Redefining Health Supplements

Mike Pinkus: Over the last 10 years at ConnectCPA, we've had the privilege of witnessing the incredible journeys of over a thousand businesses. We've been there for the thrilling highs and daunting lows of entrepreneurship. We've celebrated wild successes and monumental exits, and we've also stood by businesses as they've navigated the stormy seas facing Roblox and challenges that every entrepreneur encounters in their day-to-day grind. Join us as we dive deep into the stories of these resilient individuals who dared to dream, who persevered, and who were a testament to the power of entrepreneurship. This is their journey, their lessons, and their triumphs. Welcome to GrowthTales. I'm your host, Mike Pinkus, co-founder of ConnectCPA.

Mike Pinkus: Today's guest is Max Marion, the founder of Aqua Omega, a line of incredibly high-quality Omega-3 supplements. Max and I have known each other for many years, and I'm still amazed to this day that despite being a founder, an entrepreneur, and a business operator, Max has an MD or almost PhD-like knowledge of how to embark on optimal health. As a busy founder myself, I intimately understand the impacts of a hectic schedule and high-stress environment impacting our ability to have self-care. It was through a conversation with Max that he recommended taking Omega-3 supplements every day and sent a bottle of Omega-3 high EPA fish oil right to my house. In all honesty, I didn't know if I was doing anything with it over the first couple months, but then I went for an annual checkup and my blood lipids had improved drastically from my prior checkup.

Mike Pinkus: It was at that moment that I probably drove Max crazy requesting advice in all things health. But this is a business podcast, and Max has scaled an incredible company. In this episode, we discussed how Max scaled Aqua Omega to great heights by focusing on quality partnerships and constant research. We also discussed Omega-3s in health, as Max is both passionate about his industry and the steps needed to have optimal health day to day. I hope you enjoyed our conversation, and I hope you enjoyed the episode. 

Hey, Max, thank you so much for joining me today on GrowthTales.

Maxim Marion: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Mike Pinkus: So Max, we've known each other a long time and I've always loved what Vivo brand does, especially because I'm getting older and supplements are something that I've realized are very important in my life. The biggest one that I've added to the arsenal is Omega-3s, and that's a world you introduced me to. But before we dive into health and supplements and how they help us out, how did you start Vivo brands and how did a business person like yourself get into the supplement space?

Maxim Marion: Yeah, I mean, it is funny you said that 'cause that's where most people kinda start really getting interested in supplements and improving their health — when you start to get a little bit older, you get a family, you know, priorities change. And for me, it was kind of life after sports and still wanting to stay active and exercise, but obviously not recovering as well as I used to when I was much younger. And the interest in sports nutrition came to be, looking for things in market that could help improve my recovery, improve my performance, educating myself, and reaching out to different people to understand it better. I learned, I found that most of the products that were out there had a lot of fillers in them.

Maxim Marion: Artificial colors and sweeteners, sugars — things that could actually hinder performance and recovery. And that's where our initial idea for Sports Physician was born, which was to build a line of sports nutrition products that were made entirely from whole food ingredients. And so that was kind of our entrance into the supplement world. And then from there, when we were out in market educating athletes and consumers about the importance of avoiding these fillers and these artificial ingredients, sweeteners, sugars, was where the demand for Omega-3s came from. There was a lot of new literature coming out around Omega-3s helping to improve physical capacity, performance, obviously recovery, and just overall health. This request kept coming up so often that it kind of forced us to look into this space in general.

Maxim Marion: And at first, like anybody else, when you look at the Omega-3 space, you know, go into any supplement store or big box retail, it almost seems completely saturated. You know, there's tons of products sitting on the shelf. So at first it's like, man, someone's gotta be doing this right. But the more we looked into it, the more we found there was an opportunity to really reinvent the space and to set a new standard for what we learned was probably the most important supplement that anybody could take to really improve their overall health.

Mike Pinkus: I agree with everything you just said, and you made me jump into the rabbit hole of when I first learned about Aqua Omega and the fact you had the highest EPA that was on the shelf. And I didn't know what was on the shelf. I actually went into Healthy Planet, saw your product on the shelf, started looking against other competitors. And where my mind goes, thinking from an entrepreneurial standpoint, is you have all these safety standards and regulations, and organizations that oversee the products—like, I guess, certifications that you have on the product. When you were going from zero to one million, just getting started, how did you figure out all of these things? 'Cause it seems like, to me, overwhelming on how you would now go compete against really, really big players in the space. You'd have to meet these standards, right?

Maxim Marion: Yeah, it was a really interesting kind of journey getting into this space because, like I said, when we started looking into it—so when we were initially kind of approached with, "Hey, you guys need to add an Omega-3 to your line, it would be great for you, you're gonna sell so much product"—we could have just turned to a contract manufacturer and said, "Hey, what do you got? Can we slap our label on it and be done with it?" Our approach was really fundamentally different, where we said, "Okay, let's look at the literature. Let's look at the most recent studies. Let's really educate ourselves on this category, and let's surround ourselves with industry experts that know this space significantly better than us." And when we started to do that, it just really started to reinforce what we were already thinking.

Maxim Marion: Europe was very progressive when it came to Omega-3s, where they were showing a lot of studies showing the most amount of efficacy with like two and a half grams, five grams of Omega-3s. We couldn't find anything like that on any of the shelves here in North America. So we started to formulate and understand from a practitioner level how these products were being used in practice and their frustrations that they had. So, like you said, the products that generally were on the shelf—500, 1,000 milligrams combined EPA/DHA—where they were having to talk to their patients and convince them to take three and five servings of these, which led to poor patient compliance and poor results, and eventually distrust in the supplement. That was one of the big objections we had when we got into this space—reeducating the consumer on Omega-3s and how they should be taking them.

Maxim Marion: So we gathered all these resources and these experts, and we started to formulate our inaugural product, which was our high EPA product—the product you were just talking about earlier.

Maxim Marion: And I'm really proud of how we built all of our products. And I tell this to everybody because we built top-down and not bottom-up. And what I mean by that is, normally when companies build products like this, they'll say, "Alright, what's our target retail price point? What can we afford to pay for it? And then what can we get for that?" Whereas we made no compromises in the initial stages—even today. But it was like, okay, we want the absolute highest potency of EPA while maintaining a triglyceride form. Triglyceride is the Omega-3 when it's in its most natural state and in its most bioavailable and most stable state, which is extremely important when you're taking Omega-3 products.

Maxim Marion: We wanted a small fish. So very important—when you're getting your Omega-3s, you should be getting them from small fish because these environmental contaminants—PCBs, dioxins, and heavy metals—things that your body is not able to break down or process, tend to store in fatty tissues, the same way they do in fish. So when you harvest from a smaller fish that doesn't have as long of a lifespan as, let's say, salmon or tuna, you end up with much lower base levels of these environmental contaminants. Again, triglyceride was a non-negotiable point for us.

Maxim Marion: We were trying to hit those therapeutic doses, and at this point, we were looking for like five grams. One of our biggest issues when we were getting started was in the formulation, because when we turned to have these products made by various contract manufacturers or even raw material suppliers—anybody that could help us make the products—we kept running into costing issues. Huge minimums, costs were... if you look at the Omega-3 space even today, even after all the raw material constraints and pressures and price increases that we've seen over the few years, there's still this giant disparity between your commodity-level products, I guess we would consider, and your professional-grade products.

Maxim Marion: What we realized is that consumers are willing to spend up to a certain price point for good quality, but were pretty hesitant to go beyond that. So what we wanted to do was build the highest quality Omega-3 and make it affordable for the end consumer. When we went out to start pricing the product initially—without telling anybody what our target price point was—they were almost quoting that retail price point for our large production runs.

Maxim Marion: So that’s when John and I, our formulator, decided the only way we were going to be able to get around that was to go direct to the source and source all the materials ourselves. And that’s what we ended up doing. We actually booked a trip to South America because we had selected anchovy as the best possible source for our Omega-3s. We booked appointments with every crude oil facility, every distillation plant that we possibly could.

Maxim Marion: I mean, to this day I still say that's the absolute best thing we ever did before getting into the Omega-3 space because we really got to look at the underside of the business and the industry and find a fantastic partner—partnering with the fishery, the crude facility, the distillation plant. Because we did all these things direct to source, we were able to bring a much better product to market at a much more affordable price point. Even to the point when we launched, people were like, "How are you doing this?" or "Why are you doing this? It's so much better than everything else that's out there." And it was like, look, we understand now that this is fundamentally the most important thing that anybody could take, and we want to create as much accessibility to this important supplement as we possibly can.

Mike Pinkus: Wow. That is quite the process to get up—

Maxim Marion: And running. Yeah. And that's not including all the licensing and the approvals and the claims that you're trying to get on your products. Yeah, I think sourcing was difficult for sure.

Mike Pinkus: On the back of the bottle, what's the organization—IFOS? Is that correct?

Maxim Marion: IFOS — International Fish Oil Standards.

Mike Pinkus: Ignoring the fact that you obviously had to get these certifications in order to get on the shelves of major retailers, I think the proof, though, that people care about—like, I didn't understand this—as I'm getting older, I remember the first time we spoke and you're like, "Hey Mike, cardiovascular health, triglycerides, and LDL. You gotta get on fish oil." And I'm like, "Oh?" Like, this is the thing you don't think about in your twenties. You go through your thirties and you're like, "Okay, I'm not still thinking about this." And then somewhere in the late thirties, going into forties—at least for me—it's like you're looking at your blood work, you're like, "Does that look perfect?" And I started taking the high—I think the high EPA version of the Aqua Omega—and I told you, we jumped on a call, and I'm like, my triglycerides fell off the table, and I couldn't believe—

Maxim Marion: It. Yeah, we've seen that. We see that all the time. People will send us messages, email, and say, "I can't believe the impact that this had on my blood work." It's unbelievable. I get excited about that. I think it's amazing.

Mike Pinkus: And it's just unbelievable. So I wanted to ask you, do you think if you look at the health space—like YouTube's obviously blowing up with health influencers, doctors, people that are sharing content, that are specialists about optimizing health—you hear about like two things pop up every single time, at least for me, what I've heard: magnesium pops up all the time and Omega-3s pops up literally every single time. Do you think timing has played a major factor in you guys becoming a multimillion-dollar company and scaling out the brand—that you're in the right place at the right time?

Maxim Marion: Maybe. Maybe. I think our mission really resonated with people. You know, we wanted to really set—it was important for us to set—a new standard in this very well-established category. If you look at the Omega-3 category globally, it's absolutely massive. I think it often gets overlooked. Like when you're talking about, "Oh, I had never thought about Omega-3s before," I think traditionally people are drawn to the magic bullet, where it's like, "Oh, what's going to make me better right away?" And Omega-3s are almost too simple. It's like, get the essential fatty acids that you need—oftentimes, EPA—to help correct the imbalance of Omega-6 to Omega-3s and really reduce inflammation. And when you do that, you start improving all areas of health.

Maxim Marion: But what was a catalyst in helping us scale? I think it's a testament to the quality of our products, our educational platforms. And I think we were able to—because we were developing these great products and we were working with some really great organizations, like the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine and the Boucher Institute of Naturopathic Medicine—they appreciated what we were doing. And because they were seeing such great results with their patients in practice, the word of mouth just kind of naturally started to spread. People gravitated towards our product and towards our mission. I think we stayed really true to everything we set out to do in the initial stages. And I really believe that was the catalyst: going out, educating, sampling, talking to end consumers, talking to naturopathic doctors, getting our products into their hands. I mean, the Omega-3 category—even with all these health podcasts and influencers that are talking about magnesium, Omega-3s—the category continues to grow. I mean, we continue to grow, but I think we just continue to grow because of the quality of our products and because we have been dead set on setting a new standard in this super, super important category.

Mike Pinkus: Mm-hmm. And Max, we talked about some of the—obviously the good and the fact that people are adopting the brand. What are some of the challenges? You're in a super competitive space. Being an entrepreneur is not easy. What are some of the things that you've had to face as challenges as you've continued to grow? And I know you have so many that you probably couldn't list all of them, but what are some of the major challenges you've had as you've grown Vivo Brands?

Maxim Marion: I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is the past two and a half years. So the kind of fishing seasons tend to be very cyclical, where normally you would get one neutral kind of season, then you would get one El Niño season, then you would get two La Niña seasons, where the currents are colder, the fishing is exceptional. Because the water's colder, the anchovies tend to put on more fat and have a higher fat yield.

Maxim Marion: Recently, over the last two and a half years, there’s been a significant amount of raw material constraints. Like, even last year, they canceled the fishing season down in Chile and Peru.

Mike Pinkus: Wow.

Maxim Marion: So yeah, I mean, that's just a testament. We were able to kind of see that and plan—again, working with some great organizations. John is on the board of directors for the global organization of EPA/DHA, works really closely with the fisheries, the distillation plants, gets a good understanding of it.

Maxim Marion: I think the biggest challenge was being able to plan and properly forecast how much material we were going to need and trying to secure our very specific materials for our productions. And I think discipline too—God, we had so much demand for our products internationally and in the U.S.—but we really held off on doing that until recently because we were growing at such a fast clip. If we would've been aggressive or impatient, I think we would've left ourselves really short when it came to our products and our customers in Canada, because we would've been just stretching ourselves—our raw material resources and access—way too thin. I dunno if you understand what I mean.

Mike Pinkus: You mean with supply, if—

Maxim Marion: That happened.

Mike Pinkus: No, exactly.

Maxim Marion: That's what I'm saying. We wouldn't have been able to keep up with the supply and demand. I mean, we've had double-digit growth since we launched the brand every single year. And sometimes even when we think we're producing four or five months of inventory, sometimes it's gone in two. And it's not like we're out of inventory today and we can get inventory tomorrow. It's like a 12 to 14-week kind of planning process to be able to produce products and get them out.

Maxim Marion: So I think that was one of the biggest challenges we saw: raw material supply, having patience, waiting to develop these new markets—even though you see the opportunity, it's there, it's right in front of you—but having to be able to say no to that to continue to properly support where you're already winning. I think, for me anyway, that was kind of... I like to develop those things. I like bringing our products. I like seeing the success. But having the discipline to say, "Yeah, that's not the right time for us," because here's the materials we have access to right now, and that’s just going to support the growth that we're dealing with right now in Canada—that was pretty challenging.

Mike Pinkus: And do you think going forward it remains one of the biggest challenges for you, Max—that being able to match supply to the demand? Meaning, like you said, the lag times for production, all those things, the forecasting—does that remain a pain point that can't fully ever be eliminated? Like, you always have to be on top of that, right?

Maxim Marion: Yeah, I mean, we live in our burn rates, right? We're kind of trying to pull out the perfect crystal ball to determine how much material you need. 'Cause, you know, it's okay to go long, but you don't want to go too long. And then allocation of those raw materials—where are you putting those? We've got some great relationships with some fantastic retail partners, great relationships with doctors. But I think, yeah, I think that'll be the challenge to any kind of scaling business, especially for the fact that we are entirely self-funded.

Mike Pinkus: Mm-hmm.

Maxim Marion: So we've never gone out to look for any funding to grow or build the business at all.

Mike Pinkus: So that brings me to my next question. You mentioned international demand—all these other places of demand. What are your plans over the next, like, one to three years for Vivo Brands? Where do you want to take the company?

Maxim Marion: So, I mean, my big, lofty, hairy goal is to be the premium Omega-3 brand globally, and to be recognized as that. We're doing lots of things to do that—lots of research, lots of development, working with a lot of our university and college partners to be able to continue to educate. Yeah, I mean, that’s where I would love to go.

Maxim Marion: We're looking now at slowly expanding into the United States. We're exploring Asia—I mean, the Asian market, when it comes to any natural health or supplement, is absolutely booming. I mean, that's growing at such a fast clip that I think anybody who's not looking at that is sleeping. And there's a lot of demand for a quality Omega-3 product in those markets. So, research, development, new product development—kind of staying cutting-edge and on top of it, and just keep having fun doing what we're doing. It has been a lot of fun.

Mike Pinkus: You know what I like—I always wonder, and I want to ask you this. The education side of it: I figured this is the type of business that grows itself when you have what looks like a best-of-breed product plus a need. I think a lot of people are uneducated on the cardiovascular health, brain health—all these things that Omega-3s do. Because it's something that, I think, when you go to a primary health doctor, they're looking to assess if anything's wrong and look at your basic lipids, and there's a protocol, right?

Mike Pinkus: But when you talk about, like, if all that is good, that doesn't mean you're optimal. And so, like, optimal—and I'm learning this 'cause I look into my blood work—optimal sometimes means you have to take certain things to get there. How are you educating potential customers? And, like you said, education’s a big part of this because people just don't realize how important Omega-3s are to optimal health.

Maxim Marion: We work with a lot of practitioners, a lot of naturopathic doctors, dieticians, primary care. So they're already being educated on how Omega-3s work. But I think what makes us fundamentally different to them is how we source and process. Everything we do is done directly in the fishing grounds. So go out—you know, it’s amazing actually. After seeing everything—and I could bore you to death and tell you all the ugly side of the Omega-3 space—but that’s not what we’re gonna do.

Maxim Marion: The way we do it is, we work with a small commercial fishing fleet which goes out and catches anchovies directly off the shore of where the fish is actually being processed. So within about an hour of the time the fish is being caught, it’s being processed into crude fish oil. And then we have a patented cold molecular distillation process. So instead of boiling the crude fish oil and using industrial solvents to concentrate them at various ratios, we do it cold. We don’t damage the EFAs and we don’t use these industrial solvents in the process, which leaves us a much better quality oil. So I think a lot of that education with them went a really long way.

Maxim Marion: Now when it comes to the end consumer, I agree—I think there’s a lack of education and understanding in the standard North American diet and how it’s highly concentrated in Omega-6, which are very inflammatory. And I think sometimes when people look at disease—like what you said—they assume that disease happens overnight. Right? It’s like, "Well, I’ve got diabetes. I must have just got diabetes," like a cold or something like that.

Maxim Marion: What people don’t realize is that when you get a lot of these chronic health issues or diseases, this is something that breeds in your system over time. It’s not there today, there tomorrow. This has been breeding in your system for 10, 15, 20 years. And almost every single one of these chronic illnesses or diseases are directly linked back to inflammation. One of the primary roles of Omega-3—specifically EPA—is regulating inflammation in the body, correcting the imbalance of Omega-6 to Omega-3s. And when you do that, everything starts to work better. You get less brain fog, better sleep, better energy, better recovery, better blood sugar—better everything. It’s amazing. And it’s so simple that I think people overlook it.

Maxim Marion: So our idea, when we go out and educate, we work to reel that in and help people understand that yes, this is a fundamental, but it can’t just be any Omega-3. It has to be a good quality Omega-3. Because if you’re taking a bad quality Omega-3—which there are a lot—that carry very high levels of oxidation, that have not gone through proper independent testing, they still have very high levels of environmental contaminants and impurities which will store in your body and promote inflammation. You need to be taking a good quality Omega-3 to get the benefits you’re looking for.

Maxim Marion: I could show you some stuff—like, some of the solvents that are being used in some of these other products. When I take them and I put them in a Styrofoam cup, it’ll melt it. It’s unbelievable. And not just that—when they’re in that form, they’re highly unstable. If you want a visual of what it actually is to consume an oxidized fish oil, it’s like consuming a cup of rusted oil. That’s exactly how it would translate, where your body now would have to use its natural antioxidants to correct that oil. So if it doesn’t make you sick, it creates a cell danger response in the body, promotes inflammation—you’re going the complete opposite way of what you’re normally getting.

Maxim Marion: So our education is regaining consumer confidence—regain it in the most important supplement that they should be taking, in an essential fat. And they call it essential because you need this to live healthy. Your body cannot generate it on its own. You must obtain it through diet or supplementation.

Mike Pinkus: Right. And diet obviously helps as well—like eating salmon, fish, whatever it might be—but you don't always—

Maxim Marion: Do it. It's limited. Yeah. But with limitations, right? Because of the environmental recurrence. So the bodies of water where we're catching—and not a lot of farm fish as well—but the bodies of water that we’re harvesting these fish from, they're becoming more and more contaminated. And without going through distillation to remove these, it's not really safe to consume fish more than once or twice a week.

Maxim Marion: And there's actually a misconception that when people eat fish, they think they're eating Omega-3s. The reality is you're eating a good source of lean protein that has the benefit of having Omega-3s in it. On average, a three-ounce cooked portion of fish will have like 200 to 500 milligrams total of Omega-3s. Well, compare that to one serving of our High EPA—you’re getting almost 5,000 milligrams.

Mike Pinkus: Wow.

Maxim Marion: And that’s where your therapeutic dose on a daily basis is starting—roughly at 2,500 milligrams.

Mike Pinkus: This is—I learn something new every time we chat. And I know we’re running outta time. I have two last questions. When I went to your website before we jumped on, I saw you have Omega-3s for kids. I’ve got two little girls. I’m curious...

Maxim Marion: Yeah…

Mike Pinkus: I just wanted to ask you the question—how is this something that’s becoming important in even young kids, to have high Omega-3 levels?

Maxim Marion: Fundamentally, yeah. It's so fundamental for kids—for eye development, brain development. There are some amazing studies even around behavioral issues, ADHD. A lot of these things will link back, again, to inflammation. And if you can provide these essential nutrients—I mean, obviously everybody wants to give their kid the best start. It's just, again, you have to be careful on the quality of the products that you're getting. But yeah, the answer is it's fundamental for everybody—old, young.

Mike Pinkus: It's gummy format, so kids will eat it, I guess?

Maxim Marion: Yeah. I mean, our liquids taste pretty amazing, but our gummies are like—they're like a treat, but they're not. They're not built like everything else. Again, when we looked at the space, we looked at what was out there, and you have very low-dose—you know, I'm talking kids' gummies now—but you have very low-dose Omega-3s from large fish, a lot of the time like tuna, that carry high levels of natural environmental contaminants, often in the wrong format of oil—in the form of an ethyl ester-based oil.

Maxim Marion: But when you actually break it out versus the amount of gelatin and sugar and artificial colors that go into these products, you're net negative. So we looked at building our kids' gummies as something completely different.

Maxim Marion: Actually, I'll tell you a story. Our first rendition of the gummies was a flop because we focused primarily on the efficacy. And then it was like, "Okay, it's gotta be super efficacious—no sugar, no gelatin, no artificial colors, no dyes—and the highest concentration of polyunsaturated fat we can possibly have in this gummy. And, by the way, it's gotta taste good," right? So it had all the great things, but we missed the mark on the flavor.

Maxim Marion: But it wasn't a failure because we learned from it. So again, without compromising, we were able to go back to the lab and fix the flavor and the texture profile to make it more palatable to kids. We went through like another hundred renditions of the gummies before we got it perfect. But we learned.

Maxim Marion: You know the saying—it's like, "A fool never learns from their mistakes, a wise man learns from his own, and the smartest person learns from everyone else’s." I forget how it goes exactly, but it’s a great saying. We learned from our mistakes in this case and said, “Look, I'm not gonna stand my ground and say, ‘No, this product is perfect the way it is.’” We listened to our retailers and our consumers and said, “Okay, there's clearly a flavor profile issue here, and there's a texture issue here.” And we went back to the lab, we fixed that, we re-released this like a month ago, and it's—you know, we’ll do 50x what we had done before.

Mike Pinkus: And Max, final question for you—before I just want to be cognizant of your time and ask you your final question here, which I ask everybody—and that is: You've been in Vivo Brands for a long time. What would you say are some of the biggest lessons you could give to other entrepreneurs? Even if it’s just one lesson, in terms of growing a business, given all the challenges that—

Closing Thoughts

Maxim Marion: You know what, I was telling somebody this just the other day, actually, and I was saying, I think too many young entrepreneurs want to fake it before they make it, right? They want people to look at you and think that you're bigger than what you are. And there's a lot of power in humility. I think you'll find that if you turn to some people that have done it before, or some people that have more experience, people are much more willing to help you than what you might think. And I think that would be my biggest piece of advice to people: don't fake it till you make it. Like, make it till you make it. Because it's okay to be in the grind and it's okay to be in the trenches. And I think people will appreciate that if you work with that kind of humility.

Mike Pinkus: You know what, I think that's amazing advice. And I would echo that because that's something you see all the time. People that have been in it for long enough that they have felt the war wounds of building a company—you normally can sense at least some element of humility, meaning they've experienced flying too close to the sun and...

Maxim Marion: You get humbled every once in a while, right?

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. And Max, I want to say that I have huge respect for what you've done with Vivo Brands, and I want to thank you for taking— I know we're a little bit over on time here—but I want to thank you for taking the time to share your story on Vivo Brands. First of all, you've helped my health, first and foremost, taking the time away from this to give me free advice. And it's a conversation for another day of how you know so much about everything medical and health. I mean, you're at the level of an MD, so... that's a conversation for another day. But I do want to thank you for taking the time and all the time you've injected into helping me out in understanding how to optimize health and how to use supplements in order to get optimal health.

Maxim Marion: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. My wife would echo that—I could bore people to death, and it’s like, it’s so f— Anyway...

Mike Pinkus: It's—

Maxim Marion: Amazing. It’s funny, 'cause Calvin met somebody at the golf course the other day. We're passionate about it—I absolutely love it. And just a little anecdote in there: Calvin, who works with us here, ends up going to meet somebody that I had just happened to get paired up with to play golf. And the guy—you know, funny guy—he didn’t really believe in supplements or whatever. And he says to Calvin, “Hey, tell that snake oil salesman my joints have never felt better.” And he’s like, “That stuff really works.” And Calvin comes back and he’s like, “Of course you would—you get paired up with somebody, you probably talked to them about fish oil and supplements the entire round of golf.” I love it. I absolutely love it. Our team loves it. Like, when people get better and they feel healthier, I think that’s what really gets me going. Of course, I like the wins in business, but that really gets me excited.

Mike Pinkus: Well, you could feel the passion and you could feel that it's authentic. And like I said, people could go test their lipids after they take the product—like I did. So, thanks again, Max. And yeah, hopefully I’ll take you up on that conversation to understand the backstory of how your in-depth knowledge is at the level that it’s at. I know, obviously, being in this space, you had to know a lot, but you're on another level. So maybe that’s—

Maxim Marion: A conversation. We're surrounded by some pretty great people, honestly. We have a network of naturopathic doctors and dieticians that are just fantastic, and we're just always learning from them.

Mike Pinkus: Yeah. Well that’s awesome. Well, thanks again, Max.

Maxim Marion: Thank you.

Mike Pinkus: Looking forward to chatting again soon.

Maxim Marion: Thanks.

Mike Pinkus: That was Max Marion, founder of Aqua Omega. Max scaled this business by focusing on building a premium brand without cutting corners or making any compromises. Max shared many important business lessons with me; however, these two stood out the most.

Number one: The more passionate you are about your space, the better your product or service will be. While Max is a business founder and operator, you would swear he has an MD or PhD when you hear him speak about health. It’s the constant research and authentic passion for the Aqua Omega brand and quality that’s been a driving force in the company’s success.

Number two: Max doesn’t view setbacks as failures, but rather opportunities to improve. When Max and the team went into R&D to develop a kids’ Omega-3 gummy, he went in with the mindset that the product would be of incredible efficacy with no fillers, sugars, or unnecessary ingredients. The problem? After what seemed like 100+ development attempts, the team could not get the flavoring to be palatable to kids. They could have put one of those products on the shelf that was "close enough," but they went back to the lab until they got it right. It’s that type of perseverance as an entrepreneur that can make all the difference when solving a complex problem.

That’s it for today. And as always, keep scaling up and breaking barriers.