He Walked Away From 2 Shark Tank Offers (Sales 40x'd After)

**Kent Yoshimura** (0:00)
I would pride myself in not sleeping. There was a period of time I did the Uberman cycle, if you know what that is. Sleeping for 20 minutes every four hours. Like, I did that for like three months.
It was psychotic. I was not a good person during that time, I don't think. And the more I sleep, the more rational and logical my decision-making process can be, the more I could prioritize things versus impulsively reacting to things. If there's one thing, it's good sleep and building a rational thought process.

**Tommy Mello** (0:32)
All right, guys, welcome back. Today, I got Kent Yoshimura with me. He's the co-founder and CEO of Neuro, a Los Angeles-based brand best known for their energizing gums and mints, revolutionizing how people access their focus while on the go. Beyond Neuro, Kent is a competitive martial art artist, an investor, a large-scale muralist for the city of Los Angeles. His art has been featured in TimeForbes in New York.
NPR and a lot of other places. Kent, it's a pleasure to have you on today.

**Kent Yoshimura** (1:01)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

**Tommy Mello** (1:03)
Yeah, I've really been looking forward to this, so, you know, let's just start out a little bit. Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about you? We'll get you excited. What you're focused on now and what brought you to this place.

**Kent Yoshimura** (1:16)
Gosh, I mean, you know, it all started because we wanted to make supplementation accessible.
Like, when I was training, I was training at a fairly high level. I was traveling to Thailand to fight Muay Thai in Thailand. Like, this is like 25 years ago, you know. It's a lot more popular and built out now, all these places. But energy drinks really were the only option when I was training.
And that is not what I wanted to put into my body. And it was very obvious that when Ryan and I started the company, and Ryan was one of the fastest kids in California, absolutely incredible cross-country and track runner, who got injured in a snowboarding accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, we realized like for people like him, who are trying to find the rhythm of life again, for people like me, who are training at a high level, we are not trying to put compounds in our body that are doing us harm for the sake of short-term benefits. We want something that gives us long-term benefits, but also the energy and focus when we need it. And the most obvious approach to that was creating a portable, sustainable energy source that felt way better when you took it. And that was the invention of NeuroGum and Neuromint.

**Tommy Mello** (2:25)
I love it. And what are you excited about right now in your career?

**Kent Yoshimura** (2:32)
You know, so much of the last decade was around education. We were building a category. There was no one really like us, SF4. I think the only player in the market was like a alert energy gum and military energy gum, both absolutely terrible. They basically took the energy drink model and put it into a gum format with the same bad ingredients and overloaded with sugar and not concerned about taste whatsoever. For us, that education has come a long way. About one in six, one in seven Americans know about NeuroGum, and the pods continue to grow. As we expand into retail, which we're aggressively doing right now, that accessibility to our product is only going to get better.
We've consistently been a top player on Amazon, TikTok, we were the fastest growing brand last year, or rather two years ago, we were the fastest growing brand and we maintained that spot. Near the top all last year and this year as well.
As we enter into retail, we're seeing that same impact of our brand awareness translate into philosophies and people choosing us, not necessarily over energy drinks, but as a better option to the other energy products out in the marketplace.

**Tommy Mello** (3:54)
What about personally? I mean, it sounds like you stay busy.
What are you looking forward to?

**Kent Yoshimura** (4:01)
Man, fitness is always a big thing for me. I assume fitness is a big thing for you, just looking at how you're built. But running is big for me. So I ran this morning, I'm running the four passes 30 mile, 7,500 foot elevation again run later this year. I was supposed to run rim to rim last year, but the Grand Canyon burned down, so I couldn't do it. So how do I continue to mentally push myself and physically push myself outside the business and maintain that discipline is pretty important to me.