The Billion-Dollar Energy Drink No One Saw Coming | Ep. 446 with Scott Frohman Founder and CEO of Odyssey Functional Energy

Scott Frohman (0:00)

Justin Bieber became my spokesperson. Guess what?

SPEAKER_2 (0:05)

I lost.

This is Scott Frohman. He started with a drink nobody understood. Today, Odyssey is the number one natural energy brand in America, stocked in 17,000 doors and fueling the offices of SpaceX and Citadel.

Scott Frohman (0:22)

I built this whole thing with no marketing, no social media, zero. This whole thing happened because I focused on building it.

SPEAKER_2 (0:31)

What did building Odyssey cost you?

Scott Frohman (0:34)

One thing it didn't cost me was money.

SPEAKER_2 (0:43)

So Scott, you were a burnt out Wall Street guy. What did that world do to you?

Scott Frohman (0:49)

Look, I spent a lot of years on Wall Street and I was in coffees, moved to Florida, got into Cuban coffees that I really liked and I was always kind of like wiring out and in. Energy drinks came about and I got really into, oh, okay, here's another thing to stimulate myself in the afternoon. Got a bunch of energy drinks and things like that. But it moved me to kind of like say, okay, this existence that I have going on here, I didn't feel like it was going to get me to where and how I want to live long term. So I said, I think I have to make some changes and change it up a little bit.

SPEAKER_2 (1:25)

From what I read, you wanted energy without the crash. You were testing with putting mushrooms in but it tasted terrible.

Scott Frohman (1:34)

Yeah. So as the evolution kind of developed in my life, I started getting very entrepreneurial. I got to start to look at doing other things outside of Wall Street and I got involved in products. I got really into products like my background is I got into health and fitness and Pilates and I got sciatica and all of a sudden the Pilates helped me and I started getting into doing triathlons. So I got into using these kind of functional mushrooms, gone to utilizing like lions made for focus and clarity and fordiceps that were really good for endurance and go to max. I started adding them to my coffee in the morning and I said, wow, I really like how I was showing up. I was showing up, I had this clarity. I felt that I was managing with people, my creativity.

I didn't feel like I needed that extra cup of coffee for that extra caffeine as I went. I felt I had this longer lasting energy and I just felt that there's better existence. So that was what was going on as to how I got into these functional mushrooms in the first place.

SPEAKER_2 (2:36)

So you went from vaping to CBD to now mushrooms. Would you say that you're chasing trends or do you see things before everyone else?

Scott Frohman (2:46)

The vaping, I just looked at it like it was a better alternative than smoking cigarettes. Then I thought, I looked at it like it. Now, I'm not going to go through the debate whether it is or it isn't. But I really think that, and I saw a trend of getting from, because I was into vape early before there's even vape stores, and I saw the trend of getting into those little illiquid bottles because originally, it was rechargeables and electronic cigarettes, and moved to these little bottles, and then the bottles turned into the premium bottles, and I got into that. I ended up owning vape stores. I went public with my deal. I had worldwide distribution selling vape premium illiquid bottles and stuff like that, and that was really cool, and I built that and sold that. What happened was, when I sold that, I had to non-compete, so I couldn't do anything with naked team.

I liked the whole thing, the movement that was happening with Canvas, and I really liked the whole thing with CBD, because I looked at CBD, it was like, wow, this can really help people with anxiety and inflammation and sleep and just better existence, and I liked CBD without the THC, because I thought that this would be good for a lot of people. So I got the CBD, and I built that relatively fast, because I had all that distribution from vape, smoke and head shops, so I was able to plug right into all that obscure place in the back of a shopping center would take CBD in early days, before people really fully understood, and I got involved in that early, and I built a big business on the CBD. But yeah, I like getting involved in things that I see helping people, and at cons when I feel like the market is ready for those products.