I Launched My First Product

there are a lot of people that need their abilities stretched to the limits I feel like they should be able to do more and there is something getting in the way of them fulfilling their potential I really need something to pick me up cuz I'm tired so I bought a bottle and it tasted like piss what the hours and hours of phone calls designs that we liked and designs that we hated the five final fonts that we're picking out in the middle of the flipping night that first thing that we had was a monstrosity there is no chance in hell that anyone is trying any of those and going wow yeah they'll go and what did you say yeah it's quite nice I it's quite nice it's not been easy we falling out quite a bit didn't kill each other somehow if it doesn't taste as good but different if it's not as good it's this is hard this is [Music] difficult so here we are 12 months of messaging each each other late at night and first thing in the morning and we're still talking we're still amicable that's impressive well done we made it we made it we made this project harder than it needed to be because we wanted to be involved every single step of the way we didn't step into an existing product an existing project where someone said here's a formulation throw your names on the front of it we were here from before day one the problem that we're trying to fix for customers is that they feel like they're built for more they feel like they should be able to do more and there is something getting in the way of them fulfilling their potential it's like you're already enough but we need to unlock that potential and you can unlock that by using the drink power your productivity is a lot more soft I think than fuel your focus it doesn't have anywhere near as much punch last night by the way I was on the way to train at 6 PM so I went into a Servo and I was like oh I really need something to pick me up because I'm tired but I don't want to have too much caffeine I can't sleep so I bought a bottle instead of a bottle of and I actually became our demographic for that kind of even in uh pickup and it tasted like piss it was the worst tasting thing I've ever had it it literally I was driving down the road saying out loud what the and it filled me with hope that as long as we bring the message in the market together and create something that tastes good we can do very well for quite a while I'd been thinking I would love to do a neutop energy drink of some kind and I'd had it in my head for ages and I moved out to America and the wellness scene out there is way more Progressive I started talking to your manager my tour manager Luke and said I'd really love to do like some sort of brain enhancing cognitive performance drink and he said James is working on one of those and I thought but that was a long time ago if I'm honest to me before the events before the shows before anything the most important thing for me was priming myself and if I was a diva about anything it was right I need to be ready for what I'm about to do more cognitively and more mentally than anything else so my passion for energy drinks neut Tropics as well for years I've almost been self-medicated a desire to be productive alert and cognitively my best someone called you a connoisseur almost yeah and literally it's been a 10 year Journey without even realizing from pre-workouts to supplementation to all these different things when we started the project I already had a pretty good based understanding I was like cool this is what I've used this is what I recommend this is what I done this was efficacious this one wasn't the one thing that really excited me about this was that before when I had this concept in my mind of having something that could help people be more productive or Focus part of me you know used pre-workouts to get ready and the grittiness I didn't you fall out of love with anything that you mix with water for too long and then supplementation taking pills again my favorite way of getting myself ready for training session whatever it is is having like a nice beverage it's an enjoyable experience right and you can throw it in a bag you can do whatever speaking of that can we open these now CU I'm oh yeah thank God cheers cheers mate so why is it so important to you that we were to create a productivity drink over an energy drink the reason that we made this product is for the challenges that both of us face and we know that we are not alone we did a survey of more than 15,000 of our combined audience members about what they were struggling with most and staying focused having energy that doesn't crash and go through highs and lows throughout the day not getting distracted when they're trying to stay on task like we made this for those people like we took the research and we ensured that this fixes the problem that they have as far as I can see um we've been keeping our eyes on this market for a long time there's nothing on the market that actually does what we wanted it to do when I started modern wisdom that was the podcast that I wanted to listen to when I was younger and nutonic is the drink that I wanted to drink but wasn't available there are a lot of people that are working on tasks that need good focus and attention there are people that need their ability stretched to the limits and it's them now to know that there's more than a cup of coffee from the coffee machine that they can lean on I feel is liberating so the fact that people can you know legitimately as it says in the tagline feel their focus better is an exciting thing to me well we made it yeah exactly like actually like hours and hours and hours of phone calls and voice notes and photos backwards and forwards and designs that we liked and designs that we hated and color palettes and studies and all sorts of stuff so much of that went back and forth I feel so much more connected to this because I know every single thing that's on the back of the can I know all of the different pan turns that we went through like hundreds and hundreds of different color combinations how wide is the eye going to be whether or not we would to have five things on this side we were going to have three is it research Dash backed neut Tropic ingredients or is it research backed neut Tropic ingredients the five final fonts that we had for the title that we're picking out in the middle of the flipping night you may now be able to see why it's taken 12 months for us to get this across the line but I feel I feel genuinely connected to this which is nice and even if you were to rewind over a year I've been trying to sell people into this before we even created it so I've been people okay you got to get the right amount of caffeine but that's not just the only thing you need what you need is other compounds that can help you concentrate for longer periods of time and then when I was recommending people they're like okay so I need caffeine I need this I need this and then they look like they would Shake if they would to take everything they needed so the fact that I can take that same passion that I have towards productivity and then put it in in line of our project just yeah gets I'm excited so then obviously we discussed about some sort of illustration and I think my just slightly tweaked this but see if you guys like it um obviously we' gone hard on the eye but if you if you were to think of the eye could be a bit more relaxed but in terms of as a design it looks pretty cool that's pretty cool I think the wow both of those are really interest I love the two-tone what do you think James I really like the two-tone as well the eyes look a little bit stoned you know like doesn't scream Al to me I I have to say I'm really really big fan of that eye um which I like if you'd said we're going to put a huge pair of eyes on it I would not have guessed if we were to say right guys blindly you've got to uh you got to without looking get a pen and paper and design the can of what looks like what looks like uh what looks like people would actually probably have a quite a phazzy foggy idea of what the can look like and now so many of these new cans come to market look the same someone only needs to see us mention this once to never forget what it looks like like a police lineup you know like you're not going to foggy the water someone puts a gun to your head what did the can look like oh was it was it two ton did it say this I like the fact that we use the eye to catch people's attention which is the one thing we're all fighting for to maintain our attention so there's a bit of a story with that as well where like this it's so I look it's yeah it's just cool we did probably closer to four months of taste testing remotely I mean that first thing that we had was a monstrosity I wouldn't I would abs absolutely not go to market with that there is no way there is no way that we could take that to Market we can just like cast that one off I think that's still not right to me for four I like four four's the leader Four's overtaken too I would say that Four's four's the best but there's still still not there let's say that I bring hberman on the show or you you sit down with like [ __ ] Bartlett or whatever and you like toss a can across to him there is no chance in hell that anyone is trying any of those and going wow yeah they'll go I don't mean to be like I understand that I'm being Captain negativo over here I just think we have to nail the taste like it's so important that we nail this that first ever version that we tasted and what did you say yeah it's quite nice do you know what I think it's quite nice I used to work in a pub back in the day there was you know lime soda it was a basic drink it kept me busy maybe I was tasting Nostalgia of a cheap hor and soda so C yeah with soda water so I'm thinking it was things that don't really have any taste to them I think it was a nostalgic taste I was getting maybe it was taking me back to you know young James when he was 18 19 whatever you say the video can be I'm never working you I'm in the UK doing the final taste testing for our very own productivity drink but we have had some troubles getting the taste right I'm here for 40 hours going to go and live in the factory tomorrow for an entire day do a ton of sampling a ton of of testing and by the time that we are finished we're going to have a drink that is going to knock your testicles off we've got research backed evidence-based ingredient profile the right levels of everything everything is right except for the fact that we haven't got the flavor right if we don't get the flavor right on this batch to like tomorrow we miss the production run we miss summer and we give everybody else that is launching this stuff even more of a head start than we already have cuz I haven't been able to decide on stuff for 6 months and I'll have to go back to selling PDF training program to keep the electricity on this this winter oh so this one so I'm going I actually want to do that one left five times a small so I again I don't disagree the only thing is if it doesn't taste as good but different if it's not as good point we all agree no I would say if you if you love it then it's you we don't have to have another round Che gentlemen expecting to try yeah quite heavy that is a heavy that is a heavy flavor going get more more caffeinated these arguments I like the carbonation as well I actually don't like that that's the last one impossible this is hard this is difficult that's so there's like there's things you legally have to put on tast that it's not bad that's money oh thank God best thing I've tasted all day isn't it Chris you got say it's pretty nice 15 hours later we have come up with several flavor profiles it's not been easy we fallen out quite a bit didn't kill each other somehow but I'm excited because in all honesty we brought the most popular flavors and we put ours next to theirs and by the end of it I can't believe people are selling those disgusting flavors wipe the floor with them wipes the floor with all of them took so long to get this base right and now we have a signature flavor profile which is nicer than everything that everybody's selling it's [Music] wild [Music] formulation was actually relatively simple in terms of what we were going to put in the team came back with a pretty obvious hierarchy of what was the most evidence-based what had the most reliable uh human-based trials in healthy adults and it's what we put in here the expensive part was that we all wanted to make sure it was in efficacious doses so we didn't just want to say there's a proprietary blend there's a little sprinkling of a few different things so that we can claim that it's got these different things in it we actually wanted to make sure that it was a dosage to actually be effective and as part as the story was going for this so when we first looked at the ingredients that we were going to put into the drink I actually then went to other people that had no idea I was working on a project and I actually said to them I was doing a hit piece and I said there's this supplement mix of ingredients out there I think it's rubbish can you help me do a hit piece so I sent it off to someone in the evidence-based community and he came back and he pretty much said like you're going to really struggle because these ingredients are legit and then I told him I said actually thank God for that thank God for that and imagine if he'd said yeah mate all rubbish get it yeah take it down so that was a very you know great part in the beginning to make sure that we were on the right tracks and we w living in an echo chamber of you know deciding what was in it but yeah I'm really happy with with the ingredients and how they make me feel I guess one of the questions especially given what you've been talking about on YouTube recently that a lot of the audience will be thinking is what's in it why did you choose the things that are in it so why don't we spend a little bit of time explaining that one important thing to note is that we are not citing studies and trials that's primary subject is rats old people or those with Parkinson's are outside this one of the key ingredients that we included is cognizin cognizin is a heavily studied cyto Coline that impacts Focus attention and memory a study from 2015 found that adolescent males receiving cognizin every day for 28 days showed improved attention compared to adolescent males who received a placebo for the same period similarly a study on 60 healthy adult women aged between 40 and 60 showed that when supplementing 500 Mig of cognizin they made significantly fewer commission errors compared to those in the placebo group this shows a increase in attention this is why we put 500 Mig a full half gram of cognizin into this drink so a couple years ago I was taking a anti-cholinergic that was just like prescribed by the doctor it was something that I needed to take no big deal but I started taking it and then one day I was at the beach and I forgot the name of the small Seaside town next to Manchester Blackpool and for 3 minutes I couldn't remember Blackpool and what had happened was they doubled my dose of this anticholinergic about a week and a half before I didn't realize that Coline is a key neurotransmitter cognizin is a branded cytool so it's doing the opposite of what happened when I took that antolin urgent largely both of us are cognitive athletes right that's how I see my job and I'm really really in tune with the text of my mind so if something's off I know straight away if I haven't slept enough if I'm not hydrated if I've eaten too much sugar and then I take this anti-al energic thing and it's just like 30% of my Ram has just been ripped out from underneath me and my thoughts are muddy it was awful so yeah I think having such a massive dose the maximum legal dose that we can get of cognizant in this I was so confident even just coming in having had that one experience that was really uncomfortable to be honest like I really hated it I'm like oh maybe this is me for the rest you know like the same sensation you have if you ever smoke too much weed you're like I'm going to be stuck like this forever I thought I'm never going to be able to remember black cool again and um yeah so cogniz in very very important to me the other ingredient we included was Rola Rosa which is a powerful adaptogen adaptogens are plant extracts that impact the way your body responds to stress and fatigue a study on nurses working in high stress environments collected data in categories such as mental fatigue concentration over time and short-term memory it found that there was a statistically significant Improvement in all three tests meaning that in these cases R Rosa had helped with relieving stress induced by fatigue so if it helps these Healthcare professionals working in life and death scenarios it can help you do your emails Rod Ros is an interesting one because I've been a human guinea pig trying a lot of these things for quite a while I've been mentioning in videos for 6 to 12 months and this one I remember I was supplementing at the time I do in a pretty stressful business talk in the Gold Coast and I noticeably felt better as time went throughout the day usually as we get to about 2 3 p p.m. I start crashing a bit fly through feeling better wondering if whether or not I was just getting better at talking turns out I wasn't the you might have been getting better at talking as well no probably not probably not so uh yeah I've got firstand experience of that one where after that event and supplemented that became a non-negotiable for me moving forward another ingredient we included is panex ginang the primary active compounds in panic jinsang are Gino sdes these Gino sdes Aid the body in adjusting to a range of mental and physical challenges while fostering a sense of equilibrium and well-being these are Jin sang for cognitive augmentation has a long history rooted in traditional medicine particularly in East Asian cultures a double blind Placebo controlled study comparing 30 healthy adults supplementing panex Jensen against a placebo control group found that panex Jens can improve cognitive performance and feelings of mental fatigue during sustained mental activity this sustained focus is exactly what lots of people struggle with as your day continues you notice that your ability to focus degrades over time you continue to pump more caffeine into yourself hoping that it's going to help you control whatever it is you've got in front of you so this is why panx jinang is a big Advantage first day that came up ordered some online I was like look I'm going to try this out see what it's like and yeah over time that was one that I've then became quite proud of having it as an ingredient in the drink the Jin sang reduction in being distracted by different tasks I think for me as well was was pretty important because if I'm trying to research a guest if I'm trying to stay focused whilst having a conversation with somebody that's the most important thing like the energy is great but not getting distracted not moving onto other tasks all of that combined together so I did this event in La probably about a month and a half two months ago that week I did Eight Episodes in three states in seven days and then I did six episodes between Vegas and LA in four days two a day for two of the days and one a day for the two on either side and there's no way that I would have been able to get through it had I not have been using them one of the ingredients that we decided to include was caffeine caffeinated beverages have been consumed by people for centuries one problem with being overly reliant on caffeine is it's not fantastic for your sleep and and if you start to use it too much the next day you're going to need more caffeine to achieve the same effect only having one lever to press which is the caffeine lever is not good which is why we knew that caffeine on its own wasn't enough this is why we added Aline Aline is a natural amino acid that is mainly found in tea leads alanine is thought to enhance Alpha Brain Wave activity the relaxed but alert mental state associated with alpha waves can promote creativity focus and attention during a randomized in control trial on the combination of alanine and caffeine the data showed an improvement in both speed and accuracy of performance of an attention switching tasks and reduce susceptibility to distracting information in the memory task the use cases for this are obvious and plain I think the average amount of time that any knowledge worker spends on a single task is under 60 seconds now it's like 40 seconds and task switching is unbelievably destructive to your productivity Aline and caffeine are the perfect partners with caffeine you get the alertness and the reduction in sleepiness and with Aline you get the relaxed mental state so you're able to be focused and the task in hand and you're also going to be sufficiently relaxed that you can actually perform and feel good about it so big one for me what I knew that we had to have in from before we even started working together I knew that there had to be Athenian in because after 500 days without caffeine my caffeine tolerance is so sensitive that I need aling to smooth that out so you kind of have this it's almost like a little bit of a sea Sal right you get agitated by the caffeine which is good because it makes you less sleepy and it makes you more alert but what it also does is it can make you feel a little bit kind of uptight and it can sometimes make your brain feel a little bit scattered and the Aline for me I'd been taking tablets of Aline just with coffees because that was the only way that I could really have a coffee when I came back after having a break from caffeine so yeah I um I knew that we had to have Alin in which has ended up making the whole experience less like a rush less like getting punched in the face and more like accelerating really nicely in a fast car I think you did ask people what's the number one productivity drink on the planet and they go uh coffee well that's not a productivity drink is it it's not being designed for productivity it happens to be a useful drink that has some productivity enhancing effects that come along for the ride but this is purpose built from the ground up the dose of caffeine not overshooting over 120 milligram which I had to fight with you to get it down from because you can be a bit of a caffeine fiend and I'm like a caffeine wimp after taking such a big break and I think that 120 milligrams is bang on the dose that we want especially with the Aline to kind of smooth it out bang on the dose you can sit down it tastes so nice that you're going to Chin it if it's cold and if you're thirsty and if you down 200 300 milligrams of caffeine in 5 minutes guess what like you're vibrating your way through a near anxiety attack for the next half hour or two hours so it's the right amount for me it makes me feel fantastic this is my favorite flavor this is mine this I'm such a sucker for orange man anything orange I'm always a big a big fan of one other thing that I guess it's not a a claim that we've made anywhere on the product but the difference it makes to my mood I associate this taste with being more focused with being more productive so there's this weird vicious feedback loop of me liking the taste of it and liking the effect of it which means that when I taste it next I get for the effect to happen and it's kind of this spiral now and also over time this isn't just something that you take now in fact this is like a really important point that we made from the very beginning it couldn't be a drink it couldn't be a product that borrows from tomorrow to pay today it had to be something that would make you perform better today and then if you took it tomorrow make you perform even better tomorrow and then after that and so on and so on it Bridges the Gap really nicely between performance enhancer and supplement and I think that that blend between the two is it's it's rare to find every time that I drink most energy drinks it feels like I am cashing out of tomorrow's energy to be able to fuel today you know that really famous meme photo of H Simpson like throttling B and we're fighting each other a little bit it's going well it's going well um what we've got I'm happy James is also about 3 Mig of caffeine deep so that may explain why he feels the way he does the name oh my God you were ready to take the first name that we came up with and I must have caused another subsequent 10 meetings you wanted to call it bum yeah have a bump have a bump slap wasn't slap one of them cheat cheat that was it you want go cheat are you cheating on me yeah relatively harmonious I think working relationship especially given how how awkward I've been so we're going to sit down in this Factory tomorrow right and taste all of these different drinks flavors that we've got pretty close on James said yes to the first one everybody else was like this is awful we can't we can't go ahead with this James was ready to ship it James was ready to put a Canon bump that tasted like the top filtering of a septic tank and ship it it would have been it would have been on sale already twist one still got it still got it Ser never had it doesn't even know what it is you're enjoying this don't want to be in Austin right now shouting at you my name is Chris and I talk to famous people and because of that I had to spend the day of James Smith today and every so often I give back to the community giving back to the community means bringing someone along who is disadvantaged in many ways I don't care what everyone said about your podcast in the first year I lik what do you think would have happened to the process of creating this had it not been for me would have been done a lot sooner to but to be honest okay maybe I will concede on the fact that my my taste buds may be a little bit basic but then if I was to flip the question over to you Chris how do you think the process would have been if you were left to do the project on your oh God we would have not been anywhere near Market I would have still been in the name the name planning stage Luke would have killed me the guys that were producing it they would have killed me as well another thing that we did is launch in America and the UK on Amazon with prime next day delivery from launch I suppose what we wanted was a massive part of our audience to be able to try what we've created and I mean as far as an investment for this to happen as well right this is the biggest it's the most amount of money that I've ever put into anything ever and plus you plus all of the guys behind the scenes as well it's it's a terrifying amount of money I think it's a really important product I think that right now this move toward holistic productivity right it's it's a a ecological well balanced approach to productivity it's not sort of nose for the grindstone completely destroy yourself it's I went to work really really hard at the things that I do I want to feel satisfied at the end of the day and then I want to go and do something else maybe before you do Brazilian jiu-jitsu because something else that you haven't said it's only lightly carbonated so we wanted to make sure that it wasn't such heavy carbonation that it destroys the taste the taste so good and super high carbonation actually ruins how something tastes so we dialed that back so it doesn't give you any like digestive discomfort especially if you drink it quickly I suppose what we want is for not just to crank people so they put more effort into something but they become more effective of what they're doing so yeah for for us to be able to get it everywhere so that people can have the ability to have it for all these things are are conversations we've been having for so long to make sure that it is legitimately the right thing for that like you say could be going to Jiu-Jitsu could be studying at home could be you know needing a little pickme up in the afternoon where you're having a post pral LOL in the office or whatever it is yeah I guess you know if any of the things that we've spoken about today resonate with people then they can go and try it's available on Amazon it's got next day delivery on Amazon Prime you go to newtonic docomo about today is detailed at neic.org actually help you unless you buy it so head to Amazon get yourself a case and don't just take our word for it we sat oh it's amazing it tastes amazing you get to find out for yourself buy it put it in the fridge be more productive enjoy you