Trends Shaping Health & Wellness in Ecommerce: GLP-1s & Beyond

And if you're going to try to measure what's coming next, you have to think about this. There's very, very few megatrends, right? So like protein, fiber, sleep, like these are megatrends.

To give everybody who's listening some scale, there's roughly 30, 31 million Americans who are on GLP-1s right now. So small brands like, let's talk under $100 million, are driving 35% of US food and beverage category growth, but they're only 13% of the market. It seems to me then the play is like you just need to really be thinking about omnichannel from day one. You can't just start out D2C in these categories.

I would always say this was my advice for about 10 years, is that you should start as high as possible. Mike Beckham from Simple Modern Water Bottles and the True Classic guys kind of show that you can make a lot of money on the other end. So I would say pick one of the extremes. Just don't go in the middle. Nobody wants another $50 t-shirt. You have to be $500. You have to be $5.

This is sort of a winners and losers episode, and we're gonna throw a bunch of stuff at you. I didn't know this, and I don't know, Sean, if you knew this, but protein is the biggest category right now, I think, in consumer goods. Like, it's $8.5 billion. It's 32 times larger than electrolytes. And I think you've mentioned this, I've seen other people mention this, like, are we at peak protein, or are GLP-1s gonna keep it sort of the queen of of CPG. I feel— I think I've made this joke before— I feel like there's a point coming where like protein's going to be in your oxygen. Like you're just going to have like hook it up to your, your, you know, face mask and that's how you're going to get your protein. But there's— I would say I think we can all agree that none of this is really short-term trends, right? This is like a very large and dramatic rewiring of consumer. Might be the biggest one we've ever talked about on this show because all of us are in like durables and other categories. And I think where I want to go today, Sean, is like, if you're— if we're talking to somebody who's like building a brand today or is in this space, how should they be looking at all of these trends? So we've got a bunch of segments, we're going to walk everybody through them, and I want to start with the actual, like, the sort of the, you know, the white elephant in the room, this GLP-1 halo effect.

Yeah, well, you know, obesity was the greatest scourge of the past 50 years. There was like no bigger cost to human life in America at least than obesity. And we've just cured it. Like, you know, you can, you could be mad all you want. People like are, but like the reality is we have cured obesity and it'll, it'll be, it'll be totally gone as like a public health crisis in another 50 years. Like in 2 generations, like it won't happen anymore. So it's awesome. I'm glad, I'm glad we totally have cured it. It's gonna save a lot of people a lot of heartache and early deaths and diabetes and whatever else. But it is going to cause a bunch of, a bunch of losers, you know, and it's very easy to point out who you think is going to lose. But I actually, I, you know, everyone's like, oh, junk food's going to, going to suffer. Like fast food's going to suffer. Like all of those things, you know, one, one weird thing to think about is better for you might actually be the biggest loser. And let me unpack that. Like how many people are buying the healthier version of cookies or healthier version of crackers or healthier version of whatever. And what about in a world where you don't have an appetite? There's actually no need to eat the healthier version of that. You're trying to not overeat, basically, right? The low-cal foods.

It's also pretty crap. Like, a lot of those better-for-you alternatives are still crappy. Like, they're still highly processed. There's a lot of— there's just a lot of junk in them. I don't know. Okay, so One of the crazy things when I was looking at this at like the, the topics for today is that people who are on GLP-1 spend more on fresh produce. So 55% increase on going to the produce aisle, 32% increase on yogurt, and chicken is up 31%. And they've cut sweets by 58%, salty snacks by 44%, and sugary drinks by 41%. So to give everybody who's listening some scale. There's, I think, roughly 30, 31 million Americans who are on GLP-1s right now, and it's growing. Like, it's one of those one-chart businesses. Like, it's basically a line straight up and to the right. So how is Coca-Cola and Pepsi and all these, like, massive— how the hell are they surviving this? Like, that is— I, I have to ask, I— because those are staggering numbers.

I think people are addicted to, to Coca-Cola. So even if you're on GLP-1s, I think people are going to drink Coke Zero, whatever else. But like the Lay's portfolio is what I'd be think of as like, you know, obviously the biggest losers. It's like if people are eating fresh chicken and salads, they're not gonna be eating potato chips. But then there's a whole rash of companies who came out to make the better-for-you version of that stuff. And I just think that might get hit doubly hard. You know, think about candy that people like. There's a, there's a better-for-you candy, right? Like they, it ends up swapping sugar, it's lower calorie, like it has maybe better for your gut. But if candy is decreasing 60% year, year over year, or 60% by the end of the decade, I think better-for-you candy might, might decrease 90% just because who, who's gonna be buying better-for-you candy if no one's buying normal candy? So just something to think about. Those, those smaller adjacent categories might be getting super screwed. But then there's obviously the, the big losers— Taco Bell, like, or whoever else.

You know what else I wonder too is, do these sort of like sweet treats, bad things for you, do they just get more expensive on a per unit? Like, is that how the industry saves itself, is like they basically try to move these things upmarket? In pricing because you're like, well, now they're not selling as much of them. So, you know, a Mars bar is now going to cost you $17, um, because it's a luxury.

Candy goes back to being like a treat, like ice cream goes back to being a treat. It's like, look, if you're on GLP-1s, you might have a scoop of ice cream, but it might just be once a month and not once every, every night, right? So like, I think that's— it could, it could be a reduction, and then in that reduction, an increase in the, the luxury market for sure. Like more of an experience-based snacking. Uh, but let's, let's, let's talk about protein because protein has a lot of good things going for it. It is one of the three macronutrients. So carbs, protein, fat, that's it. It's like, that's like what all food is made out of. Um, so it is going to be hard for something to be as big as protein ever is. But at the same point, it, we have protein everything. There's protein water companies that I could send them to you. They make unflavored protein that you mix them with your water. And it's like, at some point it's like, people are gonna get proteined out. So what, what, what, what's gonna replace that?

[Sponsor Content] Everywhere we turn right now, there is some world-changing AI announcement. And I think the trick for us operators is figuring out what's actually gonna help our business. Is this stuff saving us money? Is it helping us grow revenue? Is it helping us grow profit? Like, where's the freaking ROI? Jason, for Hexclad, tell everybody what is actually working for you guys. [Sponsor Content] Yeah, look, I'm laser-like focused on implementing AI wherever we can to just make us more efficient. Fulfill has been huge for us. Like my team is constantly using Fulfill's new CLI tool and MCP features. With Claude, they're now able to query Fulfill data. They, they can write code up dashboards. I mean, we get these awesome dashboards on operations and, and Fulfill continues to build things that are actually useful for brands. It's hard to see what kind of AI work is valuable. And what isn't. Sure. Like there's so much out there, so much coming at us, but Fulfill seems to be giving us things we can really use to get more efficient.

Well, I actually wonder if you get, uh, have you heard of like the, so I, I see content, right? This, I'm on a bit of a health kick right now. So like I'm getting my Instagram feed is like tuned to this, but there's a conversation around like the bioavailability of protein. So like how much do you actually absorb? When you take it. So like, even though there might be a product that claims it's got 40 grams of protein, it's, it might actually only have like 22 grams of like bioavailable protein. So I do wonder if we see the protein category for like brand operators, it's like, how do you slice up the category? We've seen the obvious thing, which is like put protein in everything. Now are we gonna see like further niching down of the protein? So like now I have like a bioavailable positioning of protein. Right. Or like a GLP-1 specific positioning of protein could be an interesting one.

Yeah. And if some, like, you know, 5 years ago, if someone pitched me, hey, we're going to make protein bubble gum, like I might be interested in that. I'd be like, that's awesome. Like I, I protein everything. But now if I'm, someone's pitching me to invest in something and their lead pitch is we're going to be the protein version of X, I'm probably not interested in that. I just don't think there's enough space to actually stand out. What I'm interested in is like new delivery methods of the same stuff you're already taking. It's like, why did Groon sell for a billion dollars? It's like, they really put gummies back on the map. Gummies have already— have always been around. They put them back on the map. I don't know if you know Ultra Pouches. I know those guys over there. Like, you know, like it or not, 50 million Americans, mostly men, are addicted to Zyn right now. So like, they are— they are putting Zyn in their mouth. And yeah, at least— at least 50 million. Yeah, dude, you should— if you have If you ever want to pull up the craziest chart ever, it's like Zinn in the past 20 years in America went from something only freaks did to now everybody in Gen Z is doing it. So pouches are going to rise that high. It's like for the first time. And then going back to the GLP-1 conversation, for the first time ever, people are injecting themselves with stuff. It was a no-go zone for so many people, but now we have 30 million Americans injecting themselves every week. So now they're gonna be down to inject more stuff. It's why, it's why people are excited about the peptide boom. If you have to inject peptides, it's like, okay, well now people are, are okay injecting themselves, so it's not a weird thing anymore. So new delivery methods I'm excited about. And until you start mainlining protein, I just don't know if there's more delivery methods you could do with protein.

Right. And it does seem like protein is, is very much a, like the, the big guys do own a significant chunk of share in a lot of the, in, in a lot of protein products. Have you heard of this whole like protein theater theory? It's like, that's basically what protein's turned into now is like all content is all performative and that it's actually, there's just like a ton of high sodium like filler and that's what we're sticking protein into basically.

Dude, you know, Snickers has a protein bar, so it's like, it's like if you wanna eat a candy bar, they're like, bro, we got 20 grams of protein. And people are buying that being like, it must be good for me. It has protein. And it's like, oh dude, that's so the, the shark, the shark has been jumped, bro.

On protein, you know, just tying it back to the GLP-1 thing, do you see people playing the GLP-1 angle with their products? So even if it's not like related directly to a GLP-1, it's like, is it GLP-1 adjacent? So I saw an ad from Mars Men about like their thing and how it, how it should be taken by GLP-1 users. Right? So like, they're clearly like, okay, all of you people, like there's cert— certain amount of men who are taking GLP-1. So they've, they've got like, I was in their ad library the other day. I'm like, there's a bunch of ads here all around like Mars Man and GLP-1s. And I would've never like on the surface put those two together, but it got me thinking. I'm like, well, what else can you sell as a like side effect or a positive symptom of somebody being on GLP-1s? And should brands be thinking about this. Like, how do I basically create this as a new angle in my ad account or a new funnel?

Yeah, if you sell something that goes inside of you, it's like you have to try to ride whatever the wave is. But I've— okay, so I help with private equity group sometimes, um, and they sent me over a deal to, to review and it was a meal replacement shake. And yeah, and you know, they were, they were really big in a non-American market and they were like, think about how big we can be in America. And my, my whole pushback was GLP-1s are going to totally crush you. And they were like, no, no, no, we're gonna— we'll be taken with GLP-1s. It's like you take your GLP-1s, you're not hungry anymore, but you need to get your calories in, you take this meal replacement shake, right? It's basically a Huel competitor or whatever. And I just didn't believe that. I think the biggest loser in the GLP-1 experiment is going to be like the weight loss industry, obviously. It's like people have been selling snake oil forever, and meal replacement shakes fall into that. Um, so, you know, your questions about what positive angles can you take, and right now everybody's taking this works with GLP-1s, or if you're on GLP-1s, you should take this. I don't know how that's going to work with wallets or luggage, but, uh, I'll try to, I'll try to think of some ads. But also I think a lot of those people will end up finding out that their product becomes obsolete because of the GLP-1 craze.

Yeah. I mean, you made the comment before we recorded it, like the, you know, plus-size clothing is another one. Uh, like I would say like all of the products that service you know, obesity. Like, any, any industry that was born out of like people are just overweight and unhealthy, all of that's gonna take a punch. I actually wonder like how, how big of a business is diabetes?

Dude, I had the same thought. So I'm glad you brought up plus-size clothing. This is what I mean by there's third and fourth order effects of GLP-1s taken off. It's like they're gonna hurt, um, the weight loss industry for sure. Like, if you're trying to sell coaching plans about how to lose weight, you're screwed. But also, plus they're closing with the fastest growing category for the past 20 years in apparel outside of, you know, athleisure. It's just, it's not going to be around anymore, or it's going to be around but just in way, way smaller quantities. And it totally ties to everything else we're talking about.

Oh my God, the size range of clothing companies is about to get tighter.

Totally. And yeah, so you, you brought up diabetes, um, One, diabetes is a horrible condition and I'm glad that we have something that can stop type, type 2 diabetes before it happens because you're already injecting yourself with insulin if you have type 2 diabetes. So it's like, hey, you're pre-diabetic, get on GLP-1s or else you're gonna be injecting yourself anyway. Right? So I think that's, that's where a lot of this adoption's coming from. But you think about diabetic socks, bro. Diabetic socks is probably like a $3 billion a year business, right? And it's going to go down now. It's like there's no, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It, it could be a billion dollar business. You see a 66%. Contraction in that, just because, you know, people are going to be healthier longer.

[Sponsor Content] Call me a nerd if you want, but one of my favorite things is when one of my existing software partners, in this case Northbeam, adds something that I would have had to have normally paid more and separately for. Incrementality was broken and Northbeam decided to fix it. [Sponsor Content] Matt, you're not just a nerd, you're also cheap. Yeah, and one of the things my team and I are looking forward to with this is now having MTA and incrementality cleanly tied together. It's really nice having multiple views of a test totally integrated. From design to monitoring, we can just focus on the insights and not the logistics. So now your incrementality test results, they just feed right into your Northbeam MTA dashboards that we're just used to looking at every day.

Yeah, I, I don't think any of us are gonna say no to less work and making life easier for all of our teams. Uh, if this is interesting to you, go to northbeam.io and ask for a demo and feel free to tell them that the operator sent you. We're at 30, 30 to 40 million Americans that are on GLP-1s right now, like some, or something close to it. I know there's other names for them. Um, but that requires you to inject yourself and all of a sudden it's about to be a pill. Like, it's like any other supplement that you take, and that's just gonna reduce the friction. I don't like the idea of sticking a needle in myself. I don't know, maybe I'm weird like that. Some people are normal. Maybe I'm just not normal. Um, but I imagine as the friction goes down, or like, maybe it becomes like a pill you take once and it's good all year, right? Like, it's not even something you have all the time.

Yeah, you know, hopefully, hopefully in 10 years. I mean, I think, I think we're going to be at the stabbing yourself phase for the next probably 2 to 5 years. I think orals will slowly come out, and then we'll have to test the efficiency of them. But if you want the newer, best ones, like there's stuff coming out of trial right now that makes, makes GLP-1s look old, right? So this is, this is the next— it's a trillion-dollar wave, right? It's going to fast food and snacks and plus-size clothing and diabetes. Uh, but people will probably live longer, so that's something you could like— what are the— what— who are going to be the winners? It's like elderly activities. So I would start a company taking old people on walks to museums. There's gonna be more old people walking more, right?

So I was gonna go with retirement communities and like that kind of thing, but sure.

Yeah.

Professional walking services for old people.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's a Sean Frank business advice for 2026.

Hey dude, we're just freestyling here. This is my first podcast back.

There's another thought I had around this, which is like, what are— so it's, it's clear to me that the grocery store is totally going to get rebuilt. Like that has to happen, right? So like if all of a sudden 100, 150 million Americans, maybe more, are on some version of these, a peptide, whatever the hell you want to call them, uh, and they're buying 50, 60, 70% more produce. That has to impact how the store is laid out, the supply chain behind that store. It has to. Like, there's just no way that you have like 80% of the store in boxed processed food when nobody's buying. That's just going to be a demand-driven change that needs to happen. Maybe grocery stores get smaller. We just might be on a path, a very long windy path to being just like Europe. It's like everything is small fruit markets or vegetable stands because that's what we actually need.

The other thing, like, let's just— I want to keep thinking about this future where things are different. Um, low impact sports will get more and more popular. So like, if we have a bunch of people who are currently 30 to 50 pounds overweight and they stop being overweight, they're going to want to do something. But these people aren't going to want to play You know, intense basketball or something. I think pickleball probably gets even— yeah, like pickleball was good for old people in the pandemic and I think it's, I think it's gonna be great for GLP-1 people. It's gonna make you feel a little active. You get outside, you sweat, it's competitive. So anyway, more, more winners there, man.

Does your current thinking around consumables, like I know you guys, Connor was talking about it on the mops, you guys launched Gut Culture, which is a fiber play. Um, is that tied at all to the GLP-1 craze, or was that just a whole other trend that you could see, that you saw coming?

Yeah, why do we launch Gut Culture? I mean, there's 3 macronutrients, and protein has been on the biggest tear ever, right? Um, I don't think we're gonna get people to start taking fat. I mean, there's, there's definitely good fats, right? Healthy fats like omega pills, whatever. And then carbs are, have been the devil for a long time. Now fiber is a carb, but it's an insoluble fiber, so your body can't actually process it. So that's why like if you ever look at a nutrition label, they'll actually add it back. But what does fiber help you do? It helps you poop. And what do GLP-1s help you do? They totally mess up your stomach sometimes. So we saw it as a, just a trend emerging. Fiber is going to be big. I don't think it's gonna be as big as protein, but it'll be the closest thing that it, We will have the protein. Everyone's going to need to take more fiber. Colon cancer is on the rise amongst our generation because we eat processed and nobody's pooping enough. So we made Gut Culture. It's a fiber supplement. We're gonna do more stuff in the fiber space. And the way I'm thinking about stuff is, if I'm investing in consumables, you need a new delivery method that solves a classic problem. The problem can't be weight loss because that problem has been fully taken off the board. And you have to focus on other areas of health. So skincare is going to be more important, sleep is going to be more important, gut health is going to be more important, uh, you know, dental care will be more important. Like, anything that has— doesn't have to do with actually losing weight will end up absorbing a lot of that. People are still very vain. And anyway, we went with fiber first, so, and it's going great.

What's your take on this whole looksmaxing thing? I've had a few people ask me about this because they know I'm in consumer. Is this a short-term— do you think this is like a long-term trend? On that, everything you just said makes me think of looksmaxing. It's like people are inherently vain. Human beings need some kind of way to differentiate, create structure, class hierarchy, like all that stuff. What the hell is this all about?

Yeah, look, I'm, I'm the— I'm like the right age and demographic where I've been hearing about this shit for like 8 years, bro.

Okay, okay, like I just heard about it.

Okay, yeah, so like, uh, yeah, so like, do you know the whole thing about mewing? Like that was an actual doctor who came up with this idea. Like that, um, though his, his whole thing is that people have underdeveloped, uh, you know, chins and jawlines because we give them, we give babies soft foods. He's like, you, you actually need to be building up like the muscle density and the bone density by like chewing hard things. And like having a pacifier all the time actually makes people have these underdeveloped chins. So he's a doctor who's dead now, but like that was his whole idea was that you actually need to strengthen your, your bones. Like by either doing damage to them or rubbing them or whatever and getting like a more, you know, full jawline. Anyway, so I heard about that like 10 years ago and now it's like this big thing that everyone's talking about. Looksmaxing.

Is that the little chewy thing? Like I see the ads sometimes, like people chew on this like thing, like a muscle.

Yeah.

So that was, so it's like to make a more defined jawline.

Yeah. Jawsers House. Yeah. So Jawsers House was one of our old clients. I think they went out of business, like they went bankrupt or whatever. But in my agency days, Jawzrsize was one of our clients and it's like a thing like you chew to make your jaw better.

Are you paying attention to, or is there ways that you monitor some of these, I guess like these larger trends in consumer? Like I'm just thinking of everybody who's like building brands right now. There's just so much data in this space, uh, that has, has me thinking like there's just so many brands to build. Like it goes back to the whole like, why are we bullish on consumer?

It just—

so much is changing right now. How do you actually track some of this stuff, or do you, or do you just like— it just comes up through how you consume content online? Like, I'm just so curious.

Like, we don't— we— I said this in maybe a podcast 100 episodes ago. It's like, if you want to know what's coming, go to Erwan. It's like, you know, and maybe Erwan's too, too, uh, mainstream now, but like, you go to a health food store and you see what like hippies are talking about. Like, hippies were on kombucha Um, the, the founders of Ridge, Daniel and his dad. So Paul Kane is a massive hippie and he like went to India in like the '70s and like it was a Buddhist, like the whole thing. So he, like, he used to make Daniel, when Daniel was 8 years old, drink kombucha and they called it the heebie-jeebies. It was just this gross jar that like they would cultivate, but like that, that ended up being right. That ended up being this, this, this mega trend. So there's always people on the front line and if you're gonna try to measure what's coming next, you have to think about this. There's very, very few megatrends, right? So like protein, fiber, like sleep, like these are megatrends people are gonna care about. And then there's, there's a lot more ingredient trends, but not very many. Creatine's an ingredient trend, right? Like people have taken creatine for 25 years, they're gonna take it for another 25 years. Its rate of, you know, penetration throughout a society will go up and down slowly over time. But like, what we, I think what you need to look at is like, what are the macro trends? You only have to get a couple of 'em right. And then what are the ingredient trends? What's coming? Like, I've, I've, I publicly said that like, I think colostrum is going to be a trend. I think people are already taking it.

Oh, it's gonna be massive. Yep.

There's, there's huge companies being built in colostrum right now. Some people tell me that it's, it's already over and like, you know, the winners have already been made. I don't know.

[Sponsor Content] If you're scaling an e-commerce brand today, ads alone aren't enough. Aftersell focuses on the one moment that every brand already owns— after checkout— and turns the post-purchase moment into more profit. Monetize every order with post-purchase offers and thank you page experiences without disrupting checkout or hurting conversion. Enterprise-grade tech used by Gap, Ticketmaster, Macy's, and Target, now driving results for brands like True Classic, HexClad, Ridge, and Jones Road. I would know. This is the reason I ended up buying 3 pans from HexClad instead of 2. AfterSell has already generated over $1 billion in additional revenue for e-commerce brands, revenue that doesn't require more traffic or higher CAC. So check out AfterSell and tell them that The Operator sent you.

I don't know if I ever buy into this whole like the winners have been selected thing, because there's just like, there's no monopolies in consumer, right? It's just cycles. So like you could be a, um, like many, many years ago, a friend of mine, uh, Charles, sold his protein company Vega for like $600 and change million. And I remember people saying, that's it, That's like the vegan protein. That's it. There's the winner. You know, there's no more protein powder companies. And I'm like, every 3 years my wife brings home some new protein powder that has some new way of being better than the old protein powders. And that, it just seems like this is the cycle in consumer. Like there are no monopolies in consumer in any category.

The thing is tastes change. Like it's, it's not, you don't get lock-in. People want new brands. People want to try new things. Um, you know, someone pitched me human colostrum. They were like, yeah, we actually, we found a way to actually like, uh, bio-develop the equivalent of human breast milk and we're trying to sell it to people. I didn't invest in it, but I'm like, that's a crazy idea. So there's a lot, there's a lot of like, there's always gonna be new innovation and new stuff to try. Um, you know, people are pitching tallow really hard right now as like skincare and cream, right? And it's one of those things where I'm like, I just think The branding needs to be totally right. I don't think people wanna rub, you know, beef, beef parts on their face.

Dude, do you wanna talk about the hippie thing that has been— this is, that's a world I know, 'cause my wife is kind of, she's like very much one of those people that is super early to all this weird shit. That's been like, I don't know, 5 to 10 years, like tallow face cream and tallow deodorant. Like we brought this crap home a decade ago. Uh, it is weird. It's a hard sell. Like it feels super strange, uh, like just mentally that, that you're right, that's a branding thing. Absolutely. Um, a total side note too, okay, last week I was at, uh, ECF Camp, which is like their, you know, Andrew's sort of smaller event for larger brands, and I met two brothers that sell freaking caskets online. Like, I'm like, they're— you're— so you have an e-commerce casket business, like for people who are dead? They're like, yeah. And they're young guys. They're like, I'm like talking to you like you're big enough to be at this event. I'm like, tell me more, man. Like, how do you sell a casket on the internet? So everything is doable. I, I'm no longer shocked at any category in any play.

Yeah, dude, totally. So look, there's, there's always going to be, um, macro trends and there's always going to be ingredients. Like, you know, weight loss is You can't even call it a trend, but it was, it was the biggest possible category that you could make money in for the past 30 or 50 years. I mean, Herbalife, every— everybody wanted to lose weight. And now, uh, the pharmaceutical companies developed an actual perfect cure for being fat and they've released it on everybody. And now it's like, okay, I— it— that money will flow somewhere. People will always want self-improvement. So it's going to go to skincare, it's going to go to sleep, it's going to go to— maybe people get really into bodybuilding and protein actually stays, stays hot for a long time. I don't really know where going to go. If I, if I could, I wouldn't be doing this podcast. But you just want to, you want to have some bets in the game. You want to pick something and try it.

Do you, uh, this is like a total— I wonder, this is like the conspiracy theory in me, um, if you're a pharmaceutical company and you've developed, you know, Ozempic or one of these like peptides, you've got to be asking the question about like, what does this do to every other drug that we sell? Because like obesity being the kind of the lead domino in a lot of illness. You get rid of it, you get rid of a lot of other crap, you know. And these guys own the diabetes drugs, like they own all this other stuff. So in some way they're shooting themselves in the foot.

Yeah, but I guess, you know, the beauty is everyone will be on it forever. It's your, your, your TAM gets really big and you can't stop taking it. So I think, I think that's, that's why they're replacing it.

Wait, why, why can't you stop taking it? What's the— what's— is that just because like you immediately go back to being hungry and you wanna eat everything? Like, is the snapback real? Is that a documented thing?

Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not a permanent change to your body, right? Like it's, it's introducing exogenous peptides. I mean, that's, that's, that's what it is. Like that's what GLP-1s are. They're exogenous peptides that your body doesn't produce currently or produces limited amounts and you're, you're flooding it with way more of it. It's, I mean, if you stop taking it, you go back to who you were before, so you have to take it for the rest of your life.

Dude, you know, okay, so like talk about winners and losers. Another one that I've been thinking about is, uh, anything related to like intimacy and sex. Apparently these things can like really drop your desire drive. So like if you're in business and anywhere in there, like that's going to be a downstream effect. It at least it seems that way. Not that we needed more help lowering our birth rates, that's probably a separate issue, but that seems to be another one that's like there's going to be impact there. And alcohol, huge one. People are drinking less when they're on these things.

Yeah, there's a chart Mike always brings up that, you know, it's 9 out of 10 beers are drinking by like 5% of the population. It's like there's like the alcoholic trend is real. There's like a small number of people who drink all the beers. Um, it's the same thing with fast food. It's like, you know, typically after a concert, me and my wife get Taco Bell. That's like a nice little treat for us, right? So I might have Taco Bell 4 to 8 times a year or something like that. But like, I'm always looking forward to getting some Taco Bell. There's people have Taco Bell every day, dude. There's people, people I know who have Taco Bell every single day. Um, so yeah, small number of consumers actually eat, you know, most of the junk food. And if you remove them from the pool, it doesn't hurt profits 10% or 20%. It might hurt profits 80%, and that could be coming for all the fast food companies.

Okay, so speaking of like this sort of small number, big impact thing, One thing I, I dug up was that in this world now, like the— I don't know what to call this, like it's not just consumer goods, it's like we're talking health and wellness, food supplements, everything. But, or so I guess like let's just wrap it all up in CPG. So e-commerce is only like 12% of CPG dollars, but it drives 71% of all CPG growth is what the headline number is from the last year. And it seems to me that we're having a, a moment right now, right? Like we did a couple episodes ago, we talked about all the M&A activity and the investment activity in consumables specifically, not just broad consumer. What is your view of like e-commerce now as the, the sort of the growth engine for, for CPG? Because I think that's actually new. For me, it was like everything happens at retail. That's the playbook I've known for 20 years. Now it seems that like all of the winners are e-commerce first, D2C first. Um, is this a sustained trend? Do we— like, I'm just thinking of now like looping in what's going on with social and AI and all this stuff. Like, or do we think it all flips back to most of this stuff gets bought and discovered in store and that's still where you need to focus? I'm just talking all the operators out there, right?

Well, I'm going into major market retailers right now, so the Ridge is going through a big rollout and they buy a minimum of 12 months in advance, okay? And if you're a Unilever or a P&G or a Coca-Cola, your product cycles are probably— they used to be 3 years, you've probably gotten them down to 2 years, maybe 18 months or whatever. If you want a new flavor new style, new color, whatever. Like it's, it's still gonna be slow and the world is changing faster than that, right? So like there, that means the opportunity is in.com because the new thing will happen on.com first. It'll get adoption first. You can build a business because you'll just be ahead of before Target can even buy to set the store, right? So that is, that is post-COVID. The pace of change has really, really picked up. You know, Groove in 3 years got to $300 million. Like, that's a public number, right? And in 3 years, like, they were only able to be sold into Target the last year of that because you're starting up, you're figuring out your business, and you have a year of explosive growth, and then Target's talking to you about placing for the following year. So the opportunity is in dot-com just because we can move so much faster and you can, you can there's big sleeping giants. You can kind of catch them off, off, off their footing. So that's, that's why I think it's happened on.com.

I will say, I'll give people a, a tip right now listening. Um, Target is for whatever reason moving quite quickly at the moment with bringing in new brands into store. Um, I've had 3 people I know that all are getting into Target in like under 6 months start to finish, which is just unheard of. Like 12 to 18 months minimum to go into a Target was like usually the cycle. And I'm starting to see it, and it seems like Target specifically is trying their very best right now to pull in sort of like hot direct-to-consumer brands. I don't—

there's—

I'm sure there's a lot of reasons for that, but I figure it's worth saying.

Yeah, and they've, they've been courting D2C brands better than, you know, the other mass market ones for sure. Um, but look, maybe they don't like me enough, but in my experience, it's still been about 12 months to, to, from, from talking to PO. But I'm excited for that to get done.

Okay, so here, here's another stat for you that I think accentuates the point you're making around like D2C first, smaller might be better. So small brands, like let's talk under $100 million, are driving 35% of US food and beverage category growth, but they're only 13% of the market. So what you're saying is true, like it's showing up in the data now that new young brands are the ones who are basically driving all of the change in the category and all of the growth in the category. Um, it seems to me then the play is like you just need to really be thinking about omnichannel from day one. Like this is a Mike Beckham thing, just how are you going to exist across these channels? Like that's not an an afterthought anymore. You can't just start out D2C in these categories.

Yeah. And if you wanna get bought by a strategic, you have to be a real threat to taking their shelf space. Like, you know, I think why Unilever moved so fast to buy, um, Groon and why they bought Dr. Squatch is that they saw Dr. Squatch taking over the shampoo aisle, taking over the, the deodorant aisle, and they're like, it's just, we can't afford to lose it. For a billion dollars, we secure that we actually own the shelf space for another 4 years. And that's just so worth them doing.

Okay, so like in GLP-1s, I guess Hims Hers is the, the brand that I think of the most, like in the D2C world. It's like, that's who I think is playing— that's like your, you know, flashy brand. Is this space gonna mature where you're gonna get like the Warby Parker of, of like, of like gut health or like GLP-1 support? Does that happen as this matures?

You know, the thing that I'd be more worried about is that, you know, EliDirect is like— they, like, they just started selling directly to consumers right now. It's still gated, so you need a prescription. So you have to have some sort of tele-doctor system set up, and you have to, you know, be HIPAA compliant, all that type of stuff. So the incumbents there do have a big advantage. But instead of the, you know, the designer Well, I don't know. I, I guess I could see very high end, right? So like, like if you have the concierge doctor, they're gonna make extremely personal recommendations to you and check in and, and you know, there's a, there's this big movement right now in like longevity. I talk about another mega trend, right? Longevity's gonna be big, but like people doing MRIs, weekly blood tests, maybe not weekly, but at least monthly blood tests, like getting all like a custom stack built to you with a doctor. And it's incredibly expensive to do that, but Over time it'll be less and less expensive. And we're already seeing services like, you know, uh, things called Lifetime or whatever, like ripping, doing $500 million or whatever in like 2 years.

Have you ever put any thought— I've not, this is just a random thing— but have you ever put any thought, like, why is it that everything seems to go to the poles, like the super high end or the like commodity, you know, doesn't matter what the brand is? Like, what, what is the driving force there? Because it, it It seems like everything is touched by this no matter what. It's like the middle just gets hollowed out. You have no, like, you know, I won't call it like a premium, it's just like luxury or commodity.

Yeah, well, I just, I just had a great post go viral on t-shirts over on x.com, so you can go check.

I have so many opinions.

[Sponsor Content] Go ahead. But, uh, look, so we know True Classic and they're killing it, right? Couple hundred million dollars blown into the market. And then at the high end of the market, you have, uh, you know, I specifically said Tom Ford, Bruno Cochelli, like, uh, Loro Piana, like the shirts that are— that it doesn't make sense to buy them, you know what I mean? It's like $500 plus, like that's the entry price. Um, and then in the middle you just have 50+ brands, 100+ brands, 300 brands or whatever, right? And brands I love, I love Buck Mason, You know, I put James Purse in there, I put, uh, Cuts in there, like I put Huckberry, all these great brands that I love, but you end up getting just like a very, a lot of sameness in there. They're all gonna make a white t-shirt. It's all gonna be $40 to $60 or whatever. Um, and the reason why I think it goes to these both, both these poles is either you become aspirational, right? Or you become mass market. And it's very hard to do what Buck Mason does is be aspirational at a $50 price point or whatever. Right? Like, people either want the very best of the best, they want to drive Rolls-Royces, or they're going to buy Toyota Priuses and Model 3s, right? It's very hard. I mean, and that's why I would argue that Cadillac has lost its brand position. It's like Porsche, Porsche is losing its brand position. It's like, people, if you want the highest end, you're gonna buy the— you're gonna aspire to drive a Koenigsegg, a name that nobody knew 5 years ago. Now kids are like, what's on a Koenigsegg? It's like kids on Instagram know what the hell that is. So it's like this, this bifurcation of like, you either go extremely mass market. Tesla just got rid of the Model X and the Model S for that reason. They're like, yeah, people just want the 3, so we're just gonna make 3s for $25,000. And that's, that's what the future looks like. Implementing AI without trusted data is shooting in the dark and building that foundation from scratch, dealing with Tableau, dealing with data pipelines, dealing with all that. It doesn't have to be your headache. You can hire Sayers Analytics to handle that stuff for you. Serris IQ gives your leadership team a single shared view of the truth. Contribution margin, channel performance, customer economics, all can be answered instantly with the power of Serris Analytics. Do not fall behind. Serris Analytics is experts. They've set it up for Ridge, HexCloud, and hundreds of other brands. Speak to them today. Connect whatever AI tool you already use, and you can put that right on top of your personal data privately, securely, and you can start talking to your data like your favorite chatbot.

Is that driven by, uh, you think, like, desire, or is it driven by income inequality, like other things that are, I guess, like more, like less choice?

Well, I think it's, I think it's humans always want what's scarce. And this, this pod's really all going all over the place. Welcome back, guys. Uh, so I think it's all gonna tie together, don't worry. Humans want what is, what is scarce. And the flip side is for businesses to make money, they need high throughput. Another post I just did was that like the Model X only sold like 15,000 cars a year. Maybe it was, maybe it was 25,000, but like you, you don't make money doing that. They sold 4 million Model Ys. So it's like, it's like the, the throughput is just so important. And that's why Hanes, the more $9 t-shirts they make, the more $8 t-shirts they can make. And then they make and they sell $7 t-shirts and $6 t-shirts. Because they just end up getting this huge— the factory line from 24/7 at the highest efficiency possible. And that's what it takes, right? Just this throughput, and then it's good enough so people buy it.

Okay, so then the reason I'm asking all this is just to bring it back to the whole like health, wellness, CPG space. This is something I've been thinking about, is, is if you're building a brand right now in this space, a supplement brand, a food, a beverage, like any of those things, one of the powders, um, Do you start high end or do you start low end?

I would always say, and this was my advice for about 10 years, is that you should start as high as possible, right? Um, is that like, you know, there, there's margin in luxury. It's easier to find one buyer than 10,000 buyers. But I think Mike and Mike Beckham from Simple Modern Water Bottles and, uh, the True Classic guys kind of showed that you can make a lot of money on the other, on the, on the other end. So I would say pick one of the extremes. Just don't go in the middle. Nobody, nobody wants another $50 t-shirt. Like the, the $50 t-shirt has been, has been won. There's too many good options. You can't stand out a $50 t-shirt. You have to be $500. You have to be $5. Yeah.

And it seems to me that the, um, at least in the, the, I know a guy who his entire business is, uh, he, he makes products for Costco, right? So it's like he doesn't care the brand Costco basically like I, we need this food product made and this is the guy that makes it. And another guy does the same thing with Walmart. Like there's, there is a business to be made or built just in servicing these large mass market. We want a low-end version of whatever else is out there. But it does seem to me that all of the new entrants in these like big macro trends, or even, even I love the framing around like an ingredient trend, they all seem to start higher end. And maybe that's just because it's easier to go down in price over time than it is to go up.

Yeah, totally, totally, dude. Uh, what— yeah, why is that? It's because the cost of shipping stuff is going up over time because of fuel charges and inflation and whatever else. And you need to be able to have enough of an AOV for paid social to work, and you need a high enough AOV that you can make an intro offer work, right? You know, another brand I love that I'm close with, Instant Hydration, it's like their intro offer is you get a ton of great value, but it bills two separate subscriptions at $50 a month each. So it's like you're getting a lot of, a lot of cross and double billing going on, but you need it. You need enough of that margin to actually get people in the door, right? Uh, I think Gut Culture, if you buy one bag, it's $70, and if you get on a subscription, it's $30. So it's like we have a lot more people sign up for the subscription.

Yeah, you incentivize the subscription. Is it, um, it might be a bit early for you in this brand, but like, have you noticed the, it's like, it is a habitual product. It's like people actually use it as a, it's like a habit forming. I take it on the cadence that I'm supposed to take it. It's hard to tell.

No, I mean, it's a good question. You know, I think where we messed up is that it's an electrolyte plus fiber product and you, most people don't need to take that every single day. So like, you know, we sell 28-packs cuz it's supposed to be basically every day and it's, it's more or less people taking like 3 to 4 a week. Week. So the next product we're going to do, we're going to try to solve that, where it's going to be more of like, you know, we're going to sell month supplies that are maybe 20 days or whatever. You, you take this when you feel like you need it.

It's not like a greens where you take it every day, which would then would affect the overall pricing and math of a product like that, because it is not a daily consumable, right? It's, it's less frequent. So like you're gonna have to price it differently. My buddy Dan, I don't know if you follow him on On Twitter, I still call it Twitter, dude. I don't know if I'm ever gonna change. This is just an age thing. Dango, so his handle's Fit Founder. He talked about, he talked about psyllium husk in the past week and like 1.4 million fricking views on this post. He just did like a 28-day psyllium husk experiment taking 2 tablespoons 3 times a day and he and he documented out what it did to him.

Yeah, the thing, the thing about fiber is you have to drink a lot of water to balance it out. That's, that's why we're going with the electrolytes. But look, I think maybe this is the hook of the show, everybody. It is the greatest time to be building brands and making money. There is more winners and more losers than ever before, and we're going to get into them right now. I just think, I just think there's so many, there's so many great winners that are going to be built. Like every new ingredient, every new opportunity. But what I would focus on is weight loss is dead as a category. I don't think there's gonna— there's no more juice there, right? So it's like you either need to go into muscle building, you know, skin, sleep, uh, I mean, the other thing is like, like, you know, brain health is going to be a huge one, hearing protection.

I was about to say anxiety, depression, like all the mental health stuff. Any angle there is going to crush, dude, with food, with supplements, like That's another one chart business. Just put in Google Trends anxiety, like there's your brand.

Yeah, totally.

It's there. Yeah. I wanted to say, like, if you weren't building in fiber, is there another one that you want to leave people with that you're like, this is something else I think is worth paying attention to? Like, so you said colostrum. Um, these all seem like more ingredient or like more very like specific problem solution areas.

I mean, look, I think about a lot of ideas. Uh, hair loss is another one. Male pattern balding. Like, okay, so, uh, we started talking about, um, the looksmaxing trend. Matt, do you know what Norwood is? No. Okay, so, uh, it's, uh, it's a chart. I'm gonna Google this. Yeah, so it's a chart for how bald you are, um, Okay, so this is awesome. Yeah, yeah, we should, we should post this. But, um, so like, this is great. So like, that's, that's now part of the lexicon, is like people, people being like, I'm a Norwood 4. Fucking people, people know what that means now.

People know that?

Yeah, totally. I mean, our Gen Z listeners are, are gonna know exactly what the hell I'm talking about. But like, be like, calling someone like a Norwood 4, Norwood 5, it's like you're hopeless. It's like you got nothing going on.

Longevity is something I'm into. I saw, uh, I think his name is Dr. Sinclair. He's like one of those like leading longevity, uh, experts. He's been on a bunch of pods, but he's been gone for a while and he recently came back and he was talking about what they're doing. And he's got like a, I think they're gene therapies is what he does. Um, and he was, he made this comment that he gave a talk at, uh, one of these conferences that he talked about all of the things that he was able to do with these, like, reducing the age of things. He's talking about the eyes, the ears, like, your cells. He got a fucking standing ovation when he said, 'I can reverse male pattern baldness.' He's like, 'It's the only thing anybody cared about.' It's like, round of applause for the man at the top.

Sinclair has been an OG of the space. I mean, doing the stuff on mice. So, like, longevity will end up being the biggest super trend of them all. People do not want to die. So like, that is going to be a great place to, to try to build. It's going to be harder. All of these are just going to get harder over time. It used to be just be throw protein in cookies and you call it a day. And now it's like we have to figure out the ingredients that help you live longer and like gene therapies and stuff like that. But yeah, going back to male, male pattern baldness, I would— I— there's a bunch of money and great companies to be built doing a full-scale thing to help guys grow their hair. Not like, uh, Another Lux Maxim quote, uh, hair is life. Without hair, there's no life. I don't know if you've heard that.

I didn't realize I'd be learning so much today from, from the younger generation.

This is—

thanks for making me feel old, dude. Uh, okay, so this is kind of where I wanted to go with this whole show, is just there, there— it does seem like this is one of the greatest times ever to be building in consumer. Like, not only is it getting easier to start Uh, but then there's just all of these large net new trends, you know, like the fact that weight loss could go away hurts my head because as long as I've been in the internet game, weight loss was like the best business to be in. It was like top 3 easy. You could sell anything in weight loss and just crush. Info product, didn't matter what it was, people would buy it. And now we're getting a whole new wave of things like longevity, that, that category, that's a mega, mega, mega trend. There is so much to do there and there's science every day. Like one of the things I've set up is a, is a weekly, like, it's like a Claude Cowork research job that just goes out and finds me all the latest stuff that's happening in longevity purely from a, like, I want to know what's going on in ingredients and, and just like product opportunities as a builder.

Growth Hack used to be finding the fastest growing subreddits. And like, I don't, I don't know if Reddit's a good place to go anymore just because so much of the discourse has moved to Instagram and Twitter and wherever else, like places that are, that, that are harder to index. But it used to be like you'd go on there and be like, hey, like that's, that, that's where you can spot new growing opportunities is like what's the fastest growing subreddits. But you know, speaking of weight loss going away, people are gonna lose a bunch of weight. There's gonna be a bunch of skin left over. Like there's gonna be flabby skin and that's another great opportunity, guys. There's gonna be, someone's gonna make great products to help with this, great exercises, workouts, whatever. Um, we're all, we're all gonna be a little, a little flabby, a little less fat, and people are gonna make great products for it. So the future looks good, dude.

I love it. I think this is just, I wanna end it here because I think there's, it's so clear that there's like just a ton of categories and I mean, dude, okay. I don't know about you, but I, I get a handful of questions on the regular. One of them is like, what category should I expand my brand into? Or if I was gonna build another brand, cuz it's so easy now, everybody wants to have a holding company. What should you build? Like, it's always this entrepreneurs have this like default exploration mechanism where they always wanna go scratch around and like, what's new? And this bucket of things is like health and wellness. I don't know what else to call it. Like just wellness. Seems to be the best place right now. Like, they're consumable largely, and the, the trend lines are freaking insane.

And removing people being fat will remove fatigue and chronic pain, and it's going to open up— like, here's top to bottom things to think about, um, skincare, longevity, dental health, eye health, ear health, things that you can't really repair easily, right? Then it's going to be You know, overall body image. Once you do lose the fat, then it's going to be mental health, anxiety, like cold plunges, saunas, all that stuff's gonna be great. Uh, you could also then get into whatever. I mean, I think gut health is gonna be huge. I'm doing stuff in fiber. People are gonna have tummy issues because they're gonna be injecting themselves with a bunch of stuff. Then also, what are people also addicted to? People are taking Zinz all the time. I think pouches are gonna be big. Uh, big pushes in coffee. People trying to look at coffee alternatives. We've had the mushroom coffee wave for a really long time. These are like 10 or 20 great things you could be thinking about and building in. And then the last point is there's gonna be a bunch of people trying to build and stuff. It might be a great time to be selling shuffles. So start a co-man, start an ingredient packer, you know what I mean? It's like you can just sit, be the number one creatine guy on the East Coast, be like, hey, if you need creatine, whatever, I'll make it for you. Like there's just a bunch of little opportunities here for you to move as an operator, listen to the Operator's Podcast to move up the stack and serve other operators, move down the stack and serve customers, all these new verticals. So best time to be building ever, man.

That's great advice. Let's send it there, man. This has been good, dude. You gave me a ton of crap to think about. I think the people listening are going to like this one, dude.

And Matt learned about Norwood, guys. So look at this.

I just learned about Norwood as a 45-year-old man who's losing his hair. I didn't understand that there was a name for it.

I'm probably Norwood 1, 1.2, 1.5, maybe a 2. But I'll tell you, you're young and you just had your first kid.

Let that little bugger just age you a little bit. You let me know how you do over the next 10 years.

Oh, dude. And I look, I've been in the community, bro. I've been taking Finasteride for 5 years, 10 years, man.

Oh, there we go. Oh, there you go. You're, you're an early adopter.

[Sponsor Content] Okay.