have a voice who have credibility who have knowledge

[00:25:15] enough to be able to convey to your user to your listeners and to your followers we have a lot of bringing on fitness trainers nutritionists you know athletes people generally in the public health space doctors MDs they're all

[00:25:30] part of our you know ambassador network and that's one major thing that we are trying to do we are inspired by brands like Apple and Nike because you know like take Nike they didn't just start selling in Walmart they started by

[00:25:44] selling to those runners in college teams and then from there it started to cascade right Apple you know it used to go and jobs and was the act they went and started to sell at places like you know the home brew club people

[00:25:58] already were tinkering with keyboards and you know little monitors and trying to you know do the first home computers of their time and so that's the same thing that we are doing is we're looking at people with extreme needs first and then

[00:26:15] move into and people who can educate and then we slowly move into the mass market today I'm joined by Curtis Christopherson on my very first micro interview on the future of fitness Kurt is the owner and founder of workout and innovative fitness

[00:26:30] he is a 20 year veteran in the wellness space and he's got the success to prove it is also a long-term friend and colleague Kurt just recently launched a newsletter called healthy ambitions give back to the industry that's

[00:26:43] given him so much his goal to help other entrepreneurs scale their wellness businesses just like he has by Kurt what is one actionable insight you can provide our listeners that has been incredibly valuable to you in your

[00:26:56] business career wow powerful question and I could have so many answers to that one but you know I'd say that you know the biggest element of scaling your business is hiring the right people and without the right people you can't

[00:27:08] scale and you know one of my token rules is hire people that you admire hire who you admire when you do that chances are the people that you admire have some levels experience education or impact that you might not

[00:27:22] be able to provide and so when you hire people that you admire in the value that they bring to your organization inevitably they're gonna help you scale your business no matter how big or small it is when you hire people

[00:27:35] that are unlike yourself that contribute value that you can't contribute you're winning and so my biggest rule hire who you admire whether it's the things that you admire about them around their education experience impact or

[00:27:48] even how they lead their personal life I think when you surround yourself with great people you're winning the day that's awesome Kurt thank you so much for that and if you guys want to learn more please check out the healthy

[00:27:59] ambitions newsletter you can go to Curtis Christopherson.com to subscribe and learn more about it and all the great content he's putting out there thank you Kurt awesome thanks yeah it's interesting uh UJI I've seen this kind of

[00:28:14] come into play in numerous times of like I called the other 98 percent so you get one percent on either side you get the high high performers right and then you maybe you get the the populations that are sick or you know for some

[00:28:27] reason low functioning right and and those are at the opposite ends and you can start kind of at either end or both which sounds like you know kind of what you're doing right and then eventually you get into that other 98

[00:28:39] percent of the market yeah so it's kind of interesting right so if you think about the adoption curve it is a bell curve right and people the people the front end are called innovators people the back are called

[00:28:53] laggards but the cutting the bleeding edge of the innovators are who we call evangelists these are people trying to teach other people to educate themselves to change their behavior to improve their health and well-being the

[00:29:07] laggards are people who say yeah diet and all of this these are all fads as long as you know I don't overdo things I'll be okay and they're all overweight and heading towards some form of illness but after they get their illness

[00:29:20] they become health conscious and they get to the top of the queue and now they want to have and that's true it's true for me too like you know I had a

[00:29:28] you know a little bit of a scare you know a few years ago I was misdiagnosed with something but after that as a time God I didn't get what I was told a doctor diagnosed with me with Crohn's disease and I took the same reports to another

[00:29:46] doctor and he said you're completely clear all you need to do is sleep more exercise more and drink more water and so from one diagnosis that will lead to surgery to another diagnosis leads to a slightly improved lifestyle

[00:29:58] that was a difference but that occasion triggered in me a big behavior too I started moving towards being conscious about what I put in my body how much water I drank

[00:30:09] and you know how much time I slept all of that kind of stuff which I didn't used to do before that so we're looking at both those groups as early adopters for the brand people who

[00:30:19] had that epiphany that I need to improve and people who are already been on the path yeah yeah it's an interesting thing and I like I love seeing people like you have decades and decades

[00:30:29] of experience right who are now applying it in their own unique way like what you're doing like you can benefit from all that it's like you finally have the opportunity like well no

[00:30:38] I mean this is just me looking out from the outside at what you're doing it's like I can I have a lot of intention with what we're doing I know this is going to take a little

[00:30:46] of time but if we take the right steps and we keep going this way it's going to be successful right so you know when you look at what you're doing at tecton you know all the experience

[00:30:55] that you have you know how are you intentionally building a brand that has that you know like we alluded to at the beginning that has that emotional connection that has that trust yeah and I think the steps that we're taking in the short term is to have

[00:31:13] exceptionally high bars for ourselves when it comes to quality control of the product itself because I can't build trust in anyone if the product fails so the product is truly as

[00:31:27] great a product as we could humanly make you know and we you know people say what is this natural flavors in your product now under natural flavors you can hide a lot of BS in our case

[00:31:42] it's all plant-based vegan friendly ingredients so there's no we did not take advantage of what we can do you know people hide things like you know they have monk fruit in their product as a sweet

[00:31:54] nut but it's got a little bit of erythritol in it well erythritol there's all kinds of headlines and CNN saying that it's you know causes strokes well we quickly checked in and made sure there's no erythritol in our product and so that's that's the I guess the integrity

[00:32:10] that you need to have for your product to be great the second step is you really want to speak your brand's highest truth and our brand's highest truth is humans are extraordinary they don't have extraordinary potential they are extraordinary just if you think about it in

[00:32:26] the historical context of the universe what we are is extraordinary now most of us don't fully leverage all that extraordinary potential and most of it is driven by some form of inadequacy in exercise sleep nutrition and you could argue mental health a lack of purpose if you look

[00:32:48] and so as a brand would be trying to build these four things help give people the purpose and the inspiration that you can you are extraordinary and you can be extraordinary in little things you don't have to climb Everest you know just be present for your kid right

[00:33:01] and so I find myself and I'm a little stressed out and I don't own days and I'm tired and I can't have coffee because you know I'm you know caffeine sensitive usually you know my kid comes in and says

[00:33:11] something silly I may not give them the time of day whereas when I'm focused and present I'm feeling comfortable I'm going to be a much better father in that moment as well so that's kind

[00:33:22] of you know our purpose comes in there that's how we're building a brand the second step is really build a community with people who actually believe in the values that we believe in that have the same

[00:33:33] purpose so you're working with a lot of ambassadors that are veterans we are working with people who care about veterans and your first responders and doctors who care who given their lives to

[00:33:45] help other people who dedicated their lives I should say to help other people so that's how we're building the network so that's why we were at idea because we expect you to find a

[00:33:55] lot of like-minded people there we did the third thing that I'll say that's really important for anyone that has a technological advantage like we do is keep in mind that technology cannot be predicted

[00:34:07] to be secured forever sooner or later somebody is going to find a way to do what you do or come close enough to fake it that they do what you do and there's a bunch of people who just fake

[00:34:20] it anyway and confuse the heck out of the market so if I just build this brand as a ketone brand what's going to happen at some point is I'll be commoditized along with all the other ketone

[00:34:30] products so what we are doing very very assiduously is work on making sure people understand the difference between tectons approach and other brands approach and our communication, our style, how we speak, what we say, how we promote the product is all driven by a

[00:34:48] level of integrity and authenticity and we will not say anything about what tecton does or ketones do if there isn't a peer reviewed independent study that says that that's what it does

[00:34:59] and it's got to be from a really reputable source so we will not say it. We refuse to launch our product until we had the toxicity data that showed that it was benign completely benign even at 200

[00:35:11] times a daily dose limit for 90 days which is what the mice had so that's kind of the third step is to not just be focused on the ingredient but make sure you don't forget that your job as

[00:35:23] a brand is to inspire people to be their healthiest and we are just one little you know a tool along the way and then from apart from that it's really building a great company you need people

[00:35:35] on your team that are equally passionate about your purpose they're your evangelists they're your salespeople even my R&D person she's incredible she's you know Smith-Uppertale she's the one who designed Snapple Ice Cream way back 30 years ago and worked for Coca-Cola

[00:35:51] she's incredible but she also knows people and she she's willing to put out her reputation her social capital to help throw the brand so attracting great people like her you know we've got Mike Chesney who's my co-founder Victor Dominic, Joe Mato, I mean these guys are all

[00:36:08] purpose-driven individuals that kind of coalesce around our brand. Yeah and it's really you can get great people on your team but to get them so bought in that they're willing to leverage their social

[00:36:18] capital is different right like you can hire someone and pay them to do a job all day long right to get them to invest in that personally which in something which they've built over time

[00:36:28] which is a reputation in their relationships that's that's different right? Yes it is and some of it can be cultivated in people but you know when you're a startup and you've got to hit

[00:36:43] the ground running you've got to find people who are already there and they already have in their you know life a desire to go make a difference do something new do something that's value added

[00:36:55] for society in some way because you know there's arguments that you know our companies social enterprises are the you know to me every company is a social enterprise because you operate

[00:37:07] in society you have to hire people from society you've got to feed people in society you've got to take money from society so you're the social brand whether you like it or not now are you a

[00:37:17] brand with the right civic you know responsibility do you care for your people do you care for your customer do you care for your partners well the more you do the more you know loyalty

[00:37:30] you know I want to get into the topic that we alluded to right in the beginning you know changing human behavior at scale that and I think that ties into everything that you're

[00:37:40] doing it ties into a lot of stuff that people listen to this podcast or trying to do and I'm sure it's more than like a five-minute soundbite within this podcast but like maybe give us some

[00:37:52] insights at a high level when you look at that particular task which is monumental what are some of the key attributes of changing behavior at scale yeah really interesting so

[00:38:04] you know I my TED talk TEDx talk was in 2014 I think and shortly thereafter I got in touch with a guy called Dr. James Prochaska who wrote a book he's well into his 70s maybe now but

[00:38:20] he's a professor at University of Rhode Island but he wrote a book called change for good where what he realizes as a psychologist is that there are different stages of behavior and people go through different stages of change so from the first stage is really pre-contemplation you

[00:38:36] don't even know you want to change I don't know what is metabolic health could I even care about ketones I love sugar so you know who cares then you get into the contemplation mode right

[00:38:48] now you something has happened to trigger in you an interest to learn a little bit more about what changing your you know diet might do for you then the third step that he found is really critical

[00:39:00] that we all forget and really under emphasize but it's really important is helping people prepare for change if they don't go and get their shoes and their socks and the body to run with the

[00:39:13] chances are you're going to turn off your alarm and go back to sleep so preparation is really used very very valid and then you have the action that you actually went for a run or change your

[00:39:22] diet but then he found there's another big problem is most people don't maintain like gigantic percentage of people who try and diet or whatever they just don't stick to it so that maintenance and for each

[00:39:35] stage what I found really interesting Eric is that he found different tools and the first stage you've got to inspire people that tape you could be you need to aspire to be the person

[00:39:47] you would be at the other end otherwise you're not like if you think I'm the Marlboro man I love smoking you don't want to be that web on the other side of behavior change who doesn't smoke

[00:39:55] all right well they're not going to change behavior right so you've got to aspire to be that and he tries to find at an individual level what inspires you that he can then

[00:40:05] help you to change behavior so he's done that for thousands of people now that is change of behavior at an individual level what companies like Coca-Cola and Apple have done is they've recognized that there are certain emotional traits of a brand and it's customer experiences that are

[00:40:23] universal and they manage to change behavior you can go around did some work with Gates Foundation I went to Malawi land tire that's the villages in inland and there's no place where I did not

[00:40:35] see a Coke sign right it's everywhere Apple logos of people's cars and no Apple computers anywhere to be seen right so it's it's the brands have traveled way further than maybe you know and then in Coke's

[00:40:49] case the product is terrible too so for you know from our perspective you know the the the challenge is if those guys could change behavior at scale but they were not necessarily doing

[00:41:03] things that are good for you or healthy for you and you take James Pachaskas changing behavior at an individual level what we did was we married the two processes together is figure out what are the

[00:41:14] what are the most common reasons why people might change behavior and you build your brand on that right so for Apple the thing is you know hey you can be creative you are creative all you need

[00:41:24] is a better piece of equipment that'll make it easier for you right and they seduce you into believing you can do amazing things and you land up doing amazing things using Apple products

[00:41:34] so that's the same thing for tecton is that our biggest aspiration that we notice talking to people who are already following the diet or following the keto lifestyle is that they have recognized how much more optimal they feel mentally and physically and emotionally when they have

[00:41:52] lower carbs and higher ketones in their you know in their diet and so you're going to take that idea and elevate it to the brand concept to say hey listen you are

[00:42:02] extraordinary and you can be your extraordinary self if you take a few key steps and one of them is be a little more conscious about what you eat and drink and part of that is include tecton

[00:42:14] in that repertoire once you get to the point you want to make that change yeah will set you Jay I want to make sure we cover you know kind of like where you're at now I mean if

[00:42:24] you can I believe tecton is a private company right yeah what where is the business at now and you know share whatever metrics or insights you can that you feel comfortable with but

[00:42:36] how are you guys doing yeah so we are now we're doing a three pronged four pronged strategy the first thing let me give you the big picture we are at a we are midway through a series A raise

[00:42:49] so we are raising 10 million we've got about half of it in we are looking at strategic investors to come in one of them that just came in as one of the largest food brokers in the U.S.

[00:42:59] so that's one of the big I guess shots in the arm that we received just this a couple of months back the product is on Amazon as of last week and we have a D2C business which is from tectonlife.com

[00:43:15] all our products will not be on Amazon so some of the new stuff that we are doing NSF sports certified gummies and shots and things like that will be on tectonlife.com then we have the ambassador program where we give 10% of any revenue an ambassador creates for us

[00:43:31] over three years so uh one of our great ambassadors is a guy called Steve O'Reyer he was there at idea at our booth you're a muscular guy yeah incredible fitness coach looks at life very

[00:43:44] holistically so anyone that he sends to our website that buys something for the next three years anything that they buy he gets 10% of that revenue B2B relationships a lot of you know high-end coaches and you know nutritionists have high-end clients and some of them could be investors

[00:44:03] protect on all the ambassador program takes care of all of that and then the last piece is the retail strategy so we are going to be testing we are doing really well in weight loss clinics

[00:44:15] as many as 20 cases a month in some some of these locations because it's being bundled along with the semi-glutide injections now those are expensive they have side effects whereas if you take tecton it does almost the same benefit of curbing appetite but gives you real energy

[00:44:33] and has no side effect so it's working really well in that channel so we're looking to test it in other channels like gyms fitness studios crossfit studios etc and so looking for customers

[00:44:44] direct to you know and we'll sell direct from tecton to them so that's kind of our that's where we are so it's all early days our product just self-reform grass in november last year and then

[00:44:57] we raised some money and then we started doing some activation so we are really on the ground floor right now yeah what is the vision for this let's put a time stamp like 10 years from now

[00:45:08] where do you see the company being yes i would say that you know in three to five years we will be in truly mass market brand by then when i say mass market brand as you'll probably see as a whole

[00:45:21] foods and target and you know higher higher end locations like that gyms you know healthcare practitioners we will have a big portfolio products so that consumers can you know get salad dressings to butters to there's all kinds of ways in which they can improve their keto consumption

[00:45:40] or ketone consumption and you know we're going to be very cognizant about potential partners so there could be an exit to a larger fast move a larger consumer goods of food and beverage

[00:45:54] company potentially as a collaboration to just scale this thing wider than we could on our own or the other approach could be to go into an IPO but you know that's something that we haven't

[00:46:07] fully fleshed out but in the next three to five years we feel we'll be at that level ready for a real big expansion awesome awesome and last question for you jay is you know i asked this

[00:46:19] in the spirit of collaboration with our community here but what do you need right now what how can we help you and in your your venture here yeah i think the the top thing that we

[00:46:30] would love to collaborate is to build a community of practice around the keto lifestyle and help communicate the values of exogenous ketones to help people if they want to get into keto to help to mitigate keto you know the keto flu uh you know it does mitigate that

[00:46:48] gets you into ketosis quickly it can help you as a insurance in case you are already in ketosis but you're wondering you know what's in my soup i might get kicked out so you can have a tech talk

[00:46:58] to educating people on you know recovery rehab you know physiotherapists because you know it helps soup it's incredibly and reducing the you know the soreness and recovery and really helps with that if you can build a community of practice around incorporating exogenous ketones

[00:47:17] into a keto lifestyle or an alternative to a keto lifestyle because some people just can't do it and in that case they can still benefit from you know exogenous ketones and we'd love to

[00:47:29] you know build these people into our community of ambassadors and share an ambassador program with them awesome um well this is it's been really interesting i this is everything i hope to get out of this interview which was you know an education on on this particular segment of

[00:47:46] market where it's going how you stand out and you know what the potential is and ultimately like why should people care right i mean that's that's a big thing is you can launch a consumer brand

[00:47:55] but why should people care um and you outline that very well um if people want to reach out to you or if there's a particular place uh they want people to go online um where would you like people

[00:48:05] to go you Jeff yeah i would uh tectonlife.com so t-e-c-t-o-n life.com and at tectonlife is all our social handles uh followers on linkedin instagram um and obviously you know just sign up on tectonlife.com

[00:48:24] if you're a veteran uh you get an automatic friends and family pricing of a 42 discount this is you pay what i pay for my own product that i drink at home uh and you can sign in through

[00:48:35] govx on our website it's also open to all medical practitioners and first responders so anyone in that field or you know formerly of that field are all eligible for that um and you know we hope to

[00:48:50] have your listeners be a part of a community awesome and then we'd like to participate in yours so let us know we're happy to do collaborations and licensing and those kind of deals to help

[00:49:01] grow the movement. Right on well uj i uh thank you so much for for joining me on a friday morning here uh i know you have a busy schedule but it's been great to uh you know like i said it kind of

[00:49:11] extract all the information i was hoping to find out and you know um go back to you know the first time we met at uh idea i was just i'm like this guy's interesting there's something here

[00:49:20] you know the the product was was good is get me through those uh those rough afternoons of you know a lot of conversations a lot of movement a lot of engagement and uh so there's something here for

[00:49:30] sure one ever since so appreciate it ladies and gentlemen uj thank you so much i'm really grateful for the chance to be here. Hey wait don't leave yet this is your host eric malzone and i hope

[00:49:43] you enjoyed this episode of future of feminist 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 number one

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