All right, we're missing a panelist here. I think he's talking with Mr. Johnson out there, so he may join us later. We're gonna go ahead and get started here. There'll be people trickling in. My name is Nate Raabe, Managing Partner of RX3. We're a consumer growth equity fund based here in Orange County. Byron Roth is one of the co-founders. We work with a lot of different athletes, celebrities, so have a little bit of experience working with influencers. Very excited to be moderating this panel today with three guys I know very, very well. Again, we're missing. We're missing Shadi. We're missing Shadi. If Shadi shows up or you see him later, make sure to give him a hard time. Byron, you wanna message him real quick? Danny Yeung. It says Prenetics, but IM8 is a brand that you guys probably are all very familiar with. David Beckham. We'll talk about a lot of the other influencers that are behind that one. Shahab, Cymbiotika. I think this is his fourth or fifth panel of the day. Runner-up in the RX3 charity flag football tournament. Oh. Next year he's Byron, come on, man. Gonna get the win here. You guys invite people here to bash him on stage. That's very nice. Classy of you guys. Next, last certainly not least, Dr. Jason Wersland, founder of Therabody. Therabody's been a portfolio company of RX3's for a long time. Dr. Jason's been a close friend, so excited to have him here. In terms of when it comes to influencers and, working with influencers with the brands, these are three of the top companies. I'm gonna actually let each of them introduce themselves, say a little about your company, and then we'll go ahead and get started. Go ahead, Danny. Good afternoon, everyone. My name's Danny Yeung, CEO and co-founder of Prenetics. Prenetics, we're publicly listed on the Nasdaq. We own 100% of IM8. My background's actually in life sciences and diagnostics testing. For the last 11 years, we've been building a company on life science and diagnostics, but we pivoted into consumer health. Previous to that, I was in e-commerce as the CEO of Groupon East Asia after they acquired my company. IM8, for many of you guys that may know, we started on December 24. David Beckham, I'm sure you guys know, is a very famous co-founder of ours. We went from zero to $100 million ARR in less than 11 months, which on record has made us one of the fastest growing supplement brands, you know, you know, in the planet, right? Yeah. Great. My name is Shahab. I'm the founder and CEO of Cymbiotika. I wanna hate Danny so bad, but I can't. He's the nicest guy in the world, 'cause his success has been so amazing. F you, Danny. They've done a great job. You know, we're really honored to be here. This is an important event. I think if you look around the entrepreneurs in the space, these platforms are really, really important. I was here. Byron doesn't even know this. I've never told you this story, Byron Roth. 24 or 25 years ago, I was here presenting one of our companies, trying to get funding. Many, many years ago. I'm now here on stage, so these. You snuck in. What's that? I think you snuck in. I think I did. Not I think. My name was John Smith back then. I did sneak in, but these platforms are so important for entrepreneurs, and thank you guys for being here. I was expecting more than that from you. I'm sitting here thinking, "I have to go after you. What am I gonna say?" Kidding. I'm Dr. Jason, founder of Therabody. I invented Theragun in 2008. I'm a chiropractor, and I was in a motorcycle accident, and I used it to get myself better, keep me out of pain, get me back through range of motion. I had a patient who had a similar experience, and after that, I realized, like, "I should probably do something with this." That was in 2008. In 2016, I met Ben, who was here yesterday, and my business partner, seed investor. We met Nate and some other people later on. We're sold in 75 countries now. It kind of fluctuates a little bit. We've finally got into South America. I'm super happy about that. We have around 30 products. Not just the Theragun, a lot of other products. Beauty products. A lot of you probably know us by our beauty mask now that's been out and crushing it, which is kind of crazy. All of our products are based on science. They're based on protocols. I'm a clinician. I have feedback and input from clinicians. It's really about nervous system regulation. All of our products are amazing, and they are physical products. They're things that you can do autonomously to, with yourself and to yourself, but it's really about nervous system regulation. It's about being able to perform at your highest and then be able to recover at your best. Yeah, I'll tell you, Dr. Jason and I are good friends, and I have so much admiration for him. I think as the panel goes on, you'll hear about his story. What they've done is very, very important in the wellness space. We don't compete. I think there's complementary pieces to it. What this guy has done and his company has done is really unique and important. Yeah, I think that's what's so interesting about this panel and what the prior panel with Bryan Johnson and the theme that kind of Byron and Roth has is kind of health, wellness, active lifestyle, longevity. All you guys play in that space. Ironically, with the influencers are big part of all you guys' brands because it's easy for them to get behind. The role that they play in each of your brands is very different. I'm gonna stick with this order, and then we're gonna mix it up, just because, Danny, your kind of the role that David Beckham plays with IM8 is very different than it does with Shahab and Dr. Jason Wersland because he seems like he's been there since the founding story of IM8. Maybe you could talk about what is that when you said, "I'm gonna start IM8, we need to have a celebrity backer," and how did you pick David Beckham or kind of tell the audience how that all came about. Yeah, sure. I think, you know, post-COVID, I mean, again, when we listed, you know, during this back in 2022, we had a $1 billion valuation, right? We dropped to $50 million, right? We knew we needed to do something very, very dramatic to reshape the business. We were thinking about the consumer supplement space, you know. When we're thinking about the consumer supplement space, everyone actually told me not to get into it, you know, because it's so competitive, lack of regulations, and it was like. I felt like, "You know what? If we can make a good product, even if you make a great product, it's like how do you get people to pay attention to your brand, to your product, right? We coincidentally just through my business network, I had a, you know, meeting, dinner with David Beckham in London, and we got along really great. I was like, "Hey, why don't we do this together?" I felt if we got David Beckham along, we could speed up our growth and trajectory to the market by at least two to three years. Ultimately, I think that's what happened, right? I ultimately believe we would have been successful without David, but the fact that we had David from day one as a co-founder cut through so much noise, right? For example, when we launched in January 2025, we're on the Today Show, right? He was already talking about IM8 on the Today Show. That got us like 1,000 orders overnight, right? That doesn't happen if you don't have David Beckham, right? I think starting with that, it just sped up our success and cut through a lot of noise that allowed us to get so much PR and media attention. People start looking at the product. They looked at our ingredients, clinical dosages. We had NSF Certified for Sport from day one. We had third-party clinical testing, we shipped to 31 countries. I think it was very important early on to get to him. But at the same time, I told David, we can't be just a one single celebrity brand. I think that's where a lot of companies, they don't do it so well. They actually really focus just on one celebrity. That's why we brought along also Aryna Sabalenka, world number one tennis player. Last month, we brought along Oliver Bearman, F1 driver, which is doing phenomenal after two races. He's like number two behind Ferrari and Mercedes, right? The addition of these additional celebrity ambassadors really add greater credibility than just a one celebrity, co-found the company. Thank you, Danny. Wanna introduce our panelist, Shadi. Thanks for being on time, Shadi. Everyone, Shadi, give a round of applause. Pathwater. Shadi, we're talking. You're on an influencer panel right now, and we already did intros. Maybe if you can give a quick background on Pathwater and yourself, and then we'll kinda go back to. Do you care if we keep going, or do you want us to start over from the beginning? Yeah, no. No, gotcha. Keep it rolling. Let's back it up. Yes, apologies for the tardiness. Someone told me it was at 12:15. Shadi Bakour, Co-founder and CEO of Path, started from humble beginnings 10-11 years ago and since have built the leading sustainable bottled water brand in the U.S., moving away from single-use plastic towards a reusable, recyclable aluminum bottle and just trying to save the planet one bottle at a time. Yeah, glad to be here. Shadi's a terrible human being. Top five worst guys you'll ever meet in your life. I thought he was a dear friend until we got to our room, and literally every room around us had Pathwater except us. Had some of the generic Safeway water or something, Pavilions water. My wife saw him and said, "What's going on?" I was like, "Worst guy ever," and he shows up 20 minutes late to our meeting. It was 60 minutes. Worst guy. Don't buy Pathwater. Terrible human. Going back to the question with Danny, but I'm gonna Shahab, you and Pathwater, a little bit different. I think on the celebrity and influencer, one thing I think you guys did a nice job is you got them as investors. Yeah. I know you guys probably 100 different celebrity investors between the two companies. I think combined actually in this group, there's over a billion social followers in terms of people that you guys work with. Shahab, how do you incorporate influencers into what you're doing with Cymbiotika? Yeah, this is not a shot at all. I think IM8 have so much respect for Danny and David in front here. They do a great job. It was a shot. That was kind of a shot. No, it was not a shot. Dr. Jason just throwing dynamite. He goes, "It's a shot." It wasn't. I said it was not a shot. There's no right way to do it. There's just a right way for your company. Every single company is built different, and the tech is different, the background is different. We were very intentional about not wanting to pay famous people to post our products. I think the science. We want to lead with the science behind products. The prerequisite for investing in our safe round, which is unique, we give a really, I would say, nice valuation of $200 million post-money was you have to be users of the product first. We have people like Kendall Jenner, Hailey Bieber, The Weeknd, J Balvin, Zac Efron. I'm losing a bunch of these famous people. They were users of the product before they were investors. They had to be investors of the product before we use them in anything. Users and then investors, and then we use them in PR purposes. That was important to us because our science led our company. We're a science-based company. It's not a hype or marketing company, and that was really important to us. Not saying that. By the way, I'm a IM8 user. Danny knows this 'cause he doesn't send me any free stuff. I gotta pay for it. He's also another bad human being along with Shadi. The two of them. I think they make great products, but our philosophy was a little different. We've stuck to it, and we've been disciplined about it. Shadi, maybe going to you too on the, I was gonna say that's very key, yeah? For even our celebrities, like, they have to be authentic users because as in this day of age, you know, people can see through that, right? Because their network is very small, right? If they say, "I'm endorsing something, but I don't use it," it gets around very, very fast. So even for us, or even, you know, with Aryna, Oliver Bearman, they were users of the product first before they approached us. Even for us-wise, we're not interested in just all cash transactions, right? It's a mix of equity and cash, right? The thing I gotta tell you, what was not cool though was my own wife canceled Cymbiotika and signed up for IM8 because David Beckham. Like, that's not nice, dude. Shadi, though, Thank you. I'm generally interested. These guys, it makes sense. They're users of the product, but your celebrities, they're investors. They all drink water. How do you leverage or utilize your influencers as investors? Or are they posting? Or they obviously have equity because they invested? Or how does Pathwater use your guys' network? Well, the short answer is I don't use them enough. I think my strategy is very simple. I again think that there's no right or wrong way. Like, I think you've probably seen every single flavor of how someone's used a celebrity correctly and incorrectly, and paid them or had them invest or whatever it may be. Our strategy was always that we wanted to build a brand that was fundamentally sound in that people actually like our brand before we get the celebrity around it. Then coupled with that was the fact that I'm a true believer that people only value, like truly value what they pay for. You know, these celebrities are being thrown offers and deals for millions and millions of dollars, cash, equity, you name it. Our strategy was different. It was, if you wanna be part of this brand, put your money down, invest, and then let's figure out a way that we can work together. I think going back to the authenticity, you know, what we've found is that, you know, we've pitched, for example, the most sustainable person in the world. You can maybe guess who that is from a celebrity standpoint, and he wanted to throw in a $5,000 check and get 5% of the company, and we had to obviously walk away from that deal. We've had investors, celebrities that say, "I will only put you on my massive TV network, TV show, if you allow me to put in another $250,000." You know that guy is gonna work for you, right? Those are the type of relationships that we like to build. Now, Dr. Jason, full disclosure, we're investors in Therabody, so I'm very, very biased with this, whatever your answer is gonna be here. But you guys We already won then. Have done an incredible job with the athletes. We work with a lot of athletes, and I think what was so easy for us to get behind Therabody is this, we talked about authenticity. It's really easy for these athletes to support Therabody 'cause they're users of the product. Maybe talk a little about that on the athlete side because you're core to that. Yeah. Maybe on the beauty side as well as you've kind of expanded into that. Yeah. I think, excuse me, to give some context, in the early days, in 2013 and 2014, when I had the very first Theragun, I had them in my trunk of my car, and I was driving around in the daytime to physical therapy and chiropractic clinics trying to sell my product, and I was selling them one at a time, and they'd wanna hold on to it for a couple of weeks. That's what my day was like. In the morning, I would go and train at a place called Unbreakable Performance, which is up on Sunset in Hollywood, and it's like where everyone trains. The Seattle Seahawks at the time were there, hockey celebrities, and it's this backdoor place. No one knows about it. They asked me, "Hey, can you come and set up your shop here and work on these people?" I was like, "Yeah." That was like my gig, but the Theragun was my side gig. One day I went to my practice at this facility, and all of my Theraguns were gone out of my treatment room, and they were up on the gym floor. I was a little bit late. I walked in, and I was watching these guys use my Theraguns and how they were communicating to each other, and I, it was like a rock hit me in the head. I was like, "Whoa, I wanna do what Gatorade and Under Armour did. I wanna put this into the hands of the people that know how to use it, how to talk about it, who do use it, and now they'll share their testimonies. They're now telling their buddy, "Hey, dude, you should use this before you do box jumps. You should use this before you do bench press." Watching that happen, I realized that if I could get with the one guy in the room that everyone paid attention to, then that, then my work is done 'cause he uses it, he's got it. To Nate's point, this makes you feel good, like, right now. That's one of the most powerful things about Theragun and our brand for that matter is, like, you're not taking a supplement, no offense to you guys. You're not feeling it three days later. Like, you feel it now. Having those moments, those authentic moments where people would be like, "Oh my God, that's amazing," you capture that on camera, and it's the right person, that's gold. Just repeating that over and over and over again, and finally, you know, if I had a magic wand and I could wave it at the time, I would have who? Cristiano Ronaldo. We got Cristiano Ronaldo. I've worked with him for several years. He ended up coming on as an ambassador for three years. It was a blast working with him, seeing the impact he has. Like, one post got us, like, 300,000 followers. It was insane. We used that same concept, which is, like, my relationship with Ronaldo allowed that to happen, and my relationship with Josh Allen today and Nate is also what allowed that to happen. Part of what I believe in, and this really goes with Nate and RX3 and a lot of the people we work with, is I have this three-step process I go through. It's BRT, support, and educate. BRT is build a relationship of trust. I joke and say that could take a year or a beer. The next thing is you support that person or that athlete. When I met Ronaldo, we were in a very important place where I was validated right away, and then I put my hands on him. Now I start working with this guy, and now he's getting this immediate contact relationship with me on how to use the product, what it's intended for, and then he's just locked in. "I gotta have this." The first time we met, he took the one that I had. He's like, "You're not getting this back." It's repeating those moments over and over again. Now you get into beauty, and it's the same thing. The beauty people who are working with our brand have used our products before beauty was even part of our brand. That's authentic as it comes. "Oh my God, you're doing that? I'd love to. I love your brand." I think the waterfall effect of all of our new products that are coming out is because we really started out the right way. The way Theragun made you feel was really important, and I tried to capture that and grow that. I'm going to you, Shahab. On Cymbiotika, it's very different 'cause you guys have. I mean, you have the who's who on the investor side. You just raised $25 million. You can go through all the lists. What I find so interesting about what you built, and it's across the board here, is the culture, and you showed it at our event on Saturday. People love saying that they're part of Therabody. People love Cymbiotika. You ooze the Cymbiotika. You have the energy there. You do a lot with micro-influencers, and I feel like people are always reaching out to you. You guys are incredible on the gifting. I gotta get on that list somehow. You guys do a ton of influencer gifting. Maybe talk about how you use, not necessarily the bigger names like the Josh Allen, the Ronaldo, but all the other influencers that you use. Yeah. I think the crowd paused when Dr. Jason said he put his hands on Ronaldo. I saw gasps in the audience. I knew you would like. That was pretty good. This is my wife's side of the business, but I'll speak on her behalf. She's our Chief Experiential Officer. We spend a lot of time on the ground floor. I think that's where the magic happens. If you look at the really specialty places in the country, we're like in 8,000 or 9,000 specialty. This is outside of big box. That's where the magic happens, and our products actually work. There's a lot of supplements out there that just don't work, and we've tested a vast majority of them. Absorption matters, and we're the absorption company, so we have a technology that it's gonna be patent pending soon. Our attorney right there shaking his head. Adam. We have an absorption that no other product on the planet has, and this is not talk track on a panel. This is fact, and our patent will prove it. Our products absorb 3x higher than anyone else on the planet, and we can prove it, and we'll take everyone to task to do it, and we're gonna do it soon, by the way. A lot of people are gonna get some letters from us saying, "We said you have it. Now let's see it." The trial for that is on the ground floor at these smaller locations, the Pilates studios, the gyms, and we're about to announce a partnership soon, not today, but probably the next five or six or seven days. The guest speaker is actually one of the panelists today. He'll tell you. About 10,000 specialty doors we'll be in very, very soon, and he's acknowledged our presence there because our products work. We've done two clinicals, an absorption study that are unique, and no one else in our industry has the guts to do it 'cause they don't wanna know the results. The results are bad for them. They don't wanna see them. We actually, to be frank with you, we actually debated if we wanna do our clinicals and our absorption studies 'cause once you see the results, then ignorance is no longer bliss. We knew what our formulas were, and our patent is real, and we own it. We're not a marketing brand that has famous brands, famous people behind it, that's why we're cool. Our stuff actually works and absorbs 'cause we've relied so long on our patent to prove it, and we'll take a lot of people to task, Mr. Raabe. It's gonna be out soon. Here we go. You can do it. It's on. The product, you're saying you get them to post and do all that because the products work, and they believe in the product, and they believe in the science. If the products don't work, then you're just a marketing company. We have no desire to be a marketing company. We're a wellness brand, and so you have to choose. Do you wanna be a fancy marketing company? Which, no offense to those who are, there's a lot of them out there. They sell gummies and other things that are cool, and they're easy to take, and they taste good. We are not one of those companies. We are a wellness brand. We have the science behind it. We have the people behind it. We have the patent behind it. We have the technology behind it, and we're gonna take people to task, and we'll see what time it is. You have something to say, Dr. J? Yeah. I was just thinking, one of the things that we did early on when celebrities would reach out to us is we made it mandatory that I would have to visit them at their house, or we would get someone else that would visit them at their house. "Hey, I want a free product. I'm gonna send my manager down. Can you courier it to me?" "No. Dr. J's gonna come." We started educating these people because they're the ones that are talking to their influencers. I think what's interesting now in the influencer world is people are so literate to what they're seeing on Instagram that it's, you can't. If you're not using it, if it's not authentic, it won't resonate with people, and they can see that right away. One of the things we're starting to do is have people do tryouts. Like, "Okay, you wanna work with us? Let's see what your brand can do. Can you post? Let's see how much engagement you get. Let's see how you talk about it." This is what we're doing actually with our Chinese division. They have so many people that wanna work with the brand. We're saying, "We're gonna give $60,000 to the winner, and you can be an ambassador for a year. But you have to try out. You gotta show us what you can do." I think as we're talking about influencers, it's great to talk about how we did this, but my stuff's 10 years old, like it's not really valid anymore. The athlete side is because we have relationships, but, like, when you start getting new influencers, you're going into new spaces, you have to kind of, you gotta rethink it. It's not how it was before. That's. I just wanted to point that part out. Yeah, I think a lot of people when you hear influencers and brands using influencers, it's hard to track, like, what is the value. There's a lot of kind of return on ad. Like, what is really the value here? Shadi, I'm gonna go to you and, you know, I'm not questioning the product. The water works. I'm assuming it hydrates everybody. We. That's settled. You don't have to kind of what- Nailed it. Cymbiotika is doing. How are you when you do activate an influencer, how are you guys tracking at the company level of like, "Hey, yeah, actually, we wanna work with them again. We got a return on investment here." Or do you do that, and there's just more kind of the awareness play? Yeah. We actually don't have an influencer program. We actually don't really- That's why he was late. He was confused. There we go. Exactly. Never gonna live that one down. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, we actually at the moment don't have an influencer program. I think there's a big risk, especially in the beverage space 'cause beverage is frankly very hard to make money in. There's a big risk with just throwing money at marketing, right? I think we've seen some brands with, you know, really big celebrity behind it that drive a ton of trial, and you get You know, a line of kids out the door at 7-Eleven trying this product, and we've seen revenue just like skyrocket and then just plummet because after that first few trials, you know, people find out that the product's not that great. It goes back to that whole idea of having like. I think our product goes beyond the water. We have really high quality water, but it's also the container itself, right? You will not see any other competing product on the market with the same form factor as our bottle because of the relationship that we have with our suppliers. That integrity of product is something that we've never sacrificed and is very, very important to who we are as a brand despite, you know, a lot of our stakeholders trying to push us to go lower quality. We just absolutely refuse to do that, and I think that's given us a lot of trust with our customers. Yeah, you guys do a great job on partnerships too and collabs with your water and your bottles. Danny, maybe I'll ask a similar question to you because I know you do track that, and you started with David Beckham, and we were just talking. Sounds like you're adding additional influencers and a new basketball player, which I don't know if you're allowed to share, but how do you think about it as a company? Sharing it privately, yeah. Yeah. How do you think about a company in terms of, "Hey, this is the right guy. Here's how we're gonna define as being successful," or are you tracking that kind of stuff or are you just- Yeah, I mean, we track everything. I mean, from day one, that's a critical element of actually tracking all of the data. We track it by return on ad spend, top of funnel, you know. For example, last year, we had one social media post on Instagram that had 233 million views, right? This was the ad buy. We did an IM8, 100% IM8 deal in three weeks, $25,000, and it was also with Aryna Sabalenka on it. That created significant top of funnel for us, right? Once we get significant top of funnel, then we retarget, we could remarket them. It made significant ROAS for us, right? Because think about how else are we gonna get 200 million views on Instagram, right? Impossible, right? Every single influencer we track, and again, a lot of the smaller influencers we track, if it doesn't return on a positive for us after three months, we don't continue with them. However, for the bigger ambassadors, we only do three-year agreements. The reason why for three-year agreements with us is one-year agreement is actually really short, right? For both sides. For their side, for our side, it becomes actually not so authentic. We also try to track, are they also, you know, sponsoring or endorsing other supplement brands? Because, again, the authenticity is very important. If they're sponsoring like three, four, five other supplement brands, then it's like we don't even work with them, right? There's no point, right? Because the messaging gets lost. Again, consumers nowadays are so smart, they'll be able to track, "Hey, this guy's like, you know, talking about five, six other brands," right? We never work with those guys. Again, the authenticity is really important when we track every single piece of this. They get Sabalenka, and they get 300 million views. We posted Mia, and we lost like 2,000 followers. We have the inverse with them. Yeah. We're opposite of that. You mentioned a couple things that I think are interesting, and structure is one we get asked a lot in terms of how do you structure these influencer deals? I think the days of, "Hey, here's $5,000. Go do a social post," every single one of you mentioned authenticity, which that's not the case anymore. You can't just pay somebody to do a social post, and it's not gonna drive engagement. We've seen a lot of creative structures when you are working with these influencers. Maybe I'll leave it open, but maybe talk a little about how you structure. Is there like an incentive? Yeah. Do you give them a code in the sales? Shahab. We have two that we're gonna announce in the next, my team's right here, 30 days or so. Big ones, the biggest, the only ones we've ever done. There were prerequisites involved. One, a seven-figure investment, so that was part of it. They have to invest real money. At least $1 million. Yeah. You gotta have a real skin in the game besides a code or a link. The second piece is vast majority of the comp, call it, I don't know, 99.97% is only paid at exit, and so a change of control transaction. The way we tiered it is $1 billion+ is where they only get paid at any relevancy. Now you have a $1 million+ in the game investment wise. Their real exit money comes from a $1 billion+ exit. The incentive is really there for them to be engaged, not just use this link to get 20% off. That's cheesy. As Danny said earlier, people read through that kind of stuff. The ones we're gonna announce in the next, Adam, three or four weeks? Two or three weeks? Oh, I thought we were gonna have a breaking announcement today. Yeah. That'd be right. Say it. I'll say one. I can say one. I think we should do one. It's Gary Brecka. Who wants to hear one? Okay. Gary Brecka will leave all the other supplement companies for us. Gary Brecka. You guys are the first ones to hear it, and he spoke this morning, and if you guys were here for that, he's a different animal. He's a different dude, and we're blessed to have him. He's a partner. He's just not an influencer. We want partners, not influencers, not marketers. Have no interest in that. We want actual partners. Yeah. Say how that came about, because I do think that's a very interesting story. He's a user. He was with Roth, and he sought you out with Cymbiotika. Like you said, the authenticity is there, and I'm excited for you guys and what that's gonna do to the brand. But similar to Aryna and David Beckham, like, they were users of the brand first, right? Isn't that how it kinda all came together? I mean, David was a co-founder, right? David's a co-founder. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Aryna, yeah, her coach, Jason Stacy, you know, started using the product for a month until last January. He gave it to Aryna. She tried it for three months. I'm sure you can imagine at Aryna's level, they're monitoring every single little change on her diet, what they take on a daily basis. She felt significant change in recovery and energy levels, and she had her team reach out to us, right? Same thing with Oliver Bearman. Again, he's racing F1, yeah. His team reached out. They saw the product. Someone gave it to him to try, and they're traveling constantly. You know, every single week is a new country for them. Having this consistent energy and something easy for them to consume and, you know, that's how ultimately these relationships got started, right? Also make it a must that, you know, I also have the, again, very similar to, you know, Jason's that I also have to develop a personal relationship with them to understand if this is, you know, legit or not legit, right? With each of these guys, you know, I'm like in constant contact with them, WhatsApp. We, you know, get together every, you know, few months, et cetera, which is also very important, as part of this relationship. Yeah, just sticking with the structure question, go to Shadi, 'cause, you do have a lot of, I know you don't have an influencer program, but you have a lot of influential people and celebrities that are investors. Is there an expectation of, hey, you can invest, and because you're an investor, do you give them like a discounted, terms or any sort of preference, or you just want them to, invest and they're past investors, there's no expectation? It varies. We've definitely given deals to a handful of investors. I would say, look, there are two sides of, in my mind, what a celebrity has access to. Number one is obviously from a marketing standpoint, their Instagram, whatever it may be, but there's also like this back office type of side where they have these massive networks. They're constantly in front of, you know, super influential people, customers, et cetera. They can tap you into different avenues, pave new pathways for you to grow into different channels, et cetera, et cetera. I would say we kind of play on both sides. Yeah, like Guy Fieri or Ryan Seacrest, I've reached out to them and said, "Hey, can you do a video for this new program launch?" Or Mr. Boss Everline, who's joined us here in the audience today, "Hey, you know, we're doing this new product launch. Can you support us?" They're more than happy to do it, right? Going back to the relationships, I think that's super important because at the end of the day, yes, like everyone wants a deal, everyone wants to make money, but also people kind of wanna be a part of the journey, wanna be along for the ride. We've been very lucky to have a very extensive cap table. We have a lot of celebrities and athletes, more than you know we could probably take full advantage of. There is also the organic aspect of it as well, right? Where we're not necessarily expecting anything, but it's just organically happening. Only Shadi, you hit a point that I missed. Thank you for that. The relationship piece is big, and then cross-pollinating these verticals. Boss just walked in. Boss is on our board. I think he probably sits on your board too. He's an investor, and Boss is probably one of the top savants. You know Boss really well. Boss. Raise your hand, Boss. There's Boss, Ron Boss in the back. Ron is a savant in this aspect of cross-pollinizing relationships. He'll call and say, "I have this company I invest in, or I sit on the board of." Path and I, and somebody who we've done a lot of work together because of Boss, because of Robert Roman in the front here, and those relationships matter. In fact, we were in Doha together, all of us, not too long ago, and we did some business out there because of this relationship. Now we're doing some other stuff that we're working, I can't announce today, but we'll talk about it soon, Mr. Boss. Yeah, I don't know what's more impressive, the fact that Boss has invested in three of the four companies, or maybe it's IM8 that he didn't invest in you. That might be the most impressive thing, that he hasn't invested there. Yeah, I think that's a good point in terms of the equity, and I know you at Therabody, we have a ton of investors, and what's cool about Therabody is, a lot of the athletes use it as like almost a badge, where they're like excited to tell people that they're investors in Therabody because it's a product and I know we don't pay them. It's- Mm-hmm. You're starting to see the whole athlete or celebrity wanna be business people, and so they're actually, like you were saying, it's not always. It doesn't have to be paid all the time. We found it is sometimes if they expect to be paid because they're investing, then is it really an advantage to have them as an investor? Sometimes if you're paying them, they'll do exactly what you pay them for and nothing more, you know? If you don't, like, they'll just kind of be more, again, organic. Yep. Real quick, 'cause I think this might be what you're talking about. The definition of influencer has definitely changed. You know, the macro influencers are great. You guys all have massive name people like Boss and a lot of them. But the micro influencer and even like the students, like the NIL, how do you guys look at kind of the influencer in general, and do you guys. Is it a combination of having a big macro name combined with the micro influencer? Are you guys focusing more on like the smaller niches, higher engagement? How are you guys looking at that for your strategy in general? Yeah, when we did our thing with Josh Allen just recently, we sort of went back to the playbook that worked for us and always has worked for us, which is kind of a pyramid. Who's at the top of that pyramid? In this case, it's Josh, and I could use Ronaldo or whoever you wanna put in there. But we have a person at the top that's leading the brand. We can use his face, we can use his likeness. The way that influencers are now, like Nate was saying, is the machine isn't around them like it used to be. You know, if we had James Harden come in and put money in, plus you, we also paid him to be an influencer for a while. That's not how it is anymore. To Nate's point, it's like sitting down and having a conversation with these people real time, real life, like what's gonna work for you best. Having Josh at the tip of that spear or the top of that pyramid, and then the next question is, who supports Josh and who does Josh support? That's where we're going. We got Josh. I shouldn't say we got him, but we're working with Josh. Now who can we support under Josh? Who's his physio? Who's his quarterback coach? Who's working with him in Buffalo? Do we have enough presence at that level? Then the next level is NIL. Where does he train? What school did he go to? What relationships does he have? We'll build that sort of waterfall pyramid, and it just keeps repeating and repeating itself if we do it the right way. The structure with Josh at the top is what made it work, right? Validates it. Yeah, validates it. We've always kind of done that at different points, a version of that, but the details of each deal is also a little different. It's changed over time, like you said. You guys do both. Shahab, you have Gary Brecka now, but you guys' micro influencer strategy is incredible. Do you prefer doing the kinda smaller, or is it combination? I mean, I would love a Josh Allen and a David Beckham one. I'm not complaining or Cristiano Ronaldo. No. We had a PE meeting recently, and they go, "Well, Lemme is crushing Target." I'm like, "Yeah, they have a Kardashian. I'll take one of those." You know, you get us a Kardashian, we'll do well, too. We've been focused on this for a particular reason. We didn't wanna build our brand around a specific person, and a lot of brands make this mistake. These guys haven't. They've diversified really well. If you go all in on a person that's not your brand, then you've devalued what you've built, in our opinion. Now, we could be wrong in our philosophy. Maybe some of the folks have it right. The value of our brand. As we talk about the rock stars of our products, of our brands or our products, the science behind what we build are our stars. We don't want. With all due respect to Gary Brecka, I love him to death. Daymond John and I spoke earlier. He's on our board as well. He's an investor. We love him to death, and all those guys. They are not the rock stars of Cymbiotika, and neither are we. It's our products. Yeah. The science carries our products. We're gonna really elevate that over the next couple years. That's why we raised the $25 million, was to be able to articulate that. I think the micro-influencers are important 'cause there's a foundational part approach to marketing. It requires all these components. You want the big guys, your folks, and you want the micro-influencers. You really wanna focus on your product, your service, because that's what's gonna scale. You can't forever scale Gary Brecka or Daymond John. You have to scale your products and services. We have ambitions of a multi-billion-dollar exit, and those ambitions require a product that actually works, there's science behind it, and it can carry itself over time, not because so-and-so's hot for today. Yeah. Shadi? Yeah, I would completely agree with that. I think I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I've met that come to me and said, "If I just had, you know, X, Y, Z influencer or celebrity, like, my company would just explode, and everything would be, you know, flowers and rainbows." I've found that to be the exact opposite approach of what you should take. I think building the base, building the foundation, a product and a brand should stand on its own, and the celebrity, the influencer, et cetera, is just a tool to expand that reach and that exposure further. If there's fluff at the bottom, then it's not gonna last, right? You wanna build for longevity, whether you're a Cymbiotika that's actually doing longevity or any other brand. Even just to share on that, 100% agree is that even this year, right, we're doubling down on our clinical trials. We're embarking on about three new clinical trials, and very few supplement brands actually would even embark on this, because number one, it's expensive. It's, like, $2 million-$3 million just for three trials, and the results are uncertain, right? You don't know what results you're gonna get. You know, so by the fact that we're able to confidently spend that much money, we know the product works. There's a lot of science behind the product. One of these trials we're doing with Mayo Clinic, right, and two others with another CRO, right? I think going back, you have to have, you know, celebrities, influencers, et cetera, but at the end of the day, if your product doesn't work, it doesn't matter who you have, yeah? We've also seen many cases of big, big celebrities, but their products doesn't work, and they failed, right, and they went out of business, right? Yeah, we've seen that all the time, where people come to us, say, "Hey, you should invest because we have so-and-so. Yeah either as an investor or as an ambassador, and it doesn't matter. The key man risk is real. If you don't have the right products, the right science, not only will the investors see through that, but the consumer. Mm-hmm You don't have something sustainable. I mean, look at Ladder, right? Ladder was one of the biggest supplement companies. They had LeBron James, they had Arnold Schwarzenegger, they had Tom Brady, blah, blah, but they failed, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Danny made such a good point around the clinicals. The two aspects of clinicals that are brutal, our CFO's right there named Frank Kimberly, they're really, really expensive, and Danny just said it. You don't wanna know the results sometimes, 'cause if you do, then you know them, and you don't have the plausible deniability anymore. A lot of brands will deviate from it just 'cause they don't wanna know, and it's a sad reality. If you're really in a position you don't know the results of your own products, then what are you doing here? We did it, and they're doing it, and I'm proud of them for doing it, because the results are the result. I want to make sure we have a little time for questions, but there's a lot of founders out here, and we get asked all the time, like, what's the best way. If you're gonna have a celebrity, you're gonna have an influencer, maybe I'll let each of you go and say either some advice or a pitfall that they should avoid, 'cause not everyone's like Bas, where if you just ask him, he will invest in your company. Some of them, you have to actually have a strategy. Anything that you guys want to give advice to the founders that are looking to incorporate an influencer or an athlete? The one thing that stuck with me all along is a relationship, and it just ends up lasting. I think there's been times I've met. Just recently I ran into someone who I've known for a while. They wanted to work with a brand, and I told them, "If it's meant to be." This is gonna sound kind of crazy, but, "If it's meant to be, it'll work, and let's just see how our lives keep." When you keep crossing paths with people, at a certain point it just makes so much sense. I'll give you a really quick example. The Shoe Surgeon is named Dom. He does shoes for athletes and stuff. I've known Dom for a while. We wanted to work together. We're gonna build something and make something, and we're gonna do this custom thing, and it just doesn't work, and we tried a couple of different times. He's super cool, too, so he realized it's not the right time. Independently, our team reached out to his team, and we ended up making some really amazing custom Theraguns for our 10-year anniversary with Dom. That's the kind of stuff that I believe works, because now we're not paying top dollar for Dom as a service. He's actually invested in what we're doing, and halfway through the project, he texts me, he's like, "Bro, we gotta do something bigger together." That, to me, is a true, like, authentic relationship with an influencer. We work. We also. Another thing I didn't talk about much is we try to work with influencers that influence influencers. That's one of the things we try to drill down on as well. Just to double-click on that, 'cause Therabody did a really nice job just going on the NIL side. Instead of when we tried to go into NIL, instead of breaking into entire locker room, what we did is we found the quarterback of the major programs. We signed them an NIL deal, and then we had them gift their entire football team product and 'cause they were the key influential player in the locker room. You really have the influencers be the influencer for you, and it worked incredibly well. All of those guys were so thankful to get the product. It cost us just product, nothing. You have all these influencers, and the NIL, the younger generation, they know how to actually create content. A lot of these other guys, they hate creating their own content. They're not good at creating their own content. Influence the influencer. That's something that, you know, Therabody's done a great job of, and it works. We call it locker room hero. That was our term for that, but that's such a great example. Good job. For us, the person's more important than the celebrity. What they represent is multiples more important. The celebrity comes and goes. If you guys follow Epstein files or the Diddy files or whatever the new files are that come out tomorrow, the character of those individuals are far more important to our brand than the celebrity. All of us work, everyone in this room work really hard building a brand. Caring for that brand is by multiples more important than getting that initial oomph you get from a really famous person. We've taken great. I'm gonna pick on Boss 'cause he's in the room. We love Boss not because he's Ron Boss, one of the most famous wellness guys in the world. He's on multiple boards. He's a brilliant entrepreneur. There's a lot of those out there. What makes Boss unique for me is his love for his wife, Dawn. The father he is, the human being he is, the friend he is. He's got tons of friends in this audience for sure. That's why I love that man, and it's not because of how famous he is and he can walk around with the royal family of Qatar or Saudi. Those things are great. The character of that man is more important to me, and we invest in that character, not the celebrity, 'cause the celebrity will come and go. That character he's had his whole life and will have it for the next 50, 60 years, and we invest in that man. It's possible he's got great muscles. Boss, good workout. Danny? Yeah, I mean, similar, right? The person's so important, right? Because even for us, we passed down a few very big celebrity ambassadors and athletes and et cetera, because, you know, we always ask, you know, "How is it working with this person? How is it working with this person?" And this person was like, "Well, that guy's an asshole," or whatever, right? You're like, "Oh, shit." You wanna stay away from the assholes, right? 'Cause people know about it. They talk about it, especially in the industry. I also feel as a, at least for us, what we've been able to do is do it good decently is that we've been able to use equity as a really major tool for us, right? I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like, you know, they don't wanna give away equity, blah, blah, whatever. Equity can be a very powerful tool if you use it well. Even for us wise, I mean, I can share. It's like, you know, when we gave, you know, Beckham equity at Prenetics level, it was at $4 a share. Now it's at $20, right? When we gave Sabalenka, it was at $7. Now it's at $20. It's less than a year, right, when we started our relationship. When they're making money on that part, they're like telling all their friends and family about us, right? That gets into also a great thing because they're sharing it with their very close people and friends and family, right? I'm just happy Danny said, "Shit and asshole." I've never heard him say shit or asshole, so thank you for that, Danny. That was awesome. Shadi. All right. My thought on this is a little bit focused on this question, but a little bit more broadly towards entrepreneurship as well, is that speaking of assholes, I think advice is like assholes. Everybody has one. Everybody has. Far more frustrating. We used to be able to press a button and things would happen. It doesn't work that way anymore. Forward planning, we're now planning a year out or so in our marketing strategies. You have to. The returns aren't as significant as they used to be as we hit larger and larger revenue targets. It took us 5.5, six years to sell 100 million units. We'll sell 100 million+ units this year alone. The levers have changed. The complexities have changed, but that's why we have those brilliant folks sitting right there. Yeah, similar in the omni-channel approach, where we play in retail, we do a lot of partnerships. We are big in sports arenas, et cetera. It's a little bit difficult for us to pinpoint. Direct to consumer online is a very small portion of our business. Like, you know, with online, you can just put X dollars and you can see your return. It's very measurable. I would say our focus from a marketing strategy piece is actually at the point of sale. When the consumer is about to pick up the product, how do you educate them? How do you increase visibility in the store? And then how do you support that with like marketing from an umbrella standpoint through partnerships, through digital, et cetera, more from a brand awareness standpoint. Great. Thank you. I saw one more question in the back, and then we gotta go. Oh. Oh. Yes. Danny, you mentioned assessing after three months the efficacy of any particular, you know, person. How exactly do you do that? These are for more of our micro-influencers, right? Basically for the micro-influencers, they have codes, right? It's very easy. They get a code like Danny 10 or whatever, and there's an entry code, so we can assess how many people actually use that code. That was a quick one. One more here. There you go. You stand up. Sure. No worries. Not so much a question, just like Nate said, I'm a user of all your products and a believer. My Theragun, once you guys went triangle handle, game changer. I just wanted to thank you guys because this year there's a new Roth Conference Pickleball Champion who went undefeated because of his Theragun and his Cymbiotika. You used your question to compliment yourself? There we go. Get this guy out of here. Okay, that's a good one to end on. Great way to end. Thank you. Thank our panelists here. Thank you, guys. That was great.