His Snoring Led To His Wife Divorcing Him | Alex Neist Digital Social Hour #88

So when we're breathing through our nose, like near our sinuses, there, we have

something that is producing nitric oxide for our body.

Nitric oxide is also the same man that's going to make your d hard with Tiagra.

Really?

Right.

Wow.

So you get older guys who, if they're breathing through their mouth because they're not producing as much nitric oxide in the body,

that could be a reason for that.

My snoring was so bad that it really ripped my family apart

and led to divorce.

Is it that bad?

I I dude, it ripped my family apart.

I got it.

I went through divorce because of your snoring.

Yes, yeah, right.

Yeah, no way.

Do not.

Let me explain why.

Hey, they leave us for anything.

Now,

Co-host Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up?

And our guest today, Alex Neist.

How's it going?

How are we doing?

Good to be here.

Hostage tape.

You got it.

Hostage tape.

And the no strip's not.

I'm sporting.

I'm doing my Hermose, right?

I've got my nose strip on.

And yeah, look at that.

So, what does the nose strip do exactly?

So, what the nose strip does is it opens up the nasal passages just to help encourage that nasal breathing even better.

Because somebody like myself, I've got a small little nose.

so having that extra help, right, can make a pretty big difference.

Really?

I always wondered why Hermozi wore it.

Yeah, he he loves wearing those things.

Now, with using that, let's say you use it every day, but when you don't use it, do you feel the difference?

Is it addicting?

It's addicting because if you're somebody who's active,

like I'm I usually go for a run every other morning.

I run like four hours or miles, right, every other day.

I do the sauna every day.

So when I'm doing those things, it's really noticeable if I'm getting good oxygen in or not, right?

That's when I notice it the most.

So

I love wearing it and it feels good.

But then when I'm not wearing it, if I'm just sitting at my desk, I don't notice it as much for sure.

Because you know, some products, like your body gets so used to using it.

So when you're not using it, it's kind of like you're forced to use it even if you don't want to.

Yeah.

Well, it's like wearing mouth tape, right?

When you sleep with your mouth open like we do,

it's something that we just have to keep wearing.

You might think, a lot of people think that you can train your mouth to stay closed so that you can eventually not wear it.

But I think for most of us, the older that we get, I don't think that's the case.

I think you just have to continue to do something to keep your mouth shut.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I found you guys on a YouTube app like three months ago, hit you guys up.

I'm like, I was kind of skeptical at first.

I'm not going to lie.

I feel like a lot of people.

That's the word, though.

Why?

That's the most common word.

Anybody that sees it is like, I'm skeptical as shit.

No way.

Why, though?

No.

Because it's tape on your mouth.

Yeah.

So this is the package that it comes in?

So that's the pouch that it comes in.

So we ship the pouches.

It's got 30 single-use strips in there.

You can

open them up.

So, no, those are the mouth strip, the mouth tape.

So while you sleep, you put it on.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, I was skeptical.

Oh, okay.

And then I started using it, and I would wake up feeling different.

Like, I'm not even kidding.

I would feel better in the morning.

For real?

I sleep with my mouth so open, dude.

Do you?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Well,

dude, that's the thing, is a lot of us.

I don't know.

A lot of us, we don't know.

Because when you're asleep, you're asleep, right?

I wouldn't know.

Yeah.

You don't know until you have a partner who's like, get the f out of the room.

Your story's like that.

Which is what happens to most of us and certainly would happen to me

with my story.

Like, you know, it's the origin story of why I came up with this, was my snoring was so bad that it really ripped my family apart

and led to divorce.

I, dude, it ripped my family apart.

I went through divorce.

Because of your snoring.

Yes.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

No way.

You're not.

Let me explain why.

And they leave us for anything.

Now, here's the kicker.

We're back together now.

Because you stopped snoring.

I don't snore anymore.

Now, certainly, like, we were able to rekindle relationships.

Yeah, but here's, so here's the thing.

Let me explain why.

So,

you know, the Gottman Institute talked about this.

They've researched couples for years, right?

And one of the things that they looked at was, okay, for every negative thing that happens, it's a one to five ratio.

So if one bad thing happens, you have to have five positive interactions to offset that.

So imagine that when it comes to snoring, it creates a snowball effect.

So you snore, kicks your wife out of the room, kicks your girlfriend out of the room, or you.

Now she wakes up.

Shout out to today's episode sponsor, Hostage Tape.

Man, this stuff's good, bro.

I know.

Last night I slept with my mouth open.

I really needed it.

Did I heard it?

Even decreased the blood pressure.

Dude, it's got a lot of health benefits for sure.

I've even used it and slept like five, six hours, and I felt so refreshed the next day.

Wow.

When I do that without mouth tape, I feel terrible.

Yeah, it stopped me from snoring, too.

Yeah, yeah.

I can't wait to get the finished results because I know I actually took a B4 pic and i want to see what the results are in a couple weeks how much face changes yeah i've seen some nasty photos of people with like fat jaws before yeah and them using tape and it just everything lines up looks so chiseled outdoors it's actually crazy yeah i can't wait i'm excited but i definitely use hostage tape a lot bro yeah people that are struggling to sleep and you know feeling exhausted and snore i definitely try it out it's pretty cheap too Yeah, and it's really comfortable too.

It's really, really, really, really flexible.

You can just kind of fly it on.

There we go.

Well, there you have it, guys.

Hostage tape.

Shout out to them.

Link will be in the bio.

Check them out.

Or she doesn't sleep at all and she resents you.

That builds up.

She hates you.

All the other awful stuff that happens, right?

Then one negative turns into two the next morning.

Then three, four, and five.

So now think about that.

Five means you have to have 25 positive interactions to counteract that.

So that one snoring issue snowballs into so many other things.

So that's why, yes, snoring is a catalyst for it, which then turns into all these other things.

Okay.

So in my case, I pushed her into the other bedroom.

Like most men, there's a lot of men out there just like me who are in their 40s, and this is the case.

They might be sleeping in the other bedroom where their wife is.

So I pushed her into the other bedroom.

And then the intimacy just disappeared.

The resentment built.

And then just all these other things started to pop up in the relationship that just, and then we got a separation and then a divorce.

So then I moved out, and it was at the time that I moved out that I looked at myself and I said, okay,

what do I need to do to improve as a man, as a father, because we've got two kids, but then also, how do I improve my sleeping?

Because most people like us who we slept with our mouths open and we snored, you kind of don't think there's anything wrong with it, you know?

And we think that snoring may be okay, but it's not okay.

You shouldn't be snoring.

That's not normal, and it's not a good thing.

So I went on Amazon, like most people, right?

You go on Amazon, you try to look for what kind of a device or mouth guard is going to work.

Yeah, they have a mouthpiece.

They have a whole bunch of.

There's tons of them.

You can find so many different mouthpieces that, you know, you get it, you put it into boiling water, you put it in your mouth, you burn yourself.

It doesn't work too well.

I can't sleep with nothing in my mouth.

Yeah.

I've never tried.

It doesn't sound comfortable at all.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, a lot of the ones they make,

they keep your mouth open, actually.

Because the point of those is to push your jaw forward.

Because the theory is you push your jaw forward, so then you're not closing the airway in the back.

Right.

But what that ends up doing is for a lot of people, it keeps your mouth open.

So then you end up still breathing through your mouth.

And it doesn't solve the problem.

And then you're drooling all over your pillow.

Right.

So that didn't work.

So it sent me down this rabbit hole of all this other research to find out, all right, what's really going on here?

And I stumbled across an article written by James Nestor.

James Nestor wrote a best-selling book called Breath.

If you haven't read it, you've got to read this book.

And in the book, he actually talked about an experiment that he did.

He went to Stanford Medical Center.

And they did this experiment where they plugged their nose for 10 days.

And they were going to record both.

you know, scientifically and anecdotally what happened.

So over that 10 days, they developed like extremely awful snoring, sleep apnea, like awful, dangerously low levels of like blood oxygen.

That once they pulled the plugs out, they taped their mouths and they breathed through their nose, everything went away within a day or two, and they were healthy again.

So, when I read that, a light bulb went off in my head because

I've been a high-level athlete my whole life.

Like, my background is: I played quarterback,

I made it to a professional level known as arena football.

I wanted to be the next Kurt Warner.

I didn't make it, okay?

So I diverted and then I became an entrepreneur and I started some businesses.

But that whole time, my whole life, nobody ever taught us that mouth breathing and nose breathing were this thing.

Like, we didn't know, right?

So I'm in my 40s, a high-level athlete, not knowing that I should have been keeping my mouth shut when I'm sleeping, right?

And only breathing through my nose.

And so I could not believe that this was new information to me.

So he talked about mouth taping.

And I thought, is it really this simple?

This sounds so crazy.

Like you said it earlier, skeptical.

Yeah.

Right.

Which is what most people's reaction is.

How does it work?

Yeah.

So

our tape,

you just pull it and you pop it.

Okay.

Okay.

And now here's a big differentiator with why our tape is what it is.

It's flexible.

Okay.

Yeah, it is.

Okay.

Yeah.

So cover a big lip.

Right.

So, well, when you do it, what you want to make sure you do is you kind of purse your lips inward a little bit.

Right.

And then you put it on.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right.

Exactly.

There you go.

So now, we designed this to be comfortable

and strong.

All right.

Because most people think it's tape, right?

How is that any different than just regular paper tape?

Well, the problem with like regular paper tape, it's really rigid and it's not comfortable at all to have on.

So we're going to cover this part of your mouth, right?

This part of your body that is very, you know, fight or flight

and you have a reaction.

We wanted it to be the most comfortable tape on the planet that you're not going to have a reaction to it.

So it's comfortable, it's flexible.

Secondly, it's got to be strong because a lot of men wear facial hair, right?

And a lot of regular tape doesn't hold the best with beards or mustaches and all this stuff that's that's there, right?

Yeah.

But it's also got to be strong strong enough to hold strong jaws.

Because I know for me,

even if I put just a little bit of strip of tape, which some people do, it doesn't hold.

I needed to cover my whole mouth, right?

Right.

And also, too,

even for like people who wear CPAPs, like these are great for CPAP wear.

What's a CPAP?

So, a CPAP is when people have like a sleep disorder, like a sleep breathing disorder, like sleep apnea,

where

their breathing stops periodically throughout the night.

So, it's like what you and I have, but at a much worse level.

And most people who are overweight have sleep apps.

Yeah.

Where they'll wear a mask that then is assisted breathing.

So they get these tubes that like kind of blow air into their nose that help get them the air that they need.

But the issue with that, though, is a lot of people who wear sleep apps don't keep their mouths shut.

So then the machine doesn't work as well as

it's just blowing in and out.

So then they need to really keep their mouth shut.

And so the tape helps them do that too.

But yeah, so that was kind of the origin of mouth taping was like, oh my gosh, I got to mouth tape.

So when I did it the first time, I'd love to hear your reaction too.

But when I mouth tape for the very first time, I was anxious.

Right.

Putting tape over your mouth makes you go, wait, am I going to wake up?

Yeah.

Am I going to?

It feels almost suffocating.

Well, I thought it would feel suffocating.

Anxious?

Yeah, it doesn't.

But

so when you're asleep,

no,

a better question is, what about during the day?

Yeah.

Like, what,

wearing this on your mouth during the day, what are you practicing at that point?

Are you just focusing on just nose breathing?

Yeah, so

there's a couple of things to think about during the day.

One is, well, number one, we shouldn't be mouth breathing at all unless we're talking or eating.

That's the only time we should be.

So, when you start to mouth tape, you start to become very aware of what you're doing during the day.

So, when you're sitting at your desk, we're working, you start to become aware of, oh, I should shut my mouth because a lot of us tend to go like this and we don't realize it.

So, you become more aware of that.

But then, also, we've got a lot of people who wear when they work out, they'll put mouth tape on on a run or at the gym

to again really encourage that nasal breathing, right?

Because

let's talk about why nasal breathing and mouth breathing is so different.

Let's talk about the science behind this because this is really fascinating, and I'll keep it really simple.

So, there's this relationship to oxygen and CO2 that's important.

And what most of us don't know is that CO2 is way more important than we think.

So, what happens is

the more CO2 we have in our body, that triggers the release of oxygen into our muscles to be used for energy.

Okay?

So that important distinction means that if I'm mouth-breathing,

I'm exhaling so much air at a faster rate that I'm getting rid of too much CO2.

So I'm lowering the amount of CO2 in my body, which then means my body doesn't have enough to trigger oxygen release.

So then I'm not actually getting enough oxygen energy into my muscles.

Okay,

but here's the thing.

You feel better.

Like you feel like when you breathe through your mouth that you're getting everything you need because as the CO2 level in your body lowers, your air hunger, your feeling of needing to breathe lowers.

So you feel better, even though it's a mind f,

right?

So now, nose breathing, that slows your breathing down.

So now you're not exhaling as much CO2.

So it's keeping a good level of CO2 than to have that trigger of oxygen getting released in your muscles.

Wow.

So that's a really kind of simple example of why this and this is so different.

Okay.

Because running, so that feeling we feel when we're running, to breathe out of our mouth is not the correct way of breathing.

No, not at all.

Now, okay, here's the thing.

There are certainly times where if you're seriously going after it, you might need to open your mouth and breathe and definitely get some more air in.

There's certainly a time for that.

Okay, okay.

But for the most part,

no.

For the most part, you want to be breathing through your nose.

Wow.

And what does that do?

What does it do for the lung size?

Does the lungs expand more?

Are your lungs getting bigger because you're using your nose?

Well, you're definitely, you're able to fill your lungs up and keep more air in there.

So another thing is, is because

I'm governing how much I'm breathing in and out now, I'm able to get air in and keep more air into there longer.

So then I'm not, it's not going in and out so fast.

Again, so that your body can actually use it, right?

And trigger it.

So, the other thing.

Also, all of us are lacking in the exercise.

Yeah, here's a couple more things on that, right?

The other thing is, is so the air that we take in,

and so like when you have your mouth open at night and you feel like your mouth is dry and you just feel like when you wake up, well, it's because this air that we're breathing in right now,

when it goes into our mouth, it's cold, it's dry, it's dirty with all sorts of bacteria and like just other in it that it goes into our lungs and our lungs can't use that that very well okay so when it goes into our nose it's going up through these turbinates right these mechanisms in our nose to number one get filtered from the hair and the mucus so it filters out all the

right it's like filtering dirty water into clean water that can be used better it's like a burrito totally right totally like that And then also, it's humidifying it and warming up the air so that when it gets into our lungs, our lungs can actually use it better.

And it's more efficient to turn that into oxygen that we can use for energy wow right now one more thing nitric oxide

so when we breathe in through our nose like near our sinuses there we have um something that is producing nitric oxide for our body nitric oxide is also the same man that's gonna make your d hard with diagraph so You get older guys who, if they're breathing through their mouth, they can't get their dick up,

because they're not producing as much nitric oxide in their body.

Wow.

That could be a reason for that.

So now, closing your mouth helps you produce nitric oxide for your body, which definitely helps that thing

and just helps all these other things in our body that needs nitric oxide production.

It's insane.

So

if I wanted to practice just while I'm up,

using this, what would be the time frame?

Is it one hour, 30 minutes, two hours?

So you say if I just go on a walk, my hours, my walk is usually an hour and a half.

So you could do it on the walk.

I think that would be a great time to do it.

So I think what's important about that is for people who are new to mouth taping

and are anxious,

that's a good time to go, okay, I'm going to go on a walk or I'm going to sit down and do some emails.

I'm going to put some tape on my mouth to help ease my anxiety.

Right.

So do that.

Then it helps you feel better because we'll get a lot of people who they'll subconsciously rip it off at night because they're anxious about it.

Oh, did you do that?

I'll just wake up without it on.

I'll be like, what?

When did I take that off?

Yeah, because you probably early on, the first few days you wore it, you probably just were like

that and didn't realize it because your body is thinking fight or flight because you have this thing on your mouth.

So on a walk, doing emails, and then after a few days of wearing it, you're going to feel much more calm about, oh, okay, I feel good.

And the tape itself, it's the strongest comfortable mouth tape on the planet, man.

So it's going to feel good.

What about Sana?

What's that?

Sana in the sauna.

Totally in the sauna.

Doesn't sweat kind of peel it off or no?

Excess sweat can definitely start to peel off the edges.

But I wear my nose strip and the sauna every day, and then I'll go and I'll do a workout and I'll go do a run.

And it still is, you know, it's still on here really good for sure.

And how does this change your face?

that's a good question so it does it will change the structure of your face right so what changes the structure of people's face is the mouth breathing right so it's definitely more of an issue on younger children so if you have a younger child who is mouth breathing at night and they're constantly doing this then over the course of you know their whole younger adult life because their their skull and their their face is still growing yeah right that that can drastically affect how their skull and their face and everything looks.

As we get older, it's a lot harder to change your face, but it certainly helps.

It can certainly help like posture, right?

People who tend to mouth breathe, they might put their head forward and

sulk their shoulders.

Whereas if you breathe through your nose, you'll have a tendency to stand more tall with your shoulders back more.

Wow.

Wow.

So, I mean, there's so many questions.

So, um, it's pretty, it's, yeah, it's very crazy.

Yeah.

And I love the word you used earlier with people being very skeptical.

But I think the biggest thing I would say to people is just try it.

Yeah.

It's something you could easily try with any tape you have at home for now.

But I think, I think at the end of the day, it's identifying if you mouth breathe at night.

Because if you don't, okay, well, then mouth tape's not for you.

Most people do, though, I feel like.

The older you get, yes.

I'm starting to think so.

so there's like a bunch of health benefits and nose breathing over mouth breathing oh it's it's and the uh it's insane yeah bad breath and tooth decay for yeah mouth breathers right right so so what happens there is when you sleep and you have your mouth open you have a bunch of bacteria like good natural bacteria in your mouth that's good right so when you leave it open all that stuff gets killed and then your mouth dries out and then your bad breath goes off the charts and then that also affects your your teeth so then your teeth start start to decay

and so

dentists will be one of the people right who they'll they'll tell you you should mouth tape more dentists will encourage people to mouth tape than i think other medical professions that i've seen just because they're working on the mouth more than anybody.

And so they're definitely people who,

of all the people that reach out to me like on Instagram, because our Instagram's gotten pretty big now.

Yeah.

That of everybody that reaches out, we get the most dentists who say, I love what you guys are doing.

This is fantastic.

Can I get Hansi State to be able to give to people in our practice?

Wow.

And then as far as athletes, football players, basketball players, boxers, how do they benefit from it from a training standpoint?

Well, how does it work for them?

I mean, being a former player myself, I mean, I can can attest to this.

I played my whole career and I didn't even know.

The biggest thing here is recovery, right?

From a sleeping perspective.

So I think too many athletes ignore sleep and ignore how much recovery,

like how important that is for recovery for them.

Right.

Right.

And so by actually breathing properly, now they're getting.

the rest, the recovery that they need to be able to get up the next day, go train, go play, and be able to perform.

I think that's the most important thing, at least from the mouth taping part of it.

But then, like during the day, if they're training or

playing a game or whatever, if they're using nasal strips, right, like our hostage nose strip to open that up, now they're getting more air in, better air in from their nose.

And how are you able to go about the marketing?

Because I see you guys on social media everywhere.

A lot of businesses struggle to market their product.

How were you able to pull that off?

So I think, well, let's talk about the name, hostage tape, because I think that's one of the biggest questions that people ask is,

why the hell would you call it hostage tape?

Right?

It's a thumb stopper, and that's why we did it.

So I love Liquid Death.

I loved their approach to how they did this anti-marketing concept of getting people's attention, and they have a bigger mission of what they're trying to do, just like we do.

Right.

So I knew that

really the story goes back to when I first started mouth taping, I used to warn my kids that, and anybody else around me, that, hey, I'm going to put some tape on my mouth when I go to bed.

You know, it's going to look like I'm being held hostage, so don't freak out.

So I'm like, okay, well, the obvious is that we look like hostages when we're wearing tape.

That's the obvious.

But the other side of the coin is actually we're tapping in.

to this core emotion that people feel.

Your girlfriend or wife feels held hostage by you.

You feel held hostage by poor sleep and you don't know what to do.

Right?

So it's feeling held hostage by this thing.

Gosh.

And we knew people are going to see hostage and they're going to go, what the f is this?

Right.

It's going to get their attention and it's going to be memorable.

Right.

And it's very polarizing.

So we're going to get people that absolutely love the branding play and are attracted to us.

And then we're going to get people who hate it.

And that's good.

That's what we want, right?

A great brand attracts all the great people that we want to represent us.

And then it's going to get rid of all those other ones that don't want to be it.

Gotcha.

And that's it.

So just being kind of controversial, basically, is what you think helped out.

Very, yeah, very controversial.

And then we what we started to do was really lean into this Gary Vee method of creating content.

So my co-founder, Ben, he is our creative.

So I knew when we started this that I needed to have the media side of it be part of it.

I wasn't going to farm it out to an agency.

Okay.

It was going to be part of who we are.

Right.

So, that we're always creating content in-house because it was everything we needed.

That was how we were going to grow and continue to do what we had to do.

Because I'm nobody.

I'm not like Alex Hermosi or like some other big person that everybody knows or it's getting plenty of organic reach.

Right.

So, we're creating at least five pieces of content every day that we're putting out on all of our platforms.

So we're putting all those out and then we stack them and we stagger them.

So they kind of look like different pieces, even though we're doing the same pieces, just

staggering when we post them on all the different platforms.

And then I learned how to do Facebook ads myself.

So me being an entrepreneur.

I looked at Facebook and I said, this is how we're going to scale from a marketing standpoint because this is where everybody, it's it's the best place to do it right it's the best dollar spend that i can get so i wasn't going to farm that out too i was going to learn it so i learned how to do facebook ads in six months and then i just scaled the hell out of it and so we started spending six figures wow a month we spend six figures a month yeah we spend high six figures a month on facebook ads

and that's why

You and many other people are like, I can't stop seeing these hostage tape ads.

I get it everywhere.

I get it on YouTube actually a lot.

People underestimate the power of social media marketing.

Yeah.

Yeah, they well, it's because they don't understand how to do it.

Like, Facebook ads is

complex to a point.

But then once you learn it,

it's easy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Agreed.

You know, so there's just that base foundation of understanding it.

And then,

but then also, too, it's scary for people when you think, oh my God, I'm going to spend a thousand dollars a day.

But it's like, yeah, we spend thirty thousand dollars a day.

Yeah.

But I know what we're going to get back on our ad spend.

Yeah, on the ROIs, like

you make your money right back.

Yeah.

As long as you know that, right?

And you know, I know what I'm going to get back, right, on my ad spend, and I know how that's going to translate down the road on like LTV.

Because at least for us, this is

a product that people buy and use it every night.

And guys like us, I mean, we're going to be using Hostage Tape for the foreseeable future.

Yeah, it's a very evergreen product.

Yeah.

And what's the actual cost

and how many they get?

Very low.

It's a very, it's a very, we have about, I'll put it to you this way: we have about

80%

gross margin on this.

Wow.

And then after everything else is said and done, we're about 50 to 60 net.

Holy crap.

Those margins are insane for e-commerce.

So, where, how much are people actually paying for it?

So, if you buy one pouch, it's $25.

Okay, for a pouch.

For one.

For one pouch.

And 30.

Yeah, there's 30 in there.

One month supply.

It's a one-month supply, right?

And then what we do is we actually

bundle them all together in a bunch of ways.

And so really, a lot of people will come on and they'll buy a month's supply with the idea of like, okay, is this going to work?

I got to try this out.

And we tell people, look, you've got a money-bag guarantee.

So there's no risk.

You can try it out.

So they try that out.

And then if they're doing like, we've got a quarterly subscription where they'll get three pouches every, you know, three, four months.

Or a lot of people buy in bulk.

They'll buy a year supply.

Right.

Because I severely discount the unit price of them.

If you're going to buy a year supply of it, it's totally worth it.

It's like, I think at that point, $15, $16 a pouch.

A pouch, yeah.

You know, for a year's supply versus $25 if you just bought...

a month supply.

Yeah.

And then

subscription base.

Yeah, we do have a subscription.

But believe it or not, what we're seeing, so we had a subscription on all of our products, all of our bundles.

Right.

But we found when we removed the subscription on the yearly, so we have a

month try, a quarterly subscription, and then a bulk year.

When we remove the subscription, more people are buying.

Really?

Yeah.

So more people are buying now, knowing that I think there's a stigma around subscription charge.

I think PA is just the

subjective of monthly payments that people kind of stray away from.

I think they need to change the word from subscription.

Yeah, they might have to.

Yeah, subscription sounds so like money every month.

I think it's just like become a crew member or become a company.

I think because we've we've packaged it in a year

and we've increased the AOV, right?

But we've it's such a good value for them that

I like that.

And I'm keeping it simple.

Like, I don't want to give them too many options, make it too complicated.

Because, you know, like you've got too many options, a lot of times people freeze.

They don't know what to pick then.

And are you going with the approach of sticking with your core products?

Are you going to release future products?

Yeah, we've got more products.

And certainly this Nose Drip is our next big release.

And so it just came out.

I think last month.

And I mean, we've already almost sold out of these already.

In fact, I mean, we've even sold sold out of our Mouth Tape twice this year

already.

Like, none.

Yeah, twice.

Wow.

So I've had to, I mean,

I get 20,000 units, 20,000 pouches a week of these things coming in.

Wow.

But then I've got the no strips now.

And

what's happening is so people are buying Mouth Tape and then they're adding on no strips because they're seeing the value of, oh, keeping my mouth shut and then also helping increase.

Yeah, I'm going to start wearing the nose strips right now.

Yeah, I've got a bunch for you.

Yeah.

So I'm excited to try those out.

I might have so many questions.

I can see you got the gears moving.

You got a little bit more.

I know that there's so many questions people like.

When it comes to this product, because it's so unique and I've never seen it before.

And even me even trying it, I can kind of feel myself more so focusing on the nose breathing versus the mouth.

So you don't even realize how much you're actually breathing out of your mouth throughout the day or just in general.

I used to do it a lot, man.

Yeah.

Without noticing.

My girl would tell me, I'm like, what?

Or like during the day?

You just be like, while I'm working, while I'm playing basketball.

Well, I still do it during ball.

I feel like it's hard not to during ball.

It's hard.

Yeah.

If you're like seriously trucking up and down the court, there's a point where like you kind of have to, but try it.

I challenge you that when you get out there,

try keeping your mouth shut as much as you can

during the game and just see.

Wow.

I can't imagine running, though, because I used to be a distance runner.

Okay.

And I breathe through my mouth the whole time.

So what I noticed when

I started to learn how to really breathe through my nose when I would run, because I run about four miles every other day in the morning.

I developed a cadence of how I would go.

And so when I have a cadence of

like that, then it helps me

keep it like on track with my steps.

Okay.

Because otherwise it's hard to find a

cadence where you feel like, oh my God, I can't, I can't do it.

How does this help with singers?

Singers?

Yeah, singers.

I think for singers, it probably helps you not dry your mouth out and dry your throat out.

That's probably where I think it would help there.

For sure.

What's next for you guys?

We're just continuing to scale, man.

Like, we're growing like crazy.

And certainly we've got a lot of opportunity to...

I've got a lot of investors coming at me.

I've got a lot of high-level influencers coming at me who want to partnership or be a part of the business.

Some of them I won't name, but I've got some people who

absolutely love what we're doing and want to be all in on it.

But honestly, we're just going to continue to keep scaling, keep going where we're going.

And the sky's the limits.

I love it.

So, you own 100% still?

Yeah.

So, it's so my partner and I, Ben, we're 50-50 partners.

So, we're we bootstrapped it.

I used the cash that I got from my previous company that I had sold.

And so completely bootstrapped, no outside money.

Did it cost a lot to bootstrap at first?

I mean,

relatively speaking, like to most people, yeah.

Yeah.

But for

most of us business guys, it was, you know, normal amount of money just to get started.

get enough inventory, get enough spend on Facebook to get it rolling.

And then I think fortunately for us, it was lightning in a bottle with the branding of what we've created.

Because I think that's what we have: is yes, we have an amazing product.

We have a product market fit.

I think absolutely with the mouth tape.

But it's this branding that we picked that I think has really hit with people.

And then we just really took off from December to February is when it really skyrocketed.

This year?

Yes.

Yeah, because so we launched in March of last year.

So we've only been around for a month and I'm sorry, a year and two, three months now.

Wow.

And so, you know, those first few months are you're trying to figure it out and you're making mistakes, doing different things.

And then when we finally figured out our Facebook

ads and that method, then it really just took off.

And then you started seeing it everywhere.

So, what other parts of the body do you feel like you're going to make products for?

So, I think we're

without kind of revealing any of them.

We're focusing on sleep, really.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, so anything that's like our primary focus is how do we improve people's sleep in a very non-invasive way?

You know, that doesn't mean spending a shit ton of money on surgeries or what are some small, easy wins that people can do to improve sleep.

So we do also have a blindfold.

It's called our hostage blindfold that you can add on and use.

And we'll have other products too that who knows, maybe we'll have some.

you know, earplugs, maybe we'll have some kind of blankets.

How does the blindfold help?

Well,

you were saying earlier how you like things pitch black.

I was, man, right?

My house, I don't like hearing anything.

I gotta be silent.

So

Huberman talks about this a lot of, and even Matt Walker, of how we have to keep darkness, keep our eyes in complete darkness.

Otherwise, the light affects our sleep cycles.

So when your sleep cycles get affected and interrupted because of the light that's coming in, then you just don't get sleep.

Wow.

So the blindfold helps keep everything dark so that you can go in and out of those sleep cycles that you need to get through.

So, for some people,

they swear by wearing a sleep mask, right?

Me personally, I don't.

I don't need to wear one, but you know, there's plenty of people who do.

And so, we thought this is an easy upsell win that, all right, we can give people a really great, comfortable eye mask to go along with their hostage tape.

Yeah, I even went as far as painting the wall in my room black.

Oh, did you really?

Wow, Black wall.

Serious dark curtain in my room, bro.

At night, you can't see nothing.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's like, that's like the, when you have your phone at night, I mean, having that phone and that, that blue LED light, like, beaming in your eyes before you go to bed can be so bad because what it does, I believe what it does, is that it

reduces the production of, I think, melatonin in your body.

And the melatonin is what helps start to kind of calm you down at night and helps you fall asleep.

So the light immediately stops the production of melatonin.

So then your body has a harder time falling asleep.

But you can also dim the phone, too.

You're supposed to actually dim it at night all the time.

Like now.

It's like dark mode.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dim it all the time.

I got those glasses too.

Yeah.

Blue light blockers.

Is that like the Dave Asprey ones or whatever?

I just bought them on Amazon.

Okay.

Because when I work on my computer or phone late night, I like to put those glasses.

What I've done on all my devices is every single one of them, I've turned all the blue light down.

So

have they all have a red tint.

Oh, you could do that on computers, yeah.

So I got to figure that out.

So on your Mac, you can just go in and, in fact, it's got a dark mode just like on your iPhone.

Yeah, it's got the same dark mode on your Mac that

you can use too.

Nice.

Alex, I've learned a lot, man.

Thanks for coming on.

Yeah.

It's great to be here.

Any closing comments?

Don't let bad sleep hold you hostage.

Wayne?

Hi.

Hostage tape, guys.

Check them out.

It's definitely a nice little hack to get better sleep.

See you guys next week.

Peace.