Shownotes
In this episode of the LFG Energy Podcast, I sit down with Yanni Hufnagel—former college basketball coach turned founder of Lemon Perfect—for a raw conversation on grit, growth, and the rollercoaster of entrepreneurship.
From the sidelines of the University of Nevada to the shelves of Whole Foods and beyond, Yanni’s story is one of relentless drive. He shares how a lightbulb moment with lemon water sparked a billion-dollar vision, why taste is the ultimate differentiator, and what it really takes to compete in the cutthroat beverage industry.
But it’s not all highlight reels. Yanni opens up about the near-death moments of the company—supply chain breakdowns, losing retail trust, running out of cash—and how he found the resilience to keep pushing forward. We talk about landing investors like Beyoncé, the unglamorous grind of life on the road, and why building a brand is about more than just product—it’s about belief, stamina, and refusing to quit.
If you’re an entrepreneur, athlete, or anyone chasing a vision that feels bigger than yourself, this episode is proof that competitive stamina and an unshakable mission can carry you through the darkest days into your brightest breakthroughs.
Timestamps:
(00:03) – Introduction to the Conversation
(05:42) – The Journey of Lemon Perfect: From Idea to Reality
(11:13) – The Challenges of Entrepreneurship
(21:01) – The Power of Resilience and Branding
(28:45) – Prioritizing Health in Entrepreneurship
Connect with Yanni Hufnagel:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yhufnagel
Instagram: https://yannihufnagel.com/
Website: https://www.instagram.com/yanni/?hl=en
Welcome to the LFG Energy podcast! Your host, Arjun Dhingra, is a two-time Taekwondo world champion and the former Team USA co-head coach. He is a 23-year mortgage veteran of the industry who loves influencing change in people.
This podcast is about the stories and lessons of those who have had their backs against the wall and have ultimately overcome. Former Olympians, coaches, entrepreneurs, and incredible human beings will share their experiences of resilience and beating the odds in spite of adversity so that you too can learn to start doing the same in your life.
Connect with Arjun:
▶️ LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
Follow the show:
Transcripts
Yanni, thanks, brother, for taking some time in your busy entrepreneur road schedule to hop on with us today, man.
Speaker A:This means a lot.
Speaker B:Listen, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker B:I'm thrilled to be here.
Speaker A:I appreciate you, brother.
Speaker A:And look, I'm excited about this one because you're an entrepreneur.
Speaker A:It's not easy being an entrepreneur, but more importantly, you have a really incredible backstory or history as an assistant basketball coach.
Speaker A:And one of your stops was at my alma mater at the University of Nevada.
Speaker A:So we've got that in common, which is really cool.
Speaker A:But the transition from sports into business is a common one.
Speaker A:It doesn't always necessarily guarantee any sort of success, but in your case, I think it certainly has played true.
Speaker A:What can you tell us about how the background in sports and coaching and affecting change in people has come forward or parlayed into your business as an entrepreneur and a founder?
Speaker B:Look, I think it starts with just being hyper competitive, right?
Speaker B:Like when you're coaching college basketball, there's a scoreboard, right?
Speaker B:You play anywhere from 31 times a year to 40 times a year in college basketball, and every time you pitch it up, you win or you lose, right?
Speaker B:You're either walking off the floor with a W or you've taken one on the chin and.
Speaker B:And building a beverage business or just anything in the world of being an entrepreneur is usually about posting numbers to the scoreboard, right?
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:We're measured largely by how many bottles we sell and what's our revenue, right?
Speaker B:In basketball, it's, do you have more points than the other team at the end of the day, right?
Speaker B:So how do you get there?
Speaker B:But I think it starts with just having a hyper competitive drive and a will to win, understanding how hard it is to be the last team standing to cut down the nets, and then just being able to understand the work ethic that it takes, right?
Speaker B:Most college basketball coaches are relentless workers.
Speaker B:I was around head coaches that were.
Speaker B:And so when you go build this thing, what's even more personal, right?
Speaker B:I've got my entire life riding on the success of Lemon.
Speaker B:Perfect in a lot of ways.
Speaker B:And it's just a deal where no one's gonna outwork me.
Speaker B:I'm on day 47 now, out of the last 55, on the road right here, sitting in a hotel room in Los Angeles, and I'm a little beaten down and tired.
Speaker B:But, man, I got this podcast that I'm really juiced up about.
Speaker B:I'm gonna do everything I can to bring the elite level of energy, and then I got four more today.
Speaker B:Not podcast, but meetings, and then an event tonight.
Speaker B:And that's when you're the face of the brand.
Speaker B:You got to bring it all day, every day.
Speaker B:And then I guess when I'm behind the door here, when I close my eyes, I get to have a little time.
Speaker B:But, yeah, it just ties back to just being hyper competitive and understanding that at the end of the day, we're really all measured by a scoreboard.
Speaker B:And then the ability to coach your team, build a team, hire great personnel was a big part of it, too.
Speaker B:But the last thing I'll say is when people ask me, hey, how'd you do it?
Speaker B:You know how you guys are doing?
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker B:And I tell them, if you want to go start something, go back and coach college basketball for 10 years and then come back to me.
Speaker B:So I say that somewhat tongue in cheek, but it was a great kind of incubator of being an entrepreneur.
Speaker A:Amazing, man.
Speaker A:And look, you talked about the energy that you got to bring and that you know what's required of an entrepreneur and being relentless, and that's the essence of this show.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:It's called the let's fucking Go podcast.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:So that is that you're right on brand with it, and I love your energy and.
Speaker A:And just spark for everything.
Speaker A:It seems like, man, not just entrepreneurship.
Speaker A:Can you walk us through that light bulb moment when you realized that lemon water needed a better version?
Speaker A:Because that's the essence of your company, right?
Speaker A:And you committed to making lemon perfect happen.
Speaker A:But was there a light bulb moment or how did this all come to be?
Speaker B:Yeah, there was.
Speaker B:I didn't know that you could curse on this thing.
Speaker B:This is going to be the.
Speaker B:This is the podcast of my dreams.
Speaker B:Most college basketball coaches are unfiltered, and it is nice to be able to speak freely, but no, look, the short story is, as you mentioned, you know, I was at the University of Nevada and Reno.
Speaker B:It was my last year coaching because I came up with the idea and went for it.
Speaker B:The short story is, a friend of mine, while I was coaching at Nevada, wrote a book on the ketogenic diet.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B: And in early: Speaker B:Certainly in the psychology of the natural channel shopper, it made its mainstream appearance for a very brief moment in time.
Speaker B:That's not that important.
Speaker B:What is that?
Speaker B:In the back of Matt's book were all these sample meal plans, and every day started by drinking organic lemon water.
Speaker B:We are dear friends, but I was getting my ass kicked by Coach Musselman we worked hard, and he was incredibly demanding of excellence and everything that you did as an assistant.
Speaker B:I needed some structure in my day.
Speaker B:I needed a diet plan.
Speaker B:I needed a training program.
Speaker B:And I said, matt, I'm in A through Z, let's go.
Speaker B:And lemon water in the morning just became a part of my routine.
Speaker B:And I hated it.
Speaker B:I mean, it sucks.
Speaker B:Buy organic lemons, Cut the lemon, squeeze the lemon juice all over.
Speaker B:Bland taste.
Speaker B:So many mornings you just throw your hands up in there.
Speaker B:He's like, fuck, this sucks.
Speaker B:And I stuck with it.
Speaker B:And I guess this is the path of destiny.
Speaker B:Coach Musselman's wife Danielle, her sister was on the field marketing team at Buy.
Speaker B:And now they're one of our biggest competitors.
Speaker B:We think about trying to put them to sleep every day.
Speaker B: But in: Speaker B:We were drinking the product around the office, obviously, one gram of sugar, good flavor, very innovative product.
Speaker B:And I'm in the locker room towards the end of our season, I had a light bulb moment.
Speaker B:I said, hold on.
Speaker B:Can we take lemon water and make it taste good?
Speaker B:That was the seed of the journey.
Speaker B:And the season ended.
Speaker B:We lost to Iowa State in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Speaker B:I remember I'm in Santa Monica having lunch with a friend of mine who invests in early stage food and beverage businesses.
Speaker B:And John says, I love this idea.
Speaker B:He says, anything that you can build that can capture a piece of someone's daily routine, what they do in the morning when they first get up, what they do at night when they go to sleep, or any point in between is worth going for it.
Speaker B:Like, you can build a business around that, a consumer business around that.
Speaker B:Because, remember, all I knew was lemon water in the morning.
Speaker B:So I jumped up and said, my God, John, I think I've got it.
Speaker B:We're going to go build the morning drink.
Speaker B:And we went to Whole Foods in Venice.
Speaker B:We got a bunch of stevia and erythritol and monk fruit.
Speaker B:We start playing around with it on his dining room table.
Speaker B:And it wasn't great, but it was better than what I was doing.
Speaker B:I liked the sweetness profile.
Speaker B:And that night, from John's couch, I googled beverage formulation.
Speaker B: That was April of: Speaker B:We have had some incredible highs and many more unimaginable lows, near knockout blows, but here we are, and we've sold 142 million bottles to date and feel like we are really just getting started.
Speaker B:It has been an incredible journey over, over the last, you know, Eight years now.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:And you know what, real quick I want to ask you because in that space, and it's a crowded space, right, people that are putting together products that combine flavor and good gradient, good ingredients and no sugar.
Speaker A:But then you find out there's a bunch of other bad crap like how do you balance taste appeal with like functional wellness and benefits of functional wellness?
Speaker A:Like how do people do it and do it right?
Speaker A:Because there's so many products, everyone's into anti aging and living longer and having more energy and do this and do that.
Speaker A:And there's so many products that are out there and you and I both know way better than anyone, most of them are filled with all kinds of other crap that aren't going to help you out or maybe give you cancer later or make your hair fall, man.
Speaker A:Like how did you strike that perfect balance?
Speaker B:Look, for me, taste always finds an audience.
Speaker B:That's been a huge driver of everything that I believe in when it comes to building a beverage brand is that you have to win on taste.
Speaker B:Unless an item is highly functional, like an immunity shot for instance, perhaps, but you're never Arjun, you're never going to build a billion dollar brands if it is not insanely craveable.
Speaker B:From a taste perspective that is a, that is, there is nothing more important.
Speaker B:So I always start with prioritizing taste and then function is right there, right?
Speaker B:So with lemon perfect, there is nothing that delivers our taste experience, right?
Speaker B:Delicious, refreshing with the nutritional deck that we have as well, right?
Speaker B:Zero sugar, 100% vitamin C. There's half a squeezed organic lemon in every bottle.
Speaker B:So this marriage is unparalleled, right?
Speaker B:It is taste plus function and we're doing it all with zero sugar.
Speaker B:And for me that is fundamentally with products.
Speaker B:If you want to build something really big, if you want to have a billion dollar outcome, if you want to change the way that America eventually beyond drinks beverage, it has to taste really good.
Speaker B:And then you've got to back it up with.
Speaker B:Especially as consumers become more and more cognizant of what they're putting in their bodies.
Speaker B:You've got to be able to deliver on it all.
Speaker B:And we certainly have.
Speaker B:And that's been my thesis from second one of this.
Speaker A:Let me ask you, let me ask you this too real fast, Johnny.
Speaker A:For our audience, the main just bullet points, high level benefits of why human beings need lemon water are lemon perfect.
Speaker B:Starts because drinking water is boring and we're delivering that, that need for hydration in a much more joyful and fun way.
Speaker B:And Then with half a squeezed organic lemon in every bottle, the benefits are far ranging.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's everything from vitamin C to electrolytes.
Speaker B:There are cancer fighting polyphenols.
Speaker B:You have lemons fight kidney stones, clearer skin, the list.
Speaker B:And there's tons of immunity benefits here.
Speaker B:When you think about the vitamin C content of lemons.
Speaker B:We also fortify lemon perfect with additional vitamin C to build a really nice a hundred percent daily value in every bottle story.
Speaker B:So there's just a wide, there's digestive support research.
Speaker B:So the list is it just keeps going on.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And yeah, it's there.
Speaker B:There are basically two fruits that deliver strong benefit without the sugar.
Speaker B:One is the lime.
Speaker B:And it would be very hard to build a brand around lime water.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's not that familiar.
Speaker B:And the other citrus is the lemon.
Speaker B:And obviously it's a very familiar fruit, especially lemons and water.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:How often do you go to a restaurant and they say, would you like still or sparkling?
Speaker B:And then they say, okay, well would you like a lime with.
Speaker B:Or they just give you the so Or a lemon with it?
Speaker B:You know that, that is, you start with a point of real familiarity.
Speaker B:And we've just basically taken that and made it taste really good and super convenient at the same time.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:And you talked earlier, you know, about the, the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.
Speaker A:We've had some good times, we've had some like rough times.
Speaker A:It's been darker times.
Speaker A:Talk to me about that.
Speaker A:Because people look at entreprene yourself or founders of companies, particularly when it comes to health and wellness.
Speaker A:And there's a lot of like positivity and happiness around those subjects.
Speaker A:So they look at you and they think, oh, he started this company, it must have been always smooth sailing.
Speaker A:This must be easy.
Speaker A:Look at him, he's winning all the time.
Speaker A:But talk to me a little bit about some struggles or moments where it hasn't been easy for the company that, that I think our audience could take away from.
Speaker B:We're winning now.
Speaker B:This journey has been unimaginably hard for me.
Speaker B:I have had weeks and months where it's been hard.
Speaker B:Getting out of bed, the worst kind of despair.
Speaker B:The business has almost run out of cash three times over eight years.
Speaker B:And what we've been able to do is just survive in advance and find a way to get out of bed in the morning and just figure it out.
Speaker B:Now.
Speaker B:There have been times when I've been pulled out of bed by my dad because things got so rough.
Speaker B:So what today?
Speaker B:And even what I've been able to communicate publicly when times were challenging is very different than what goes inside, goes on inside my mind.
Speaker B:And I don't think, I, I don't, I certainly don't think I'm alone on this journey of entrepreneurship.
Speaker B:And it is really hard.
Speaker B:It, it is really hard.
Speaker B:And look, we're doing something that has a chance to fundamentally make people healthier.
Speaker B:The beverage landscape is so filled with products that accelerate the dislocation of health in America and beyond.
Speaker B:And one of my greatest dreams is to give people a chance to make a healthier decision and have a wonderful taste experience at the same time.
Speaker B:And so I think that mission and that want has allowed me to power forward in the times of the greatest despair.
Speaker B:And then obviously being there for our people, all of our people have options in lemon Perfect.
Speaker B:All of our people would have a really special financial outcome when we cross the finish line victorious.
Speaker B:And we will just because for me it's really simple.
Speaker B:I'm either going to be six feet under or walking out of my house with some coins in my pocket.
Speaker B:A lot of them having made people healthier at the same time.
Speaker B:We're just, we just are going to refuse to lose.
Speaker B:Now what I'll say is we've had all of our issues have largely been around the supply chain.
Speaker B:And I would imagine that for most entrepreneurs it is usually product related because if you have product market fit, which we have from day one, we've never had an issue when our product has been good and we've been able to produce it.
Speaker B:This thing has been a rocket ship.
Speaker B:All of our issues have been around challenges in our supply chain.
Speaker B:I made a decision to go from a 12 ounce bottle to a 15.2 ounce bottle.
Speaker B:I thought that it would give us a better chance to win on the shelf and in refrigerated environments.
Speaker B:Just that physical presence in retail, our competitive set is all in a significantly larger vessel than a 12 ounce bottle.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Hint is in a 16 buys in an 18.
Speaker B:Vitamin water's in a 20.
Speaker B:And so I felt like we had to at least get on the field with them from a vessel size perspective.
Speaker B:There was a real moment for margin expansion by making the change.
Speaker B:And, and when we did that, we also switched our contract manufacturing partner.
Speaker B:But we got caught in between where we were running the 12 ounce product and where we ultimately ran the 15.2 in that transition.
Speaker B:And we had to run on an interim make site.
Speaker B:It was not equipped for lemon Perfect.
Speaker B:There was no nitrogen dosing.
Speaker B:We couldn't put oxygen scavengers or UV blockers into our resin and we became a hospitable environment for oxidation last year.
Speaker B:And our bottles tasted really bad starting last summer.
Speaker B:And we couldn't get out of it until the line was ready for us, which was eight months later.
Speaker B:And we, our business went from in our revenue from 0 to 46 million in the span of five years.
Speaker B:And we would have blown past 50 and in the blink of an eye.
Speaker B:There was a real moment when we got shut down at our 12 ounce supplier because they were having capacity issues and they started to prioritize longer term customers with longer term obligations.
Speaker B:There was a real chance that we were going to zero.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And we had a couple million dollars in the bank.
Speaker B:Term sheet got ripped up on me when I told our investors that we had nowhere to produce our product.
Speaker B:Fortunately, Niagara Bottling, who we signed our long term deal with, came up with this interim solution.
Speaker B:But it was not without challenge.
Speaker B:At least we were able to produce bottles.
Speaker B:But we also poisoned the well on a lot of consumers that were now trying to reacquire with a product that's spectacular.
Speaker B:We go through the challenges last year and we decide to because we didn't know exactly what was happening.
Speaker B:So we reformulate the product and then we also changed our packaging and we launched these new bottles, quote unquote, new bottles last March.
Speaker B:And over the last five months, the V shaped recovery in this business has been unbelievable.
Speaker B:We're sitting here recording this in August of 25.
Speaker B:It will be the best month in company history.
Speaker B:And now it looks like September, based on some of the early purchase orders will beat that number as well.
Speaker B:This thing.
Speaker B:It's a new day at Lemon Perfect.
Speaker B:My psychology has never been better than it is in this moment.
Speaker B:I have told investors that the time to invest in Lemon Perfect was on day one or day now.
Speaker B:We've never been more excited about our business.
Speaker B:But you need to be resilient, certainly in this Lemon Perfect journey.
Speaker B:And we've done it.
Speaker B:I've had a great support network, we've raised a lot of money.
Speaker B:I will tell you about that.
Speaker A:Yeah, I want to ask you about that with money because like you guys have been able to.
Speaker A:You got.
Speaker A:Beyonce is an investor.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So how do you take something?
Speaker A:And for those that are like, for those that are listening to this that like want to do something big, but they're afraid of going to that person or to that company to make the ask.
Speaker A:Obviously there was a, there was either a formula or maybe, I don't know, maybe you're going to tell me it was dumb luck or like a.
Speaker A:Just an opportunity that you couldn't refuse and, or you couldn't turn away from and you had it.
Speaker A:But how does a company get Beyonce to invest?
Speaker B:I can't get into the specifics of it just because of the terms of our deal with her, but what I will say is I've never made.
Speaker B:We have raised over a hundred million dollars.
Speaker B:We have 410 investors, and I've not made one outbound call.
Speaker B:I've been hungry.
Speaker B:But we don't solicit lemon.
Speaker B:Perfect.
Speaker B:We present the opportunity, which we think is a really compelling one.
Speaker B:But I will tell you that Beyonce was an organic inbound, a true fan of the product through one of our investors and.
Speaker B:But imagine having to go to her team after she invested and tell them about all of these issues that we're having.
Speaker B:Her and 409 other investors.
Speaker B:I take great pride in being transparent.
Speaker B:Good, great, bad, Fucking horrible.
Speaker B:It is a lot harder to write an email in a time of challenge and adversity than it is when you can put yellow face paint on and wave the pom poms.
Speaker B:And you got to be able to, you got to be able to do both, right?
Speaker B:And then you got to be able to take it on the chin.
Speaker B:I will tell you that our investors, they.
Speaker B:There was a moment where I think they would have been just as happy if I told them I'm going back and coaching college basketball.
Speaker B:It is what it is.
Speaker B:But you have a few people that are very close to me that were in that room that supported me.
Speaker B:And at the end of the day, the dislocation in our business was on my shoulders and on my watch.
Speaker B:But I'm also very proud of fighting back and finding a way to get this thing back on track.
Speaker B:But we've hired great people through the dislocation.
Speaker B:We go out, we hire a CEO who's done an unbelievable job.
Speaker B:My wingman, or I'm his wingman, depending on how we have a great relationship.
Speaker B:It's been unbelievable.
Speaker B:And we've got.
Speaker B:I will tell you this, we have some loyal people here that, that have fought through all the storms.
Speaker B:We, we've got people that have been here almost six years now that have seen it all.
Speaker B:And you better have.
Speaker B:You better have some of those people that, that are relentlessly defensive and loyal to you, to the founder.
Speaker B:If you don't have that, all hell can break loose.
Speaker B:So we're very fortunate.
Speaker B:I'm very fortunate.
Speaker A:Tell you this too, and I'm really curious to get your take on it.
Speaker A:Because so many people in our audience have personal brands, so many people have corporate brands that they're tied to.
Speaker A:You obviously had a strong brand to be able to.
Speaker A:It was a component.
Speaker A:It may not have been the entire thing with.
Speaker A:Combined with your resilience and everything else and your vision to make it through some of these dark moments, but a brand probably played a big role in that.
Speaker A:The brand of lemon Perfect and what it had established.
Speaker A:Talk to me about the power of the brands and how owning it, leaning into it was also part of the formula for getting out of these tough waters.
Speaker B:Our brand is unbelievable, man.
Speaker B:This trademark is crazy in terms of just the power of it and the resiliency of it for us to go through what we went through.
Speaker B:Started as a keep refrigerated item in a 12 ounce vessel.
Speaker B:We go shelf stable.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And then we changed the formula.
Speaker B:We took erythritol out of the product when we went to the 50.2.
Speaker B:Had all those product challenges last year.
Speaker B:Scared off consumers.
Speaker B:Had my dearest friends and some of our investors stop drinking the product.
Speaker B:Here we are feeling, my God, we're not going to build a billion dollar business.
Speaker B:We're going to build one that's much bigger than that.
Speaker B:The lemon Perfect.
Speaker B:The trademark, I think the most, one of the most important things is your name and we got that.
Speaker B:It perfectly describes the product.
Speaker B:Just the mark itself is just very powerful.
Speaker B:And the concept, like lemon water that tastes good, anything that is good for you and elevates, you know, your happiness when you drink it, pretty resilient.
Speaker B:And we've got that right.
Speaker B:And now what I will tell you is if we don't.
Speaker B:Yes, the power of the mark.
Speaker B:But you know, if we don't changed things last year, I don't know if we're dreaming as big as we are right now.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So like we went through the darkest of the darkest days to get to this moment of light.
Speaker B:And I don't want to.
Speaker B:Like it's not all sunshine, but light is starting to peek out and brighter and brighter by the day.
Speaker B:I love it.
Speaker B:And just imagine like how uplifting that is.
Speaker B:You ask our team right now.
Speaker B:I've never.
Speaker B:I'm flying around like I, I am when I say flying around, not airplanes.
Speaker B:Like I'm flying around the room.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like I'm bouncing off the walls and.
Speaker B:Yeah, you know what I will tell you is when the next moment of adversity comes and it will, I don't think it'll be as it won't be as big as what we've gone through, but I am so much better equipped to handle it now.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:It has been one hell of a journey.
Speaker B:And I don't think anyone, unless you're in it.
Speaker B:Just so hard to understand and process.
Speaker B:But no, totally.
Speaker A:Entrepreneurship's lonely that way.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker A:It's its own island.
Speaker A:It seems glamorous.
Speaker A:You watch all the Instagram and the YouTubes, people on jets, and you think, oh, it's just easy to get there.
Speaker A:And I want to do that, too.
Speaker A:It's not for the faint of heart.
Speaker A:I always tell people, for the entrepreneurs and solopreneurs that are listening to this, that are going through really dark moments also of either contemplating quitting, running out of funding, having the market reject them time and time again.
Speaker A:Maybe they're in a.
Speaker A:Maybe they're in a depression.
Speaker A:All these things are part of it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:We've all been there.
Speaker A:Is there a framework or is there something that you would advise that people need to either have around them, whether it's certain types of people or maybe just a bit of advice you want to leave them with because you've come out of it.
Speaker A:And like you said, you were sharing here some pretty vulnerable stuff here about the company, about how it was really tough and touch and go.
Speaker A:But to that solopreneur that's listening, what's your guidance to them that's in a very dark and low spot right now and maybe even contemplating quitting?
Speaker B:I would listen.
Speaker B:I would say until there's no money left, keep going.
Speaker B:If you really believe in it.
Speaker A:Yeah, you gotta believe in it.
Speaker B:If you really believe in it.
Speaker B:Like, there are a lot.
Speaker B:Look, Arjun, I'll tell you.
Speaker B:There are people that start things that do not find product market fit that might pivot one time or two times and still not find it at a certain point.
Speaker B:Cut the rope and go figure out what comes next.
Speaker B:Learn from your experience and.
Speaker B:But if you believe.
Speaker B:If you believe, keep going.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:That is what I will tell you, is there are always going to be brighter days ahead.
Speaker B:It might get worse before it gets better.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But there's no way that brighter days are not ahead.
Speaker B:It's impossible.
Speaker B:And if they aren't, then you're going to go do the next thing great.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:Do you know how cool entrepreneurship is?
Speaker B:Waking up and being able to be the creator of your own destiny.
Speaker B:Creator of your own destiny.
Speaker B:There are not many jobs on earth where you can have that and be able to create your own schedule, be able to build the network the way that your network, the way that you want it is.
Speaker B:It's unlike anything else.
Speaker B:And for me, again, it's a little bit different with consumer products, and especially one like lemon.
Speaker B:Perfect.
Speaker B:Because it's truly a better for you product.
Speaker B:My God.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:If you can't get fired up about that.
Speaker B:But generally speaking, people are building things that are making people healthier, happier, more productive.
Speaker B:And I think that's unbelievable, Right?
Speaker B:That's unbelievable.
Speaker B:Without Steve Jobs, I wouldn't have my iPhone.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So it's.
Speaker B:It's cool to see how many new products are going to continue to be created.
Speaker B:But look, I just think that you have to have a relentless will to win.
Speaker B:You have to have, you know, motor.
Speaker B:If at any point you're not waking up and doing a backflip out of bed, you're probably not where you should be doing what you should be, I think so.
Speaker B:Last couple of months, I really.
Speaker B:I can't even sleep to my alarm anymore.
Speaker B:I'm so excited to get goat.
Speaker B:Listen.
Speaker B:And sleep is like the most important thing in this thing.
Speaker B:But my body just has just been waking up.
Speaker B:I'm like, let's go get.
Speaker B:After this thing, hit the gym and go.
Speaker B:I've been drinking so much lemon.
Speaker B:I wasn't such a dark.
Speaker B:I put 20.
Speaker B:I was £217 before we put our new bottles out in the world.
Speaker B:I'm down to 193 right now.
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:All I'm doing is drinking lemon.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Oh, I got a little bit more to go, but the road will beat you up.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker B:But how?
Speaker A:Let me ask you that.
Speaker A:Let me ask you that because that's important, because a lot of people that listen to this are entrepreneurs or athletes.
Speaker A:They're in performance on some level, right?
Speaker A:Whether they're performing in the business world, the entrepreneurial space, or as athletes or as college students, right, that are trying to embark upon some kind of career.
Speaker A:How important is your product?
Speaker A:Let's focus on to performance.
Speaker A:And what is that connection?
Speaker A:Because it obviously is paramount to you with your health journey that you just described in losing all this weight.
Speaker A:But how important is it for entrepreneurs to take stock in that?
Speaker A:Because I think so many of us get so caught up in our grind, we can easily forget about or let this other stuff kind of fall by the wayside.
Speaker A:But how important is that?
Speaker B:Yanni, everything starts with your water intake.
Speaker B:So lemon, let's just.
Speaker B:Lemon.
Speaker B:Perfect is unequivocally, in my opinion, the best way to get your hydration goals met.
Speaker B:And We've done.
Speaker B:There's a lot of research that isotonics, right.
Speaker B:All those added salts.
Speaker B:If you run a marathon, yes.
Speaker B:At the point of sweat, maybe if you just got done your peloton bike, maybe.
Speaker B:But anytime hydration need to hit your goal.
Speaker B:So we feel like we're a huge piece and part of that.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But just generally speaking, I think of this, no matter what business you're trying to create, if you don't have your health, none of it matters.
Speaker B:None of it matters.
Speaker B:Like great.
Speaker B:And so I think it's really important to be able to find time to prioritize how you sleep, how you eat, how you train.
Speaker B:I've got some screws to tighten and some work to do there, but it's a priority.
Speaker B:And you like I had a dinner.
Speaker B:It's Thursday.
Speaker B:I had a dinner on Tuesday.
Speaker B:I had a dinner last night.
Speaker B:I've got an event tonight.
Speaker B:I've got another event tomorrow.
Speaker B:These are all opportunities to either feel really good when you walk out or feel like you fucked up when you walked out because you had three tequilas on the rocks and hamburgers and french fries and whatever.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But just because a lot of these times they're social gatherings so you don't have the a hundred percent ability to control the environment.
Speaker B:Like tonight, there's no menu.
Speaker B:There are going to be servers with passing out whatever X, Y and Z.
Speaker B:There's going to be a bar that's just the mind, that's just your personal mind.
Speaker B:And then.
Speaker B:But I think it's really important and I've learned that I need to be on for 16 and I need to be off for eight every day.
Speaker B:So I sleep seven, I train one and then I'm on for 16.
Speaker B:I put my phone on do not disturb when I'm in the weight room.
Speaker B:And then the other thing that I've been doing and I'm on during these.
Speaker B:But the other thing that I've been doing is I have been unequivocally getting 10,000 steps of a walk in every day where I put my headphones on and or my AirPods on and I make work calls and lemon perfect calls.
Speaker B:So you're knocking out two birds with one stone on that.
Speaker B:You're being highly productive.
Speaker B:And you're also getting, you're getting your movement in and you're burning calories and you're probably in a zone 2 environment.
Speaker B:So you know that's.
Speaker B:But you got to make it.
Speaker B:You got to make it important.
Speaker B:You got to make it important.
Speaker B:And because what the Hell, shoot.
Speaker B:You're going to can build these products and you're gonna maybe get a payday and then you're gonna be fat and Adams, come on.
Speaker A:Like, this is not gonna work.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker A:Can't be the, can't be the founder of the Atkins diet and die.
Speaker A:Like he can't.
Speaker A:We can't do that.
Speaker A:We can't do that, man.
Speaker A:Melan, I love that you're all about it.
Speaker A:Yanni.
Speaker A:Listen man, you with your story and I know we could have gone so much deeper, but I appreciate you sharing it with the struggles of entrepreneurship.
Speaker A:How it's not as glamorous as advertised, it's not for the faint of heart, even being so honest.
Speaker A:It's the same.
Speaker A:You had to get dragged out of bed some days.
Speaker A:Cause you couldn't do it.
Speaker B:You just couldn't.
Speaker A:Couldn't physically get out with whatever was facing that day.
Speaker A:I really appreciate it.
Speaker A:But you are the embodiment, man of LFG energy.
Speaker A:That's the whole, I mean that this whole show is centered around the energy and the aura that you have, man.
Speaker A:Like it's relentlessness, it's belief in what you're doing, the overall mission and it's burning the boats and saying we're going to take the island no matter what.
Speaker A:Like failure isn't an option.
Speaker A:We will succeed.
Speaker A:You will walk out of the building with coin in your pocket.
Speaker A:Not being six foot feet underground, as you said, is the alternative.
Speaker A:But what is?
Speaker A:What is?
Speaker A:As the last question, I asked this and there's no right or wrong answer to it.
Speaker A:I asked this of every guest and I'm really excited to get your take.
Speaker A:What does LFG energy mean to you?
Speaker B:Yeah, Relentless motor.
Speaker B:That just relentless motor, I think phrase that we use often is having competitive stamina.
Speaker B:And I think, look, LFT is it really is about motor and just competitive stamina like that.
Speaker B:And, and, and be when you're on can bring it at the highest level.
Speaker B:That that's what I would say.
Speaker B:And our junior, when this podcast opportunity came my way, I was like, I'm in.
Speaker B:I saw the name and I said, I'm in.
Speaker B:That's like who we are.
Speaker B:And I applaud you for coming up with the best name in podcast history, or at least I would say the most relevant to me and to the build of Lemon Perfect or the story of Lemon Perfect.
Speaker B:Because we really have had great energy for what we're doing, what we're building.
Speaker B:All of our people in this are feel that way or are that way.
Speaker B:And I will say this.
Speaker B:Congratulations to you for what you've built.
Speaker B:Can't wait to continue to listen and learn from your guests.
Speaker B:You're awesome, and I really appreciate you having me on.
Speaker A:I appreciate you, too, brother.
Speaker A:And go pack.
Speaker A:Go, Lemon.
Speaker A:Go, Lemon.
Speaker A:Perfect.
Speaker A:And pack, guys.
Speaker A:By the way, is the mascot for the University of Nevada.
Speaker A:That's an inside thing here with Yanni and I since he coached there, but I appreciate you, brother.
Speaker B:Thanks for having me on.
Speaker B:Thank you.