What happens when a United States Marine decides pain and fatigue aren’t “just part of getting older”?

In this powerful episode of Spirits and Stories, host Donald Dunn sits down with Marine veteran and entrepreneur Lee Ettinger — a former Special Operations qualified service member who transitioned from the battlefield to business.

After years of pushing through injuries, inflammation, and energy crashes, Lee refused to accept the status quo. Instead, he spent nearly a decade researching natural compounds and scientific studies to develop what he calls the world’s first energized pain reliever — Power Plus Pain Aid.

This conversation goes beyond business.

It’s about:

• Reinventing yourself after the military

• Overcoming physical breakdown at fifty

• The science behind natural pain relief

• Why most energy drinks do more harm than good

• The brutal reality of manufacturing and distribution

• COVID’s impact on small businesses

• And what resilience really looks like after service

If you’re a veteran, entrepreneur, athlete, or someone fighting fatigue and chronic pain — this episode will hit home.

Watch now and discover how one Marine turned frustration into innovation.

Learn more about Power Plus:

DrinkPowerPlus.com

Links referenced in this episode:

1. drink powerplus.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Power plus
2. Jocko Willick
3. Conundrum

Welcome to Spirits and Stories, a place where we slow things down and talk about the moments that shaped us.

The stories behind the scars, the victories, the lessons.

Every guest brings a journey.

So settle in.

This one's meant to be felt.

Hey, welcome everybody.

Spirits and Stories.

I'm your host, Donald Dunn.

Today's guest is Lee Edinger, a United States Marine, Airborne veteran and Special Operations qualified Advanced Landing Unit member.

After eight years in the Marine Corps, Lee transitioned into business, earned his MBA and spent a decade chasing a problem most people just accept.

Pain and energy.

That journey has led him to create what he calls the world's first energized pain reliever.

Power plus pain aid.

This is a conversation about resilience, reinvention, and what happens when a Marine decides there has to be a better solution.

Welcome to the show.

Lee, how are you doing?

Thank you, Donald.

Thank you for having me today.

I am so excited to be on your show, so excited to talk about some of our experiences back and forth with you.

So I want to thank you for the work you're doing and, and sharing these stories because it is such great help for all the veterans to be able to hear and listen to these kind of things.

Absolutely.

I appreciate that.

Why don't we start with a little bit?

What brought you to the Marine Corps?

Well, I tell people it wasn't because I was getting straight A's in school.

It's not like I had this amazing future I created for myself in high school and I had all these opportunities to.

No, it's just the opposite.

Unfortunately.

I fell in with a bad group of kids and I started picking up some really bad habits.

And by the time I was getting out of high school, I realized I was not set up for any sort of success in the world if I was even going to stay around much longer.

So I figured I needed something dramatic.

And I thought about it and I said the most dramatic thing I could think of was joining the United States Marine Corps.

Okay.

Yeah, I, you know, I.

My nephew is sitting in boot camp right now for the Marine Corps.

So been there about a week, week and a half.

So he's.

Oh, Jesus.

He's probably hating life right now.

He's got a bald head and eyes as big as Bambi.

Just going, what did I get myself into?

This can't be real.

That was my first impression.

My first week of boot camp was literally this because I didn't have any pre expectations.

I didn't want to be a Marine.

I didn't live to be a Marine.

I didn't know any, any other Marines?

Yep.

I was literally just.

I jumped off a cliff and figured I'll land where I land.

Yeah, I, you know, that's same with me.

I went in the military, I went in the army, had no expectations, didn't know what to expect.

Went in for the same reasons.

I got married right out of high school and, and realized I didn't have any really sellable skills that people were looking for at that age.

So I went in the army.

And yeah, it was, it was eye opening, to say the least, you know.

What did you do for the army?

So I was a mechanic.

Went in as a diesel mechanic, spent 20 years.

I ended up doing similar as you.

I ended up volunteering, went into the special Ops community, did 10 years there, and then I went back out, went back into the combat arms and finished my career and retired out of good old Fort Stupid.

I mean, Fort Stewart.

So nice.

Well, hey, you know, any, any enlistment you get to walk away from is, is, you know, it's not a bad enlistment.

You just got to work on, you know, some of the details.

Uh, so,

so let's, let's dive into a little bit.

What, what brought you into pursuing business and picking the, the energy and pain industry?

Well, my father was always a sales and marketing guy, so I knew when I got out I wanted to follow in his footsteps.

But I'll back up a little bit.

It wasn't as smooth as I thought it was.

You know, when you look back on, on your enlistment or, you know, events in your life, and they kind of seem smoother than probably they really were.

I didn't realize that my separation was as bumpy as it really was.

I was active duty until 80, 89.

I was in the inactive reserve.

And during that time, they just dropped me back on the block with, you know, nothing unpacked, let's say.

And all of a sudden I kind of fell back into that crowd really quickly because now I could.

There was no, you know, no restraints on what I could do.

So I fell right back in with that back crowd.

I was doing bad things.

And it took me two years to almost three, I think.

No, three years to all of a sudden realize, oh, you've got a, you've created the same problem for yourself.

So I ended up switching colleges so that I could get a little bit more serious about my education.

And that helped.

And then my dad actually said, you know, son, everybody gets out of college with a business degree these days.

Nothing special.

You should do something that sets yourself apart.

And he said at the time, he said, if you could learn a foreign language, that would be good.

Right.

Because not many Americans know other languages.

And at the time, the 80s, 90s, the Japanese were.

The economic boom was in full swing.

So we said, why don't you go learn Japanese?

Wow.

I looked at him.

Yeah.

I went, I just got out of the Marines.

I'm getting great grades in school, but yet I got to do something more.

It's not enough.

And I crossed my arms like this, obviously, and went, he's right.

I mean, if I could, that would be a really cool thing, right?

Yeah.

White guy speaking Japanese all, you know.

And I thought, okay, well, if I was gonna do that, how would you do that?

How would you go and learn that language?

You'd have to live in Japan.

Yeah.

You have to live in the target language country.

Right.

So, okay.

Okay.

How do I live in Japan?

What jobs are there?

I don't speak Japanese.

Turns out teaching English is the easiest way for a foreigner to get into Japan.

Yeah.

Of those programs, the government had one.

You actually work in a public school in the system in Japan for the Ministry of Education.

And I signed up for that.

I got accepted, and I lived.

Did that for three years in a small, rural, remote village on the Sea of Japan side, because they'll put you anywhere in the system and luckily be being a Marine.

Being in the service, we're used to, I think, being able to handle different situations better, Handle ambiguity better, handle the unknown better.

Yeah, we don't really stress about it.

We just, you know, one step at a time.

So I flourished in that environment.

Nobody spoke English.

There were little children there that had never seen a real life Caucasian person.

Yeah.

So I learned Japanese.

And, you know, after that, I was married for 10 years to a Japanese girl.

Spoke Japanese every day for 15 years.

So from there, kept going, just business.

Sales job after sales job.

It wasn't until much later in life.

Donald, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you?

I am 51.

Nice.

You're just a baby.

I know.

I'm 60.

Right.

So, you know, now, unfortunately, especially you mentioned you had a deployment in some years with the SF community.

Yep.

That's a lot of ground and pound.

That's a lot of, you know, tumble and fall.

I mean, I don't care what you say.

And so at 50, my body hit a wall, and all of a sudden, I couldn't run five miles anymore.

I couldn't be in the gym for Two hours a day.

I couldn't skate in Southern California for, you know, 10, 15 miles a day because my body was breaking down.

My Achilles tendon I tore in jump school.

That was coming back to haunt me.

My dislocated shoulder.

I'd done that in Indonesia, surfing, so that was my fault.

But all these things like, okay, they're really starting to affect me.

I can't just muscle past this.

So what do you do?

You, you back up, say, okay, what can I use for support?

And I started looking at supplements.

I had never heard of them before, never really used them before, you know, but I saw all this great science behind a lot of great products that really work.

I mean, protein, creatine, amino acids, those work.

They do help rebuild muscle tissue, soft tissue.

So that's great.

Okay, that's good.

What about like, energy?

Oh, I found lots of energy products, especially in the workout world.

I mean, it's a completely different level of energy supplements than let's say, you know, just the consumer beverage, energy drink, right.

I mean, a lot of, especially in the 90s.

I mean, a lot of this stuff is banned today because it's just, it rocks your heart.

Okay, but lots of, lots of that.

Okay, I got energy, I got rebuilding tissues.

What about for this workout right now?

And that Achilles tendon?

What about the pain?

And there was nothing, there was nothing in the market that was an energy because to the two go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

At our age, energy and pain relief, herbal, not over the counter, not something that's going to destroy your liver.

And I thought being a marine and being in business for, you know, by that time, 35 years, 40 years, how hard could it be?

It can't be that hard.

I mean, shit, it was a little harder than I thought.

I mean, I admit that, but I thought about it for five years as one does, right?

You've got life going on, all sorts of different stuff.

And then for the last five years, we moved from Southern California up here to Big Fork, Montana.

And we've been able to really focus and have a great community around us that's supportive and helpful and gives us great hints, tips, networking opportunities.

A lot of retired folks here, so what do retired folks do?

They call back to their friends in the business that are still working and introduce us.

That's good.

So how did, where, where I, I'm familiar with the amino acids and creatine and that.

Where did the, the pain relief part come?

What, what did you end up finding to go with this to, to help with the Pain?

Yeah, good question.

Because it's, it seems like there's a lot of information on that, but when you start just looking through the shelves, a lot of it is, it's not exactly what you're hoping for.

It's not on demand, all natural.

It's tissue loading, anti inflammatory.

Right.

So where do you start looking?

So luckily, from business, I had learned to do research really well on the Internet.

At that point in my career I was writing business plans for startup companies, startup ideas and ventures in California.

So I was used to researching business proposals.

And that's what I did.

I started researching this on the Internet.

I found the nih, which is the National Institute of Health.

They have an online database repository of every ingredient that has ever been tested in the world, that has a scientific, peer reviewed report.

Okay.

Okay.

So that's great.

I, you type in this little search bar.

It's called PubMed.

Type in the little search bar.

Pain relief, natural, herbal, anti, nociceptive.

I think that's a fancy word for you don't feel pain, but whatever.

And you get 2, 600 hits back.

Titles of these reports, read through every single one of those, the titles.

It was a long weekend and I found about 60 that looked interesting.

So I started opening up these reports and I started looking and it took me a couple of months just to learn how to read those reports because they were using scientific words and metrics and data and it was like, I don't know what that means, but you learn, right?

Yep.

I mean, if I could learn how to take down an M60 machine gun and put it back together, you know, blindfolded, how hard could this be?

Yeah, same thing.

So we found the ingredients.

Now, a lot of ingredients have good pain relieving numbers.

But what about the cognitive impairment?

We had to look at that because we want this to be a product everybody can use at any time.

So whether you get drug tested at work, whether you're driving a car, whether you're operating a motor vehicle, whether you're a pilot, you know, you're in the military.

So we wanted to make it so it's effective, immediate and safe.

And looking through those ingredients, we found five.

No, four.

Four.

And it's simple.

It's white willow bark, which is what aspirin used to be made from a Chinese herb called cordialis herb called devil's claw.

It's a known herbal pain reliever.

It won't knock your socks off, but it's good.

And then we use turmeric to put all of those together.

You get them at the best, highest quality, 98 purity and you got.

I always like to say this little two ounce shot has two cups of coffee, energy and two glasses of wine worth of pain relief.

Wow.

Okay.

Ask me how I know.

Absolutely.

I mean that, that is fascinating because I, I am a consumer of energy drinks.

I'm not gonna lie.

That's usually in the summertime.

That's my go to.

In the wintertime, it's coffee.

And so I. Yep, absolutely.

You know, and all of us military guys, we like our coffee and you know, energy drinks is super simple.

But yeah, there's not any benefit to them.

You know, you get that crash that's afterwards.

There's definitely no pain relief, you know, and, and they're definitely not healthy.

But you know, they, they, they are effective.

And so how did you incorporate the energy side and still keep safe and healthy and, and that together

Again, I'm going to draw back from my wine experience.

My wife and I had a restaurant for a little bit.

It was an accident.

It fell into our lap.

Never wanted to run a restaurant, but it ended up we had to for financial reasons because she built it.

Oh, wow.

She was an architect and builder, so she builds this for somebody else.

We decide because we're smart people, we'll do the build out for free and just take equity.

That didn't work.

The owner or the person who was going to run at the operator, who was a known operator, she, she, she had a nervous breakdown.

Oh, wow.

She was.

Yeah, she was 52 years old.

This was going to be, you know, like her 40th year in.

Seriously, in the restaurant world.

And she just came to the point where she couldn't start another project, I think, and we didn't know that till too late.

And she literally had a nervous breakdown.

Wow.

So we're left with this.

So we have, we've got the restaurant, upscale Latin in Southern California, Ocean views, liquor license.

Can't lose.

Yeah, can't lose.

Unless there's this thing called Covid that will shut everything down completely in Southern California.

But that's another story in another podcast.

Yeah.

So wine.

Let's get back to wine.

We found because we're doing the wine buying, right?

We've got a wine program.

We're doing the buying.

It's spirits and stories.

Here's the spirit story.

Some of the best, most affordable wines are blends.

Some of the hottest new wines coming up.

Conundrum.

I loved Conundrum.

Smooth and inexpensive because they blend right.

So when I'm starting Power plus and I'm thinking of a product.

I'm like, huh?

I know.

You just can't take 500mg caffeine.

Ask me how I know.

Because right when you're desperate, you got to stay awake on long hauls back to base after partying in Washington D.C. for a weekend and trying to get back to North Carolina.

That's a seven hour trip.

And formation is in six hours.

Yeah.

You can't take 500 milligrams caffeine and feel good.

That turns out, yeah.

So I want to blend even the energy side.

And so that's what I did.

I started layering these things.

We only use 150mg caffeine.

It's probably the least amount of caffeine in any energy drink.

But we layer it with a lot of B12, a lot of B6, a lot of folic acid, niacin.

And then we also use this thing that I found from the exercise world called yohimbine.

Okay.

Yohimbine is an African.

It's not an herb.

I believe it's a root.

And it has a strong energy profile.

So strong that it's about 1 to 10 strength for caffeine.

So I use 1 milligram of yohimbine.

It's worth about 10 milligrams caffeine.

Okay.

But when you add that to caffeine and everything else, you don't get the knots in your stomach and you don't get the heart rates, palpitations, and then the huge crash because they have different levels of when they start wearing off.

Caffeine wears off first, yohimbine wears off later.

Okay.

So it's doing that sort of, you know, detransitioning from the energy profile slower.

That makes sense.

But again, it was all from wine.

Layered wine.

Blended wine, yeah.

But it is genius.

And it's making me sit here, think, right?

Because as deployments and the war went on and on, you know, I'm not sure if you deployed at all, but they, they brought in this crap.

And, and it is exactly crap.

It's called rip it.

Right.

And it's an energy drink.

Sounds terrible already.

It is terrible.

But when you're on long missions, it serves its purpose, right?

But you get the shakes, you get upset stomach because you're drinking so much of them to stay with.

And there's literally, they're putting as many rip its in a container as there is water, you know, and that's, that's how many people, that's how much people are grabbing these.

There's no health benefit to this.

And we're giving this to our troops to get hyped up on, on caffeine and still have a valid decision making process, you know, when life's needed and yeah, it's just not healthy.

And I was sitting here thinking about how if, if the military had provided something similar to, to your product, you know, how much healthier had been for the soldiers and probably how much less they would have had to drink.

Yeah.

You know, because a can of rip, it's not going to keep you awake very long.

It's not like a monster or something.

That's very valuable.

Lowest bidder, you know, that's the way the army works.

And you know, low, big contract.

Yeah.

Yeah.

High.

Caffeine, no taste.

There you go drinking.

But you know, people are taking these by the caseloads to their, their Humvees and it's just unfortunate because it did nothing for pain, it definitely did nothing for health.

And, and it definitely probably wasn't the best for your thought process.

And, and making, you know, shaking with a trigger finger is kind of probably not two things that go good together.

But you know, it's, it's neat how, how a veteran like yourself that came up with an idea like this that has the potential to help not just, you know, people with pain, but also people that are on the go and, and, and not cause a lot of problems.

I kind of wonder if like monsters also encourage like inflammation, you know, with some of the stuff that's in them, it's not necessarily a great health benefit.

Yeah.

So I know a lot of foods and stuff like that will cause inflammation as well.

You know, who's come out with probably the best all clean product in the energy world.

You know, you'll probably recognize the name right away.

Jocko Willick.

Okay.

He came out with a super clean energy drink to the point where he, he took out the preservatives because usually all energy products, including mine, what you do is just put preservatives in it and it's got a shelf life of two years.

That is the standard industry procedure for this.

He took better ingredients, cleaner caffeine, and he pasteurizes it so you don't need preservatives.

He took the preservatives out, threw them away.

Wow.

And he pasteurizes.

It's more expensive, but it's better for you.

Yeah.

So shout out to Jocko.

I mean, he's about the only guy I know that really is, you know, focusing in on that and being a Navy seal, you can understand, you know, his desire to kind of help out his teammates by.

Look, look, I don't want you guys to drink Ripits like the army does.

My God, those poor bastards.

They probably said that, dude, they probably called out rip and gone.

Oh, no, no, no.

That stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It.

It made near beer taste good, I'll put it that way.

Oh, my God.

So you.

You're in the.

The.

The restaurant business, which is already a brutal industry to begin with.

Yeah.

What was the migration like when you finally decided, hey, I'm gonna.

I'm going with this product and we're gonna start this company?

And I mean, because the drinking industry is not any easier, that's for sure.

No.

Well, two things happened.

One, we moved out of California, which was great.

We sold everything we had there.

So we came up here with a little nest egg, and the nest egg goes a lot farther up here in Montana.

The other thing we found out was, and this was totally by accident again, just dumb luck.

We ended up going to a golf community.

So the center of this community, there's a golf course, and it's sort of a retirement destination.

We joke around that I love being the youngest member at this golf club, and I'm 60.

They call me son.

I am not kidding you.

We play golf with people that have kids my age.

Wow.

And they're better golfers than I am, so.

But that's an interesting thing because now you've got.

For instance, four years ago, we've just started this up.

We're working through the details.

My wife plays golf with a woman, and she invites us to dinner at her house.

So we go to her house, her husband's there, and they're much older, and.

And the guy, his name's Frank.

Frank says, so what do you do there, Sonny?

I'm like, oh, I started a thing and we got the thing and we're going to do.

He goes, do you need packaging?

I'm like, well, yeah, I suppose we'll need packaging for.

He goes, hang on.

He created a packaging company 25 years ago that is now a $3.5 billion a year company.

That's with a B. Wow.

He created it with the founder.

Calls up the president of the company currently goes, hey, this is Frank.

How's it going?

How are the kids?

How's the wife?

Oh, that's wonderful.

Hey, I got this K. His name is Lee Edinger.

He's going to be calling you next week.

Be good to him.

Be nice.

He's a nice guy.

And that was at dinner in the middle of dinner, and he hangs up his phone.

You're like, what happened?

I didn't know it was a $3.5 billion company.

I had to look that up.

He just said, I was.

I had a packaging company before Aurora Packaging.

One of the low.

Anyways.

It's those kinds of stories, those kind of people.

It's the same sort of selflessness and brotherhood that you find in the military.

You find up here, even with civilians, bless their heart, because they want to be of service again.

They're just far enough out of retirement, or they've been in retirement long enough where they're getting bored.

They want to be back in the business.

They want to be back in the, you know, in the hustle because they've got so much to offer.

These guys are titans of their industries.

They've moved up here, they've played enough golf, and when they hear about somebody doing something that they can help with, they don't even question what's in it for me.

Wow.

Yeah, that's.

That's unusual.

You know, Right.

When I got out of the military, I opened up a trucking company and I drove.

Where at?

I want to know where.

So I was in Georgia, where I open it up.

Yeah.

Which all there is to do there is you either drive truck or you work at work.

Moonshine drink.

Yeah, absolutely.

Maybe sometimes both.

You know, I. I was in Georgia.

I know.

Yep.

But.

So I opened up this trucking company, and, yeah, I went through Montana several times.

Beautiful, beautiful state, in my opinion.

Probably one of the most beautiful states in America, to be honest.

Now, when you.

When you got up there and you started this.

This company, what level were you at when you got up there?

Were you.

Were you already at.

To the point where you were ready for production, or were you still in the research phase or what?

Yeah, a little bit of both.

So I thought I was in the production phase.

I had a formula.

We had it created once.

We did a small production run in 2,000 bottles.

And so I said, okay, I think we're going to produce.

And I gave it to a company that was going to produce more.

And they did a pilot run based off of the formula.

Just little testers.

And it tasted terrible.

It was horrible.

You couldn't even drink it.

My wife was, like, throwing up in her mouth.

Wow.

And we found out.

I took the old bottle.

I went and had it tested.

That company, who was from California, while I was in California, had just lied, and they hadn't put in the ingredients.

Wow.

So we realized one of Our main components.

White willow bark is the second most bitter thing on the planet.

Where we're supposed to have 200 milligrams, they put in five.

Oh, big difference.

Yeah.

It's called fairy dusting.

So they fairy dusted it to make it taste better.

So unfortunately, I was already up here.

I'm not going to go back and sue people behind me.

I just want to look forward.

Right.

And so we thought we were going to be in production.

No.

We had to go back into R and D and work on flavor.

Flavor took us two years.

Okay.

Because it is such a powerful.

All those ingredients are so powerful.

We look through every single flavor company in the industry.

I went to trade shows, you know, from sales.

Right.

Background spreadsheet, phone numbers.

Call them up, ask them if they can do it.

Everybody says yes.

Yeah.

Ask their, their engineers.

Half of the engineers right away says, oh, did you say white willow bark?

Oh, no, no, no.

We don't do that.

No, no, no.

We don't even let that touch our machinery.

Half of them said they could.

We give them a sample, they give it back to us.

It was terrible.

Two years of that.

I am not kidding you.

I have the receipts.

Two years.

We finally got a company to flavor it.

Then we had another company produce it.

And half of the batch of they produced was bad spillage, staining, and all this black goo around the threads.

Oh, wow.

We didn't find that out till we were halfway through.

And so that was a whole batch we had to throw away.

And the wild west really is in the, you know, beverage manufacturing world because literally the guy said, hey, sorry, it's a small run.

We don't really see, this is what his email said.

It's a small run.

We really don't pay attention to those.

If you want us to pay more attention and do it right, you have to have a bigger run with us.

And if you want to go find somebody else, good luck.

It's hard to find manufacturers that will work with such small companies.

Best of luck to you.

Wow.

So basically, in translation, we screwed your crap up because we don't care.

And because we don't care because of your size.

Good luck.

Yeah.

Go pound sand.

And I was like so close to just copying the FDA and going, okay, thanks for that information.

Good to know.

But again, you want to look forward, not backwards.

Sometimes you have to.

But in this case.

So it took us three years to get into series production.

From that first time we got here, we thought we were going to produce to actually producing a run that had the right flavor, had a good production company and was in mass, meaning we produced 50,000 bottles, and then we turned right around and we produced another 130 with a different company just to leverage, right?

Yep.

For a small part of my career, I spent 15 years in the entertainment industry.

I sold independent films.

I had a boss who's female.

My first boss in the industry.

She said, you know, you should always have a pair and a spare of everything.

Even though I think she was talking about boyfriends.

A pair and a spare.

That's three for the kids, counting at home, for all the marines, that's three crayons.

So, yeah, we try to have redundancy in everything.

Now, with your trucking company, what happened with that?

What was.

What was the story?

This thing called Covid.

You know, I made a.

What I thought was a good business decision at the time, and it was paying off, and I went from hauling bulk chemicals to hauling infrastructure with flatbed, and I loved it.

It was more my cup of tea.

Not as much money.

There was more money in chemicals, but I was happy.

I'd been doing that for a while, and so I did that.

And then this thing called Covid came around, and guess what?

Nobody needed cranes anymore.

Nobody needed building material, because we were not building.

Everybody was at home.

And so, you know, I would pick up a load, get a couple hundred miles away from the customer, and then get a phone call, hey, go ahead and take that load back to where you got it.

Your customers closing down for a couple weeks.

Somebody came down with COVID and they're not receiving any new orders.

And now at that point, I have to cancel all the loads after that because I'm not going to be in that area no more, because I have to go back to where I just picked up this load, which means now I go back with no future loads that have already been booked out for the week.

You know, so dealing with agents and everything else, it was.

It was brutal.

And, you know, during that period, not getting a paycheck became a lot more common than getting a paycheck.

So it was.

It was brutal, and it affected a lot of people.

So I. I completely understood when you said this thing called Covet, you know.

Yeah, that's a whole nother podcast in itself.

It's just what happened to us.

And how.

How is that allowed to happen where the government basically could destroy your livelihood at a snap of the fingers?

It's like a Marvel Comics bad guy.

Yeah, right.

They just snap their fingers, and all of a sudden, your ability to make Money was gone.

But not your liabilities, not your insurance, not your rent, not, you know, your electricity, your heating, your.

Your taxes.

Oh, yeah, thank you.

Yeah, they.

That there was no break there.

You know, we still want 30% of whatever it is that you made, you know?

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, no, I. I got it.

Yeah, it is whole nother podcast.

Yep.

So.

So you're now into production.

You've got the.

The products out there.

There's no more black goo around the threads, so.

So life is good.

Where did distribution come from?

So distribution's tricky, you know, and we just moved in from manufacturing, which I had spent manufacturing research and development, which I spent this entire time doing.

Really.

Now I'm finally in distribution, and we're finding out that there's a lot of weird stuff happening with that as well.

There's people that will promise distribution, then it never shows up.

You give them the money to get it out to the stores, and all of a sudden the promise of 250 stores turns into 50 stores maybe, but there's no way to prove it.

Right.

So luckily, again, you go on the Internet, you ask one of the AI agents, how do I get my product?

And, you know, they kind of tell you the same thing.

So, you know, it's.

It's pretty.

You get it into a couple stores first.

Even if you gotta walk in, which I've done here in my community, I've walked into stores and just went, hi, I've got this.

Who do I need to talk to about getting it in this store?

So we've had some successes just getting it in.

Right.

Walking through the front door.

Yeah, we've been turned down a couple times just because people like, no, maybe they.

They got to deal with fiber energy, or they're just worried about the word pain relief.

Who knows?

Or they don't like the flavor.

Yeah.

You know, they'll taste it and go, oh, I don't know.

That's really not for me.

I'm like, it's not for you.

It's for everybody else.

Yeah, right.

Some people just, you know, so we're working through, you know, grassroots, and then you go on the Internet and there's these associations and organizations that say, we help with retail, we help with distribution, and you gotta go through them one at a time and hear their pitch.

And luckily, you, me, you know, it's like the old insurance commercial.

We know a few things because we've seen a few things, right?

You get to a point in your life where you're like, I can smell bullshit better than I used to.

And you can tell right away.

I mean, I was given a contract.

It said, give us $10 a store and 200 free boxes.

We'll put one in every store, and then if they like it, they'll reorder it.

I said, okay, to get your product out there.

That sounds good.

What stores?

And they said, oh, well, we can't tell you because the distributors are worried you'll go around them and deal directly with the stores.

I'm like, nobody does that.

Everybody knows you can't go directly to a store.

You go through the distributor unless you live there.

And why would I do that if the distributor's already?

And I ruined that relationship?

But you realize what they're saying is there is no way for you to prove, to verify that we are doing what we say we're going to do.

Yeah.

You don't even know if your stuff was sold.

No, no.

And so I'm like, no way to verify.

And I'm.

I'm a huge trust but verify guy.

You know, if.

If you can't tell me, you know, if.

If we've hit the bullseye or not.

Yeah.

I'm going to keep going along till I find somebody who can.

And there are, there is.

There are programs out there that actually do give you the names, will give you, you know, direct contact with the folks that are buying.

So.

But you just got to find them.

You got to keep, you know, hammer it away.

Yeah.

You know, that.

That's weird that people would think that that's what you're doing, because anybody that's scaling at that size, that is in the business of making a drink is not in the trucking business.

They're not going out there to buy a, A large, you know, panel truck and, and start making these runs and deliver their own product, you know, across state lines.

Yeah, they're looking for distribution for a reason, not because they want to get into the industry.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that, that, that is.

That would be the first sign of.

To me too.

Yeah.

Donald meter's going off.

He's like, wait a minute.

So makes.

It makes no sense.

Now, one thing I am interested in, and I don't know if you've ever heard about this, but obviously for me, it would be a neat thing to be in, like, the military PX's.

Yeah.

Right.

And I just don't know anybody in that world anymore.

So, you know, that would be something that is on my to do list of find somebody who is, you know, connected with the exchanges and see if we can just Present to them maybe, you know, take rip its shelf space.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Good old apes.

You know, that's, that's the, the world.

You know, the, the PX workers, you know, when we were deployed was making more money than we were as soldiers for big over there.

Yeah.

They didn't have as much fun as we did.

Okay.

They get to shoot guns.

They didn't get to ride on tanks and helicopter rides with the new guy.

Yeah.

Oh, I mean, it's just priceless.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

You know, and, and that's the type of stuff that, you know, I, I miss, I do miss that stuff from the, from the military.

The good times, you know, the.

Yeah.

So, so do you guys also have like your own website that you sell online as well as, as being in stores as well?

We have a website, we do have online sales.

We advertise online.

But I'll tell you, Donald, the online sales are terrible.

Yeah, we just, you know, we're doing better than the industry.

So Supplements world to get a customer average 40 to $80 in advertising.

That's the average.

So we're about $50.

That's pretty good.

It's good.

But you think about it, that's for one customer.

Yeah.

So for 10 customers a month, I have to spend $500.

Right.

For 20 customers a month, I've got to spend two.

No, a thousand dollars.

Yep.

That's not really scalable.

I mean, I need to really make a dent.

I need 10,000 customers a month.

Yeah, that'd be great.

I mean, right, that.

Now we're selling at three bucks a bottle.

Now we're, you know, covering our cost, but that sort of linear ramp up.

Yeah, there's a little, there's a little curve, but it's very capital intensive.

And we're nervous about.

We just can't spend $10,000 a month in Facebook ads.

So we're working through that.

We've got some sales.

Not a lot really.

Retail is where we want to be because again, if we can give it to one distributor and they give it to 200 stores and they're going through a box a month even that's great for us.

And then just multiply that 10 times.

Yeah.

And when you say stores, are you focused more on like convenience stores or.

Yes, convenience stores.

Gas.

Gas and goes.

Convenience stores.

You know, it's funny, people say, or they think, oh, you're an energy and pain relief product.

You'd be perfect at gyms.

I'm like, well, gyms are full of people that really want to be healthy.

And they're super clean about their systems.

They may not be the energy drink kind of people, but a person going into.

And you might know this.

7:11 Long haul trucker, back aches all the time and you're having problems staying awake.

You know, those are the type of people that could really use just this quick fix.

Not really concerned about the ingredients.

They don't need to see on the label kosher, gluten free, you know, they don't need that.

They just need to know it works.

Yep, that's, you know, that, what is that?

A five hour energy shot that, you know, similar, similar to that, you know.

Yeah, it's, it's one of those things that you go up there and, and it's sitting right there at the cash register, you know, in a box there and, and it catches.

I see truckers buying that stuff all the time, you know.

Yeah, because it works.

It's a great product.

I mean that inspired us.

I watched that whole thing happened from the time it hit the first shelves to the commercials and I thought, this guy's a genius.

He's took the 16 ounce energy drink, big and sugary, focused on kids doing backflips on motorcycles, took the ingredients, scaled it down so it's easier to drink like you were talking about.

You don't need the whole drink, just the things that work and focused on adults.

You got that 2:30 feeling.

Those office workers, those weren't kids.

Yeah, brilliant, brilliant.

And he's still crushing it today.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

So why don't we, why don't we get into.

Where is it that, that if, if somebody wanted to purchase your product or try it, where, where is it that they could get it and, and where could they find it?

Yeah.

So best place for everybody watching your show is the website, which is drink powerplus.com.

okay.

We'll make sure that we get the links and everything down there at the bottom

and we got lots of information.

You know, we could even do a discount code for your viewers if you want.

We'd love to, you know, support your viewership.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I'd be, I'd be glad to do some.

Of course.

Absolutely.

I'd be, I'd be glad, I'd be glad to give it a shot and I'd be glad to help you market it.

And anything to take.

Rip it down.

I'm.

I'm down.

Right.

Hey, I got a question though.

You got a picture of some guys playing football?

Either one of you.

Them?

No, one of them.

You know, those, are those the People behind that's Ken Anderson.

You know, I'm hoping this is the year that he gets put in the hall of fame.

There's right next to him is Anthony Munoz right there.

And then you got the old Joe Burrow.

I'm a, I'm a huge Bengal nut.

So I guess you're.

Oh, wait a minute.

The chair is even bangled.

Wait, is that right?

Yep.

There you go.

All right, all right.

I see where, I see where it's leaning to.

Yeah.

And then there's my, my grandkids and my, my daughter is in the middle right there next to my wife.

They're a bunch of martial art nuts.

It's been in our family since my kids were 7, 8.

So I see him doing the Karate Kid thing.

Very cool.

Yep, yep, absolutely.

So, yeah, that's, that's the old background back there.

A little, A little bit of me.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like it.

So, yeah.

Well, we will definitely get those links out there and, and if you want to share that discount code, I'll put that in there as well and it'll help you figure out who's coming to you from, from us and help the show out as well.

So.

Absolutely fantastic, Donald.

Thank you.

Yep, absolutely.

I hope all of you guys that are watching this understand, you know, the importance there, there is a lot of stuff.

And for you soldiers that are still drinking rip its, I know a few, you know, there's better stuff out there.

It is not, it is not the stuff for you.

There's a reason why your stomach hurts after you drink it.

It's not healthy.

And now, you know, there's actual stuff out there on the market that can help you with pain.

It can help you with, with the energy.

You know, especially those guys that work in an office about 2:30, 3:00', clock, right after lunch, they just need that little bit of power up to get home and, and have the energy to, to greet the family, play with the kids and, and everything before they settle down.

So stuff like this is absolutely perfect for that.

I hope all of you guys enjoyed this.

Take a lesson here.

Just because you're, you're done being a military guy doesn't mean that you don't have something to contribute.

So again, Lee, I appreciate what you're doing.

It's awesome.

I love seeing veterans that, that are creating products and creating businesses out there and, and just killing it.

I've always said that we have the best minds in the world and we're too dumb to give up, so.

Right.

That's the key.

Absolutely.

Right there.

So, again, I hope all of you all enjoyed it.

I know I did.

Y' all take care.

Lee, thanks again for being on the show.

Thanks, Donald.

Don't forget.

Don't let the day kick your ass.

Kick the day's ass.