132: 5 Grams of Mushrooms Solves 100M Problem; BioTRUST Founder & Onnit Investor (Joe Rogan’s Gym) Josh Bezoni

Today, I’m sitting down with Josh Bezoni, an entrepreneur, investor, and the Founder of BioTRUST Nutrition, a premium food and supplement brand that has sold nearly $1 billion in products since its founding in 2012.

As a first-time entrepreneur in his 20s, Josh made $48,000 on the day he launched his first supplement company. He grew the company to $30 million in revenue, only to have it come crashing down and leaving Josh in financial ruin at age 37. Not to be deterred, he soon launched BioTRUST, selling $4 million in its first week and hitting $100 million in sales in its first year, before eventually completing a 9-figure exit.

Josh is also an angel investor and philanthropist, and is an early investor in brands like Onnit, Magic Spoon, and Outstanding Foods. He has donated millions to Make-A-Wish®, Pencils of Promise®, and Matt Damon’s Water.org™ charity.

Today, you’ll hear about Josh’s surprising perspective on the realities of a 9-figure exit. You’ll also hear about how Josh grew BioTRUST without taking any outside funding, how he navigated getting sued by Oprah Winfrey, and how to unwind a workaholic mentality to take better care of yourself, your mental health, and your future.

Inspiring Quotes

• “A lot of online entrepreneurs these days miss the basic principles of psychology and selling, and how to get people to actually take action and want your product.” – Josh Bezoni

• “A lot of being a great businessman is learning the hard way of what not to do.” – Josh Bezoni

• “We thought it was all about revenue. We didn’t understand that your product category that you’re in affects the multiple you get for the company.” – Josh Bezoni

• “Anyone out there who wants to sell a company, my best advice is to learn what the buyers want early in the process, so you can build the company that way.” – Josh Bezoni
• “Anyone who’s starting a company, build it to sell from the very beginning and then maintain it. So, if your life changes and you do want to sell it, you have something that’s sellable right away.” – Josh Bezoni

• Making $48,000 in one day at 24
• Should you hop between marketing platforms?
• Getting sued by Oprah
• Why revenue numbers might be a mirage
• Doing $4M in the first week of a launch
• Is it possible to grow too fast?
• Prepping a company for exit
• The unexpected reality of a 9-figure exit
• The power in addressing your traumas
• What Josh would do differently as an entrepreneur
• Advice for a 25-year-old entrepreneur

Brad Weimert: Josh Bezoni, I’m so glad you came out to hang, man.

Josh Bezoni: Glad to be here, man.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, quick bio on you. I know you from around Austin but I think a lot of Austin entrepreneurs know you from BioTRUST. So, you launched BioTRUST in 2011. You did 100 million your first year.

Josh Bezoni: Correct.

Brad Weimert: Eleven years later, you sold to American Pacific Group or a sub of them for multi-nine figures. You’ve also invested in other brands that people know like Onnit and Magic Spoon, which is my favorite cereal.

Josh Bezoni: All right.

Brad Weimert: And you’re a pretty good pickleball player.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. Getting better. Getting better.

Brad Weimert: I know. I remember when we first played, and you’ve been on a ramp since then.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: Just commitment to being good. It’s traumatizing for me. So, I want to get to BioTRUST but before we get there, how did you start in business? And what was kind of the beginning of entrepreneurship for you?

Josh Bezoni: Yes. I got a degree in biology in college, and then I went and worked for a guy named Bill Phillips in Golden, Colorado. And Bill owned a company called EAS, which at the time was like the biggest sports supplement company in the world. They had like Sylvester Stallone was a client and like Brad Pitt and Demi Moore and all these people. And the Denver Broncos when they were winning the Super Bowls in like ‘98 and ’99, they were clients of EAS. So, I went from basically the farm in Iowa, very rural area, and went to Denver. And like the first day I was in the gym there, EAS on the job, I think like Stallone was visiting. And I’m like, “What is going on? You know, this is crazy.”

And so, I was there for two or three years. Bill sold the company for a couple hundred million dollars on the first bite at the apple, and then he retained equity and then he sold, again, I think maybe even more. So, while I was there, I learned how to build supplements, how to test supplements based on science, how to different parts of a company, how to do marketing, really got into marketing there. And so, I remember when Bill sold the company, I kind of like had a meeting with him, and I was hoping that he would fund my company because I was going to go out on my own.

So, he said, “You have a lot of, you know, you’re a hard worker, you got a lot of potential, and you should go out there and start your own supplement company.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I just don’t have the money.” And he’s like, “I didn’t either. Good luck with that.” I’m like, “Ah shoot.” So, yeah, that was the beginning of it. And I started my first company when I was probably 23, 24 years old. And I remember the first month of the launch of the company. So, at EAS, I made $48,000 a year. The first day I launched the company, my first supplement company, I made exactly $48,000 the first day.

Brad Weimert: Wow.

Josh Bezoni: Because I had a big launch for the first day. And I’m like, “Holy sh*t, I can make what I made in a year in a day with this entrepreneur stuff. This is pretty awesome.”

Brad Weimert: Damn. Those are pretty solid reference points to fuel you for the rest of the journey.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: But two or three years working for a supplement company isn’t a ton of time. No. Especially if you’re 20. I mean, I understand the hubris involved and that process. Is that the right word? Arrogance? Maybe it’s the opposite of hubris.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: And thinking that you can go out and launch this stuff. I want to talk about kind of the differences that happened in supplements through that time. But how was EAS built? Like, what was the marketing of that time? What did you learn there really from a marketing perspective? Because today, direct-to-consumer supplements online is a very different thing than it was 15 years ago.

Josh Bezoni: So, Bill was a direct response marketer but he was old school. He did it all with mail and like postcards and mail and lead generation ads and magazines. And so, I learned all that from like the greats like Gary Halbert or Joe Polish. I was working with Joe back in like ‘99 or ‘98. So, that’s where I learned the marketing from. So, it was old school direct response but the technology is the same or the psychology is the same, I should say. So, how to get people to take action? A lot of online entrepreneurs these days, I think they miss the basic principles of psychology in selling, and how to get people to actually take action and want your product.

So, I mean, my first website was just a long sales letter. Everyone’s like, “You can’t make a website like this. This thing’s like just scrolls forever.” And I did it and it worked like crazy because it’s the same. It’s just all about selling psychology, you know? So, that’s what I learned from Bill watching him market. He was a master. He was the first guy that came out with before and after contests. So, like take a picture, take our products, follow our nutrition program and exercise program, do an after photo. And he was giving away like Lamborghinis to the winners and stuff like that. So, he’s the first guy to have these huge contests where millions of people would join around the country and compete for these prizes and buy a lot of the supplements and change their lives. And so, he was like the original godfather of that. Yeah.

Brad Weimert: So, two or three years there, you wanted to go off on your own. What was the first company?

Josh Bezoni: It’s called GNS. It was Global Nutrition Sciences, and I just kind of picked up where I’d left off with Bill. I did like protein powders and creatine products and fish oils and general health products, and did some before and after contests, all online. But my company came out in like, I mean, Google came out in ‘98. I think Google launched in ‘98 and then I was I think 2001.

Brad Weimert: Damn.

Josh Bezoni: Because we were doing Google AdWords and stuff when it was just brand new. And so, we’ve got as new technology would come out and new platforms to advertise, we would kind of be on the beginning of that wave. And so, when you’re on the beginning of that wave, like Google AdWords, you could just crush it with back in the day. There’s no competition. Big companies didn’t know how to use it. When Facebook advertising came out, no one knew how to use it. And you could just, compared to now, your return on investment would be insane. And we did a lot of email marketing before CAN-SPAM laws came out.

So, you could just email whoever you wanted and people would like write us back and be so happy that they got an email. Not like now where they get thousands of emails a day. Then we’d get like tons of letters back with people’s stories and stuff. And you could buy. We get a 10X return on email advertising back in the day. We’d invest 10,000 to make 100,000 from it.

Brad Weimert: So, okay, I’m jumping ahead but I don’t f*cking care. That’s a really good question in general with what you know now. So, fast forward, be 50 right now?

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: So, fast forward. This is 30 years of business in the health nutrition supplement space. You just pointed out in your first company, you basically grabbed the new trends, the new marketing tools to sell things. Is that something that you still feel like is a good play to aggressively go after the new platform, the new tool, or do you go after the tried and true?

Josh Bezoni: I think you got to test it all and see where it’s at. But those people that can really optimize like a new technology like TikTok when it first came out. I know people that do really well, but it only lasts for a little while. You know, like Vital Proteins sold their company for like 600 or $700 million. And they were the guys who first went out on Instagram and did all the influencers, and they just crushed it doing that. But now you can’t really do that. It’s so much harder. There’s so much more competition. Once everyone else figures out the new technology and the new advertising platform, prices go up. It’s harder to acquire customers at a decent price point.

So, I think you got to test it, definitely got to test it. But for us, building our own email list was the way to go. I mean, we made so much revenue off of our own email list just because once you own it, it’s yours. And we had 10 million plus people on an email list. So, that’s a great asset to have because whenever you need revenue to pay bills or whatever, you just send out an email. You know, there’s a new sale and it’s like that was the real valuable part of BioTRUST was that we had this really large email list.

Brad Weimert: And that was acquired over time or did you start with an email list with BioTRUST?

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. Over time.

Brad Weimert: Okay. So, first supplement company, GNS, where did that end? Where did you take it to?

Josh Bezoni: Oh, I crashed and burned it.

Brad Weimert: Perfect. So, $48,000 the first day.

Josh Bezoni: So, $48,000 the first day. Build it up to 30 million in revenue.

Brad Weimert: Oh, damn.

Josh Bezoni: Then all supplements. Then 2010 hit. The economy was crashing. Big recession, 2010. The real estate market crashed. A lot of the way we were doing business dried up. You know, I knew enough about business to be dangerous, but I didn’t know enough about I was just stretched too thin, basically, is what happened. Then we had some legal problems in Colorado like my famous story I’ve talked about another podcast is I got sued by Oprah one time. I love Oprah.

Brad Weimert: I don’t know this story.

Josh Bezoni: She’s amazing. So, one day I’m walking into the office and a guy comes up and says, “Are you Josh Bezoni?” and I’m like, “Yeah.” And he hands me, he serves me a legal document. And I’m like, “Oh no, what’s going on?” And so, I open it up and it’s like you’re being sued by Oprah Winfrey for use of her image and likeness without her approval.

Brad Weimert: Oh, damn.

Josh Bezoni: And I’m like, we’re not doing this. What’s going on? And so, what we find out is that we had thousands of affiliates. One of our affiliates was using her photos in the ads to drive clicks. And so, this lawsuit was going on. And finally, I kept telling the lawyers, “I’ve donated a lot to Oprah’s Angel Network, like her charity. Like, shouldn’t we tell them this?” And they’re like, “No, that’s not how it works. You know, you can’t do that.”

Brad Weimert: Yes, it is.

Josh Bezoni: So, yeah, that’s how it works.

Brad Weimert: It’s definitely how it works.

Josh Bezoni: Because after like a year and all these legal fees, I said, “Screw you, guys. I’m going to write a letter to her lawyers and say I’m a big supporter of her and this was an accident. We didn’t mean to do this. It was an affiliate. It wasn’t us.” I write the letter and they drop it within 48 hours. You know what I mean? So, the lawyers, I find out lawyers aren’t always at your best interest. They want to rack up the hours. And so, yeah.

Brad Weimert: I mean, there are a couple of lessons there. One is 100% you have to look at the incentives of the people that you’re playing with. And the incentives of an attorney are hourly billing, right? And it’s more complicated than that but following incentive ads I think is a good lesson in general. And the other is when somebody tells you that’s not how it works, f*ck them.

Josh Bezoni: Yes.

Brad Weimert: Like, listen, you have to. It is your responsibility when somebody says that’s not how it works to critically analyze the situation. And they might know more than you, and it might serve you to listen to them and dig into the process that typically happens and learn from it. Also…

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. So, Joel and I, one of our great skill sets was really going against the grain, and we would go in and people would say, “Oh, you have to do all this branding and spend all this money on branding.” We just looked at everything and didn’t care what the pros were telling us to do. We would just test things and then see the results based on like real numbers, like for optimization of website pages. People were saying, “You can’t build pages that long with that much copy. No one’s going to read all that stuff.” And we’d be like, “Okay. Let’s do a short page versus long page, and we test advertising dollars to the page.” And then we would find out that the long page got like double the conversion rate.

And so, it’s like that and when people would always say, “Oh, you can’t do this in business. You can’t. This is the proper way to do it,” and the proper way will drive you into bankruptcy. So, we were always going against the grain, trying new things, and just letting the stats show us like what really worked.

Brad Weimert: I love that. I have this image of $30 million being lit on fire in my head.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah, you got to tell me.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, tell me more about GNS. So, Oprah sues you. You point out, tactfully, to her attorneys that you donate a lot of money to her causes, and they drop the suit because people work with people that they like, know, and trust. And then you proceed to blow up a $30 million business.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. Okay. So, I was in my 30s at the time and had maybe 80 employees in a big building and all this stuff in Denver. Things were going well. With the Oprah thing, what happened was she filed it in the state of New York. State of New York attorney general then said Oprah also sued 50 companies, not just us. So, she was doing it as a way to protect her brand, which I completely understand.

Brad Weimert: Sure. Seems like you’re also getting into FTC territory here.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. No, that didn’t happen. But the attorney general in New York then said Oprah’s filing this case in New York against 50 companies. We should be policing this, too. They just saw blood in the water. And so, then they filed a suit against all 50 companies, including us. And then we were in Colorado and State of Colorado attorney general said, “Why is New York policing someone in Colorado?” So, they opened a suit against the company. And I’m like 30-some years old running a $30 million company and I have a lawsuit against Oprah, and it was Dr. Oz and Oprah in the same lawsuit and in the State of New York and then the State of Colorado.

And like the legal fees and like how it just was a nightmare. And then the economy dropped some the ways that we were advertising like I think Google AdWords had dropped off and it just was a mess. And so, at the end of it, we didn’t go bankrupt but at the end of it, it was just like it was such a mess because of all this legal stuff that we ended up just shutting down. But the great thing was I was 37 years old. I remember now. It’s 37 and I had all the knowledge and I also just learned what not to do. So, a lot of being a great businessman is learning the hard way of what not to do. And so, then I moved to Austin to start all over. And I met my business partner, Joel Marion, at a conference here, and Tim Ferriss spoke at the conference, and Bill Phillips, my old mentor, spoke at the conference.

Brad Weimert: Before you tell me that, I want to know something about GNS, the $30 million company that was going very well pre-lawsuit. Easy Pay Direct has tons of supplement companies that use us for payments. We did some of BioTRUST for some period of time years ago. What I know about supplement companies is there are a litany of different ways to structure them, both from like, are you making the product? Are you outsourcing it? Are you warehousing the product or are you outsourcing it? Are you shipping it or are you outsourcing it? Where is the traffic coming from? Is it pay-per-click? Is it SEO? Is it affiliates, etcetera, all of which changes the margin? And I see a lot of supplement companies that red line.

So, they operate off basically zero margin and they grow and they get to 10, 15, 20 million with no margin. And a lot of them explode because they have no margin. What kind of operation were you running with GNS from a margin perspective? And like generally, how did it lead to that margin?

Josh Bezoni: I think we’re running at like at that time maybe 15%, 16%, 17% net profit. So, there’s good margins in supplements. That’s where we were. And a lot of companies like you said, nowadays, we invest in some of them but they’re trying to get gross revenue because food companies, for example, we invested in a lot of better-for-you food products. They just get a 3, 4, or 5, 6 times multiple of revenue, not profits.

Brad Weimert: When they buy?

Josh Bezoni: When they sell.

Brad Weimert: Right. So, the company trying to sell to the company buying is buying something off of multiple of 6 revenue.

Josh Bezoni: So, like Primal Kitchen, for example, the mayonnaise with the avocado mayonnaise and all that. Mark Sisson owns that company. I believe, my numbers could be wrong, but I believe they got to 50 million in revenue and then they sold to 200 million to Kraft. Okay. So, it’s four times revenue. I don’t think they were profitable at all. See, the play is just to get as much revenue and shelf space as possible and then sell for a large multiple. In the supplement world, for us anyway, it was all about net profits. And so, they give you a multiple off of net profits, which is much lower than of gross revenue. So, when you go to sell, you actually have to have decent profit margins in order to get a good exit. So, for us, I can’t say the exact amount but supplement companies, at least at that time, were getting like 8 to 12 times net profits.

Brad Weimert: Got it. Okay.

Josh Bezoni: Of their net profits. But so back to the original question, back at my first company.

Brad Weimert: Which would so 15% at 30 million, that would put the sale around 30 million.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: Not quite, but.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah, but I’d never sold that company.

Brad Weimert: Right, right. Right, right.

Josh Bezoni: Unfortunately. And the big thing there, the big news there for me was looking back is that I got financially crushed at age 37. I mean, I had to sell my house, car, everything.

Brad Weimert: Ouch.

Josh Bezoni: I had to move from a mansion in Denver to Austin and I lived in an apartment and start all over at like 37, 38 years old. And then I hit the thing that was the real big thing, which was BioTRUST. So, there’s a lot of people out there here that are getting close to 40 or early 40s and they just think their time’s completely passed. They think all every which is so funny because when I was young, no one in their 20s or 30s was like running legitimate companies. It was all these older white-haired CEOs. I would go into banks and try to borrow money, and they would just laugh me out of the bank. And now, if you’re 40, the business world has changed because all the tech entrepreneurs are in their 30s making it big.

Brad Weimert: Well, yes. Specifically, VC-backed ones are, though, I will say kind of back to the point that I’ve been circling around here is that very often the newer entrepreneurs aren’t thinking about the exit. They don’t know their history. And as a result, that’s why we see the companies that are running. It’s not that are running at no-margin supplement companies. It’s not because they’re aiming for an exit and they know that it’s off of gross. Most of them, it’s an ego play and they’re just, “Hey, look at my numbers. Hey, I did a million a month last month. I had a 2 million a month last month.” And they’re flexing and they have no margin.

Josh Bezoni: It’s a recipe for disaster.

Brad Weimert: It’s crazy.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: But no question about it. Like, that landscape is totally different than it used to be. Okay. So, that burned. You moved to Austin. Did you know Joel previously?

Josh Bezoni: No. So, I had a conference here at Lake Travis. Tim Ferriss spoke. Tim and I’ve been friends for years. And then that’s where I met Joel and all these affiliates because my goal was to get out of supplements and get into publishing, online publishing because Joel was doing 10 million a year in revenue selling his own e-books. And the margins are insane for e-books. It’s like software. You’re selling air because it’s all downloadable programs on health and fitness. So, I met Joel at that conference, and then I met like 20 more versions of Joel with different affiliates. And I found out they all have these big monster email list, and they all sold health content about all kinds of how to get in shape and how to eat right, nutrition, how to work out.

And I’m like, “Who’s doing your backend supplements for all these companies?” And they’re all like they were just scattered. And I thought, “Wow. I could start a supplement company for the e-book publishing business and then become their backend provider for like high-quality supplements for like all these millions of clients that they have.” So, at the conference, I met like Mike Geary, Joel, like all these guys that were kind of number one for email marketing of content. And over time, Joel and I, then I had to pitch Joel and this whole idea of starting BioTRUST. And I pitch Joel, I have this big presentation, and he goes, “Nah.” He goes, “I’m doing 10 million a year selling air right now with like one employee.” He’s like, “I don’t want to do this.”

And so, then I’m like, “Oh, man, I really wanted Joel in the team.” And then I said, “Well, let’s test a few supplements out there to our list and see how it does.” And so, Joel tested some product out there to his big email list and then like crushed the numbers. And so, then Joel is like, “I think we need to do a supplement company.” And so, we ended up doing a supplement company and how we did 100 million in the first year was because we had the Mike Gearys and Joel and all these people that had these big email lists, and we did a deal with all of them that basically said, “We’ll be your backend supplement company. Send our offers to your email list.”

And Mike would say like, “I love their protein powder. Here’s why. It has no artificial colors or flavors. It’s grass-fed whey protein, all this stuff.” “And we’ll give you 30% of revenue or 30% of revenue created but then we’ll also give you a piece of the backend. So, every time a customer buys again, you’ll get paid again.” So, it was an affiliate program, but not off a first sale. It was off of like lifetime sales to the customer. So, everyone loved that idea. We signed up probably 30, 40, 50 of the biggest email marketers in the country and became their back-end supplement company. And that’s basically how we did 100 million in the first year in revenue because the first product we launched was a protein powder.

I think it did like 2, 3, $4 million in the first week of launch, and Joel and I looked at each other and we’re like this is going to be huge. I pitched Joel that we could probably do 5 million a year in revenue in a supplement company. We did 4 million in the first week of launch.

Brad Weimert: That’s insane. So, I mean, a couple of things stuck out to me there. One is the sort of perpetual sale. So, Joel says no. And you’re like, “Hey, how about we just test it?”

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: And I think that’s a really good lesson in general for people is no doesn’t mean no in all situations. The other is leveraging this massive affiliate network but creating an offer for them that was better than the other offers. And it sounds like and I’m inferring this so correct me if it wasn’t the case, but it sounds like at the time the norm was not to give part of the continuity, the recurring subscription. So, most affiliates would, the people of these huge email lists would promote a product but they would expect 30% or 50% on the first sale, and then anybody that was in the subscription, sorry, so sad for the affiliate. And so, you offered the subscription upfront or revenue from it.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: Did it occur to you at that point to white-label the product for other people, or did you ever go down that path?

Josh Bezoni: No, because we wanted to keep the brand all us because we were looking for an eventual exit. So, if you white label, you’re just competing against yourself and your own brand. And so, everything was BioTRUST.

Brad Weimert: Got it. So, from the beginning, the goal was to sell it.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah, from the very beginning.

Brad Weimert: Jumping ahead again. So, 100 million the first year and then you continued to do 100 million roughly every year for the 11, right? Why did you not sell sooner?

Josh Bezoni: Well, if in retrospect, we shouldn’t have done 100 million in the first year.

Brad Weimert: To show growth?

Josh Bezoni: To show growth. So, that’s like the inexperience of someone who’s never sold a company before. We didn’t understand how certain things affect the sale of a company. For example, we just thought it was all about revenue. We didn’t understand that your product category that you’re in affects the multiple you get for the company. So, if you sold $100 million worth of like a food product or a protein powder or collagen powder product, you could command really high multiple. But if you’re doing anything in weight loss, it almost is a negative against you.

Brad Weimert: Why?

Josh Bezoni: They don’t like weight loss companies when you need go to exit in general.

Brad Weimert: Why not?

Josh Bezoni: There’s a history of weight loss companies like crashing and burning through acquisition. Because what happens with a lot of weight loss companies is they’re hot for three, four, five years, and then they bomb like Atkins.

Brad Weimert: Trendy.

Josh Bezoni: They’re trendy.

Brad Weimert: Got it.

Josh Bezoni: And so, SlimFast and Atkins, there’s always every three, four years, there’s a whole new rotation of a new diet that comes in.

Brad Weimert: That makes sense.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. So, we grew too fast. We should have done like 20 million the first year. It would have helped us from an operational standpoint. We had the tiger by the tail.

Brad Weimert: No sh*t.

Josh Bezoni: Like, you can’t imagine what we went through to do 100 million in the first year. I mean, we had like five employees when it started and we’re like working. We’re never not working. Joel and I had a standing call at 2 a.m. every day because we’re still working at 2 a.m. And so, after our call, I think I would go to bed at like 3 a.m. and then I think I’d get up at like 6 a.m. and then it was insanity, right? So, we’re trying to work with manufacturers to get enough product created to keep up with the demand. We’re trying to work with payment processing to cover that type of thing as a new company, that type of growth. We’re trying to rapidly hire because we know where this is going, and we have to build a real team that can manage all of this. So, it’s like five years of work, six, seven years of work into like one year. Yeah. Insanity.

Brad Weimert: So, yeah, I’ve thought about that particular element of your story several times. And we haven’t had a chance to talk about it because 0 to 100 million is an insane thing, but it’s different if it’s a VC-backed company that has a plan to do it and it’s not a surprise, right? It’s like, okay, well, we deployed X capital with the intention of Y return. And so, we staffed accordingly to do this. We’ve done this marketing model before. They’re running a playbook. You guys are like, “F*ck it. Let’s get a bunch of affiliates to promote the supplement. Let’s go.”

Josh Bezoni: Let’s rock and roll.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, what was the makeup? And I think I’m going to know some of this but today, for anybody who doesn’t know supplements, today you can white label a product that’s basically a business in a box. You can have somebody that will put your brand on a sort of a generic supplement in a whole range of different types of supplements, protein powders, pills, whatever. They will warehouse it for you. They will drop ship it for you direct to the consumer. All you need to do is send them an API call or an email saying, “Send this product to this place.” And that can be your supplement company. I’m guessing that’s not what you did.

Josh Bezoni: Not at all.

Brad Weimert: And that wasn’t available in 2011 either, I don’t think. Tell me about sort of the creation of the product, the warehousing the product, the shipping, the tech. Like, how did you put that together? And what was there before you did the email launch and what wasn’t?

Josh Bezoni: Oh my gosh. First of all, the products are really good because I’ve been in the industry and understood from EAS that you have to have science-backed products that all the ingredients are tested. We did everything all natural. These are really good products. We didn’t just white-label them from another company. So, we had a great guy named Shawn Wells, and Shawn was our Chief Science Officer, and he came in and like designed the best products. And so, before we even launched BioTRUST, we probably had a year of product development, maybe even longer. So, before we even launched our first sale, we had a whole year of product development, finding manufacturers, getting the products built.

Brad Weimert: Okay. Well, we’ve established that you didn’t have any money. So, did Joel foot this bill or how did this work?

Josh Bezoni: Here’s the craziest part of this whole thing. So, at the end of my whole journey in Colorado, long story, but I was left with $600,000 to my name. After selling my houses and everything, I had 600,000. And then Joel and I launched an e-book on health and fitness that I wrote. And that e-book, we did a launch around it, and it was a $3 million launch.

Brad Weimert: Damn.

Josh Bezoni: And the profits from that were maybe we netted half of that, 1.5, and then we paid for product or whatever. So, maybe Joel and I made $500,000 from that. So, I put in $500,000 from the e-book launch. Joel put in $500,000.

Brad Weimert: So, at 3 million, you paid affiliates half of it to sell the e-book. So, now you’re down to 1.5. You had some cost to make it.

Josh Bezoni: Costs and everything else, and it came out to about 500K.

Brad Weimert: Got it. I like breaking those down because so often you hear the story of the number.

Josh Bezoni: But you don’t.

Brad Weimert: You never hear what people take.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. Here’s the part of it. So, I have a friend that his company sold for $800 million and he’s all over the news and sold $800 million and everything. And then he’s talking to me privately, and he’s like, “I own 1% of the company.”

Brad Weimert: Damn. Wow.

Josh Bezoni: So, he’s not making $800 million, you know?

Brad Weimert: No.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. So, with Joel and I, we both put in 500,000. And from that 500,000, we never took out a loan after that and we never had any investors. So, when we sold our company for nine figures, like we owned 90% of the company and then like 10% to our employees. So, it’s a completely different thing.

Brad Weimert: Did you have, another random question, but did you have a sort of stock option pool or equity pool for the employees through the journey? Or did you just break off 10% at the end?

Josh Bezoni: No, there was a stock option for 10% for employees.

Brad Weimert: Cool. Okay. So, you went through all of the formulation process, the scientific testing, to make sure you had a good product in the beginning. You knew what you were selling. Did you warehouse it? Did you have a giant warehouse, the whole bunch of f*cking product waiting to sell?

Josh Bezoni: We had our COO at the time, Chief Operating Officer, owned a shipping company in Denver. And so, we shipped out of that company but we outsourced manufacturing. We outsourced shipping. We had customer service in-house just so we could control it. It would be really high quality. And we outsourced accounting in the beginning. But over time, we brought a lot of things in-house but we never did shipping and we never did manufacturing. For supplements, it doesn’t make any sense. To manufacture supplements, it’s like warehouses of high-tech equipment and it just doesn’t make any sense. So, you just create your recipes, and there’s manufacturers around the country who will create that recipe for you.

Brad Weimert: But then they ship to your COO’s warehouse.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. And then we shipped out around the country.

Brad Weimert: Got it. So, functionally, you sort of dropship from one of your employee’s businesses.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. And then we had different warehouses over time because just with logistics at that volume, having East Coast, West Coast warehouse makes a lot more sense. And it got more complicated. But that’s how we started.

Brad Weimert: I mean, this may be moot at this point but 2011, what did you do from a tech perspective?

Josh Bezoni: Oh my gosh. There’s no Shopify out there to any degree. Everything was in-house custom-built. And it was a nightmare. Tech back in those days was hard because it wasn’t like today with Shopify and things, integrated apps, and all that. Yeah, it was old school. Our affiliate software that kept track of sales to affiliates was like homegrown. You know ClickFunnels?

Brad Weimert: Yeah, sure.

Josh Bezoni: ClickFunnels, basically the first version of ClickFunnels was basically like our tech, not that Russell. It was just the same model, like sell on a page and have upsells, and the tech that was there. So, I always joke with Russell, I’m like, “I got in the wrong business,” because his company, ClickFunnels, is probably worth multi-billion at this point or close to that and we’re in supplements. But it was basically like the same thing that we custom home built.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, he’s fighting a battle now. There are definitely competitors pushing, stealing, hid their market share.

Josh Bezoni: Oh, sure.

Brad Weimert: He might have lost his window to go for the highest price that he got at one point but, yeah, that sounds like a struggle. So, when we sat down, you said you did about a billion over the course of those 11 years.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. Joel and I together with everything we’ve done together has about a billion in revenue over 12 years.

Brad Weimert: So, was the marketing model the same for BioTRUST, the whole time? Was it always the leveraging other people’s email lists? How did that expand? So, you launched with this giant $100 million a year with other people’s lists. How did the marketing change as you grew?

Josh Bezoni: So, the affiliate model worked well for four or five years and then we tried to go to market to sell, and that’s another story. And we found out we weren’t ready to sell. We didn’t know, like anyone out there who wants to sell a company, my best advice is to learn what the buyers want early in the process so you can build the company that way. For example, going to 100 million in revenue and then going up to like 110, 120, 130 over time is not what they want to see. They want to see 20 million the first year, and then 30 million, and then 50 million, and then 90 million. And you have this growth rate that looks really impressive, right? And they want to see diversification for when you advertise at.

So, like one of our initial companies we invested in was Onnit. Joe Rogan was an owner of Onnit along with Aubrey Marcus. And originally Onnit, the Joe Rogan Podcast was a huge percentage of revenue. And so, when Onnit was looking to sell…

Brad Weimert: They knew that Onnit was sponsoring the Joe Rogan Podcast in the early days?

Josh Bezoni: Meaning that Joe Rogan owned a big part of the company and he was driving a lot of revenue for the company. So, when they go to sell, people who buy the company, which ended up being Unilever, they want to see diversification in the sales channels. So, if Joe Rogan got hit by a bus, they’re not out of business. So, we didn’t know that early on either. So, you want to have diversification so that you lose when your channels, your marketing channels, other ones can pick it up. So, there’s all kinds of things like that when you go to sell a company that we didn’t know about. We also didn’t realize people didn’t want the weight loss category at all, and it was a detriment to selling the company.

So, the first time for years we tried to sell the company, we went to market and just found out basically that we weren’t ready to sell the company. So, then we had to go back, kind of remodel the whole company in a way that’s built to actually sell. And then 10, 11 years later, we were finally able to sell the company.

Brad Weimert: That’s an awesome lesson. Most people do not premeditate the sale unless they’re venture-backed or they came from Silicon Valley, which is their whole game, right? Speed to exit. What are the top three things that you would tell people to do to prep for sale?

Josh Bezoni: One, get a real team in place that can replace you when you sell. A lot of guys are founders. They’re CEOs. They want to control everything. They sell a company, and then when they sell, they get put like golden handcuffs on them, and they have to work for the company and become an employee for like four or five years, which is torture if you’re an entrepreneur and a founder.

Brad Weimert: I see it happen a lot.

Josh Bezoni: And so, what we did was we replaced ourselves before we sold for a number of years. And then part of the deal was when we left, we left. We were completely out of the company when we sold. So, that’s a big one. The other one is to grow 20%, 30% a year sure like steady growth. That’s what they want to see. They don’t want to see 100 million and then you kind of level off. That’s not a good thing. The other is make sure your product category is the best it can be. It’s better to sell 50 million of powdered collagen than 100 million of a weight loss product just because of the category.

So, we didn’t realize that each category has a different multiple. And that happens with any company. So, any company you happen to be in, a lot of times people just go to products that are hot and they want to sell even in like finance or whatever. And when they get into it, they might realize that when they go to exit, they chose the wrong product category.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. One of the big explosions of our lifetime was WeWork, and part of that was that he raised money through the lens of them being a software company.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: Which of course they weren’t.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: But that led to a bizarre multiple that was really inflated and not based on the actual value of the company. But I think the takeaway from that really is that if you have a way to modify your offering into a model that has a bigger multiple when you’re looking at exit, take it.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. So, if I were starting a company today, the first thing I would do is I would go and find out who would buy a company like that and I would talk to those people. And I would talk to bankers that sell those types of companies and I would write from the beginning and say, “What are they looking for? What product categories? What growth rates? Like, what structure of the company?” And so, from the very beginning, I would find out what the buyer wants when I’m starting a company. We did it the wrong way. We went four or five years in, we thought we had a home run, and then we went to market and found out that we’d structured it wrong and made pivotal decisions that just didn’t serve us.

And a lot of people get into entrepreneurship and they don’t think they’ll ever exit. And I tell all entrepreneurs, I’m like, “Oh, this company will be sold. It might be when you die. Your kids might sell it. But from the beginning, you need to like structure the company as if you’re going to sell it because it will be sold at some time.” A lot of people say, “Oh, I never want to sell. I’m never going to sell.” I’m like, “What’s going to happen when you die? I guess it’ll be sold.” Yeah. Everyone’s selling the company. They just don’t realize it.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, that’s a good point. I also think that it’s foolish to believe that you will know what your future self wants. And so, to not organize things in a way for exit is putting yourself in a bad situation in the future.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. It’s like a house. So, I have friends who have these great houses and they start to get rundown and then they’re not actively taking care of the house. So, after like five or six years, you go into their once beautiful house, and like the hot tub doesn’t work anymore and the lights don’t work, and this is broken. And then they live that way for years. And then they go to sell the house. And they have to do all this remodeling and fixing all this stuff. And they had this beautiful house before they go to sell it, right? But it’s like they should have enjoyed the house the whole time. So, I say anyone who’s starting a company, build it to sell from the very beginning and then maintain it. So, if your life changes and you do want to sell it, you have something that’s sellable like right away.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. That’s great. You mentioned getting advice from bankers. Where do you find those bankers?

Josh Bezoni: You do a search and find bankers that are selling your types of companies. So, there are specific niche bankers like in supplements and they’re specific in all categories. So, I would just start with a Google search and just learn the top ones and do a meeting with them and say, “I’m starting this company. We’d eventually like to exit. Can I have some of your time?” Most of them will give you some time. And if you’ve even started your year in, most of those guys will want to talk to you because you could be an eventual exit for them. Yeah.

Brad Weimert: That’s great. Okay. So, I met you years ago while you were in BioTRUST doing the thing. And every time I saw you was most of our interactions were around a new business that you were investing here that spun up, and we were doing the payments for it. Or it was related to BioTRUST, and then you sold it. And now the only time I see you is when we’re playing pickleball. Tell me about selling for nine figures plus and how that impacted your life in what was different than expected.

Josh Bezoni: So, a lot of entrepreneurs don’t make really any money but a basic salary, and then they exit, and then they get a windfall of cash, right? Their life dramatically changes. So, BioTRUST is doing 15%, 20% net profits a year at 100 million plus. So, Joel and I were doing really well, 10 million plus a year take home. You know, in some years way more than that.

Brad Weimert: Pretax.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah, pretax. And that’s an amazing lifestyle. So, we had the monetary things that we wanted. And then we sell the company. And I just remember sitting at my computer after all this work and all this big, long exit process, due diligence process, and multiple companies wanting to buy us and all the negotiations and all the contracts and legal stuff and all of this. I’m sitting at my house on the computer and I’m talking to Joel on the phone. We’re waiting for the wires to come in because that’s like what I’ve been waiting for my entire life. It’s like winning the Super Bowl business. How many businesses go out of business, right? Like, 97% of businesses go out of business. And then the percentage of companies that actually end up selling is probably like 1% or less of all companies that ever start, probably 0.5% or less.

So, Joel and I are sitting there and I’m looking at my screen and the wire comes through to my account. And I’m on the phone with Joel. I’m like, “Holy sh*t.” He’s like, “Yeah, holy sh*t.” Then we just sat there looking at the screen for like two minutes. I’m like, “Good job, man.” He’s like, “Good job.” And we hung up, right? And I thought that that would be a day where all my problems disappeared like the heavens parted, like there was a parade for me, and I won. Like, all my insecurities would go away. My relationships would be perfect. I always thought that once I hit this number, life was golden then I was set. And that number hit and it was kind of an empty feeling. And it was awesome and great but it wasn’t what I expected.

And so, after we sold the company and we were just out, I was completely in shock because I was like a workaholic. I was in a nutrition company selling health products, but I was so overworked and stressed out that I was like overweight and wasn’t healthy. And so, I had to like look in the mirror and basically say, “Okay. The financial part’s taken care of. I don’t have to work another day in my life.” But I’ve got a lot to fix. I’ve got to like get in shape again. I’ve got to recalibrate workaholism and put it into something else. I’ve got to like dig into the old trauma stuff that I’ve been running from forever, from childhood, for example, and like really dive in and do some work around that because I’ve got this money now, but I’m not like truly a happy, fulfilled person.

So, that’s kind of what happened and it was a huge wake-up call after the exit. It’s like it didn’t really change our life that much because we’d already done well financially during the process. So, there’s nothing else I really wanted. And so, then it became like an internal crisis, so to speak.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. And, I mean, you’ve painted this picture but to highlight it, if you’re post-tax, making 5 to 7 million a year, most entrepreneurs, when they sell, that’s what they leave with. You know, like your friend that had an $800 million sale, but owned 1%, he’s got 8 million and then he’s losing half of that to tax right away so he’s coming home with four with his exit.

Josh Bezoni: Well, the great thing about selling to company is you pay capital gains. So, you pay 20%, 22% instead of the usual 40-something. So, we had calculated but…

Brad Weimert: Still.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah, still. We calculated that we would have had to hold on to BioTRUST and do the same revenue for like 25 years in order to make what we did off selling the company because the tax differences and everything like that.

Brad Weimert: Okay. Nonetheless, you’ve been pulling a good amount off the table for a long time. I think that that’s really relevant because there are, and that’s frequently the difference between when you say most people, most entrepreneurs take a salary and then their payoff is at the end. That’s usually the biggest difference between a VC-backed or a funded company and a bootstrap company is that the bootstrap people have the capacity to take home little windfalls every year and the VC-backed people usually don’t. They’re usually on salary as a CEO. So, tell me about one of the things that I heard you say, in prep for this, watched parts of a podcast you did with our friend, Ryan Moran.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: And in it, you said you’re more proud of the change that you’ve made in the last year than building $100 million company.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: To you, what is the difference between creating physical change and emotional change in your body versus creating change in a company?

Josh Bezoni: Well, first of all, I am really proud of what we did at BioTRUST. We employed hundreds of people, affected hundreds of families. We had millions of customers that we gave like top quality products to. A lot of them used it to change their lives. We did a lot of charity work, Make-A-Wish Foundation. We did millions and millions of dollars to Make-A-Wish, like hundreds and hundreds of wishes granted. We’ve had kids through No Kid Hungry. We did millions of meals. We tied in a lot of charitable aspects to the company. That was all super fulfilling, but on a personal level, like me making a lot of money is nothing compared to like over the last year or so, just the changes I’ve made internally. They just come in.

If you can have all the money in the world, but inside you’re full of anxiety and depression and you’re full of angst, and you don’t have solid relationships or you don’t have real, authentic relationships, I mean, what do you really have? You know what I mean? Like, that stuff is so important. So, after I sold the company, I did like a big mushroom journey. I did a…

Brad Weimert: How big?

Josh Bezoni: Like, 5 grams-plus-ish big.

Brad Weimert: Okay.

Josh Bezoni: And with sassafras, with the shaman. And just a lot of stuff that I was running from.

Brad Weimert: And Sassafras is like it’s MDA?

Josh Bezoni: MDMA. Yeah, it’s kind of like MDMA.

Brad Weimert: I think it’s same molecule.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Similar to MDMA.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. And so, I’ve done quite a few psychedelics in the past but this is one where I really went in with the intention of like let’s just face this stuff I haven’t faced, the old stuff in there that’s holding me back. And a lot of entrepreneurs I know say, “I don’t want to like deal with the trauma of my past because I’m afraid it’ll take away the edge.” And I’m like, “You’re crazy because the edge is what’s like holding you back and like keeping you up at night and it’s suffering.” So, did a big mushroom journey, had a lot of realizations. And I also met Mike Tyson, which I talk about in Ryan’s podcast.

Brad Weimert: Oh, I didn’t hear that part.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: While you’re on mushrooms?

Josh Bezoni: Well, no. That would be awesome to do mushrooms with Mike Tyson.

Brad Weimert: I wasn’t sure if this was like you saw him in your…

Josh Bezoni: Me and Mike Tyson in Oprah, we’re doing mushrooms.

Brad Weimert: Right, right, right.

Josh Bezoni: I met Mike Tyson at an event, and I talked to him, and there’s a line to take pictures with Mike Tyson, right? And I’m sitting there going, “How can I get more time with Mike in this big line of people waiting to take pictures with Mike?” I’m like, “Oh, I saw him do a podcast with Tony Robbins talking about doing Bufo 5-MeO-DMT, which is a psychedelic. And he was pumped up about it with Tony Robbins and said that it changed his whole life. Tyson, like in The Hangover movies, was like 300 and some pounds. He was psychotic at times. He was in prison.

He was like the chances of that guy being alive right now, he blew through $200 million, I mean, he was out of control. Tyson’s out of control, bankrupted himself, lost all that money, blew it all. And I see him and on these podcasts and stuff, he’s like a wise guy now. He’s very wise. And he’s in great shape.

Brad Weimert: He seems that way.

Josh Bezoni: He’s supposed to be fighting again. And he’s 58 I think. And so, I talked to him about psychedelics and Bufo. He said it completely changed his life. He said it just rewired his whole system. And he talked to me. While all these people are waiting in line, he talked to me for like ten minutes. And I say to Tyson, I go, “I met you before.” And I go, “You’re at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas.” And it was at the time when Tyson like just got out of jail and he was like built like a truck, and he was just angry at the world. And I walked up to him at the Hard Rock cafe, and he’s walking through like a couple of big bodyguards or something, and I go, “Hey, Mike,” and he looked at me like he was going to kill me. Like, I was scared.

I go, “Hey, Mike.” He looked at me. I go, “Sorry,” and I walked away because I’m like, “This guy, he’s having a bad day and he’s going to like…” And then I meet Mike at 58. He’s like jovial and wise, like an old sage. He’s in great shape. And so, I talked to him about it and he said this 5-MeO-DMT changed his life. Well, for me, I had that in my head that if Mike Tyson can go from 300 pounds back to like 215 and completely change his life as this wild guy who was just insane and losing all this money, surely I can make some real changes in my life in like a year.

And so, for me, I went from like 215 pounds at my max down like 165, like changing everything. I did like a lot of psychedelic work, I did therapy, I like dove into the stuff from childhood, which we all have, that was haunting me and delved into my abandonment wounds. I dove into like all this stuff that I’d never wanted to face before because I didn’t think it was important. I’m like, I’m making all this money. I’m doing great. Nothing’s holding me back because I thought money and finances were the key to everything. Now, I realized that it’s like your relationship with yourself, like being able to sleep at night, like having great friendships that are authentic with friends, like having a real romantic relationship where you’re truly yourself.

And I just recently got engaged at 50 and I’m going to be starting a family. Like, I didn’t even want children before. I didn’t put a lot of stock into marriage and I was not a good partner in my past relationships. It was all about me and my business, and I was the star. And my partner’s wants were kind of secondary. I just didn’t have a good mindset around all that. So, in the past year, I’m just a way better human. I understand like what holds me back. I understand my old traumas and how it affected me growing up. Yeah, I’m just so happy and content compared to where I used to be that it’s made all the difference in the world.

Brad Weimert: Would you have done anything differently in building the business if you were to do it over?

Josh Bezoni: So, I was a complete workaholic. And in America like rewards workaholism. And it rewards yourself when you’re seeing like revenue coming in. And so, I just got so hooked into working that I was just always working. Even when I’d go and have fun, I’m still checking my phone. I’d go on vacation, still working the whole time, just going and seeing dolphins while I’m on my phone. You know what I mean?

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

Josh Bezoni: So, I would do different.

Brad Weimert: I’m very familiar.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. I would do different and I probably could have worked 60% of the time that I worked and had the same outcome. The other 40% I was just doing stuff for work’s sake. Tim Ferriss calls it in The 4-Hour Workweek, working for work’s sake. I just thought I always had to be grinding. And so, if I was doing it again, I would delegate a lot of what I wasn’t good at and not even try to do it. I would not do projects just to be doing projects. I would map out exactly what we should do strategically and I would follow that. And then at night, I would put a timer on my phone. And then when that went off, I would just shut down.

I would get the sleep I needed. I would work out. I would take care of myself. I would have been a better leader. I would have had, I think, we would have had better results too. Yeah. So, I said this before on a different podcast, but we had the same financial offer to buy the company four years into BioTRUST as we ended up selling the company for. But they dropped out because once we got into diligence, we just didn’t have everything structured and everything the way we should have. So, we had to put in another four or five years of work to have the same exit we could have had four years in had we known like how to sell a company.

Brad Weimert: Do you regret building the company the way you did?

Josh Bezoni: I don’t regret it because it’s all like this amazing journey, and I don’t regret it at all. But if I were to have to do it again, I would just do it with just knowledge from when you’re older. You look back and things that are important to people ten years ago aren’t as important. I was like, I thought that if I made enough money, I would have like a lot of self-esteem, I feel great about myself. And I got that like Jim Carrey says. He said everyone should make $10 million or $20 million or whatever. I think he said 100 million. I think Jim Carrey, the actor, said everyone should make $100 million, and after a year later, you’ll realize that it’s not the answer to living in your existence.

You can go buy the cars and the houses and the Rolexes and all that stuff, and then you’re still just left with yourself and your relationships. So, I kind of follow the same path and found the same thing out. It’s not like poor me. I sold a company for nine figures and it’s not that at all. I’m like so grateful for it. And it also gave me the life now where I can do this work. You know, I can go journal on a beach for five hours in a day and figure stuff out. I can call friends that our relationships have like waned over the years and reconnect with them. And I can spend time with my parents who are older. And before when I was running a company, I could have, but I didn’t do any of that stuff. It was just all work, work, work, company, company, company like all the time.

Brad Weimert: What advice would you give somebody starting today? So, let’s say a 25-year-old entrepreneur.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: What’s your advice as a 50-year-old post-exit person? And let me preface this because the advice that you just gave that you heard that when you were younger, I definitely heard it. And it comes off as cliche and out of touch and irrelevant to a young, hungry, ambitious entrepreneur. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Money’s not the answer. It’s not about the money. It’s about who you become.

Josh Bezoni: The money is part of it because it allows you to do great things to help other people and charities and stuff. That’s very true. But for a younger person, I think you got to go through it yourself, right, and you got to discover this yourself. And I also think 20s and 30s, you should go all in. You got so much energy you need to screw up and learn things. You’re not going to listen to anyone anyway. So, you have to go through the process of your own journey, your own entrepreneurial journey, and you got to go through that. I’m just saying that along the way, I wouldn’t lose yourself in it. And I would spend time getting to know what drives you and who you are. Just don’t let the company become your whole identity.

I have friends that have sold big companies and then got divorced and are like just miserable. You got to keep the whole goal in mind of where you want to go, outside of just the money. And do you want a family? Do you want to get married? Do you want to…? You know, all that stuff.

Brad Weimert: So, entrepreneurship becomes part of most people’s identity when they’re building. Being a business person, my father makes stained glass lamps, and they’re unbelievably ornate and beautiful. He’s a retired physician.

Josh Bezoni: It’s awesome.

Brad Weimert: It’s crazy too like it’s just this meticulous. It’s the way that he unwinds and it’s so meticulous, it seems like he’s going to be anxiety-ridden.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah, I would be anxious.

Brad Weimert: Oh my God. But they take him hundreds of hours. And he frequently or on many occasions we’ve talked about sort of that not being economically viable. There’s no way to sell the lamp, right?

Josh Bezoni: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: And I currently, at 43, have this thought in my head of the economic viability of a hobby being part of the fun of the hobby. But that’s my stance now when I’m in it. Do you at 50, post-big exit have any desire to have business be a part of your life moving forward in any capacity? And if so, how will it be different than it was?

Josh Bezoni: So, I sold the company with Joel two and a half years ago, and after I sold, a lot of people told me like, “Don’t get into any more business. Like, take a year off. You’ve earned it.” I didn’t do that. Right after I sold the company, I immediately invested into another company and was spending time on that because I was so wound up and just had to be doing something all the time that I started another company and I had a non-compete in supplements, and so that’s my specialty. So, then you go into an area that you’re not a specialist at and it doesn’t work, right? And then you invest in companies that you don’t understand, and then a lot of them don’t work.

But anyway, I finally just slowed down probably a year after I sold the company. I’m just like I’m just going to slow down. I’m going to look at my own stuff. I’m going to work on myself. I’m going to make myself. I’m going to be my own company. When they go in, they buy these companies that are like on the verge of bankruptcy and these DC companies, and then they put in a new CEO and they rebuild the whole company. I basically looked at myself and said, “I’m like a take-over project.”

And I’m going to spend the next year and a half just looking at my nutrition supplements, how I sleep, get into biohacking. I’m really into anti-aging now, doing all these crazy things, trying to be healthy and live longer. And, yeah, I just made my own personal self like my own company that I was taking over and reinventing. Yeah.

Brad Weimert: Awesome. Anything else you want to tell people? Where do you want to point people? Do you care if people find out more about you?

Josh Bezoni: So after…

Brad Weimert: What are you doing now?

Josh Bezoni: After I sold a company, I actually had, like, and then I stopped working a little bit. I actually had a disdain for business. I’m like I don’t want to be selling and hawking another product like for the rest of my life. I don’t want the stress of HR and handling operations and like I can’t believe I did that. It’s probably like a pro athlete that like doing the grind and working out every day and all this stuff for years. And then they go through a crisis because they don’t know who they are after they sell. And then after a while, then they kind of settle into their new life and they look back and what they used to do and they’re like, “I can’t believe I even used to be able to do that. Yeah, that was insane.”

So, now I invest. We have our own fund, Joel and I do, and we’ve invested in 22 different companies. But the workload for me is like I have some calls with founders when they need help with something once a week or something. And then I’m investing in lead investor in two pickleball courts. So, we do one called Brush in Austin and it’s on Menchaca by all the bars out there. And so, it’s got 18 courts. Half of them are covered. Some of them are going to be indoors. Big bar, big restaurant. You know, that’s going to be awesome because I love playing pickleball. And we got a community there. And financially, the projections look really good.

I invested in Maui. I have another home in Maui, and we have Aloha pickleball there that breaks ground later this year. Same concept, but with a gym. You know, big state-of-the-art gym and pickleball courts because there’s so much tourism there. Those will do really well. But there’s people that have founded that. I’m just like the lead investor, so I don’t have to deal with. That’s what’s great about after you sell a company, you can be involved in things. It’s probably like being a grandparent and you don’t have to raise the kids, right? You just show up and play and do the fun stuff.

And so, now I’m in at that mode where I’m investing. I get to do calls when I want, I get to be as involved as I want. And financially, if I’m not an idiot and you just look at being in index funds and making an average of 10% a year, like you don’t have to make money again. And so, it’s a nice feeling to know that that’s financially taken care of. But that’s what I’m doing now, investing in pickleball courts. I’m working on myself like in my own business and I’m managing some investments and traveling, enjoying life, getting married, thinking about having a family. And, yeah, it’s completely, completely different now.

Brad Weimert: I love it, man. Well, I appreciate you carving out time to come tell me about it.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah, man. Awesome.

Brad Weimert: It’s been great to get to know more than pickleball.

Josh Bezoni: Exactly, more than. So much more than pickleball.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I don’t know, man. I’m actually looking forward to the next pickleball adventure with you. So, it’ll be cool to check out the new club in town and hopefully someday in Maui.

Josh Bezoni: Yeah. All right, brother.

Brad Weimert: Thanks again, man.

Josh Bezoni: Thanks for having me.