How One Man Went From Prison to Building a Fitness Empire (REDCON1) | Aaron Singerman 💪 EP140

What this episode is about

Aaron Singerman shares his inspiring journey from a troubled past as a drug addict to becoming the CEO and founder of Redcon 1, a thriving sports supplement and beverage company. He discusses the crucial role of fitness and personal investment in transforming one’s life, emphasizing how health and strength can positively impact both personal and professional success.

Key takeaways

• Success isn't a straight line; consider zigzags your scenic route to growth.
• Passion-powered careers are more than paydays; they're happiness dividends paid daily.
• Fun fact: Perfection is boring; relatability is the new influencer gold.
• Rebounding from mistakes builds more muscle than a perfect track record.
• From drug lows to fiscal highs, reinvention is life's ultimate pivot.

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Aaron Singerman, Money Mondays, Mr. Olympia, Predator
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Equinox, Flex magazine, Hurricane Katrina, Jim Manion
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Arnold Classic, Brandon Cruz, Brian Bates, Direct response marketing
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Blackstone Labs
5. 25:00 – 30:00: Redcon Energy

Notable quotes from "How One Man Went From Prison to Building a Fitness Empire (REDCON1) | Aaron Singerman 💪 EP140"

• Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. Our guest here has built up a very, very large business. He's built.

  about Money Mondays · at 0:00

• Sure. So, my name is Aaron Singerman.

  about Aaron Singerman · at 0:51

• Bodybuilding and fitness and being a tall skinny Jewish guy by nature being the next Mr. Olympia Arnold is very unlikely, you know. So I realized pretty quickly like I'm not going to be Arnold.

  about Mr. Olympia · at 4:11

• Movies. I strictly focused on how could I get into the bodybuilding space. And I looked at people like Joe Weider, who is the father of modern bodybuilding.

  about Joe Weider · at 5:08

• Get a chance to interview one of my favorite podcast hosts on his podcast called Offtopic Radio. And that was what gave me the opportunity to then take that small opportunity…

  about Offtopic Radio · at 5:53

• An hour. There's gyms that charge 10 bucks a month and char, Equinox charges 300 bucks a month. What do you think the difference is with someone that's charging small, medium versus large?

  about Equinox · at 7:28

• Already a really crowded space. when you go to the Olympia or the Arnold Classic or any of these big expose, you see these big booths, these companies, and they spend this…

  about Arnold Classic · at 10:22

• Formula and you can use my exact formula on our one of our hit products like Total War where our labels are transparently labeled. So you have every ingredient on the back. You…

  about Total War · at 11:44

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Aaron Singerman — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:51
• Joe Weider — Person · 1 mention · first at 5:12
• Jim Manion — Person · 1 mention · first at 5:21
  Like Peter McGuff, who was the editor-in chief of Flex magazine, and other Jim Manion, who is the creator of the pro bodybuilding organization, IFBB. I looked at these guys as…
• Mario (Sherry Coleman's brother) — Person · 1 mention · first at 5:28
  The pro bodybuilding organization, IFBB. I looked at these guys as my inspiration instead of the Ronnie Coleman ons, the Jay Cutlers. I loved all those guys, but I realized I…
• PJ Braun — Person · 1 mention · first at 10:56
  The brand. And so I was ahead of my on my time, me and my partner at the time, PJ Braun, got in front of the camera and we personalized the brand.
• Brandon Cruz — Person · 1 mention · first at 12:50
  Beginning I was What a cool opportunity. I have two good friends, Brandon Cruz and Ryan Bates, who are Navy Seals that just retired, and these guys are good-looking…
• Brian Bates — Person · 1 mention · first at 12:50
  Beginning I was What a cool opportunity. I have two good friends, Brandon Cruz and Ryan Bates, who are Navy Seals that just retired, and these guys are good-looking…
• Jay Cutler — Person · 1 mention
• Peter McGough — Person · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• Redcon1 — Company · 20 mentions
• Money Mondays — Company · 1 mention · first at 0:07
• Flex magazine — Company · 1 mention · first at 5:18
  Discovered Arnold Schwarzenegger, and like Peter McGuff, who was the editor-in chief of Flex magazine, and other Jim Manion, who is the creator of the pro bodybuilding…
• Offtopic Radio — Company · 1 mention · first at 5:57
• Muscular Development — Company · 1 mention · first at 6:06
  That small opportunity to get my own podcast with this same gentleman. And that got the attention of mus muscular development which gave me a chance to do a podcast there and…
• Equinox — Company · 1 mention · first at 7:32
• Blackstone Labs — Company · 1 mention · first at 17:30
  That was not the original. Honestly, my original thought, Dan, I left Blackstone Labs and I owned 33% of Blackstone Labs and we were doing about $10 million or so in revenue.…
• Gary Sinise Foundation — Company · 1 mention
• IFBB — Company · 1 mention
• Vitamin Shoppe — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

• Porsche 911 Turbo — Product · 1 mention · first at 8:14
  Busy, very upbeat, good energy. And one day I pulled up in the morning with him and he had a brand new Porsche 911 Turbo. And I looked at him and I said, Man, I said, This is the goal.
• Total War — Product · 1 mention · first at 11:47
• Redcon Energy — Product · 1 mention · first at 28:08
  Fourth of July, but they're not doing it every day. for us, every can of Redcon Energy, one cent of every can goes to a military charity. Right now, Gary Senise found…

Concepts & topics

• Mr. Olympia — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 4:16
• CPG (consumer packaged goods) — Concept · 2 mentions
• Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing — Concept · 2 mentions
• Predator — Concept · 1 mention · first at 3:42
  With bodybuilding and fitness. I always remember watching with my dad Predator and Arnold, or the arm wrestling scene or Arnold arm wrestles Carl and I saw that muscle and I thought, man, that's cool.
• Hurricane Katrina — Concept · 1 mention · first at 7:54
  That's where I was after I was born and raised in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina sent me to as an evacuee to Houston, Texas. And there once I got sober, I worked at this wellness center. And there was a guy there, Mike,.
• Arnold Classic — Concept · 1 mention · first at 10:25
• Direct response marketing — Concept · 1 mention · first at 14:47
  At that time we were really effective at direct to consumer marketing, direct response marketing.
• Gold Star family — Concept · 1 mention
• Index fund — Concept · 1 mention
• Redcon 1 (military readiness level) — Concept · 1 mention
• Tzedakah — Concept · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:05 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. Our guest here has built up a very, very large business. He's built up a personal brand. He's helped a lot of humans get healthier, lose weight, build up strength, and build up confidence and all the things in between there. So, we're going to dive deep into the different categories of what happens not just on the investing in money side, what happens about investing into yourself, becoming healthier, becoming fitter. What does that do for your household, for your career, and for your life in general? Now, as you guys know, these podcasts are under 40 minutes because the average commute to work is 45 minutes, and the average workout is 45 minutes. So, this episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. Now, without further

0:47 ado, our guest, Aaron, if you could give us a quick two-minute bio so we get straight to the money.

0:51 Sure. So, my name is Aaron Singerman. I'm the CEO and founder of Redcon 1, which is a sports supplement brand that has transitioned into also canned energy and beverage space. So, we started off thinking bodybuilding and fitness, which is my passion, and has transitioned into a much larger business. For me personally, my journey is uh is an unusual one uh because I started my life early as a kind of mixed up kid, a drug addict, introvenous heroin and cocaine uh addict who really didn't know where to they were going to go in life. I was lucky enough to decide, find and pursue my passion of bodybuilding and fitness, get into the world of bodybuilding and fitness as a uh as an interviewer. Like imagine like a Bob Kostas of bodybuilding and fitness and uh as soon as I got pregnant uh with my first child, I realized that that's not going to make enough money to pay the bills and pursued the passion uh of

1:42 supplements, sports supplements, which is, you know, something that I've been taking and passionate about my entire childhood adult adult life and uh was able to create success in that. And it sounds like a upward trajectory from there, but the truth is there's been some uh very jagged falls along the way. I went to prison along the way uh following that same passion and then came back out of prison and continued the journey with Redcon 1 and have been able to have some explosive growth even though I've had quite a bit of pitfalls along the way. So it wasn't a journey straight to the top. There was quite a few jagged edges along the way.

2:16 Well, I'm very excited to ask you a lot of questions then because I think it's important. I think too often on social media, people pretend everything's perfect. The perfect filter, the perfect story, the perfect household, the perfect child, the perfect relationship, the perfect perfect.

2:30 Perfect is not relatable. No. And I definitely there's hasn't been too many perfect. So, it's been a struggle and a way uh you know, one one after another of obstacles that I've had to overcome. Um but I never got myself too down about any one of them and tried to figure out a way forward in a positive way. And I think that certainly is relatable because most people don't just have this wonderful path to the top.

2:55 So on the make money side, there's so many different categories in personal training weightlifting competitions creating supplements, creating products, opening gyms. There's so many different things from a financial p perspective in the health and wellness category. You're doing a lot of them. Not only do you have the supplement company, but you also have a gym that you built in Bokeh. You've also got different divisions. Now you started the energy drink. Walk us through the different elements of your business empire.

3:24 Yeah. So initially it was about passion and you know I tell people you know a lot when we talk about people are trying to figure out which their path in life is going to be is for me I was very lucky to have a passion from an early age at 13 years old. I I fell in love with bodybuilding and fitness. I always remember watching with my dad uh Predator and Arnold uh Arnold, you know, or the arm wrestling scene or Arnold arm wrestles uh uh Carl and and I saw that muscle and I thought, man, that's cool. And my dad thought it was cool, too, even though he wasn't really into that.

3:54 And I pursued that passion and was able to find that and even through all of the the downtimes and some of the really difficult times, I always had that interest. And so when I uh when I was able to get away from the drugs and take a good look at my life, the only thing that I had a consistent interest in was bodybuilding and fitness and being a tall skinny Jewish guy by nature being the next Mr. Olympia Arnold is very unlikely, you know. So I realized pretty quickly like I'm not going to be Arnold. So if I'm not going to be Arnold, what could I be in the same space and make money and be able to pay the bills?

4:27 Honestly, at that point it wasn't even about being a millionaire or a billionaire or any of that kind of craziness. It's just about, man, if I could just follow my dream, pay my bills, and do something fun, man. That just seemed like, uh, uh, 100% the goal. And so, uh, that is what I did. I I ended up focusing every bit of my energy on that. I stopped doing the things that normal 20. By the way, I was doing drugs and stuff till my late 20s. So, it's not like I discovered this early on and and, you know, had this trajectory that began in my late teens. It took me till, you know, 28, 27 to get off of heroin and to to start following the passion. But I stopped everything that everybody else does. You know, I didn't go out. I didn't go out with girls. I didn't go to movies. I strictly focused on how could I get into the bodybuilding space. And I looked at people like Joe Weider, who is the father of modern bodybuilding.

5:15 Discovered Arnold Schwarzenegger, and like Peter McGuff, who was the editor-in chief of Flex magazine, and uh other Jim Jim Manion, who is the the creator of the pro bodybuilding uh organization, IFBB. I looked at these guys as my inspiration instead of the Ronnie Coleman ons, the Jay Cutlers. I loved all those guys, but I realized I couldn't be them. So, I put everything I had, all my attention, all my focus, all my energy into figuring out a way to get in. And I got shot down over and over and over again where I would, you know, send articles for free to magazines and I would try to break in by, you know, emailing the hosts of the initial podcast when podcast just started going out. And uh I did anything I could and eventually I was able to break in and get a chance to interview one of my favorite podcast hosts on his podcast called Offtopic Radio. And that was what gave me the opportunity to then take

6:02 that small opportunity to get my own podcast with this same gentleman. And that got the attention of mus muscular development which gave me a chance to do a podcast there and then so on and so forth. Opportunity after opportunity. I pursued passionately with everything that I had and uh and I did that continued doing that same level of passion to discover sports supplements which led me to start making actual money. Um, and I would say that the the the journey to that was a long journey and it didn't happen overnight. But by following my passion and pursuing it, you know, relentlessly, uh, at the at the sacrifice of quite a few other things in life, uh, I was able to achieve a fair element of success by the time I was in my early 30s and and made my first million dollars at 31. So from drug addiction at 28 to a million dollars at 31, you can imagine you have to really really give it everything you

6:54 everything you got. I've always had that ability to switch, you know, that uh that sort of obsessiveness that that is maybe not something that's easily taught. I have this this unnatural way of being able to say, I'm going to do this and nothing else matters and focus out all the noise. And it's that can be a curse, by the way, for sure. I'm sure it's probably part of the the drug addiction, everything else is uh is that same kind of obsessiveness that has made me successful in business.

7:23 So, on the making money side, there's personal trainers that charge 40 bucks an hour and some that charge 100 bucks an hour. There's gyms that charge 10 bucks a month and char, you know, Equinox charges 300 bucks a month. What do you think the difference is with someone that's charging small, medium versus large?

7:37 Sure. So, I have a great example for this. Um, when I first got sober, the first thing I did was personal training. It was the easiest thing to get into. I loved bodybuilding. I love fitness. I knew how to build muscles. I knew how to work out. And I went to a place, a wellness center in Houston, Texas. That's where I was after uh I was born and raised in New Orleans. Uh, Hurricane Katrina sent me to as an evacuee to Houston, Texas. And there once I got sober, um, I worked at this wellness center. And there was a guy there, Mike, um, another trainer. And he was uh very busy, very upbeat, good energy. And uh one day I I pulled up in the morning with him and he had a brand new Porsche 911 Turbo. And I looked at him and I said, "Man," I said, "This is the goal."

8:20 I told I told him, I said, "Mike, I'm I'm going to get a I'm going to get a Porsche like you, man. I'm you're you're my inspiration." And he said, "You're never going to get a Porsche like me."

8:29 And I was like, you know, my first my first impulse was like, "Oh, you know, [ __ ] this guy." Like, you know, I was mad. I was mad for

8:35 sure. Um, and I said, "Dude, what like what kind of thing is that to say?" And he said, "Do you love training people?" I said, "Not really." He goes, "I love training people." He goes, "I love helping people here." He's like, "When I'm in the gym, I'm thinking about how to help them. When I go home at night, I'm thinking about how to help them. When I sleep and I dream, I think about how to help these people. And as a result of that, I get great results and people feel that energy." He's like, "I watch you in the gym and you don't love it." M

9:03 and I was like, "Yeah, yeah, you're right. You know, I don't love it." And Mike charged a few hundred an hour. I'm charging $50 an hour. He's got people lined up for him. And it's the same thing that comes down to what we just talked about. He had that passion.

9:17 And uh and actually that conversation with Mike, the trainer, made me sit down and think like, what am I doing with my life? What if I'm sober and I'm going to be, you know, if I'm going to make something out of this life, I should figure out what it is I'm passionate about because it isn't training. He was right. It just was kind of like a slap in the face to be told straight up like that. But it helped me. It helped me tremendously and I'm still in touch with Mike and he watches our my success and has uh applauded, you know, from the sidelines doing what he's still doing and loving what he's loving. So, it's interesting.

9:47 So, why dive into the supplement space? There's thousands and thousands of brands that are out there all over the world. What makes the your brand stand out and why dive into that category? So, um I would say that when the brand began nine years ago, I had another supplement company before that. I've actually owned quite a few sports supplement companies, about 10 uh companies over the the entire lifetime of my career where I've been a part owner or I've helped develop the products where I had some ownership uh portion and the the one that I had sold previous to starting Redcon 1, I sold my shares and at that time it was already a really crowded space. You know, when you go to the Olympia or the Arnold Classic or any of these big expose, you see these big booths, these companies, and they spend this money, and then the next year they're gone, and you're like, "Wow, whatever happened to these guys? Now they're they're that's

10:35 cuz it's competitive. It's a difficult space to be in." And so, the reason why I initially got into it was because I knew that there was an ability to fill a niche um and personalize the brand. So when Blackstone started, there were very few owners that had anything to do with the the brand. And so I was ahead of my on my time, me and my partner at the time, PJ Braun, got in front of the the camera and we personalized the brand. And because we were two likable, charismatic kind of gym bros

11:04 who were didn't really know what we were doing, but people related to the fact that we're just two gym bros who don't know what we're doing and making it work. Um, people liked that. People thought this is something I can relate to. And now we have a lot more of that. But that getting in front of the camera and personalizing the space was big. When Redcon one started, it was the same thing again where I had to figure out how I differentiate myself from the crowd. What can make Redcon One different? Obviously, we can make great products, you know, that's obviously a big deal to make a great product to sell it for a reasonable price to do a good job marketing because basically sports supplements are a commodity. You literally you can have uh Dan Dan Labs come out and you can take my my exact formula and you can use my exact formula on our one of our hit products like Total War where uh our labels are

11:50 transparently labeled. So you have every ingredient on the back. You bring it to a flavor scientist, you make the exact one. Instead of Total War, it's Dan War.

11:56 Uh so it's just a commodity. So if you don't have a strong brand and your marketing doesn't tell people who you are and what you're what you're about, it's going to be tough. It's going to be really tough. I tell people when they say they want to start a t-shirt brand or whatever brand, you have to say like, well, what's going to make your t-shirts different?

12:11 Sure. Why why are they going to buy this t-shirt instead of that t-shirt? Uh maybe it's price, maybe it's, you know, some quality, but there has to be something different. So for us with Redcon 1, uh it came right down to the name in the beginning. We decided in 20 January 2016, I thought, man, to make this different, I already have the bodybuilding crew. I have that group, right? That's the lowhanging fruit for me. But what I thought was different was in 2016 in January, the United States military was particularly I felt like at a golden era of my lifetime where people really respected specifically special forces. You know, it got more polarized quickly thereafter. But in 2016, the beginning I was like, "What a cool opportunity. I have two good friends, Brandon Cruz and uh Ryan Bates, who are Navy Seals that just retired, and these guys are good-looking, charismatic, smart, funny. I can use these guys as

12:59 frontman and I can create a company that stands for something. Um, Redcon one really technically means the highest state of military preparedness or readiness. Um, and I wanted to do a brand that had something where it stood for something where it was a purpose- driven company. And both of my grandparents, my grandfathers fought in the Korean War and World War II. And my grandfather on my father's side, it was a big deal because he was an officer who stormed the beach in Normandy and commanded men as a Jewish officer. It's very rare. Um, so I always was very proud of that and I thought in, you know, in a different universe if I hadn't done the drugs and everything, maybe that would be my path, right?

13:37 Maybe I could have went in that direction. So I thought this is an opportunity to do something really cool where I can help service men and women um by I know the third part of the show is charity, so we will save it for that. But um I thought that what a great differentiating way to do things so that the the brand can stand for something more than just great products and a great formula, great price.

13:58 So when things are a commodity, it's easy to get someone to buy something once. Not too easy, but it's easyish to get someone to buy something once.

14:06 How do you get someone to reorder, subscribe, buy it year after year, whether it's wear the shirts proudly, buy the supplements, etc., buy the energy drink. How do you get someone to want to be part of the brand in perpetuity? So I think uh uh for looking back at Redcon it happened in a few ways. Number one uh was because we built a strong brand that stood for something. Um I think it was also very important that that we had a really good social media uh team and that the message we were putting out resonated with people.

14:36 Um I think it's important that you have placement so it's easy to purchase so you can get it. The more more available it is, the easier it is to repurchase. Um, at that time we were really uh effective at direct to consumer marketing, direct response marketing. And so you had by having a good product that people like and they want and they like what it stands for and it means something more to them than just the protein powder is and as long as by the way the product has to taste good. If it's if it's a garbage product, you're going to have even harder time. But we quickly built a community around Redcon 1 where we built uh the tier operator program and how it happened was very organic because the products were popular and we were doing well right off the bat and we had a lot of digital presence. Uh people started asking can I be sponsored by the brand and I bootstrapped this whole thing. I had no

15:20 investors. It was all completely and totally my money. um I had to be very very careful about where I spend my money and so there was a lot of people that reached out who said man I would love to be part of this brand and you know they're asking for sponsorship

15:34 and I had to say no and I said no a few times where I realized I was disenfranchising people by saying no and so the thought was like okay how can I say yes so we came up with this tier operator program where anybody who has a social media presence that doesn't have anything like you know outwardly like you know racist or nudity or anything doesn't fit with the brand ethos. We had a very specific one of the cool things we did with Redcon Wine that was different than any other brand I had is we created a brand book in advance. Who are we? What do we stand for? What are our fonts? What are our panone colors?

16:05 Who are we? And then if you didn't fil fit in the brand filter, which would be obviously somebody is a racist or whatever, right? If you don't fit, you can't be in. But if you do fit, come on in. You can earn points. the points will get you the ability to get free swag, free products, and eventually if you move up the tiers enough, you get money, you get commission off of it. And so that building that uh it ended up being about 30,000 people towards the beginning uh that were all posting on social media, that were all participating in the brand, uh that love the products, that were willing to do work at exposing events all over the country. It was really neat when we went to Vitamin Shop originally and they said, "Hey, we're doing big sampling campaigns. how many, you know, events do you think you can do? I said, we can do hundreds of events a month, literally because we can mobilize these guys and

16:53 girls who just want points. That's what they're doing it for. They want points and the points helps them get to the next level or get to the next piece of swag and they love the brand and they're coming there. It's not a a pretty girl you pay $100 to go to the event and doesn't know anything about the products and just hands it out. These are people that are passionate about the products. So, I think those are all key factors um on getting somebody not only to try it, but to repurchase because obviously that's the key. If you can get you don't need a whole lot of people if they're all buying regularly, if they're all subscribed, you know, you don't need millions of customers. Um which is great that we got millions of customers, but that was not the original. Honestly, my original thought, Dan, I left Blackstone Labs and I owned 33% of Blackstone Labs and we were doing about $10 million or

17:35 so in revenue. I'm sorry, $20 million in revenue the last year that I left. So, I'm like, look, if I can do seven or eight million in revenue and at Redcon, I'm pretty much even with with where I was before, right? And uh we were doing a million dollars a month uh within the first year.

17:50 Whoa. Which is really cool. And almost all of that was direct to consumer. So, I passed up in one year. I passed up our my biggest loftiest goal at at Blackstone going just man, if I could just replace this income, you know, it's all me and I own 100%. I get to make the decisions. what a win that would be. But we ended up making uh a little a little under 12 million the first year and a little over 30 the second year. So it was like uh you know wildly successful, very fast and very exciting.

18:18 So most companies come out of the gates and if they did one or two million that'd be great for the first year. What do you think was the difference that you would do 12 million and then 30 million right out the gate?

18:25 Well, I think there's, you know, unfortunately for the the new person watching this show right now and goes, "Well, how do I recreate that?" It's tough because I had a few things out of the gate that people don't have, right? I had connections. So, I had relationships, which is a very big deal. Um, very big deal. As the CEO of uh of a hund00 million plus, you know, a nine figure business. One of the biggest things that I do in my job is build relationships and utilize those relationships to get, you know, favors or a better price or to get our product run quicker or use that to meet other people that that then help the business.

19:00 That's a big part of what I do other than keeping people accountable and motivating the troops kind of so to say. That's a big part. Um, so I had these relationships. I had some money in the bank which helps for sure. Um, so I wasn't even though I was bootstrapping it, I was able to start Redcon with a dozen employees. When I started Blackstone, it was just me and my business partner. I didn't have the money to afford to even have buy a person to pack the products. I packed the products and PJ really packed most of the products until we hired our first person. And by the way, funny how things are difficult when you just get going. I had a difficult time making in my head the sense to pay anybody to pack the products cuz like I can pack the products. You know, you start thinking you can do everything better than everybody else. And then obviously if you want to scale a business doesn't work like that. Um so knowledge,

19:46 industry knowledge, uh the ability to scale because I had the the cash and the ability to uh have the relationships. For example, one of our manufacturers in the very beginning, um, I ordered $500,000 of product to start and cost of goods. And he said, "You have 60 days to pay me back." And I was able to sell all $500,000 of products within the 60 days.

20:08 So there was no cash needed. So he goes, "How much money do you need to start?" I didn't need any cash.

20:13 I needed relationships and the ability obviously to sell. If you can't sell the product, then that's a problem. So, when's the turning point for someone out there listening that they went from making 80 grand to 100 grand, 100 grand to 150, started making some money for their household and for themselves? When's the turning point when they start consider maybe investing into other things, whether it's real estate, crypto, angel investing? There's so many different options out there. We don't have to get into that part, but when do you when did you decide, you know what, I'm going to start to diversify a bit, start investing other things,

20:42 you know? Um I uh as I said until by the time I was 28 I really had no money at all. Um and I started generating money very quickly because I used that obsessiveness. As soon as I had an opportunity, I look for another opportunity, look for another another opportunity. And I distinctly remember um saving up the first few hundred,000 in the bank and feeling like this is unbelievable. You know, uh the first thing we invested in was a house

21:08 um a down payment on a house, which I don't know if I would re recommend that these days the same way as I would have, you know, 15 years ago. Um it's very different. But then uh pretty much all of the initial investment that I had went into investing into myself and into businesses. I didn't start investing into like equities and real estate and stuff like crypto for years. Honestly, which I'm not saying is the right way to go. I think uh you know it's it's smart to take a portion of your uh income and start investing in index funds and stuff like this very early on. The earlier the better, 401k, etc. Uh, but I don't think I started doing it till after I had a million dollars or so in the bank where I started thinking about it because I was so uh single-mindedly narrowly focused on the business stuff that um when somebody said, "Well, you can make an 8% return." I'm like, "What do you mean

21:58 8% return?" I buy uh the product for for $10 and sell it for 50. What do you mean?

22:03 Right. You know, um so it's difficult. it was difficult to to get my head around it until you start thinking about the future and and building generational wealth and your kids and and other things like that. So, uh it took me a little while.

22:17 So, at some point the 8% matters because it's you hit a certain part of a business where you can't invest more into the company.

22:25 It has what's called either diminishing returns or you just don't need that much capital for the business. And that is typically a time where 8% sounds really exciting because now you don't want the money just sitting in your piggy bank. Often times people save up 100 grand their their savings account and they don't realize that if that money is not moving, if it's not being invested,

22:43 well the 100 grand spends like 92,000 next year and then it spends like 83,000.

22:47 And you try to buy a Ford truck and that Ford truck was 50k now it's 54,000 then it's 59,000.

22:52 So it looks like you got 100 grand but do you really? Because it spends a lot differently. And so at some point you can't invest into your company anymore because your business is generating. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy at some point.

23:04 Okay. For people that come on as executives to businesses that want to get equity into a company, how can they have discussion with you? They're like, "Hey, I worked in this industry for 22 years. I want to come work for Redcon 1. I've got all this experience, but I want to get 1% equity, for example." How does someone have that discussion and figure out what are they worth?

23:24 Sure. Well, um I could tell you initially back when I started, I didn't even understand that that principle um where you would want to retain uh or or acquire a valuable uh employee that is vested into the business where they're not just saying, "Hey, I'm just doing this because I want to make enough money to pay the bills and go on vacations, whatever, save for my 401k."

23:45 To get people that are really good and then to retain people that are really good because I've had people poached for me for sure,

23:50 of course. um more than I'd care to remember. But um I think that when you're thinking about approaching a business owner like myself um that that's really the key is that that saying, "Hey, I'm here for the money, right, to work, but if I'm working my ass off and I'm putting everything into this and you exit one day, I want to be able to participate in that and I don't want to be poached by somebody who offers me more money." I mean, we we just recently had, you know, one of our beverage guys on the beverage team, um, he left for $25,000 more at a different account, and it's like, man, I wish we would have even had a chance to talk about it. Sure.

24:25 Yeah. But because he's went from one to another, and and this happens a lot. And so one of the things that we've done at Redcon is is basically carve out a piece of the business so that we can give key employees uh equity that's ve that'll be vested over time and if there's a a transaction or something happens they'd be able to take advantage of that too because the truth is you know if you are a very valuable player you don't want them to leave and you don't want to look left and right and see who's making more because if that particular gentleman had a a small piece of Redcon and he was able to go work at a much bigger company let's say like Celsius hypothetically and they don't offer anything like that, does the $25,000 a year matter more than the opportunity at something big at the end, the golden parachute,

25:06 right? Um, so I think approaching somebody, you also have to be reasonable obviously. So when somebody

25:11 show up and ask you for 14%. Right. Right. Right. You be reasonable and then also know know your position, right? And like so for example, if a graphic artist, which we have a lot of great ones, came up and said that uh it would be like man like not such a reasonable ask, right? Unless you're the graphic artist or you've done such great work or maybe this is a time where you've shown how much work you've done and that's the appropriate time to ask for something like that.

25:35 So you have to be careful because I know for me if the wrong person askked me that I would will be I would want to like I'd be like well see you later because I would write the person off in the fact that they're going to leave to go somewhere else. So, you have to know the right time to do that. And I think as a business owner, you have to realize that this is a competitive marketplace. And if you have allstars, there's a good chance that they're going to get offers and and their offers could be better than the one you're you're and you can lose people.

26:02 Yeah. My agency has been around for 14 years and I've had two people leave and the two people I forced them to leave. I was like, "You need to go work at this company." One of them had to go work for ClickUp. I'm like, "Clickup's worth four billion. Go I get it. Go work for them." You know, get a little equity in a huge company. Um, and the other one end up starting a a mobile app company that I'm a part of.

26:20 But outside of that, no one leaves me and because I'm obsessed with what you said, replacing someone, it's really hard.

26:26 It's hard because you have, especially in tech. In tech, too, it's you got I mean,

26:30 you have somebody that's key that's doing something for you in tech. Um, CPG is a little less like that, but still, it's important. It's important.

26:38 Yeah. You get someone that has the relationships with Costco and Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and GNC and they leave.

26:45 Sure, other people might have a connection, too, but it's different when they just got a phone call versus that employee that had 16 years and they can call Johnny over at GNC and he's like, "Hey, buddy. Yeah, of course. Bring bring one over."

26:56 Relationships matter. I mean, relationships matter. And and if you can if you lose somebody that has a great relationship, there's no guarantee your product better be damn good. You better be selling and turning at a very fast rate.

27:07 Johnny could go to the other one and say, "Hey, you know, switch them." Yeah, it could happen

27:11 for sure. Okay. On the charity side, the philanthropy part, why do you think it's important for companies, for their employees or their investors or their vendors or clients to see some type of charity element to their business?

27:22 Well, for the consumers, I think it's important because there's so many options, right? And so, you want to put your, you know, I think it's at least for me, I know I do. I uh I let my dollars do the talking for me. So, if I believe in somebody's the the the business ethos or what they stand for, what I believe they stand for, I'm going to be much more likely to spend my money with that business versus the one, and we see this all the time now. You know, you're starting to see it more and more. When REDCON came out, uh, and even really to this day, if you think of all the sports supplement companies, there's not many that stand for something in particular. You can't look at them and go, "This is what they're about, right?

27:56 They're about this." You have people with like, so, for example, military charities, military purposes. Um, you see companies that maybe do it for Fourth of July, but they're not doing it every day. You know, for us, every can of Redcon Energy, one cent of every can goes to a military charity. Right now, Gary Senise found Foundation, but we do online voting. People can switch. We've done millions and millions of dollars to many different charities over the entire lifetime of Redcon 1. Um, and I think that that is that is important. I think it's important to do good with your money. And I think that uh I think that it speaks to the consumers. I think it speaks to investors. I know when I talk to buyers um at, you know, Circle K or and we talk about that, you can see that like I mean it matters to them. They light up on the fact that that we're doing something good and they're supporting United States service men and

28:44 women and their families. A lot of our stuff is gold star families, the people that have given their lives, men given their lives in the uh line of duty or or in relation to their service and their kids are are without a parent. And that that speaks to everybody. Nobody goes, "Ah, who cares about that?" Right? And uh and it's so it's it's it's multironged, you know. It's we're helping people. It actually helps the business and it makes me feel and everybody feel good about it.

29:08 Yeah. So there's only one question I ask on every single episode for the last 200ish episodes and I've never gotten the same answer. You build Redcon 1, sell it for a billion dollars, you then build another brand, sell that one for $2 billion over the course of your career.

29:23 Okay. What percentage of that net worth do you leave to those children later on when you pass away? Yeah. So, um I have three little boys right now. Uh and I wouldn't be surprised if I have some more. So, um the thought is that right now my thought obviously this can change. I'm 45 years old and as I get older, uh grandkids hopefully, you know, I have a live a lot longer and I get to see I get to see these guys develop. But my thought would be something to the extent of um I would figure out a way to do it where they get money or get part of the money as they get older

29:58 as opposed Yeah. as opposed stages and very well thought out and not something that I would let them

30:03 here's 84 million in one check. No, it's not. I just feel like it's a right when you people and I know and this is a big question when a lot of people that have have generated generational wealth. This is something that people really contemplate and think hard about because they don't want to do a disservice to their children which can for sure happen.

30:19 So I think for one making sure that they realize I tell my guys already because they already ask me oh am I going to get this? Will you give me this? Do am I going to be the CEO of Redcon one I tell them all you need to work you don't you're not owed anything right.

30:32 Um Asher my my oldest said hey can I have such and I forget the kid's name come over and swim in my pool. I you don't have a pool buddy. Where's your pool? And he's like, "Oh yeah, you're right. Can you swim in your pool?" Yeah, he can swim in he swim in my pool. Right.

30:46 That's like Shaq. He's like, "Yeah, you're not rich. I'm rich." Right. Exactly. So, I think that's important though, telling them that at a young age.

30:52 So, in terms of percentage wise, it's very difficult to to determine. In uh Jewish the Jewish faith, we believe the first thing you do is you help your family. Your sedaka, your charity is to your family, and then it's to your community, and then it's to the rest of the world. So I believe that I would uh I would do something where at first I help out family and then my community at large and then the world. So I would if I were to throw out a percentage right now and let's say I have billions and billions of dollars, you know, I would think I could do 50/50.

31:22 Mhm. Um that's what I would think in my mind. And of the 50 that I give away, I think a good part of that would be to additional family members and a good part would be community and the rest would be to bigger purposes and things that mean something to me in the world.

31:34 Y All right. All right. So, where can people find you across social media personally and for the brand?

31:39 Sure. Uh, every one of my social media handles is just signarancing. Uh, and then the brand is redcon.com. Uh, it's also sold everywhere from Amazon to Walmart, uh, 80 countries worldwide, United States military, vitamin Job, GNC, grocery stores. Um, and it's expanding. We're in 20 plus thousand Circle K, I'm sorry, C stores, not just Circle K. We're also in Circle K. Um, and that continues to expand really rapidly. Hopefully everybody's going to be seeing Redcon 1 everywhere in 2026 because our resets for the beverage business is happening right now. And so, uh, we're hoping to go from 20 plus to 50,000 sea stores by the end of next year. So,

32:18 I like it. It's exciting. Exciting. Exciting for sure. All right, guys. For these podcast, just keep in mind it's not just for you. These type of episodes could be useful for your friends, family, and followers. People from your past, present, and future. You might be at a lunch one day and someone's like, "I want to start a supplement company or a beverage company." You could then forward them this episode and have these discussions that are really important to them. And that's what I call the butterfly effect. If you might help someone out there learn how they can go scale a $100 million business like he did, that could be the butterfly effect that changes their life to help them save money, make money, and everything in between. So, as you guys know, we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think that's ridiculous. We have to have discussions about taxes, loans, should I buy this?

32:57 Should I lease this? Should I rent it? Should what should I do? And we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about it. You have to be able to talk about it. It is not rude. It is not. Money is not the root of all evil. It's part of your daily life. It's part of your bills for your mom, for your children, everyone in between. They need money for supplies, items, travel, medical suppl,

33:22 commenting, subscribing. when you share this podcast, especially an episode like this that is really big for someone that's in the CPG space, beverage space, supplement space, health space, people that are in your life, they may enjoy this episode. By you liking, commenting, subscribing, it helps us because right now we're number 55 in the world. It's up to you guys by doing this, by sharing this episodes and talking about money with your friends, family, and followers. I appreciate you guys, and we'll see you next Monday on the moneymunddays.com.

Questions about this episode

What is "How One Man Went From Prison to Building a Fitness Empire (REDCON1) | Aaron Singerman 💪 EP140" about?

Aaron Singerman shares his inspiring journey from a troubled past as a drug addict to becoming the CEO and founder of Redcon 1, a thriving sports supplement and beverage company. He discusses the crucial role of fitness and personal investment in transforming one’s life, emphasizing how health and strength can positively impact both personal and professional success.

What is mentioned in this The Money Mondays Podcast episode?

33 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Redcon1, Mr. Olympia, CPG (consumer packaged goods), Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing, Money Mondays, Aaron Singerman. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "How One Man Went From Prison to Building a Fitness Empire (REDCON1) | Aaron Singerman 💪 EP140"?

The episode runs 34 min; the transcript is about 7,578 words in 86 timestamped sections.

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