The Story Of Bloom Nutrition, Building Your Dream Life, Financial Success, Grit, Failures & Sacrifice W/ Mari & Greg
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The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Hi guys, it's Mari and you're listening to The Pursuit of Wellness.

Guys, I am so freaking excited to announce that I will be participating in the first ever Dear Media in real life event. You can join me and some of your favorite Dear Media hosts in Austin, Texas on May 6th. Be sure to grab your tickets. They're on sale now. Keep an eye out for all the updates on the Dear Media Instagram at Dear Media Studio. This is insane. I'm going to be able to talk to you guys live face to face. I'll see you there. I can't wait.

Okay, guys, today's an exciting day. I'm here with Greg Levacchia, Mari's husband.

And co-founder. And co-founder. Right. We're talking business today. This is exciting. We are talking business today. This has been highly requested, and I'm so excited to finally be telling the full story of Bloom. So I'm back in the studio again with Greg. Your DMs and comments were heard, and we're here to tell the story of our company, Bloom Nutrition. If you're new here, you may have seen our greens all over TikTok, in celebrities' pantries, or featured in Forbes.

But if you've been here for a while, you know that everything started out in my dad's attic. This isn't just a business story, but a personal journey of our relationship as co-founders. In this episode, there will be business advice, behind the scenes stories, relationship tips, and ultimately our advice on living your dream life. Wow.

I'm very excited. And also, guys, bear with us because it's now been four years around, yeah, just over four years since we launched Bloom and a lot has happened and me and Greg have subpar memories. So we do have a full outline here of everything that's gone down with Bloom, but we're going to give you guys like behind the scenes stories, things that may have gone wrong that you don't know about, things that may have, you know, never came to fruition, secret products, etc. So...

Let's do it. It's funny. We're so go, go, go. We definitely don't stop and reflect enough. Yeah. So I'm so glad. First of all, I'm so glad about this podcast overall, but I'm so glad about this episode just to take 45 minutes and reflect. It'll be nice. I agree. I think we could be better about that. And that's probably the reason we've never actually sat down and done this. But I also think both of us are kind of the types of people where we're like,

we're not done yet. Like we never feel done no matter what happens. I feel like we just feel like we have so much ahead of us.

I think just in terms of mindset, I mean, I'm probably diving too deep into it and I want to get going on the story, but we've always put ourselves intentionally in situations where our back is up against the wall. Yeah. So even if we've reached, whether it's like a financial or a business or even like a mental state, we'll introduce a new channel just to force ourselves to be back at that point of we have to succeed or we're screwed. 100%. Right. 100%. And I think keeping that in mind as we tell this story,

both Greg and I are, I would say risk takers. I think you especially not adverse to risk, but both of us together kind of had nothing to lose. So with that said, let's hop into the beginning of the journey.

Everything started with my personal fitness journey. Now, I'm not going to go into the full details. If you guys want the full details, go back to episode one on this podcast where I did a solo episode and really jumped into the full fitness story. But I had a pretty transformative nine months. I lost 90 pounds. I changed my whole outlook on life, my mental health, my discipline. And Greg was by my side the whole time.

helping me figure out fitness, helping me figure out where I was going. And it got me on the path of getting my life back on track. I was working the front desk at Orange Theory Fitness. I was making minimum wage.

no commission because I couldn't sell the program. It was below minimum wage with the commission supposedly making it over minimum wage, but you never made any commission. I think I didn't make a single sale. And you were, where were you at in this? I was finishing college. I mean, you were part-time in school. I think you were finishing your diploma, but I was in the dorm during the week. So I was still in Philadelphia while you were in New York. What was the last real job you had before Bloom? It was just internships.

So it was internships, but I mean, several of them, I had to wear a tie, believe it or not, which I still don't know how to tie a tie. Were you not fired from one? I was fired from several internships. Let's dive into Bloom because it's a far better show. I love that you are this successful CEO, but the job you had before Bloom, you were like fired multiple times. You know, it's funny. I graduated college...

with a 2.4 GPA because we were finishing this, the first business before Bloom was called Mari Fitness. And that's still, you know, an LLC that exists. Currently our Slay app is under that LLC. And,

I just had to graduate. So I would literally go and talk. I mean, it was a very strategic, what is the lowest grade, therefore the lowest amount of time I can commit to school so I can get that diploma. Mom and dad are happy, but we needed to turn up and do more fitness. Right. I think that's a great starting point because that was how Bloom was ever able to come into existence was because

After my fitness journey, I got a lot of inquiries about my workout plan, my nutrition guide. And Greg is super entrepreneurial. I feel like you were just born to do this. But he was like, oh, this is a massive business opportunity. Let's make this.

PDF guides and me being super connected to the community and super mission driven and loving content. It was kind of like the perfect storm. It's really interesting because Greg and I are extremely different. And I could see how if something was a little off, both of us might clash. But because of our like... Yang, yang. Yeah. It was just something about us together that...

makes business work. I don't know how to put it, but I was in Barnes and Noble every day, writing up the workout plan, trying to make it look cute. It didn't look cute, but there was some solid gold information in there. Greg is a marketing genius. And the second that I posted that transformation, you came up with a whole marketing scheme.

So, first of all, my mindset starting my Mari Fitness was not this is a huge opportunity for us. It was let me help Mari start this business. That can be her job when I'm done with school and then I'll get a normal nine to five. That was the mindset. But what happened when we launched the guides is, you know, the community came with that. And I mean, probably the community was there before the guides even launched. So what would happen is, let's say a female bought the guide.

they would interact with Mari in the DMs of Instagram or whatever the communication point was. If they gave energy to Mari, Mari would give that energy back. And they essentially had a one-on-one trainer for as long as their transformation took. And so the transformations that came out of the guides, physically and mentally, but of course we were able to, you know,

the physical transformations. It was incredible the portfolio we were able to put together of client success stories. So we sold... Oh. How many guides did we sell? I mean, probably a million. Right? Yeah, and they were, what, $5 each back then? Price was all over the place, whether it was a gym guide, a home guide, an eight-week guide, whatever it was. And then our first physical product to complement that guide was the booty band. Okay, the booty band is like, to me, our...

entrepreneur story. Like when I think about the booty band, it's us hand packing them in the attic. My dad's like, why the fuck is my house full of bands? What's going on? It was, we were, everyone thought we were losing our minds. First of all,

Okay. Well, they don't even know the, those people who think we're losing their minds. If they knew the real details, they would think that we had completely lost it because we had, we have a full, we still have a full manufacturing plant in Pakistan called the Mari Fitness Wing. Like we have a whole wing of a manufacturing plant in Pakistan. It's beautiful. And we essentially funded the entire construction of this place to just keep

heat press these cotton resistance bands, you know, in whatever color we wanted with the Mari Fitness logo on it, which I think evolved several times. And that was our first physical product. And again, we sold over a million of those. I think once we realized we can sell PDF guides, we were like, oh, we can sell anything. And I think

It's because there was so much emotion tied into it. I always say this on other episodes, but I think the best businesses are the ones you would do for free. So we wanted to be making workout plans for people. I wanted the resistance band that we designed. Mari wanted a bigger ass. So Mari wanted a bigger ass. And so we obviously had to create a product for Mari to get a bigger ass. And then...

we decided we should probably sell this tool. Okay, you can put me on blast, that's fine. Everyone listening wants a bigger butt and I knew that and I wanted one too and we were sampling them and I just feel like with businesses, you have to have that emotional connection and that drive if it's just to make money.

You're never going to make it. I really feel that way. Well, you'd be you'd burn out. I mean, you're not going to have a late night. You're not going to work the candlelit evenings. Right. So you don't care. One story I have from that time of Mari Fitness is we suddenly decided, you know, oh, I really like cute loungewear and activewear. I think we should try making a sweatshirt.

So we decided to make a Mari Fitness sweatshirt. And at this point, we had the bands, we had the guides, things were going well. We launched these pink cropped sweatshirts that had the Mari Fitness logo on them. And it was our first time ever doing clothing. So first of all, I literally designed it from down to like the neck hole width. Like I had no template. I was literally...

adjusting this sweatshirt inch by inch, an inch here, an inch here. I want this. I want that. I didn't have any examples. So I was sampling this thing for like months and then we finally got it right. And it was very cute. People still have it. I still see people wearing it. So what year are we at right now? 2018? 2017? 2018. So...

We don't, we never really made like merch, right? You think of like an influencer or YouTube or whatever it may be, and they create merch and they essentially just throw their logo on something. That's never how bit, how Mario and I do it, right? We've always tried to create the actual product down to the measurements, down to the products, the ingredient sourcing or the fabric sourcing. So we tried to,

create a clothing line with zero experience. And we were in a little over our head, right? So... Right. So we put the product on the website for every size, you know, extra small, small, medium, large, extra large, 2X, whatever. And...

It was the day before Christmas or Thanksgiving. There was some sort of family gathering that I know we had to leave because it was a disaster. It was Thanksgiving and I think we launched and sold 500 units of a size we didn't even have. So we never did clothes again after that. We were like, you know what? Clothes are not really in our wheelhouse. Clothes are hard.

Yeah. And, you know, we can go into like some other almost ventures that we've taken where you've designed some really good clothes and we just have decided not to do it. Oh, some of my favorite clothes in my closet I've designed. That's epic. But no one knows that. I love that. Yeah.

What a perfect episode to tell you about Bloom Nutrition Greens. You probably know all about our greens at this point, but what you may not know is how incredible our ingredients are. We have a fruit and vegetable blend that contains organic carrot powder, beetroot powder, kale leaf, blueberry powder, spinach powder, broccoli, ginger root, and

more. We have an antioxidant beauty blend that has cranberry extract, strawberry fruit, raspberry fruit, elderberry, acai, goji, matcha, and

and more digestive enzyme blend and an adaptogenic blend, which is incredible for stress. Ginseng root, rhodiota powder, ashwagandha, etc. These are incredible ingredients, guys. Like this formula, as you know from this episode, is my dream formula. And what's so incredible is that we made it taste good.

Greens are incredible for your gut health. Having a healthy gut helps with so many things like improving your skin, supporting digestion, boosting energy, enhancing metabolism, fighting bloat, and so much more. This is the best way to make sure you're getting your essential nutrients in every single day. So what I like to do is in the morning before breakfast, I grab a big mason jar, fill it with ice,

squeeze some lemon in there, some cold water and add a scoop of greens. I take mine before breakfast, but you can really take it any time of the day as long as it's part of your routine that's easy for you. As long as you're taking it daily, that's all that matters.

They're also available in five delicious flavors. Mango is my current fave, but I highly recommend checking out coconut as well. I have some very exciting news. Greens are now available in Target stores nationwide. From the beginning, Greg and I always felt like the Bloom customer was a Target girl. I was a Target girl. And now greens are easier to find than ever.

They are available in store for the first time. You can also find greens on Amazon and on the Bloom website, www.bloomnew.com. That's B-L-O-O-M-N-U.com. And again, I do have a sneaky little code for you guys. You guys can use code POW for 10% off greens on the Bloom website. Enjoy. Let's get back to the episode.

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Caraway, non-toxic cookware made modern. Hey friends, my name's Olivia Perez and I'm an entrepreneur, journalist, and the host of the Friend of a Friend podcast. Every Monday, I meet with some of today's youngest and brightest entrepreneurs to make space to tell their stories and shine a light on who I believe to be the next generation of luminaries. I'll interview up-and-comers and game changers from brand builders to personalities, activists, artists, and thought leaders from around the world. Each episode lets you be a fly on the wall during one of the greatest pep talks.

Like a conversation between you and a friend or a friend of a friend. See you there.

But with that said, we spent all night individually emailing people trying to sort out the problem because we did not know how to manage that. And it was just me and Greg at this point. But anyway, I want to get to Bloom because that's the whole point of this podcast. So we had this guide community, right, of people using these fitness guides. And everyone was saying, what supplements should I take with these guides? And, you know, even even rewinding a bit, when you started your fitness journey, you would go to GNC vitamin shop and come home with this junk.

right? Made for men, made by men. If you could even call like these corporations human beings at this point. And we were just like, wow, there's just like literally nothing on the market that we want to take. And so the first one was a pre-workout. You had anxiety. All of these pre-workouts had like a, you know, a truckload of caffeine and stimulants and they just weren't even good for you, let alone, you know, all they did was turn you up for two hours. And Mari was like, we need to make something better. And so again, it was for you.

It was for me. And I was the fitness girl who was like following all the influences and I was super into the whole scene. I wanted to take supplements. I wanted to wear the clothes.

And I would go in GNC because online, again, all I would see was male marketed supplements with the red and the yellow and the black or whatever it was. And I would walk into a GNC and it was still super masculine. So I felt like there was nothing that was approachable, nothing feminine, nothing that felt like it would be good for me at the same time as helping my performance. So yeah, we saw a hole in the market and we really wanted to create something for my community. Well, I think we're at,

January 2019, we had our first baby. I mean, tell them about what was the name of that company you had designed in school? STB, Simply the Best Nutrition. Okay, so Greg's been designing supplement companies since he was in middle school. Yeah, and they were definitely not for women. And they were definitely not all natural. I had no ethos to the brand. But, and mind you, at this point, Mario and I are living in your childhood bedroom in your dad's attic.

starting this business that we just thought would be a pre-workout company. Right. And of course, Bloom, you know, think of like cocoons and hibernation and like, you know, transformations and turning into your butterfly or whatever it may be. Bloom, right? Like the whole thing made sense. Mari, as Mari is just a branding legend, draws the logo on a napkin. That's still the logo that we use now. Mari probably said the name should be Bloom like within 30 seconds. So we put together this branding.

And then we started to reach out to manufacturers. Well, let me touch on the name because a lot of people have questions about the name. Let's do it. I wanted a name that represented the transformation I had experienced, but I wanted it to apply to all of the women following me. I wanted something that would help people become the best version of them. And Bloom...

was super fitting and honestly it's one of my favorite parts about our whole brand i think the name has lasted and really applied and the messaging behind it is really true to who we are even now so anyway continue

So we reached out to manufacturers and just like cut me off if I'm going too into detail here. But, you know, we reached out to manufacturers that were just local to us, which is so funny now, right? Because we're in such like a globalized world that you can really reach out to anybody. But we were like, we found every manufacturer within a two hour drive because we wanted them close. I wanted to see this plant. I wanted to see the things being made. I wanted to go make sure that, you know, the place was beautiful. So.

We found one in New Jersey. And we were able to do a full lab tour with our lab coats and our glasses and everything was third party tested. We were able to actually see the ingredients and hear where they were sourcing them from. And we developed that trust right away. Definitely. And essentially, we came up with the formula of the product itself. And then we were like, we gave it to the flavor scientists, right, to say, OK, now you need to make this taste good, which is tough.

when you're like, especially with pre-workout ingredients. So we came out with three flavors of a pre-workout, pina colada, pink grapefruit, and green apple.

I can see them in my head right now. Do any of those even exist anymore? No. That's so funny. I was telling the team about them yesterday and they were like, what? Pink grapefruit. Grapefruit. And also keep in mind, guys, we did not have a single employee at this point. It was just me and Greg. We had help with graphic design. Yeah. But we were managing absolutely everything. So we were designing labels. We were doing customer service. We were building the website. So upon we launched January 2019, leading up to launch, if you look at our

phones, the photo albums. It's me with a light box taking photos of coconuts with cherries in them trying to recreate a pina colada for the label. It's us trying to build a website. It's us

figuring out how to make this work. And this is now, I'm always talking late 2018, right before Bloom launched, we moved to Colorado. And, you know, we moved to Colorado because one, we thought we loved the outdoors. Definitely not as much as Colorado people do, but we do love the outdoors. We love nature, but it was also like, we had so many voices telling us what to do, you know, just influencing factors around us. And also we were just comfortable. Right.

Right. I'm near my parents. We're living in your parents' house. And we were like, we need to just go to the mountains and focus. And so we I mean, it's easier to say that now. I'm not sure if it was that clear of a thought, but we moved to Colorado for a year. And I mean, the only friends we even have in Colorado are just Dom and Hunter are very close friends. And Dom's a crucial team member now. But we didn't even really make any friends there. We just worked for a year straight and built Bloom.

I mean, we were inside the house all day, every day building this company. And now I look back and I'm so grateful, but it definitely was tough on our mental health. Like I don't want to

leave that out of it. Like it was a sacrifice for sure to make this happen. And yeah, as you mentioned, this was the time we hired our very first real employee for customer service and her name is Dom and she's still with us. She's head of, I mean, human resources now. Head of HR, head of customer service. I mean, she wears a lot of hats at the company and she's incredible. Big shout out to Dom. She's an actual angel of a person. And it was

So her husband was our real estate agent. Oh, my gosh. And he was like, by the way, my wife is a big fan of Bloom. And we were like, is she looking for a job? And we hired her in the parking lot of a Target. Yeah. Shout out to Target. Shout out to Target because now we're in that store. Number one. Number one. All right. So I'm sure all over the place here. But imagine we're living in Colorado. Just Mari and I, we just hired our first customer service agent, Dom. And we have pre-paid.

pre-workouts. And so the ethos of the company at this point was definitely like products for women who lift weights because that's what Mari was. From there we released a protein powder. So obviously every product at this point was like, again, for women who lift weights. And just like when you're speaking on business terms, you know, you hit a ceiling when you have a little bit of a niche like that, especially in 2019, you know, there was just not as many women lifting weights and it's just, it was a difficult market to convert. So

What was really interesting is what came in 2020, which I think most people associate this big decision with Bloom. Greens. Greens. January 2020, we launched our greens. And this is something we've been working on the formula for for a while. I have been gradually and people who know me now know of me as this kind of wellness girl. I don't think I'm considered necessarily like a weightlifting girl anymore. I'm kind of more in the wellness sector now.

But I realized that wellness and fitness is about so much more than just what's happening at the gym. It's about your day-to-day life, your day-to-day habits, your overall health. I wanted to create a product that was an all-in-one supplement to get all my greens in because first of all, I was really bad about vegetables back then. You were? Oh my gosh. No, I didn't eat vegetables. I did.

I didn't. So I wanted something that was going to help me get my vegetables in, get my fruits in, get my nutrients in and help my gut health. I was huge on gut health back then. And I still am because it affects absolutely everything. Mental health, skin, energy, metabolism, bloating, everything. I think anyone who's on a physical journey, a wellness journey, a mental journey, whatever you want to call it, you so quickly realize like, oh, all of this just goes back to my gut health, right? Because if it's your,

your gut health is almost like your emotional health. And if you can't, if you don't have emotional health, then you don't, your feelings aren't on point, whether that's motivation, whether that's sadness, whether that's happiness, whatever it is like gut health is everything. And this greens powder just on one, you know, the, the, the formula is hits every checkbox that anyone would want. So on one end of the spectrum, you have your antioxidants and your adaptogens on the other end of the spectrum, we have full organic fruits and vegetables, fiber, fiber,

It's everything that anyone would want in a one supplement. It's the gut health home run.

And what else I would say is at this point, we'd kind of become known for our flavor. Our pre-workouts tasted amazing. Our proteins tasted amazing. These greens had to taste amazing. And that was quite the ordeal. So flavoring is one thing, but to get good flavoring with 100% all natural flavoring and coloring, I mean, it took us months. It took us several different manufacturers. It took us so many different iterations. I mean, it was

It was tough. And by the way, we had no idea this product would be a success. Yeah. Like this was just like, again, us really just wanting to make this product for us. And then you keep in mind when we have things like organic barley grass powder, spirulina, wheatgrass, chlorella, those are difficult things to make taste good. And somehow we landed on this formula that just tastes like a tropical fruity...

morning beverage and really, really proud of the taste of it. The way that I first realized that this was going to be our best selling product and our hero skew, as you would call it,

Greg and I went on a vacation to Puerto Rico. Little did I know this would be the vacation that Greg proposed to me. So good thing I have my greens because we were celebrating so much. We were drinking, we were eating, we were doing all the things. And I was taking my greens, which was a new product at this point, every single day, twice a day. And I was posting about it and keeping track of my progress and realizing that

I was not experiencing the same bloating that I was on a regular basis when I was eating and drinking that much. I mean, my hangover was better. The bloating was better. And I was like, holy shit, I think this product is the one. And you were just explaining this to your story because you were like, you know, it was the day I can't skip over the proposal. Get on one knee. We're in the hotel room. It's my mom's ring. Like, it's not a big deal anyway. So so we move on. And so we're on like day two or three of the trip. And you're like, why do I still feel like

Fine. Fine. Yeah. Right. Like, why do I, you know, we're eating all this salty Puerto Rican food. We're literally like a festival in Puerto Rico. Like that's an annual festival. It was fantastic. But we're eating like we're eating salt. Right. We're eating like the saltiest fried food and you're feeling and looking amazing as you always do. But you're telling me that. And.

we were realizing it's the greens. So we put it to like the real test and you're telling your story this and we just, we're not even checking, but the product's selling out. Right. Greens blew up. We kept selling out mostly because at that point we couldn't afford to keep them in stock. The amount of greens required was,

to keep up the demand was too much for me and Greg. And keep in mind, I don't think we've mentioned this, but Greg and I never had investors. We never took a loan. This was all of the money that we had saved from selling guides and resistance bands. So this was all of our personal money in this business. Very much so. I mean, even to this day, when I say back up against the wall,

We've been all in for seven years straight. We've never taken an investor. So we had to fund the production of this product. And as it's selling out, I mean, it takes over three months to get a new batch made. And we couldn't necessarily order more until we sold the batch that we had. So it was difficult keeping it in stock. And one thing that I want, you know, I kind of alluded to this earlier,

this product was our first product that was wellness, which therefore meant our customer went from women who lift weights to a woman in the United States, right? And of course, men can take it too, but we've always branded the product and our brand for women. So when your customer is a woman in the United States, it creates just, I mean, you can just market this product to anybody and anybody can essentially benefit from it, right? So-

It was a very different business experience to a product for a niche group. And I want to get into marketing because I know everything changed for us kind of recently. But back then, the pandemic hit March 2020. So a couple months after we had launched Greens and that really...

picked up the whole momentum of greens because everyone became way more concerned with their inner health, their immunity. All of the things that the greens were providing were things that people wanted. So that was kind of the perfect storm and greens absolutely exploded and quickly became our best-selling product. And in June, 2020, we had our first million dollar day.

That was crazy. I mean, these restocks would just be mind blowing. It was, you know, we would be out of stock for over a month and the hype was just building up, which we didn't even realize, I guess. And then one day we restocked within 12 hours, we did over a million dollars in sales, which this is like the story of our life. Whenever we have a massive success like this, it's grouped with

kind of an oh no, because we sold out in 12 hours. Right. So at the same time, we had so many unhappy people in our community, our customers. And it was it was so frustrating. So one, it's not even like we could even touch that money as we never could. It went right to ordering more greens. But it was just like, what's going on? Like to see this thing that looks like a fucking phone number on our Shopify screen to say like, I don't I don't

I think I still thought it was fake. I didn't know what was going on. And the craziest part about that day was I was literally training our second real employee on the team, watching us hit a million dollar day, trying to help her, our first creative director. We still had Dom at this point, but we were still in a freaking three person office trying to manage this entire business on our own, watching us make a million dollars in a day while trying to train the second. It was

And that's how this whole experience has been, to be honest. It was like a 110 degree day in Brooklyn, New York. Oh, and guys, by the way, like when we say there's a million dollars in sales, by no means does that mean we made a million dollars in profit. I just want to make that very clear with business. What your top line revenue is obviously not like the profit that was made on that product. But that's another conversation. I just want to make that very clear. We laughed and we were like, what?

Yeah. No, definitely not. It's not really our books. We shot for more greens, but we were still super excited. And that really meant that, okay, we have something here. And that's when we knew we needed to shift our focus to the greens and to wellness overall. Yeah. Yeah. So the next landmark was relocating to LA in August of 2020. Yeah.

So I had always wanted to live in LA. I had it written in my notepad. I will live in LA one day. And we made it happen. We felt like the entire fitness industry was out here. Health and wellness was out here. It was during the pandemic and we were really struggling to run our business out of our apartment basically. And to stay fit and healthy in New York was such a challenge as well. So LA felt like the right fit. And this is where we really started to actually build our team. And we were working for the first, I think, five months of

being in LA, out of our Airbnb. So, you know, in terms of our residences up until this point, Mari and I had almost never lived in a single home for more than six months. Up until the house that we live in now, it was pretty much

furnished long-term rentals or long-term Airbnbs. We never just like even had the time to like actually plant our roots anywhere. And it's funny because like I'm hearing you say, we decided to go to California. Like that sounded crazy at the time. We were like, let's just go to California for a couple months. It's the pandemic and see if it works, right? And that's what this has always been. Like, let's just try.

Like we didn't have this actual confidence behind the decision making that like, you know, we're able to kind of make it seem like that now. But like it was very wary of if that was a good idea. I'm trying to like verbalize our mindset with things like that. People get really nervous to move. They get nervous to take a new job. I feel like people have this perception that things have to be permanent and things have to work out perfectly. And we're more like, let's try. Yeah. And let's see how it goes. And we'd rather know than not know.

It's also like, first of all, this is just our story. There's a million ways to run a business or to start a successful journey of any type. This is our story. But everyone who does have this story that you look up to is just another human. And if you meet them in real life and you shake their hand or you give them a hug and you're like, oh, this is like a same person with the same problems, with the same anxieties, with the same insecurities, the same strengths. And

There's nobody better than anyone listening to this. Anyone can do exactly what Mari and I have done here. If you just pour your heart and soul into it, right? I'm going to quote you from your last episode with me. I think you said success is just your ability to tolerate stress, correct? I mean, I've been like obsessed with that quote and trying to, trying to dive into it myself recently. It's actually what I was just talking about in terms of emotional health. I think how like the

The quality of life, I've heard another way of thinking about it outside of just success with business, where it's like the quality of your life is just the quality of your emotions.

And I think that's like a less business way of saying that your business success is just your tolerance of stress. You get what I'm saying? I also just feel like we weren't afraid to fail. You know, like I think we both knew that if we failed, we'd just come up with something else. Guys, Greens is one of 50 products that we try to... There were so many fails for this win, but you just got to win one out of 10 times to make these things work out, right? So I just want to catch us up to...

to kind of more current day. And, you know, Bloom has changed a ton since we first moved to LA. I mean, moving to LA was kind of like the catapult into where we are now. And we've obviously grown tenfold. You can probably give some more hard numbers to that, but I'm not a number scout, so I'll let you handle that. Probably literally tenfold, yeah. Okay. So January of 2021, we launched on Amazon.com.

which was a big deal for us. Do you want to kind of speak to that because that was your shebang? You know, it's scary going on to Amazon. There's this whole like review culture, which is weird, right? In the world of social media, we were used to unwanted feedback from everybody, which is fine. Everyone has their right to speech. But of course, Amazon, like it's a review game. And

Very quickly, we became the top five selling supplement on all of Amazon. And it's just been a result of these reviews that, you know, it's crazy. It's just, of course, with the quality of your product and consumer feedback. So we're currently the top five selling supplement on Amazon. We've had some outrageous single days. We've had some crazy months on Amazon. Almost every month has been a record month to that point. I think Amazon gets a really bad rap for small businesses.

And for, you know, mom and pop businesses like Mari and I, I guess. And...

I have nothing bad to say about it. It's been a great platform for us to spread our wings outside of just our website. A lot of retailers wouldn't give us the shot up until that point. So Amazon, of course, anyone can put their product on Amazon. And it's the number one retailer in the United States. So for anyone who does have a product, I really encourage you to give Amazon a shot. It's been a great platform for us. And then I feel like

Hand in hand, TikTok came along at the perfect time for us with Amazon. So it does seem that the TikTok viewer likes to go to Amazon, as does everyone in the United States. So when our product, as it's just been snowballing in virality on TikTok, you know, for the last 18, 24 months, most of that traffic seems to be going to Amazon.

So if you plan on putting your product onto TikTok or if your product does start to blow up on TikTok, you really need to have that product on Amazon. Yes. And I want to talk about how you went about building the influencer program and everything like that, just to kind of give some clarity to my role versus Greg's at this point, because we

you know, at the beginning, we're very much doing everything. And at this point, we kind of were finding our individual roles and what we were best at and what we weren't good at. So if you couldn't tell from the conversation, I am super into the branding of it all, the creatives, the campaigns. I'm front-facing, obviously. I tell our story. I share the message. I'm super mission-driven. I love speaking to the community. And yeah, I'm still involved in all of those things. And Greg...

became the CEO. Yeah, I'm the CEO of Bloom Nutrition. So I, you know, operate, you know, the entire team, essentially. We're still very involved in every single piece of it. I mean, Mari yesterday was tasting, what was it, like seven different new flavors of greens. We're thinking of 2024 or for 2023. And yeah, I mean, I guess the head operator of Bloom, but if I didn't have Mari to talk to throughout the day, everything would crumble. So I feel like we're just one unit. I

I know. And it is interesting because I've really had the pleasure of watching Greg bloom into this role. I appreciate that. He really did bloom. Greg is one of the most charismatic, enthusiastic leaders that I've ever witnessed. I mean, the energy that Greg brings to the team call every day and to the office every day is...

Amazing. The energy you have is contagious. And I feel like the whole team is so amped up to be working for Bloom every day, largely because you are a fantastic leader and you're

That's not something that I ever really envisioned for myself. I love what we do. I love our team. I don't have the same leadership skills that Greg has. So it's been amazing to watch him lead the team and kind of spearhead being a CEO. And I love being whatever the hell I am. I mean, technically, I'm the president, but Greg calls me the chief branding officer. Yeah.

I like that title for you. But, you know, it's funny. And thank you very much. That was very kind of what you just said. But we have no experience with this. And to be honest,

Most of our team has no experience prior to Bloom with their current role at Bloom. And I think that is what has made us so special is because everyone's just working on what they think it should be like, not what they were brainwashed from from some corporation prior to being at Bloom. So I have no idea how to be a CEO. Mari has no idea how to be a president or chief broadcaster.

brand officer or whatever you operate at day to day. We're just doing what makes sense to us. And I think that's the only way it can be done in 2023 because social media is only six, seven years old. It's not like they have any idea how a social media brand, which is now turning into an omni-channel operation, is supposed to operate because it's never been done before in history. So history

So to have experience is nonsense. You get what I'm saying? 100%. And I think people are so hyper-focused on, oh, I need the qualification. I need someone to tell me that I'm allowed to do this. I need permission. Low key, that's what everyone's thinking. When I check my DMs, it's like, where did you get permission to start a business? Where did you get qualified to start a business? Can you go on Blast right now and tell everyone that they have permission, please?

If you're listening, if you are listening to this episode, you have permission to pursue your dreams and turn your passion into your business. And if anyone questions you say,

A several hundred million dollar company founder told you that. I will sign your permission slip here and now. We'll take full blame. So at this point, we start building our influencer program, which I think is what a lot of people know us for. Because if you've seen us all over TikTok, it's with our influencers. And we have influencers ranging from moms to students to nurses, all types of people. Grandmothers. Literally, the most famous grandmother on TikTok is using our greens right now. She's a killer. She's a killer. Like...

Hilarious. But do you want to speak to how we... Actually, do you want to know my first memory with the TikTok program? Yeah. I remember sitting you guys down because you were trying to find Instagram influencers for the program. Yeah. And I said, guys...

I think we should be looking at TikTok because it was around this time that everyone was becoming obsessed with the big TikTokers and we shifted our gaze to TikTok. And then you guys took that idea and ran with it. I think going back to the type of product that this is, which is a product that is for any woman in the United States, it's the perfect product to compliment the wildfire that is the algorithm of TikTok and Instagram, right? So

when you put a product that's so beneficial and checks every box that somebody's looking for into a video, it gains the interest of the potential consumer, which is everyone on that app. And

And now we're at the point where, you know, we used to reach out and try to get it in people's hands. Now we have people reaching out to us, telling us they love the product and they would love to work with us. Like we have celebrities and big influencers saying, hey, I use the greens every day. I'd love to work with you. So that's been an incredible journey to watch unfold. I mean, not only that, it's just been incredible.

because it's a product that we can actually stand behind. And it's a product that we know is like beneficial to the overall health of anyone consuming it. So to be able to, you know, use these social media channels for what we can stand behind and what feels like the greater good, lack of a better word, which, you know, we're so passionate about spreading health. It's just been, it's been a pleasure, the whole journey. And I'm so happy that these social media channels exist to give people like us these opportunities.

A hundred percent. Every time I talk to someone who's kind of lost in life, I say, you can do anything. You know, like I think having...

Social media has its pros and cons, but it's allowed us to live our dream life. And it really has allowed us to give our team that dream life too and watch them grow into these roles that I don't know if they ever would have had at a big corporation. I mean, our entire team is under the age of 30. Just about. And it doesn't mean you need to be an influencer. I don't go on camera, right? But I use the power of social media.

So there's no excuse. I'm not comfortable on camera. I'm not comfortable talking to this microphone right now. I'm enjoying this because Mari's next to me. But you're able to use social media as a tool in whatever way you're comfortable using it that way.

So we're running out of time. I feel like we could talk about this forever. And we did have a bunch of community questions to get to. But, you know, one of the most exciting things that happened to us recently was launching in our first retailer, Target, in October of 2022. From the beginning, we said that our customer was a Target girl and to actually physically be in Target and also selling out of Target frequently is insane. I mean, we just became the number one selling vitamin brand.

In the nutrition section, correct? So in all of vitamins and nutrition for the last 13 weeks, essentially since we launched, we've been the number one selling product, which is, it's incredible. We just have our berry flavor there right now. We have a few more flavors launching in on April 1st. And, you know, I can say it right now in, in two weeks. So this may be out by then we will be in Walmart as well. And, and,

These are hand-selected retailers where we said, how do we make sure this product is accessible to every woman in the United States? We don't want to be exclusive whatsoever. We want to make sure everyone can prioritize their health at an affordable price with convenience. And that's why we've chosen Walmart and Target and Amazon as the three retailers we're sticking with in 2023. More may come later, early 2024, whatever. But

I mean, these are the largest retailers in the United States. 100%. It's been incredible. I can't believe from my dad's attic to Target to Walmart to everywhere we've been. It's been amazing to do it with you by my side. And I'm so proud of you. So proud of this company. I'm so proud of our team.

Can't wait to see what's next. We do have a bunch of community questions. We may have to do a part two at some point to answer those and hop into more details. Obviously, Bloom is a very long story, but I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you did, make sure you go comment on my latest post. Let us know what you want us to talk about next.

And don't forget to follow and subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed the episode. Thank you so much, Greg, for joining us. Thank you, Mari. This was a treat, as always. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Go comment on my last Instagram, at Mari Llewellyn, with the guest you want to see next. I'll be picking one person from the comments to send our bloom greens to. Make sure you hit follow so you never miss my weekly episodes. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to share and leave a review. See you next week.

Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.