Welcome back to the podcast, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. And I'm joined in studio with Jake Hadlock. It's good to have you here, man. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Yeah, this is good. It's good to coordinate because you're a busy guy. You got a lot of stuff happening. And so for those of you that don't know Jake, I want to give you a little bit of an intro. He's the founder and owner of Nutrient, which is one of the fastest growing contract manufacturers. He actually has a new podcast and YouTube show as well, which is Bottom Line. And what I want to talk about today is a little bit of the supplement industry, but I also want to talk about entrepreneurialism, strategies, tactics. So I hope you're good with whatever we go. Absolutely. All right. Cool. Cool. So give us a little bit of the backdrop because I want people to understand you've got this thriving business, but I want them to understand kind of where you came from, how you got into the supplement business or even contract manufacturing in general. Totally. It was a long winding road is the short answer. Like most entrepreneurs. Absolutely. And so it's funny that like Steve Jobs has a quote where it's, you can't connect the dots forward, but you can when you're looking back. Yes. So for me, it was honestly family that got me into it. So my dad died when I was young. I was the oldest of five kids. So I had a really close relationship with my grandpa and he was a very entrepreneurial guy who was starting businesses. He got into the natural products industry and I was still pretty young, but he found a career as a formulator. And I got to see him do a lot of cool things just growing up and through observation. And went to college, was still kind of figuring out what I wanted to do, but I knew I always wanted to do something entrepreneurial. That just kind of runs in my family. And so graduated from college and went to work at a brand. Was doing marketing at the time, but found product development was the piece of the business that I loved the most. So you were doing some marketing, but you also got into product development and that's the piece you gravitated to. Okay, got it. Yeah, specifically at a supplement brand. So, you know, helped develop a number of those. And when that company ended up selling, started doing some formulation, consulting on the side, and then realized, wait, we're doing these. We're sending it off to manufacturers. Why are we not helping people do it ourselves? So that's kind of the short story of how we got into it. Yeah, so Nutrient, now you've got a business that's been scaling and growing, and we're going to talk about that. But I find it interesting because you have a real insider's view on the supplement health industry in general, both from a marketer, you see how it's being marketed, but also from an actual formulation. So I'm curious if anything comes to mind right off the bat. Do you feel like you're kind of behind the scenes seeing some things that a lot of people don't see when it comes to formulation and products? Like you probably see them out on the shelf and you're like, all right, I see the marketing and I know what they're made of. What are some things that come to mind that really have stuck out for you? Absolutely. That's the most fascinating thing is seeing behind the scenes. It's funny how many of the products are very similar. And really what sets a company apart is obviously the marketing and the brand. Like that's number one. But then the team behind it. It's fascinating that you've obviously got to have a solid product. or if you don't take the product and people don't have experiences, they're not going to come back and keep buying. But you've got to have a dynamic brand with a really great team behind it to scale. And I mean, that's really the biggest difference between companies that do well and ones that don't. Yeah. It's interesting because I go now into like supplement stores or things like that. And you see so many different brands and marketing tactics. I really feel like most people buy because of the marketing branding, which is interesting. But are there misconceptions that the public have or that even business owners have when it comes to the health efficacy of these products? What is something that comes to mind for you when it comes to that that most people just don't really understand is the key? The biggest thing that I love to harp onto in my YouTube channel that you mentioned is proprietary blends. Those are the ones that just get me. Yeah, everyone has one, right? Everyone has one. And it doesn't mean they're bad just because there's a proprietary blend on the label. But the companies that want to be a little sneaky about it, they'll throw a ton of good sounding ingredients in the proprietary blend, you know, this buzzword, that buzzword. Unless you know to kind of break it down and wait, how much is really in this? You could be getting just marketing or you could be getting a really great product. There's a huge gap. Now, technically proprietary, they don't even have to tell you all the pieces that are in that blend, right? So isn't it difficult to even know how much is in the proprietary blend because they just give you some lump sum? That's exactly what it is. They have to list every ingredient from greatest to least input in the blend. Okay, so that means the most ingredient is the first listed down to the least. So the one you might want if it's at the bottom, this is probably the least amount that's in there. It's just in there. That's probably what they call fairy dusted a little bit. So it's in there because it looks good on the label. Wow. Now, that doesn't mean that's a blanket statement either because there are, you know, in the supplement world, we talked about branding and marketing is one way you set yourself apart. When it comes to the formulas, you can't get a patent on a formula. So I understand why these things happen and exist, but they're doing it in a protective way. Like anything, you know, the bad actors can come along and, you know, oh, I know how we can do this. That the problem is a lot of people can game and it interesting I used an analogy a while back because I had a couple of supplements that I developed and it a fine line because to get people to take it you want it to taste good but you also are doing it for the health benefits and so it a slippery slope I mean, would more people take a tasty, healthy bar or the most healthy bar on the planet, but it tastes like crap and nobody wants to eat it, right? So it is a blend, but I'm sure you see all of that. But there's also people that can come in and take advantage at the supplement level, right? Any kind of health product at that point, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, to be fair, the companies that really last are the ones that have efficacious products. It's like, you know, maybe marketing gets you to buy the first one. But if you don't have the good effect, if you don't enjoy the product, you're not going to come back for the second, third and fourth buy. So, you know, it plays out over time with what the best products are and the best companies. But, yeah, it's kind of funny behind the scenes. You can see like, oh, OK, they they are making that product choice because they need to hit this price point behind the scenes where this one is. Oh, clearly, they really care about the science and they, you know. Yeah, people don't think about that because obviously people are doing business. They got to stay in business. Of course. You can't just put the most healthy, expensive products in there and ever expect to stay in business. Yeah. But you may, so you got to know what to look for at the end of the day. But I think you made a good point. Time does expose everything, meaning good, solid companies last. And so the products have to work. And so that new, you know, flashy product, if it's brand new, you know, you got to really look into it. And so you've built a company now that has worked with a lot of different industries, whether it's health, supplements, direct sales, whatever. What are some of the characteristics that you think the lasting companies have? What have you seen that lasting companies have besides, you know, obviously a good product? Like what have they done differently that's kept them in the game? I think if you distill it down to something really simple, it's innovation. Because especially if you've got a company that lasts for, I mean, think of how many companies don't even last five years, let alone like 10 years. And when you get past that, past a certain point, you have to innovate yourself past whatever the first thing was that got you success. Maybe it was a single product. And if you just keep going on now, how many companies have we seen that do not last past that single product? Because they can't figure out what is the next play? How do we innovate? So the strategy, I think that does have to really come from who at the top is leading that strategy. And then how are we going to be innovative? Great that this is our cash cow today. What does it look like down the corner a little bit? What are we doing to make sure that we're addressing that? So ways we see that is, okay, what are trends we're seeing in the general health space, right? Like GLP-1s are affecting everything in food and supplements. And so smart companies are seeing, okay, these trends are changing. How is our product different? What's our product strategy going to be? What's our marketing strategy going to be? So from our seat, the ones who really do well, they solve a true need, and then they don't stop innovating. Yeah, and it's interesting because the market's changing so fast, and it's so difficult to stay up. I wonder, I'm sure you've seen this, but with AI coming onto the marketplace, isn't it easier than ever for people to reverse engineer a formulation or come up with something that maybe they don't have the expertise to do, but now they have access to information to do? Is that one of the reasons there's so many companies coming on the marketplace and why it's so crowded? I'm sure that's part of it because you're right. You don't necessarily have to go hire a formulator like maybe five or 10 years ago. And some don't, but that doesn't make it a good thing, right? Totally. Expertise is still important. But AI gets you, I don't know, 80% of the way there, arguably. So absolutely, that's a big part of it. The thing that AI can't do, though, you touched on, you might have a ton of good stuff in there, but then it tastes like crap. That's the thing that AI is not good at, is the actual experience. We've worked on, I don't know how many hundreds of formulas at this point. so we can pretty much tell like when someone sends us here's what we'd like in this product because we do a ton of r&d and so we can see pretty clearly oh this is not going to work great ingredients there but that one that one that one taste bad or smell bad and you've got to have a good experience if it doesn't taste good people aren't going to consume so that's one of the big advantages of it's why i use a lot of partners that have been in the industry so nutrient works with so many different companies you know how these great ideas are going to come about without wasting a lot of time and energy and you've got that expertise to add. So I'm curious, one of the things I wanted to ask you is, in your opinion, because you've been around a while, how do companies balance health efficacy with compliance and marketing to grow their business? Like what's more important and what have you seen that kind of, how do companies balance all those? Because there's companies that are, you know, right now exaggeration is like the norm. So how do you balance health with compliance with growing a business from your perspective as a formulator for some big companies? Fortunately, because I don't own a brand, I don't have to do that myself, but I get to observe a lot of it. You watch them do it, right? Absolutely. You know, it's, I would say it really depends on the company's life cycle of what that mix looks like. Because when you have like a legacy company that been around for a decade or over a decade they going to weigh compliance Yeah more to lose Yeah absolutely So they going to be really protective of we're probably not going to make that claim in marketing. We're probably not going to put that on the label. A little too gray area. Then you see the upstarts, the innovators who want to disrupt the legacy company, they'll come in and they'll say- Aggressive, like it's time to go. Absolutely. They're like, cool, we'll figure out if we get in trouble from these claims or that claims. Now, from our seat in Nutrient being a contract manufacturer, we are responsible for making sure the claims on the label are accurate. So meaning if it's a claim on a label, then there has to be something substantiated behind it through a scientific study. So testing, documentation, you cover that base for everybody. We do the label. Oh, you have to at least. We have to. We are held responsible for that by the regulators that regulate our industry. So that is always like a, you have to get that done. If your manufacturer isn't doing that, find a new one, because that should be a basic. But it is interesting that the younger companies are usually the ones that, you know, push the boundaries a little more on what they say, what they print, on all those kind of things. Yeah, it's interesting. It is. You know, one of the things I wanted to ask you is, you talk about that you're not a doctor or an influencer, you're an operator. And I think that gives a very unique perspective. Like, I don't think of myself as an influencer or thought leader either, even though we have a top podcast and all these things. I'm kind of more of a businessman. But what do you mean when you say an operator? What perspective does that give you that a medical professional or an influencer doesn't necessarily have? It's a day-to-day reality that you just don't understand unless you've been doing it. When you're the one overseeing purchase orders, when you're the one seeing where raw materials are getting stuck, you know, coming into the country, when you're the ones overseeing production schedules, when you're the ones seeing what ingredients are going to work with a flavor or not, it's, it's such a different seat than, you know, let's say the science side, they're going to look at it more from an academic standpoint, which is great. And they're going to understand, okay, these are probably the dosages that we need in a product. And then you get it to, okay, How do we make it taste good or palatable? That usually they don't have the expertise there. And that's where they rely on someone like us to do that. Because we have been doing that for years now. On the other hand, with influencers, you know, that's something that overall has been so positive for brands is working directly with influencers. And they are great at what they do. But again, a lot of them don't have the formulation expertise to go in and maybe they know, yeah, I'd love this ingredient or that ingredient. in it, but they really need someone who, where we can show, look, rubber meets the road here. Yeah. And here's what that price point is going to be. If you want all that stuff in it, or if you want it to be, you know, there's always like a new villain ingredient all the time in, in supplements. The latest, greatest. And so a lot of times they'll come to us with, well, cause they heard, yeah, the trends are, Hey, I need to make sure I'm not having this, this, this, this in my product. It's going to taste bad then. So, and so it's always that balance, It's like everyone has the role in the ecosystem, but as an operator, it's like we have to ship the product at the end of the day. Yeah. Well, and that's one of the strengths of what you guys do, which I really like because, you know, I tell a lot of business owners, I say, you know, first of all, marketing and sales is probably top. But when you're an operator, you have the ability to build a business that can scale. And you can bring in influencers, you can bring in marketing teams, and you can bring these things. But if you're a doctor or a marketer and you don't have a business infrastructure, you can't scale. Right. Because and probably your role has had to evolve over time from the guy doing that stuff to scaling. But now you're scaling. So tell me what you've done. Do you have any particular processes that you do with your team? You've got a team of like 25 people now in a nice big facility. Do you have processes or are there principles you put in place with your company? What do you do as an entrepreneur that's allowed you to scale your business that you feel like is something that maybe it is unique to you, maybe it isn't, but it's something you feel like is a key to success of why you're scaling. Absolutely. You know, in the first, I mean, we met originally like in the first, I don't remember, it was in that first year or two of starting this business. And back in those days, it was like, whatever needs to get done, at the end of the day, we're probably going to be the ones making sure it gets done. And that only lasts for so long. Like, that doesn't scale. You're one person trying to do so many different things, but you also have to do those things out of necessity sometimes, and especially in the early days. So that's how it was in the early days was, you know, designing those kind of basic systems to put in place. But then the most the thing that's really allowed us to scale is bringing in a solid team to fill in the gaps that are not my expertise. Like I'm good at certain things. I'm not good at everything. And that's where I had to realize with being an entrepreneur that my success and the company's success is going to come if we can truly build a team where we all fill in each other's missing skill sets. Because I'm not the, honestly, I'm not the best at designing every SOP. You don't want to be. I don't want to be. And I've got a COO who does that for me. And I got a project management team that does that better than I could do So for us it took a period of time And it it finding those right people takes you know the right culture the right kind of people It takes a long time to fill out the team But that by far is the biggest thing. Bringing in team who could build the SOPs, who could build the systems to scale. To scale. Because you have to have systems to scale, like just bottom line. Yeah, and that's the number one thing I've seen when growing businesses from six to seven, seven to eight, eight to nine figures, as I've done that or people that I've worked with, it goes from doing whatever it takes to grow the business to bringing in leadership and also personally now needing to become the CEO, the chief executive officer of things and not just do it yourself, which you always feel like you could do it better than anybody else, right? So it was a little bit of, you know, blind faith there. But if you bring in the right people, it really helps to scale. Well, last question I was going to ask is, what do you do on a daily basis for daily rituals that keep you focused on success, consistent? I mean, I found most successful people have some kind of daily rituals are always different. What is it that you do? Mine's really simple. You know, I'm not one of the guys who is like cold plunge at 4 a.m. Then the gym, then that, you know, I'm not I'm not that kind of a guy for me. It's more simple. I have the daily stoic book next to my nightstand. So like when I wake up, absolutely. Like it's, that's something just from a high level stoicism has really helped me become a better entrepreneur and deal with all the ups and downs that come with it. So it's like a nice little routine of, I'm going to get a thought from some like, you know, good stoic thinker. And then, you know, it's, it's the basics, like supplements are always a part of it based on what I do. So it's, you know, coffee with collagen. It's, I'm going to do a, you know, some kind of a hydration drink. And, uh, but early in the morning, it's, I'm doing something to read, like get my mind ready. And then it's jumping into work after that. So I love that because I do find that if you win the morning, you win the day, but if you focus on yourself first and you do this very similar to me, you know, get your mind body, you know, and, and everything focused on the right things and carry it throughout the day. That's awesome. Well, listen, um, I wish we had more time, But what else would you like to, are there any strategies, tips, anything you would have for business owners, people that are wanting to scale, anything that you would suggest in the given marketplace because everything's so crazy right now? I think it's finding the thing that you are truly good at that other people where you get noticed for being better. I hate the message of follow your passion because I'm super passionate about music, but I'm not going to go have a career in music. for me, I figured out what I was good at. I figured out this skill set in, you know, specifically supplements and getting to the bottom line of what is good, what is not, and dissecting that for people who don't have that background and, you know, are kind of, you know, unfamiliar with it. So that was- Well, and I want people to go check out your YouTube channel, by the way, Bottom Line, which is what you're hosting now. Yeah. What is, when you say you try to get to the no nonsense, what do you mean by that? Like, what's the whole point behind why you started that podcast and what do you talk about on it? Yeah, I appreciate you asking about it because it's interesting to see how many large brands get so big and the products are really okay at best. And then you see, or I see because of just what we do for a business on the day, I see smaller companies that have incredible products and then just don't get there to that same level. And yet, since I'm behind the scenes, I can see what this one's dosed at and I can see what that one's dosed at. Wow. And it can be kind of frustrating that way of like, oh man, just because that company has figured out, you know, how to work with this influencer or the marketing this way, they're the ones killing it right now. Oh yeah. And yet, yeah. And yet like the products, there's so many great products from brands that people just don't know about. So that's what I try to do is like give a supplement insiders view into, hey, maybe this product's not as good as you thought it was. maybe check out some of these, which are great and that will be the future. So that's what I try to do to it. That's a, that's great information. So where can people check out your YouTube channel and your, your podcast? Yep. So it's just YouTube. If you search bottom line, that will pop up. I've got a ton of videos. So I've been doing it just about a year now. Okay, cool. And then if they want to connect with you, any kind of contract manufacturing, or even get to, you know, just connect with you, follow you, where's the best place to do that? Yeah. Our website is nutrient with an extra I, so N-U-T-R-I-I-E-N-T dot biz. Okay. Or look me up on LinkedIn, Jay Cadlock. If you search nutrient, you'll find it. Yeah, I'll put the links in the show notes. And for those of you that want to check out more about this, I encourage you to go check it out. That's kind of interesting to hear the stories, the information behind the scenes of a lot of these big things that are out there. I mean, the health and wellness industry is one of the biggest out there. So anyway, appreciate you being here. And for those of you that are listening for the first time, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Don't miss any episodes. And, you know, the whole reason we bring these messages to you is because we want to give you strategies and tips to grow your business. But we also want to remind you, and I always like to end with this, that it's never too late to start living the life you're meant to live. But you've got to listen and follow time as principles, do things that help to focus on your own mind, body, money business. And if you do that, you know, anything can happen. So hit us up on the Daily Mastermind. Hit us up on Authority Formula. Let us know what you're working on. And we'll look forward to talking to you again soon. Have a great day. Thank you.
