Alex Neist, founder of Hostage Tape sleep enhancement tape, shares his first love of football and his time as a former professional quarterback in the arena football league, explains how dedication is just motivation over time, gives the story behind the name “Hostage Tape”, and talks about the importance of being polarizing, targeting your T.A.M., the TRUE definition of success, and finally making it on Rogan.

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Southwestern Student Coaching

Hello, Action Catalyst listeners. Today, our

guest is Alex Neist, the founder of Hostage Tape sleep

enhancement tape, as well as an entrepreneur and former

professional quarterback in the Arena Football League. Recently,

he has also founded Neist Media with a mission to build econ

brands with passion. Alex, nice to meet you.

It's good to be here.

Look, we're honored to have you and I love

focusing kind of on early days a little bit, Senator due to we

have a lot of business owners on here. They're going to be really

curious about scalability. So you got started wearing pads and

helmet?

Yes, my first love was football. I was a football

player as so there's this great story when I was probably 13 or

14 years old, somewhere around there was at a birthday party.

And it gave everybody these acts of Topps baseball cards. I

wasn't really much of a football player back then. And so we got

these cards and we opened them up. And the very last card that

I got was a Joe Montana card in everybody around the table is

like oh my god, you gotta Joe Montana card. He's the best

quarterback in the league, like a light bulb went off for me. So

then it was at that moment, I knew, I want to be like that.

Everything I do was breathing football, living football. And

then my dad built the net, we lived out in the country, in

southern Minnesota. So out of the country that I had, we had a

past year where my dad built this net, or I would be outside

all day, from morning till noon, when the sun went down, just

thrown the ball. And even before I had the net, what I used to do

was I would go out and I would just throw the ball at all the

trees, and then that prompted my database. All right, so you're

killing all the trees. Let me build a net for you. So man, I

wanted to be at the time the next Joe Montana. And then as I

got older, that was the era of Kurt Warner, right, this this

underdog story. And I'd always kind of had an underdog

mentality and underdog story for me too, that I love the Kurt

Warner story so that I always wanted to be the next Kurt

Warner. Nobody ever thought I was gonna go play college

football. And then I went, I played college football. I went

to the University of Minnesota I was a gopher, and then from

college, I wasn't a starter I was I was a backup. So nobody

ever thought like what kind of a backup actually continues on and

keeps playing. But I had a mentality much like Kurt Warner

did, where I just I knew I was good enough. I knew I could

play, I was able to get into arena football. I was always

that guy that nobody ever ever be counted me out. But then I

always had a chip and I'm like, I can do it. I know I can add

this like dude, delusional confidence. But look, man, in

this day and age when you're playing with a playbook that's

this thick. There's so many options. And there's so many

reads and things are so complicated, you have to have a

smart guy, you've got to have a guy who can take all that and

learn a new language and think on the fly, and can go into a

meeting and command the room. Because the reality is this, you

got a billion dollar organization behind the guy,

those guys in that room are not going to follow him if he's not

working harder than everybody else. And he doesn't actually

show that, Wow, that guy knows what he's doing. He can coach

everybody in the offense, everybody in the room, everybody

in the huddle, they have to be able to follow that guy. And if

they can't follow that guy and trust that guy, not gonna work.

A great example is Johnny Manziel. You're seeing a lot of

more media come out, especially with the Netflix documentary

that That dude was so talented, but it was obvious why he

failed. He just was not doing the work. He was not studying,

not doing film, not doing all the things. And then he lost the

entire locker room lost all the coaches. And it was obvious.

Yeah. So I mean, it's a good pivot actually to

talking about business. So talk about the transition from

athletics to business.

I think it's an easy transition in the sense that

when you're an athlete, especially a high level athlete,

and you make it to college sports, or some level of pro

sports, you know what it takes to actually put all the work in,

day in and day out the grind. That's the thing that most

people don't understand about being an entrepreneur and

building a business. They look at it from Instagram ago. Oh,

wow. Look at all the amazing things they're doing. Look at

what they've accomplished, like the it's like an overnight

success. But what they don't see is what all of us athletes have

gone through is that dude, you're going to practice every

single day you're working on every single day. You're doing

all the little things every single day. that then pays off

every weekend every Friday night. So it's a very similar

mentality of, of what we need to do on a daily basis, that grind,

you have to do you just, you don't need motivation, you just

need dedication, and you need consistency, to continue to do

the right things day in and day out, and you're gonna fail. And

that's okay. Right. And that's another piece of it is that

being a great entrepreneur and a great athlete is learning how to

be able to use failure, you know, you're going to fail, you

know, you're going to fail. And it's using that failure than to

learn from it to then get better and try not to make those

mistakes, again, keep moving forward and keep stacking. Diet,

there's one thing that my, my mom taught me, and I say this to

my kids, you can accomplish anything in life, if you want,

you just have to be willing to work for it. And if you're

willing to work for it, you can do it and you can accomplish it.

And you could make your own luck to get to it.

That's good. I know, it wasn't like a complete

transition right into the businesses that you that you're

known for. Now, you're the hostage tape, which we'll talk

about a little bit. But you kind of had this like pivot point of

getting into sports video analytics, which was related,

right?

Yeah. You know, when you're an athlete, so I was also

a coach, like when you're playing arena football, like we

all make tons and tons of money, your goal is to try to climb to

make it to the NFL. And that was obviously my goal. And so while

I'm doing that, I'm also coaching football, I was a high

school football coach for 15 years. And so when you're a

quarterback, and you're a coach, you're student of the game. And

so as a student of the game, back then this was in the early

2000s, mid 2000s, right? Where the internet, the internet

wasn't what it is today, you weren't watching video, and

interacting with software in the browser the way that we are now

and we're used to it. So back then everything was very,

Alright, hey, I'm gonna want to mail you a DVD. Right then meet

you in McDonald's. And we're going to hand off tapes, it was

very rudimentary and how we used to exchange information, video

and study things at the dawn of that was certainly Netflix was

starting to change and grow, YouTube was starting to change

all these things were happening. And so I knew all right, there's

something here online with being able to take video and share it.

So we actually just started out as it was a file sharing site,

game exchange, changing game video. But then we pivoted and

we said, let's actually take that though and add more to it,

we'll let the sexy build an application in the browser that

people are going to interact with, we pioneered this concept

of using humans to watch the video and tag it so that way,

then as a, as a coach, you play the game on a Friday night you

woke up the next day, your game was entirely tagged with the

data points that you could search and pull up to be able to

teach your players more effectively. Because most teams,

especially Olympic sport teams, they've got one maybe two

coaches on staff, how the heck are they going to take a 90

minute match? add data to it, so they can actually use it with

their players? Most don't most didn't? At the time, they were

just like, All right, we lost anything we can learn. I don't

know, let's move on. Because I got a game in two days, that

really catapulted us into where, you know, we were doing seven

figures a year with our business, and then we

bootstrapped it ran it for 16 years, and then I sold it to a

company out of Tel Aviv, that kind of led to ending that

chapter of my life into a new chapter.

And in tell me like if you you know, there's

the same, you know, there's, so much of what you go through in

life is preparing you for your moment when it comes right, what

was the preparation this business gave you?

Well, in 16 years, I failed an awful lot. Right? When

you when you run your own business, you fail a lot. And I

was just fortunate enough to not fail too much that we were still

in business, and we lasted for 16 years. Or you could look at

it as I failed so much that I was able to learn enough to stay

in business for that long to then get to this point. But so I

negotiated the deal. I negotiated it myself, I didn't

have a broker or banker or anybody. And I'll tell you when

you're when you're an American negotiating with an Israeli,

that's an interesting negotiation that most people are

not prepared for. Because like, we're not as Americans were not

brought up in a culture of negotiating and haggling. We're

just not, we're just not prepared for that. They don't

teach that we should be teaching in our kids and they should be

teaching in school how to negotiate. So shout out to this

book, never split the difference. But Chris Voss Yeah,

he needs to read this book, this book changed my life. So when I

read that book, it changed everything about how I approach

business, how I approached my relationships, and then it

really helped me helped me set up be able to go in and

negotiate that deal to sell the company. Now I know the things

that I need to learn when I build my next company that's

going to be big. And I also learn what do I not want to do?

How do I not want to be how do I not want to manage my people and

lead my people? I learn all the a lot of things I don't want to

do.

How did this come about? I mean, this seems like a

departure from you know what you've done previously?

Well, the story is actually this five years ago, I

thought I had everything right. I had the business, the seven,

figure your business, I had my wife I had, we had house, I had

two kids, then literally two years after that I lost all of

it. I sold the business. And then I went through divorce,

because I was super laser focused on the business. But

also, I was a terrible snore that have pushed my wife into

the bedroom. And a lot of people think, Oh, you store sleeping

separate better. And that's great. It's not great. And not

good for relationship to be sleeping in separate bedrooms. I

don't care what you think it's not. I've been through it. And

then I only saw my kids at the time. And then as a result, I

had to sell the house. And I was living in my mom's basement. So

then it was in that moment where all right, I'm investing out my

equity. And I'm at like my rock bottom moment. And I'm going,

what do I need to do? What do I need to do is change the work on

myself? So I started with my sleep. And I went down this

rabbit hole of what do I how can I improve it? How can I improve

my snoring my sleep all of it. And I discovered this article

written by James Nesta and James Nesta wrote a best selling book

called breath. And in this book, there's an experiment that they

do where they go to Stanford Medical Center, and they plug

their nose for 10 days to see what would happen both

anecdotally and what the doctors would say. Throughout this 10

days, they developed sleep apnea, snoring like crazy and

dangerously low levels of blocks. And once that's done,

they unplugged their nose, they tape their mouth, everything

went away in a day. So when I read that, I went, is it really

that simple. It's mouth breathing, because as an athlete

my whole life, they never taught us that they never taught us the

dangers of mouth breathing, and the benefits of nasal breathing

in so I then went okay, went on to Amazon, I had no idea what to

get. And I just bought some cheap stuff that like I will

just try this out. And everybody, same reaction. Wait a

minute, if I put this on, am I gonna die? Like, is there a

chance I die? And I'm like, I'll be fine. Come on. So I put it

on. When I woke up the next day, I felt like a kid. I felt like

my 14 year old son like the amount of energy that I had.

Because when you get more sleep it stacks. So I finally felt

what it was like it was jolting. And that's when I knew, Okay,

I've got something in and on top of who and you're like, we're

gonna call a hostage tape. They're like, yeah, like, the

amount of pushback I got from that. Our people didn't like it.

But when you have polarity and a brand and you're gonna have

people who love it, people hate it. When you know, you've got

something good hostage tip. Why would you call it that? When I

first started mouth taping, I used to warn my kids, I would

say Hey, guys, I'm gonna warn you. I'm gonna put some tape on

my mouth. Right? It's gonna look like I'm being held hostage such

as, don't freak out. But it's also tapping into this core

emotion. People feel people feel held hostage by poor sleep, or

their partner, and they don't know what to do. And I knew

you're going to scroll through your seat and you're going to

see such tape. Whoa. And you're gonna remember you're never

gonna forget that. And people don't.

I was just thinking like it sometimes you

like glanced at it maybe on like an ad scroll down and you're

like, Wait, is this like the s&m feed at first?

What are they going to sell ball gags next?

But then to your point, polarity causes you to

read. And then as long as the science backs up the tool, it's

it's it's compelling. What were the exercises that you took in

exploring the marketability of this?

There wasn't much that I did to like, past. I just

knew in my bones that this was that. Oh, the challenge, though,

is is that because it is a commodity essentially, right? I

mean, anybody can take the concept that we've made, and try

to sell it. But the real brilliance of it is creating

this brand that we've created in this movement that we've created

the largest brand in the world. It's not even close. Like you

look at the web's statistics. Nobody's even close to us. No

competitor, nothing. What was amazing is a few weeks ago, Joe

Rogan, he was talking to an MMA fighter on a pod. And the guy

said, oh, yeah, you know, I'm taping them at night. And he was

Oh, yeah. Do you use hostage tape? So we've got the biggest

person in the world equating a category to us. Yeah, in the

manner of two years, we have taken over a category and we are

the category when somebody says mouth tape. Oh, yeah, that's

your hostage tape. Right?

That is the hard part, for sure.

The first year was my co founder and eyes all

internal. We didn't hire an agency didn't hire anybody else.

And so it was that medium. And then I had hired on a my head of

support a few months after that, because if there's one thing I

learned from my previous business, as a SaaS company,

your customer support the has to be dialed in has to be dialed in

early. It was the three of us, you know, really for that whole

Last year, and I learned Facebook ads myself, I had never

done Facebook ads before. But I knew this was our ticket. And I

learned how to do it. It took me six months. And I learned how to

do it. I struggled and fumbled and figured it out. But that's

the way I'm wired, as an entrepreneur, like I figure

everything out, and I identify what are the things that are

going to move the needle the most. And I went, and I learned

how to do those things. Now, I completely understood it,

because that was why I didn't want to go hire an agency is I

wanted to understand how the biggest thing that I was going

to be spending my money on, and the biggest thing that was gonna

move the needle, I needed to understand it, right, I wasn't

gonna hire somebody who had just some 24 year old kid running our

ads who didn't really care. Right? He was just put on the

project. Because we were paying that agency. He's not the one

who took all of his money. And he put into this business, his

sweat, you know, I put my life into this business. So I'm gonna

make sure that it works.

So like you have a valuable product, but you're

creating a market in some ways, because it's just not there yet

that wall of like, I don't understand it.

Yeah, there's, there's totally an education

piece to our product, for sure. Because most people see, and

they're like, this is stupid. But then it's like, oh, wait a

minute. Most people here don't actually understand the

difference between nasal breathing a mouth breather. And

this is why it's important that like, oh my God even know that.

So when it comes to branding, we've got a 25 person team in

when I hire my team, there's a very particular type of person

that I like to hire. I like hiring optimistic people, people

that have an optimistic mindset. And also, they're, they're

people who they might be entrepreneurial. They might

leave in 234 years, and then start their own brands. Because

that's a do like, those are the kinds of people that I look for,

mostly, and I tell them all, hey, if you've got your own

brand, your own idea, I'm totally cool with you working

with it as a side hustle, I encourage it, and I'm here to

help in because I know that you may not want to be here, your

whole life, you might want to eventually learn everything you

can and then move off and do your own thing. And so right now

I've got I got two brothers, my head of growth, and his brother,

they've got a brand that they're working on. And it was funny,

like we were on a call one day, and they had a name for the

brand, a mic that doesn't work doesn't make sense, like the

name of the brand didn't make sense for what they were making

and where it was going. And his wife had said something. And

then I heard and I went, That's it. And I said, you're gonna do

this, this isn't this with it. And it was like, Holy crap,

that's it. So part of it is there's years of experience that

sometimes it takes to really be able to nail branding and know

what's going to hit what not hit. But in this day and age,

you have to be able to get people's attention, blend in. So

you have to be willing to take the risk of making something

that polarizing, when you're building a brand it has to stand

out, it can't blend in to this wall of social content, right?

Because there's so much that it's so easy for somebody to

start a Shopify account to go on, and put a brand on start

doing a Facebook ad, it is so much easier nowadays. Be willing

to put your neck out there, if you believe in it, and you

believe it's a great product, and you believe it's going to

maybe it's going to change people's lives. Maybe it's gonna

be life changing, maybe it's gonna be this or that be willing

to do it be willing to take a risk and be polarizing be

different.

Good point, to really, like, emphasize, because

most people struggle I feel with the need to be liked. But if

you're liked by everyone, you're loved by none.

And that's the other side of this. Right? Exactly

that it's too too many people will go Oh, wow. I want to make

sure that like this person likes it and this person every now

that's these desktops that you should do is assuming the team's

big enough that assuming that all right, this isn't like 1000

people, assuming you have a large enough Tam and for the

audience damage your total addressable market, your total

number of people that you think are actually your demographic

that you could sell this to zoomies, it's big enough. Go

after those people. Religiously, hardcore, go after them. And

that's what we did. We went, alright, we're gonna go after

men, or when he five to 50. Right? I have those middle aged

men who they have facial hair, the growing facial hair, and

they're probably married and they're having trouble sleeping,

and they're probably pushing their wives into the other

bedroom. We went hardcore after that guy. And now as a result,

what you start to see happen when you when you take that

approach as a brand, because you really nail a demo. Rafic now

all of a sudden, everybody starts and it's successful,

everybody else starts to see you go. Well, that's actually really

interesting. I see how it's helping that person one figured

out me. And now, ironically, 25% of our customer base is women.

And we are buying it and using it.

It's kinda like Stanley Cups.

Yeah totally, right.

That's awesome. Just a couple of rapid fire

questions that I think is gonna be really good for our

listeners. Alex, one question that I have for you that if you

can't, like, concisely, answer, everybody has a different

definition for what success means to them. That can mean so

much to somebody. So for you, what does success mean? And when

do you know if you've achieved it?

I heard a great businessman say this one day. I

think it was on social. He said success means that when I'm 50

6070, and my kids are out of the house, that they still want to

spend time with me. And it's something I'm working on.

Because part of the story that I didn't didn't mention, Adam, is

that the best part of the whole, this whole thing is that my wife

and I and my kids were all back together. So that happened about

two years ago.

Wow. Completion story, not not one that everyone

can say. But that's really cool. Good for you. One piece of

advice you would give yourself, the 21 year old you Alex.

Learn emotional intelligence at a much younger

age, I was too inner focused on just me what I wanted, what I

was trying, you know, as an athlete, you are right, you're

always focused on what you need to do to move forward to get to

there. And I just didn't understand how to actually

interact with other people how to network, how to use

relationships, to build relationships, how to make

people feel heard, how to just do all those things that you

need. You need to have if you're going to be a successful person,

whether it's business family, a partner, a parent.

There's one more question I got to ask you

morning routine.

You ready for this? Okay. Rivalry routine is I'm

usually up at 530. Every morning, I stretch or at least

30 minutes, I do red light therapy than I do sauna. I do

cold plunge. And then I'll do either depending on the day,

I'll get a three to five mile run in, or I'll do the gym. Now

a really important piece of that is when I'm in the sauna every

single day I do visualizations. I am visualizing exactly where

I'm going to be where I know this company is going I'm

feeling what that feels like. Nada. I hope I do this. It's

this is what it feels like when hostage to build a billion

dollar company. This is what it feels like what I know this

company and where we are going to be huge part of that, then it

come back and and that's usually two to three hours of my

morning. Very important that morning routine, taking care of

yourself all entrepreneurs out there taking care of yourself is

one of the best things that you can do. Because the end of the

day you have all these people, your family, your work would

depend on you. And if you're not taking care of yourself, then

how the heck are you going to take care of them?

Yeah, listen to the flight attendant put your

oxygen mask first. Right well now it's great having you on

thanks for giving us this time. Really good interview.

Great to be on. I appreciate it. This is great.

Don't let bad sleep hold you hostage.