[00:00:02] John Craven: If you're looking to create a soda, a ready-to-drink cocktail, a seltzer, an energy drink, a coffee, a CBD beverage, a kombucha, or any drink you can imagine, we can turn your idea into liquid gold. At Flavor Man, we are the beverage architects. We help entrepreneurs and large companies bring their beverage ideas to life through a collaborative process that includes getting flavors just right. We help you scale your recipe, providing quality assurance and testing, and deliver your finished formula to a contract manufacturer that will help you locate. We create beverages from start through finish. Visit flavorman.com slash BevNET and change what the world is drinking. And now, Taste Radio.
[00:01:00] Ray Latif: Hello, and thanks for tuning in to the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry, Taste Radio. I'm Ray Latif, and you're listening to episode 168, which features an interview with Doss Cunningham, the chairman and CEO of NutriBolt, a leading developer and marketer of performance sports nutrition products with annual sales exceeding $400 million. Doss is also the founder of Live Well Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm investing in better for you brands. Tune in on Friday, June 28th for episode 40 of our Taste Radio Insider podcast, when we sit down with Smari S. Munson, the founder and CEO of Icelandic yogurt company Smari Organics, who discusses his foray into the beverage industry. A request to you folks listening, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we'd love it if you could review us on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. Visit Nutribolt's LinkedIn page and you'll find a rather short description of the company. We're the makers of America's number one pre-workout brand, C4, it reads. Given the immense success of the C4 brand, that statement, despite its brevity, says a lot. Since taking the reins as CEO of Nutribolt and eventually as its primary owner, Doss Cunningham transformed a middling sports nutrition company into an industry-leading juggernaut. In the following interview, Doss chronicled the rise of Nutribolt, including his remarkable ascension to the CEO role, why he focused on premium as the guiding principle of the company's business strategy, and the genesis of C4. He also spoke about the mission and focus of his venture capital firm, LiveWell Ventures, and the lessons he's hoping to impart to brand owners within its portfolio. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. I'm at BevNET Live Summer 2019 inside the Taste Radio studio presented by BevSource. Sitting in front of me is Doss Cunningham, the CEO of NutriBolt and the founder of LiveWell Ventures. Doss, thanks so much for being with me. Hey, great to be here. Where are you coming in from? We're here in New York City. Where did you travel from? Yeah, Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas. Are you from that? Are you originally from the city? Originally from Austin. Very cool. I've been to Austin a couple of times. Once for ACL, Austin City Limits, which was amazing. And then once for a wedding. Both times, an amazing experience, an amazing city.
[00:03:24] Doss Cunningham: So, Austin for me growing up was not the Austin of today. And at 18, I left. I went to Texas A&M. It's about 100 miles or so due east. And, you know, followed some friends out there, wanted to kind of get out of the nest. But Austin's developed so rapidly over the last two decades. And so going back there now as we relocate our headquarters is really exciting. I spend quite a bit of time already just with our marketing office and our e-commerce, our digital business being in Austin. I've got a chance to kind of, see Austin as it's been, you know, growing up in the last several years.
[00:04:20] Ray Latif: Any barbecue recommendations for folks that have gone there? Because I know I've had some good barbecue there, but I don't know, I can't remember the names of the places that I went to.
[00:04:28] Doss Cunningham: There's so many great places. I mean, you know, the name brands are Franklin, you know, Salt Lick.
[00:04:38] Ray Latif: I have a feeling you have a special recommendation, a personal recommendation.
[00:04:43] Doss Cunningham: You know, I I love barbecue, but I'm I'm more of a Mexican food kind of guy. OK. Yeah. So love bodies. You know, if you're if you're if you're down for barbecue, I think county line on Lake Austin, it can be beat. It's pretty great.
[00:05:00] Ray Latif: I got to get out there and try that. I think that I haven't been to that place, so I'll try it. Now, I ask you about Austin because at one point in your life after you finished school, you know, when you had talked prior to this interview, you said that there was a point in your life when you wanted to move to New York and become an investor and an investment banker. Am I getting that right? That's right.
[00:05:21] Doss Cunningham: Many, many years ago, I thought that my future was definitely around transactions and wanted to be in the heart of M&A, which is New York City. I think it's a blessing that I stayed the course with and it's become an incredible journey for me. At one point, I thought I'd be in New York. I was out last night at dinner with a bunch of guys that are doing exactly what I thought I wanted to do, and no regrets.
[00:06:01] Ray Latif: I wouldn't assume that there are considering how well Nutribolt has done and is doing. For context, what is Nutribolt and can you give us some perspective on sales and distribution?
[00:06:13] Doss Cunningham: Sure. So Nutribull is one of the leading sports nutrition businesses in the world. We have focused primarily in the pre-workout and through acquisition now post-workout categories. We launched in 2002. We built our business through specialty retail, GNC, Byron Shop, et cetera. Today, we are much more omni-channel, broadly distributed. You'll find us at Costco, Walmart, online, Amazon. We're really a lifestyle performance business. So if you work out and you want to have improved energy or you want to recover faster, that's what we're about. We're about the before and the after and making sure that our consumers that really are focused on fitness and overall improvement that we have a product for them to help them.
[00:07:28] Ray Latif: And your hero brand is C4, which many of our listeners might be familiar with, which started out as just a single line of powders. And now you have a line of RTD products as well, which is growing really, really fast. You weren't one of the founders of Nutribull, but you were there almost since the beginning. Tell us about how you came to the company and how you eventually became the CEO, which I know is a long story, but let's start at how you came to the company.
[00:07:59] Doss Cunningham: Yeah, I'll try and make it brief. Nutribull, for me, was initially just a part-time job. I had a college roommate that I had grown up with, Jason Duran. And he came home one day and he's talking about this company that he had recently gotten a sales position with. And he said, you gotta check this out, Doss. He's like, it's amazing. And he's bringing home products every single day. This is, my junior year or so of undergrad.
[00:08:36] Ray Latif: And was he a workout buff? I mean, is that how he kind of got into it?
[00:08:39] Doss Cunningham: You know, he was into fitness, but, you know, he more than anything was just this kind of perennial sales guy. And, you know, him and I grew up in a number of sales jobs. We worked at MCI, WorldCom, selling long distance. That's back in the day.
[00:09:01] SPEAKER_??: Yeah.
[00:09:01] Doss Cunningham: It was just a great sales job. You're calling 700 people a day. Wow. And you're successful if you convert 1%. And if you're super successful, you convert 2%. You're leading the entire center.
[00:09:17] Ray Latif: So if you get 14 people to convert, you're like the master.
[00:09:21] Doss Cunningham: At 14 people, you're making massive money. At 18 years old, I'm taking home pretty good checks and my dad's like, what the hell's going on here? But it was a great learning experience for me. I really learned how to pick up the phone and talk to people. And it built my confidence in so many ways. You know, I think that was a springboard for me in my career. But yeah, no. So getting back to how I got into NutriBowl, my college roommate. came home, he was talking about the company, he was talking about the founder, a guy named Paul Bottholt, that had this big vision and dream of creating this just world-dominating sports performance company. And he's like, come check it out. Like, you should come in and, you know, just see what it's all about. Come be a part of the sales organization. So I took his advice, I went in, I interviewed with Paul, and you know, I didn't get the job. So, you know, my first meeting with Nutribull was, and informally it was known as Woodbolt. We changed the name in 2014. But my first experience wasn't so great. What kept you from getting the job? So, it was a key question that was asked at the very end of the interview. He said, where do you see yourself in five years? And me being this enterprising entrepreneur, I'm thinking about it. And I'm like, so I'm definitely in New York. I'm in the transaction space. I'd love to be doing M&A. And he's like, wrong answer. You're going to be here at Nutribull. Yeah, he's like, if you don't see yourself here, then I don't see yourself here.
[00:11:21] Ray Latif: It's an interesting question for I wonder how people would think about that question nowadays. I mean, let's say a young up and comer, you know. Let's say you were interviewing a young up-and-comer today. Would you want that same answer? Would you want to hear that they'd be with your company?
[00:11:39] Doss Cunningham: You know, I think it depends. If someone's in college and they're interviewing for a part-time job, I probably don't expect the commitment to a long-term career. If someone's coming in and talking about a job, you know, in their post-college and looking for the next step in their life, absolutely. Commitment's everything. But, you know, I was a junior undergrad. You know, I have my whole life in front of me. And at the time I was making sandwiches at the neighborhood sandwich shop. So, you know, I wasn't thinking about my next five years at age 20.
[00:12:24] Ray Latif: So fast forward three years later, you're the CFO of the company.
[00:12:30] Doss Cunningham: It's really interesting. You know, Things happened really fast. It was a startup bootstrap business. And so basically I got called back in by Paul. He said, hey, look, I need some help with bookkeeping. And I'm starting to think about what ERP are we going to put in place? Do you mind coming in and spending some time? You know, his partner at the time was doing all the accounting, Mickey Wood, great guy. And he could use some help. He didn't have any, like, professional background in accounting. So he's like, come help me out. So I jumped in. and everything just kind of manifests so fast. It was overnight. I went from 20 hours, you know, supposedly a week part-time job to working full-time, you know, at the expense of my school. You know, I was, thankfully, I had some professors that were very accommodating. They would allow me to reschedule exams and, you know, just kind of fit things in. But I went from 20 hours a week to 60 hours a week in no time at all. But, you know, I took the bull by the horns. I was given the opportunity to really lead, from a financial perspective, a number of functions in the company. And, you know, I I think I succeeded because I just was so passionate about what we were doing and I spent you know, 15 hours every single day in that office. I get there before anyone else and I'd leave, you know, at 10 o'clock and, you know, it's me and the founder. And so one of the things that facilitated my career and my rapid growth within the business is I spent so much time with our founder and CEO, Paul, in the early days. And so, you know, at 10 o'clock at night, there's only a few places that are open and we go to dinner together. We spent, you know, so much time just talking about the business and the culture and what we wanted to create. And it was really his vision. And I was so bought in. But he gave me a, he entrusted me to oversee so many functions at such an early age. And yes, it was a result of not having the resources to bring someone else in, but he believed in me and that was all I needed. The fact that someone that owned this company, and it was a very small company, and there's four or five people total, when I joined, and we're out of a small duplex in South College Station. You know, it's a living room as it sells for, and the bedroom was the inventory, and, you know, the other bedroom was the accounting office and record keeping. but it's such a small business that I really got a chance to kind of put my DNA into the business and help shape it.
[00:15:38] Ray Latif: I mean, I hear that from entrepreneurs sometimes. It's, yeah, when I started out, I needed someone that I could rely on, that I could trust, that maybe didn't have the same skills as someone I could find elsewhere, but the passion, the motivation to succeed was worth more than anything else. And it also, at the end of the day, seemed like it might have been the saving grace for the company. We'll be right back with more from Doss Cunningham after a short word from our sponsor.
[00:16:10] John Craven: Turn your drink idea into liquid gold with the beverage architects at Flavorman. We'll help you go from startup to bottoms up. Learn more at flavorman.com slash BevNET. Flavorman, change what the world is drinking.
[00:16:28] Ray Latif: So Paul, your founder and mentor, eventually had to step away?
[00:16:32] Doss Cunningham: He did. You know, in 2007, you know, he had some personal issues that led him to step away. And he came to me and he said, Doss, you know, I need to be, you know, away from the business for a period of time. I need you to step in and really, you know, lead this thing while... Become CEO. I'm gone. He's like, I, you know, internally, I was leading the company without the CEO title. Okay. But, you know, he entrusted me to lead the business, and that was a heavy lot at 24 years old or so. I had a really great respect for him and his vision, and I felt like I could be a great custodian to what he wanted to achieve, but also have the opportunity in this timeframe to do things a little bit more my way and everything just kind of crystallized at that point. You know, this was something that I was super committed to. I had this opportunity to be a leader for the first time, really, in my entire career. You know, at the end of the day, what really, I think, afforded me the smooth transition into a leadership role was I was extremely aligned with Paul's vision. And so I wasn't disruptive in my thought process around how the business needed to move forward. You know, at the end of the day, I was the guy who was stepping in for a period of time. I wasn't stepping in to lead the company in perpetuity. What I cared a lot about was some of the core principles that he focused in on. At the same time, I had my own kind of style to what I wanted to do. You know, I think that's what made it successful. Like, it was more of a stylistic, you know, adjustment versus a shift in direction. You did eventually take the plunge, though. So, yeah, everything happened really fast. So, I stepped in to kind of lead the business in 2007 when Paul stepped away. And in 2008, you know, a lot of things happened during that year. I was given the opportunity to purchase Paul's shares. So he came back to the business for a short period of time and then he basically was done and gave me the opportunity to buy his shares. So I was able to move into the CEO and ownership role by the beginning of 2008. At that point, I was still pretty young. I was pre-30. It was still very much this entrepreneurial journey, but I had this massive responsibility in my mind because the company had grown. At this point, we're 15-plus people.
[00:19:53] Ray Latif: What was revenue at the time?
[00:19:55] Doss Cunningham: Around $4 million. It was a shell of what we are today. For context, where are you today in terms of revenue? Roughly 100 times that. We're roughly $400 million or so. The truth is, at $4 million, stepping into an ownership and CEO role with just a small office It was still extremely terrifying. And maybe terrifying is the wrong word, but it was- I can imagine it'd be terrifying. It was such a responsibility. And I'll take back the word terrifying. I felt at that time that I could not let anyone down. And the business was not certain. It was not profitable. Every single day mattered. you know, making payroll, making, you know, the mortgage payment. These are things that I thought about. So it was interesting because I wanted to emerge as the leader of the business, the culture driver, but at the same time, like I'm having real, you know, concern over what makes this business successful financially. And you know, how do we win, you know, long term so I can provide for the people that, you know, were bought into the business? Because so many people, you know, even though the office was small, this was their life. And I had to make sure I didn't screw it up.
[00:21:38] Ray Latif: The space you were in, the industry you were in, was extremely competitive. And It was changing. It was evolving. And one of the reasons that you're still here and your brand is still here is because your strategy, your go to market strategy was sort of ahead of its time. Can you talk a little bit what you did and why it worked?
[00:21:59] Doss Cunningham: Yeah. So I think. You know, and thank you. I, I, I think the business has gone through so many different evolutions of, of kind of the strategy, right? So early on, we were all about the brick and mortar independent mom and pop retailer. Paul's vision coming from retail was I want to support these guys. There are no brands out there that are focused on their distribution strategy. Basically, brands were going everywhere. They were getting into mass market and creating a lot of cost and pricing pressure that It really resulted in low margins and ultimately kind of a fleeting foot traffic that was critical for mom and pop stores. So he launched the brand really as this brand that was going to be exclusive. We had the seven-mile geography that we gave retailers. You know, we were hyper-focused on one-to-one direct relationships. We didn't work with distributors. We didn't sell to online retailers. We did everything we could not to screw it up. You know, so premium products, high retail price points, strong retail margins. And the vision was if we do that, then every mom and pop retailer out there has no choice but to buy in because their alternative is you know, this assortment of margin, decretive products that were sold increasingly everywhere. And so I really bought in to this idea of thoughtful distribution and protection of value for the entire supply chain, you know, from manufacturer all the way to the consumer. And The evolution really, when I took over the business as a CEO and owner in 2008, was small adjustments. So while our core principles were really around premium, price point, you know, margin integrity. Our vision started to evolve because mom and pop retailers, there's this interesting situation where the more successful they became, they would actually reach out to manufacturers and start developing their own private label. So that accomplished everything that we brought to the table, but at even a higher margin and profitability scale. Or, they wouldn't be successful and they'd go out of business. So when I took over as CEO, I ultimately decided, look, we need to do everything we can to protect premium and safeguard our route to market and distribution. But we should work with GNC. And ultimately, we should work with online retailers like bodybuilding.com. They had so many consumers trafficking into their site. For us not to be there was a mess. So I had a little bit of a bigger box that I wanted to play in. And so initially in 2008, 2009, we started going down that path. embracing bigger distribution, corporate relationships, not just mom and pop.
[00:25:30] Ray Latif: While maintaining margin. I mean, I feel like that was the key to everything because you could have a premium product at a lower price. yet maintaining that margin was critical. And it sounds like that's sort of what happened with C4.
[00:25:47] Doss Cunningham: Yeah, look, the economics have to make sense, not only for the consumer, but for the retailer, for the distributor, and the brand owner, right? And, you know, we were very heavy in our direct distribution, so we didn't have a lot of reliance on distributors early on. That helped. We built really premium products, you know, that the consumers regarded. And so we got high retail price points that really just worked throughout the entire value chain. And, you know, I think that was a big key to our success. You know, we, we were all about premium and with premium comes, you know, economics for all.
[00:26:31] Ray Latif: We'll be right back with more from Doss Cunningham after this quick break.
[00:26:34] John Craven: If you're looking to create a soda, a ready-to-drink cocktail, a seltzer, an energy drink, a health beverage, a coffee, a CBD beverage, a kombucha, or any drink you can imagine, we can turn your idea into liquid gold. At Flavor Man, we are the beverage architects. Visit flavorman.com slash BevNET and change what the world is drinking.
[00:27:00] Ray Latif: I mentioned C4. Can you talk to me about the launch of C4 and how it fit into the future and development of the company? It feels like that's when you really, the business really, really took off.
[00:27:11] Doss Cunningham: Yeah, so I mean, we launched C4 in 2011. 2010 for us, you know, we were still a pretty small business, you know, 15 million or so in sales. But, you know, as we grew up from 2002 to 2010, we were all about that mom and pop independent retailer. So we had very, high price points, you know, that supported our premium brand. What I learned really quickly as a CEO of the company coming in was that the broader consumer sentiment was that we were overpriced. I don't believe we were overpriced at the time. I think we had a retail that matched the efficacy and the formulation. Does that have anything to do with the recession at the time? No, I don't think so. I think our industry has been pretty insulated from, you know, kind of macroeconomic, you know, conditions, conditions, but it really kind of irked me that the broader population that was in the forums and really giving us their, their, their deepest thoughts on the brand. We're saying, Oh, sell your cars overpriced. You know, you can buy X, Y, Z. That was the name of your one of your brands. So, so it was the brand. Yeah. C4 is a product line within Cellucor. And I thought to myself, listen, this is a problem. Like, if we want to expand beyond mom and pop retailers and we want to be kind of mainstream, we have to not have this perception of being overpriced. So C4 initially was the design of wanting to have a gateway product that could price itself down in line with the category and bring people in. Initially, our thought was C4 would bring people into our brand and they'd graduate up. And so when we launched C4 back in 2011, you know, the price was $25, you know, for a 30 serving C4 powder. Over time, we've increased that price point a bit. I think today you can buy it for about a dollar a serving, $29.99 in most retail locations. But our cheapest product in 2010 was $60. So for us to come in with a $29.99 offering, or $24.99 offering actually, It was disruptive to what we were about.
[00:29:42] Ray Latif: It seems like you'd be undercutting your own products in many ways.
[00:29:45] Doss Cunningham: In so many ways, but what it was really was this, okay, Cellucor is a super premium brand that the perception is overpriced, but they just launched C4 at $25, which was actually $5 cheaper. than the competition at the time. And it kind of made people like turn their heads and like, what am I missing here? Like, OK, maybe this is a super premium brand. And, you know, we're missing out. Here's this opportunity to enter the brand at a very affordable price. And my thought was they graduate up to other products in the brand. Yeah. But what really happened was C4 became, you know, in a very short period of time, you know, the rocket ship and really defined us within two short years as a company.
[00:30:36] Ray Latif: Was it the branding? Was it the price point? You know, what really gave it its fuel to become what it is today?
[00:30:43] Doss Cunningham: You know, I think it really quite a few things that kind of converged to make it be the impact product it was for our portfolio. But it started with efficacy. You know, we launched a product that really just did what it said. The consumer experience, and we caught all of this, we recorded so many of our initial influencers consuming the product, their experience, 30 minutes after consumption, throughout their workout, what they felt like after their workout. And we built an incredible product in C4. But we had the packaging, we had this premium images of business, but we came down to a price point that was accessible to so many consumers. And I think we checked all the boxes. We were the fashion leader in design and aesthetic. We were the, you know, kind of undisputed leaders in efficacy and we gave it to consumers at an affordable price. And that was a winning recipe.
[00:31:53] Ray Latif: Were you thinking about bringing more consumers into the category with C4 or was it just really about, you know, delivering better value to the existing consumers?
[00:32:01] Doss Cunningham: It was all about shedding the perception that we were overpriced, bringing core consumers of sports nutrition products into our brand and representing something new. I mean, we were one of the first consumer brands in the concentrated pre-workout space. So, you know, the history of pre-workout really started with BSNs and it'll explode back in 2002 or so. And then, you know, it migrated, but We were a small format concentrated pre-workout energy supplement that really kind of stood out and differentiated a category. Now we went on efficacy, we went on flavor. So we spent a lot of time and energy making sure that the flavors It truly resonate and be talked about. I think that was one of the keys to our success.
[00:33:03] Ray Latif: It feels like one of the keys to your success also was the fact that you never needed financing, which blew my mind when you told me that. You grew this company without any outside financing.
[00:33:13] Doss Cunningham: I just didn't believe that success would come from this. really fast acceleration. I thought we needed to be methodical and really think through how we built our distribution and grow it kind of brick by brick, store by store. You know, be very focused on the type of categories that we entered. You know, there's a whole back office, you know, managing, you know, the overhead of the business. And we did that well. But really, I think what kept us from needing outside capital was We grew and kind of plowed all of our profits back into the business and organically kind of snowballed the company. But we didn't just go for the stars like day one.
[00:33:59] Ray Latif: Well, it seems like the runway for C4, given what you were just talking about, is pretty long at this point. It also seems like the runway is high for other innovative brands as well. It's one of the reasons that you launched LiveWell Ventures, a family office that invests in emerging and better for you brands. How did that come about? And what does your portfolio look like?
[00:34:23] Doss Cunningham: You know, as the business continued to have success, You know, I realized that there was this void in the marketplace of resource and whether it be financial or advisory services for small up-and-coming brands that had gone through, you know, I had gone through so much, you know, from 2008 as this, you know, kind of thrown in the thrown into a company and had to kind of develop and learn, you know, on the go. I felt like, you know, like I had so much just kind of institutional knowledge that I wanted to share. And so Live Well was really about, I want to help, I want to support up and coming businesses and brands that have big dreams, big vision, You know, but, you know, have not connected all the dots. And whether that's financial or advisory, I felt that we had something to offer and a unique perspective being kind of homegrown, you know, and... A value-added investor, in many ways. Exactly. I thought we could go out there and be impactful. you know, get involved. And, you know, part of it was a little bit more how I wanted to give back, you know, because I'd, I'd been through so much and experienced just about everything you could possibly imagine during that, that journey in the first 10 years or so that I thought, let's give back to up and coming entrepreneurs that, you know, if we can help them in any way, whether it's, you know, cut a few years out of their learning curve or be more profitable. I think any brand would want to sign up with you if you could cut a few years off their learning curve. That'd be pretty amazing. You know, I think it's really easy to misstep. And we've made so many mistakes, you know, over our history as a business. that, you know, being able to help entrepreneurs not make those same mistakes. Yeah, it does save years.
[00:36:30] Ray Latif: Doss, this has been fantastic. I know we've we've tried to connect and meet a couple of different times. I'm really glad we were able to make it happen here in New York City. Congratulations on all your success with Nutribolt and good luck with everything going forward with that brand. And of course, with Liberal Ventures. And I hope to connect again really soon.
[00:36:48] Doss Cunningham: Hey, Ray, thank you so much for having me on. And, you know, I really appreciate the opportunity. All right.
[00:36:58] Ray Latif: That brings us to the end of episode 168. Thank you for listening and thanks to our guest, Doss Cunningham. You can catch both Taste Radio and Taste Radio Insider on Taste Radio.com, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, SoundCloud, and Spotify. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send an email to ask at Taste Radio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
