How One Man Went From Prison to Building a Fitness Empire (REDCON1) | Aaron Singerman 💪 EP142

33m

In this episode of Money Mondays, Dan Fleyshman sits down with Aaron Singerman, CEO and founder of Redcon1, to talk about building one of the fastest growing sports supplement companies in the world, overcoming massive personal challenges, and scaling a brand in a fiercely competitive industry.Aaron Singerman is an entrepreneur and visionary leader best known for creating Redcon1, a powerhouse in the fitness and nutrition space with hundreds of products distributed worldwide. Before his success, he battled drug addiction and rebuilt his life from scratch—turning setbacks into the foundation for a multi-million-dollar empire. Today, Aaron is dedicated to helping others achieve both physical and financial transformation while driving innovation in the supplement industry.Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇How to Build a Business (Even If You’re NOT Ready) 🏭 : https://youtu.be/NnCBHEEQL2IFrom Rock Bottom to $60M in One Year w/ Andrew Bachman 💵 : https://youtu.be/xd4DRx78o_QMaking Money Online? Here’s What No One Tells You | Dion Pouncil & Brandon Bowsky 💰: https://youtu.be/F3xUCSONZaEBoost Your Profits by Building Connections (No Investment Needed!) 🤑 : https://youtu.be/74E_xUFTG6ASubscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneymondays?sub_confirmation=1Watch ALL Full Episodes Here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k---The Money Mondays is a business podcast here to teach you how to make money, invest money, and donate money by showcasing some of the world's most successful people and how they do the same. Hosted by serial entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman, the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, this money podcast gives you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how the wealthiest celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and influencers make, invest and donate money.If you want to learn more business and investing while you work to improve your financial life, you're in the right place! Dan Fleyshman,The Money MondaysLearn more here: https://themoneymondays.comWatch all the podcast episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6kLet’s Connect...Website: https://themoneymondays.comPodcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-money-mondays/id1663564091Twitter: https://twitter.com/themoneymondaysLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-money-mondays/about/TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@themoneymondaysFB: https://www.facebook.com/The-Money-Mondays-110233585203220/

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Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity.

Our guest here has built up a very, very large business.

He's built up a personal brand.

He's helped a lot of humans get healthier, lose weight, build up strength and build up confidence and all the things in between there.

So we're going to dive deep into the different categories of what happens, not just on the investing and money side, but what happens about investing into yourself, becoming healthier, becoming fitter?

What does that do for your household, for your career, and for your life in general?

Now, as you guys know, these podcasts are under 40 minutes because the average commute to work is 45 minutes and the average workout is 45 minutes.

So this episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure.

Now, without further ado, our guest, Aaron, if you could give us a quick two-minute bio so we get straight to the money.

Sure.

So my name is Aaron Singerman.

I'm the CEO and founder of Redcon One, which is a sports supplement brand that has transitioned into also canned energy and beverage space.

So we started off thinking bodybuilding and fitness, which is my passion, and has transitioned into a much larger business.

For me personally, my journey is an unusual one because I started my life early as a kind of mixed up kid, a drug addict, intravenous, heroin, and cocaine addict who really didn't know where they were going to go in life.

I was lucky enough to decide, find, and pursue my passion of bodybuilding and fitness, get into the world of bodybuilding and fitness as an interviewer, like imagine like a Bob Costas of bodybuilding and fitness.

And as soon as I got pregnant with my first child, I realized that that's not going to make enough money to pay the bills and pursued the passion of supplements, sports supplements, which is something that I've been taking and passionate about my entire childhood, adult life, and was able to create success in that.

And it sounds like an upward trajectory from there, but the truth is there's been some very jagged falls along the way.

I went to prison along the way, following that same passion and then came back out of prison and continued the journey with Redcon One and have been able to have some explosive growth, even though I've had quite a bit of pitfalls along the way.

So it wasn't a journey straight to the top.

There was quite a few jagged edges along the way.

Well, I'm very excited to ask you a lot of questions then because I think it's important.

I think too often on social media, people pretend everything's perfect.

The perfect filter, the perfect story, the perfect household, the perfect child, the perfect relationship, the perfect, perfect, perfect.

Perfect is not relatable.

No.

And I definitely,

there hasn't been too many perfects.

It's been a struggle and a way, you know, one after another of obstacles that I've had to overcome, but I never got myself too down about any one of them and tried to figure out a way forward in a positive way.

And I think that certainly is relatable because most people don't just have this wonderful path to the top.

So on the make money side, there's so many different categories in personal training, weightlifting, competitions, creating supplements, creating products, opening gyms.

There's so many different things from a financial perspective in the health and wellness category.

You're doing a lot of them.

Not only do you have the supplement company, but you also have a gym that you built in Boca.

You've also got different divisions.

Now you started the Energy Drink.

Walk us through the different elements of your business empire.

Yeah, so initially it was about passion.

And, you know, I tell people a lot when we talk about, people are trying to figure out which their path in life is going to be.

For me, I was very lucky to have a passion from an early age.

At 13 years old, I fell in love with bodybuilding and fitness.

I always remember watching with my dad Predator and Arnold, Arnold, you know, the arm wrestling scene or Arnold Arm Wrestles.

Carl, and I saw that muscle and I thought, man, that's cool.

And my dad thought it was cool too, even though he wasn't really into all that.

And I pursued that passion and was able to find that.

And even through all of the downtimes and some of the really difficult times, I always had that interest.

And so

when I was able to get away from the drugs and take a good look at my life, the only thing that I had a consistent interest in was bodybuilding and fitness.

And being a tall, skinny Jewish guy by nature, being the next Mr.

Olympia or Arnold is very unlikely.

So I realized pretty quickly, like, I'm not going to be Arnold.

So if I'm not going to be Arnold, what could I be in the same space and make money and be able to pay the bills?

Honestly, at that point, it wasn't even about being a millionaire or a billionaire or any of that kind of craziness.

It's just about, man, if I could just follow my dream, pay my bills and do something fun, man, that just seemed like

100% the goal.

And so that is what I did.

I ended up focusing every bit of my energy on that.

I stopped doing the things that normal 20,

by the way, I was doing drugs and stuff till my late 20s.

So it's not like I discovered this early on and, you know, had this trajectory that began in my late teens.

It took me till, you know, 28, 27 to get off of heroin and to start following the passion.

But I stopped everything that everybody else does.

You know, I didn't go out.

I didn't go out with girls.

I didn't go to movies.

I strictly focused on how could I get into the bodybuilding space.

And I looked at people like Joe Wider, who's the father of modern bodybuilding, who discovered Arnold Schwarzenegger, and like Peter McGuff, who was the editor-in-chief of Flex Magazine, and other...

Jim Mannion, who was the creator of the pro-bodybuilding organization, IFBB.

I looked at these guys as my inspiration instead of the Ronnie Coleman's, the Jay Cutlers.

I loved all those guys, but I realized I couldn't be them.

So I put everything I had, all my attention, all my focus, all my energy into figuring out a way to get in.

And I got shot down over and over and over again where I would, you know, send articles for free to magazines and I would try to break in by, you know, emailing the hosts of the initial podcast when podcasts just started going out.

And I did anything I could.

And eventually I was able to break in and get a chance.

chance to interview one of my favorite podcast hosts on his podcast called Off Top Big Radio.

And that was what gave gave me the opportunity to then take that small opportunity to get my own podcast with this same gentleman.

And that got the attention of Muscular Development, which gave me a chance to do a podcast there.

And then so on and so forth, opportunity after opportunity, I pursued passionately with everything that I had.

And I did that, continued doing that same level of passion to discover sports supplements, which led me to start making actual money.

And I would say that

the journey to that was a long journey journey and it didn't happen overnight.

But by following my passion and pursuing it relentlessly,

at the sacrifice of quite a few other things in life, I was able to achieve a fair element of success by the time I was in my early 30s and made my first million dollars at 31.

So from drug addiction at 28 to a million dollars at 31, you can imagine you have to really, really give it everything

you got.

I've always had that ability to switch, you know, that sort of obsessiveness that is maybe not something that's easily taught.

I have this

unnatural way of being able to say, I'm going to do this and nothing else matters and focus out all of the noise.

And that can be a curse, by the way, for sure.

I'm sure it's probably part of the drug addiction, everything else,

is that same kind of obsessiveness that has made me successful in business.

So on the making money side, there's personal trainers that charge 40 bucks an hour and some that charge 100 bucks an hour.

There's gyms that charge 10 bucks a month and Equinox charges 300 bucks a month.

What do you think the difference is with someone that's charging small, medium versus large?

So I have a great example for this.

When I first got sober, the first thing I did was personal training.

It was the easiest thing to get into.

I loved bodybuilding.

I loved fitness.

I knew how to build muscles.

I knew how to work out.

And I went to a place, a wellness center in Houston, Texas.

That's where I was after I was born and raised in New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina sent me to, as an evacuee, to Houston, Texas.

And there, once I got sober, I worked at this wellness center.

And there was a guy there, Mike, another trainer.

And he was very busy, very upbeat, good energy.

And one day I pulled up in the morning with him and he had a brand new Porsche 9-11 turbo.

And I looked at him and I said, man, I said, this is the goal.

I told him, I said, Mike,

I'm going to get a Porsche like you, man.

You're my inspiration.

And he said, you're never going to get a Porsche like me.

And I was like, you know, my first, my first impulse was like, oh, you know, fuck this guy.

Like, you know, I was mad.

I was mad.

For sure.

And I said, dude, like, what kind of thing is that to say?

And he said, do you love training people?

And I said,

not really.

He goes, I love training people.

He goes, I love helping people here.

He's like, when I'm in the gym, I'm thinking about how to help them.

When I go home at night, I'm thinking about how to help them.

When I sleep and I dream, I think about how to help these people.

And as a result of that, I get great results and people feel that energy.

He's like, I watched you in the gym and you don't love it.

And I was like, yeah,

yeah, you're right.

You know, I don't love it.

And Mike charged a few hundred dollars an hour.

I'm charging $50 an hour.

He's got people lined up for him.

And it's the same thing that comes down to what we just talked about.

He had that passion.

And actually, that conversation with Mike, the trainer, made me sit down and think, like, what am I doing with my life?

What if I'm sober and I'm going to be, you know, if I'm going to make something out of this life, I should figure out what it is I'm passionate about because it isn't training.

He was right.

It just was kind of like a slap in the face to be told straight up like that.

Yeah.

But it helped me.

It helped me tremendously.

And I'm still in touch with Mike and he watches our my success and has applauded, you know, from the sidelines doing what he's still doing and loving what he's loving.

So it's interesting.

So why dive into the supplement space?

There's thousands and thousands of brands that are out there all over the world.

What makes your brand stand out and why dive into that category?

So I would say that when the brand began nine years ago, I had another supplement company before that.

I've actually owned quite a few sports supplement companies, about 10 companies over the entire lifetime of my career, where I've been a part owner or I've helped develop the products where I had some ownership portion.

And the one that I had sold previous to starting Redcon One, I sold my shares.

And at that time, it was already a really crowded space.

You know, when you go to the Olympia or the Arnold Classic or any of these big expos, you see these big booths, these companies, and they spend spend this money.

And then the next year they're gone.

And you're like, wow, whatever happened to these guys now?

Because it's competitive.

It's a difficult space to be in.

And so the reason why I initially got into it was because I knew that there was an ability to fill a niche and personalize the brand.

So when Blackstone started, there were very few owners that had anything to do with the brand.

And so I was ahead of my time.

Me and my partner at the time, P.J.

Braun, got in front of the camera and we personalized the brand.

And because we were two likable, charismatic kind of gym bros who didn't really know what we were doing, but people related to the fact that we're just two gym bros who don't know what we're doing and making it work.

People liked that.

People thought this is something I can relate to.

And now we have a lot more of that.

But that getting in front of the camera and personalizing the space was big.

When RedCon1 started, it was the same thing again where I had to figure out how I differentiate myself from the crowd.

What can make RedCon 1 different?

Obviously, we can make great products.

You know, that's obviously a big deal to make a great product, to sell it for a reasonable price, to do a good job marketing, because basically, sports supplements are a commodity.

Literally, you can have Dan Labs come out and you can take my exact formula and you can use my exact formula in one of our hit products like Total War, where our labels are transparently labeled.

So you have every ingredient on the back.

You bring it to a flavor scientist, you make the exact one.

So Total War, it's Dan War.

So it's just a commodity.

So if you don't have a strong brand and your marketing doesn't tell people who you are and what you're about, it's going to be tough.

It's going to be really tough.

I tell people when they say they want to start a t-shirt brand or whatever brand, you have to say, Well, what's going to make your t-shirts different?

Sure.

Why are they going to buy this t-shirt instead of that t-shirt?

Maybe it's price, maybe it's some quality, but there has to be something different.

So, for us with Red Con One, it came right down to the name in the beginning.

We decided in 2000, it's January 2016, I thought, man, to make this different, I already have the bodybuilding crew.

I have that group, right?

That's the low-hanging fruit for me.

But what I thought was different was in 2016, in January, the United States military was particularly, I felt like at a golden era of my lifetime where people really respected specifically special forces.

You know, it got more polarized quickly thereafter.

But in 2016, in the beginning, I was like, what a cool opportunity.

I have two good friends, Brandon Cruz and Ryan Bates, who are Navy SEALs, just retired.

And these guys are good looking, charismatic, smart, funny.

I can use these guys as frontman and I can create a company that stands for something.

Redcon 1 really technically means the highest state of military preparedness or readiness.

And I wanted to do a brand that had something where it stood for something, where it was a purpose-driven company.

And both of my grandparents, grandfathers, fought in the Korean War and World War II.

And my grandfather, on my father's side, it was a big deal because he was an officer who stormed the beach in Normandy and commanded men.

As a Jewish officer, it's very rare.

So I always was very proud of that.

And I thought, you know, in a different universe, if I hadn't done the drugs and everything, maybe that would be my path, right?

Maybe I could have went in that direction.

So I thought this is an opportunity to do something really cool where I can help service men and women.

I know the third part of the show is charity, so we'll save it for that.

But I thought that would a great differentiating way to do things so that the brand can stand for something more than just great products and a great formula, a great price.

So when things are a a commodity, it's easy to get someone to buy something once.

Not too easy, but it's easy-ish to get someone to buy something once.

How do you get someone to reorder, subscribe, buy it year after year, whether it's wear the shirts proudly, buy the supplements, et cetera, buy the energy ink?

How do you get someone to want to be part of the brand in perpetuity?

So I think for looking back at Red Con, it happened in a few ways.

Number one was because we built a strong brand that stood for something.

I think it was also very important that we had a really good social media team and that the message we were putting out resonated with people.

I think it's important that you have placement so it's easy to purchase, so you can get it.

The more available it is, the easier it is to repurchase.

At that time, we were really effective at direct-to-consumer marketing, direct-response marketing.

And so you had, by having a good product that people like and they want, and they like what it stands for, it means something more to them than just the protein powder.

And as long as, by the way, the product has to taste good.

If it's a garbage product, you're going to have an even harder time.

But we quickly built a community around Redcon 1 where we built the tier operator program.

And how it happened was very organic because the products were popular and we were doing well right off the bat and we had a lot of digital presence.

People started asking, can I be sponsored by the brand?

And I bootstrapped this whole thing.

I had no investors.

It was completely and totally my money.

I had to be very, very careful about where I spent my money.

And so there was a lot of people that reached out who said, man, I would love to be part part of this brand.

And, you know, they're asking for sponsorship.

And I had to say no.

And I said no a few times where I realized I was disenfranchising people by saying no.

And so the thought was like, okay, how can I say yes?

So we came up with this tier operator program where anybody who has a social media presence that doesn't have anything like, you know, outwardly like, you know, racist or nudity or anything doesn't fit with the brand ethos.

We had a very specific, one of the cool things we did with Red 21 that was different than any other brand I had is we created a brand book in advance.

Who are we?

What do we stand for?

What are our fonts?

What are our Pantone colors?

Who are we?

And then if you didn't

fit in the brand filter, which would be obviously somebody is a racist or whatever, right?

If you don't fit, you can't be in.

But if you do fit, come on in.

You can earn points.

The points will get you the ability to get free swag, free products.

And eventually, if you move up the tiers enough, you get money.

You get commission off of it.

And so building that,

it ended up being about 30,000 people towards the beginning that were all posting on social media, that were all participating in the brand, that love the products, that were willing to do work at expos and sampling events all over the country.

It was really neat when we went to Vitamin Shop originally and they said, hey, we're doing big sampling campaigns.

How many events do you think you can do?

I said, we can do hundreds of events a month, literally, because we can mobilize these guys and girls who just want points.

That's what they're doing for.

They want points.

And the points helps them get to the next level or get to the next piece of swag.

and they love the brand and they're coming there it's not a a pretty girl you pay a hundred dollars to go to the event and doesn't know anything about the products and just hands it out these are people that are passionate about the products so i think those are all key factors um on getting somebody not only to try it but to repurchase because obviously that's the key if you can get you don't need a whole lot of people if they're all buying regularly if they're all subscribed right you know you don't need millions of customers which is great that we got millions of customers, but that was not the original.

Honestly, my original thought, Dan, I left Blackstone Labs and I owned 33% of Blackstone Labs and we were doing about $10 million or so in revenue.

I'm sorry, $20 million in revenue the last year that I left.

So I'm like, look, if I can do seven or eight million dollars in revenue at Redcon, I'm pretty much even with where I was before.

And we were doing a million dollars a month within the first year,

which is really cool.

And almost all of that was direct to consumer.

So I passed up in one year, I passed up my biggest, loftiest goal at Blackstone, going, just, man, if I could just replace this income, you know, it's all me.

I own 100%.

I get to make the decisions.

What, what a win that would be.

But we ended up making

a little under 12 million the first year and a little over 30 the second year.

So it was like, you know, wildly successful, very fast, and very exciting.

So most companies come out of the gates, and if they did one or two million, that'd be great for the first year.

What do you think was the difference that you would do 12 million and 30 million right out the gate?

Well, I think there's, you know, unfortunately for the new person watching this show right now and goes, well, how do I recreate that?

It's tough because I had a few things out of the gate that people don't have, right?

I had connections, so I had relationships, which is a very big deal.

Very big deal.

As the CEO of a $100 million plus, you know, a nine-figure business, one of the biggest things that I do and my job is build relationships and utilize those relationships to get favors or a better price or to get our product run quicker or use that to meet other people that then help the business.

That's That's a big part of what I do.

Other than keeping people accountable and motivating the troops, kind of, so to say, that's a big part.

So I had these relationships.

I had some money in the bank, which helps for sure.

So I wasn't, even though I was bootstrapping it, I was able to start Redcon1 with a dozen employees.

When I started Blackstone, it was just me and my business partner.

I didn't have the money to afford to even

have a person to pack the products.

I packed the products and PJ really packed most of the products until we hired our first person.

And by the way, funny how things are difficult when you just get going.

I had a difficult time

making in my head the sense to pay anybody to pack the products because, like, I can pack the products.

You know, you start thinking you can do everything better than everybody else.

And then, obviously, if you want to scale a business, it doesn't work like that.

So, knowledge, industry knowledge, the ability to scale because I had the cash, and the ability to have the relationships.

For example, one of our manufacturers in the very beginning, I ordered $500,000 of product to start in cost of goods.

And he said, you have 60 days to pay me back.

And I was able to sell all $500,000 of products within the 60 days.

So there was no cash needed.

So he goes, how much money did you need to start?

I didn't need any cash.

I needed relationships and the ability, obviously, to sell.

If you can't sell the product, then that's a problem.

So when's the turning point for someone out there listening that they went from making 80 grand to 100 grand, 100 grand to 150, start making some money for their household and for themselves?

When's the turning point when they start to consider maybe investing into other things, whether it's real estate, crypto, angel investing?

There's so many different options out there.

We don't have to get into that part.

But

when did you decide?

You know what?

I'm going to start to diversify a bit, start investing in other things.

You know, I...

As I said, by the time I was 28, I really had no money at all.

And I started generating money very quickly because I used that obsessiveness.

As soon as I had an opportunity, I looked for another opportunity, look for another opportunity.

And I distinctly remember saving up the first few hundred thousand dollars in the bank and feeling like this is unbelievable.

The first thing we invested in was a house,

a down payment on a house.

So I don't know if I would recommend that these days the same way as I would have, you know, 15 years ago.

It was very different.

But then pretty much all of the initial investment that I had went into investing into myself and into businesses.

I didn't start investing into like equities and real estate and stuff like crypto for years, honestly, which I'm not saying is the right way to go.

I think

it's smart to take a portion of your income and start investing in index funds and stuff like this very early on.

The earlier, the better, 401k, et cetera.

But I don't think I started doing it until after I had a million dollars or so in the bank, where I started thinking about it because I was so single-mindedly, narrowly focused on the business stuff that when somebody said, well, you can make an 8% return, I'm like,

8% return.

I buy the product for $10 and sell it for $50.

What do you mean?

So it's difficult.

It was difficult to get my head around it until you start thinking about the future and building generational wealth and your kids and other things like that.

So it took me a little while.

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

It has what's called either diminishing returns or you just don't need that much capital for the business.

And that is typically a time where eight percent sounds really exciting because now you don't want the money just sitting in your piggy bank oftentimes people save up a hundred grand their their savings account and they don't realize that if that money's not moving if it's not being invested well the hundred grand spends like ninety two thousand next year yeah then it spends like eighty three thousand yeah and you try to buy a ford truck and that ford truck was 50k now it's 54 000 yeah and it's 59 000.

so it looks like you got a hundred grand but do you really because it spends a lot differently and so at some point you can't invest into your company anymore because your business is generating.

Absolutely.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy at some point.

Okay.

For

people that come on as executives to businesses that want to get equity into a company, how can they have a discussion with you?

Like, hey, I worked in this industry for 22 years.

I want to come work for RedCon One.

I've got all this experience, but I want to get 1% equity, for example.

How does someone have that discussion and figure out what are they worth?

Sure.

Well, I could tell you initially, back when I started, I didn't even understand that principle

where you would want to retain

or acquire a valuable employee that is vested into the business, where they're not just saying, hey, I'm just doing this because I want to make enough money to pay the bills and go on vacations, whatever, save for my 401k.

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

Of course.

More than I care to

remember.

But I think that when you're thinking about approaching a business owner like myself,

that that's really the key is that saying, hey, I'm here for the money, right, to work, but if I'm working my ass off and I'm putting everything into this and you exit one day, I want to be able to participate in that and I don't want to be poached by somebody who offers me more money.

I mean, we just recently had, you know, one of our beverage guys in the beverage team,

he left for $25,000 more at a different account.

And it's like, man, I wish we would have even had a chance to talk about it.

Talk about it, sure.

Yeah, because he went from one to another, and this happens a lot.

And so one of the things that we've done at Redcon is basically carve out a piece of the business so that we can give key employees equity

that'll be vested over time.

And if there's a transaction or something happens, they'd be able to take advantage of that too.

Because the truth is, you know, if you are a very valuable player, you don't want them to leave.

And you don't want to look left and right and see who's making more.

Because if that particular gentleman had a small piece of Redcon and he was able to go work at a much bigger company, let's say like a Celsius, hypothetically, and they don't offer anything like that, does the $25,000 a year matter more than the opportunity at something big at the end, the golden parachute, right?

So I think approaching somebody, you also have to be reasonable, obviously.

So when somebody is...

You end up asking for 14%.

Right, right, right.

You be reasonable and then also

know your position, right?

And like, so for example, if a graphic artist, which we have a lot of great ones, came up and said that, it would be like, man, like, not such a reasonable ask, right?

Unless you're the graphic artist or you've done such great work, or maybe this is a time where you've shown how much work you've done, then it's the appropriate time to ask for something like that.

So you have to be careful because I know for me, if the wrong person asked me that, I would be, I would want to like, I'd be like, well, see you later.

Because I would write the person off in the fact that they're going to leave to go somewhere else.

So you have to know the right time to do that.

And I think as a business owner, you have to realize that this is a competitive marketplace.

And if you have all-stars,

there's a good chance that they are going to get offers and their offers could be better than the one you're

and you can lose people.

Yeah, my agency has been around for 14 years, and I've had two people leave, and the two people, I forced them to leave.

I was like, you need to go work at this company.

One of them had to go work for ClickUp.

I'm like, ClickUp's worth $4 billion.

Go, I get it.

Go work for them.

You get a little equity in a huge company.

And the other one ended up starting a mobile app company that I'm a part of.

But outside of that, no one leaves me.

And because I'm obsessed with what you said, replacing someone is really hard.

It's hard.

Because you have special.

It's in tech.

In tech, too.

I mean you have somebody that's key that's doing something for you in tech um cpg is a little less like that but still it's important right

yeah you get someone that has the relationships with costco and oh yeah whole foods and trader joe's and gnc and they leave sure other people might have a connection too but it's different when they just got a phone call versus that employee that had 16 years and they can call johnny over at gnc and he's like hey buddy yeah of course bring absolutely bring red con one over here relationships matter i mean relationships matter and and if you can if you lose somebody that has a great relationship, there's no guarantee your product better be damn good.

You better be selling and turning at a very fast rate.

Johnny can go to the other one and say, hey, you know,

switch them.

Yeah.

It could happen.

For sure.

Okay.

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

Well, for the consumers, I think it's important because there's so many options, right?

And so you want to put your, you know, I think it's, at least for me, I know I do,

I let my dollars do the talking for me.

So if I believe in somebody's, the, the, the business ethos or what they stand for, what I believe they stand for, I'm going to be much more likely to spend my money with that business versus the one, and we see this all the time now, you know, you're starting to see it more and more.

When Redcon came out, and even really to this day, if you think of all the sports supplement companies, there's not many that stand for something in particular.

You can't look at them and go, this is what they're about, right?

They're about this.

You have people with, like, so for example, military charities and military purposes.

You see companies that maybe do it for Fourth of July, but they're not doing it every day.

You know, for us, every can of Redcon Energy, one cent of every can goes to a military charity.

Right now, Gary Sinise Foundation, but we do online voting.

People can switch.

We've done millions and millions of dollars to many different charities over the entire lifetime of Redcon One.

And I think that that is.

that is important.

I think it's important to do good with your money.

And

I think that it speaks to the consumers.

I think it speaks to investors.

I know when I talk to buyers at Circle K or and we talk about that, you can see the

matters to them.

They light up on the fact that we're doing something good and they're supporting United States servicemen and women and their families.

A lot of our stuff is gold star families, the people that have given their lives, men or women that have given their lives in the line of duty or in relation to their service, and their kids are without a parent.

And that speaks to everybody.

Nobody goes, ah, who cares about that?

and uh and it's so it's it's it's multi-pronged you know it's it we're helping people it actually helps the business and it makes me feel and everybody feel good about it yeah so there's only one question that i ask on every single episode for the last 200 ish episodes and i've never gotten the same answer you build redcon one sell it for a billion dollars you then build another brand sell that one for two billion dollars over the course of your career Okay, what percentage of that net worth do you leave to those children later on when you pass away?

Yeah, so I have three little boys right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if I have some more.

So

the thought is that right now, my thought, obviously this can change because I'm 45 years old and as I get older,

grandkids, hopefully, you know, I have a live a lot longer and

I get to see these guys develop.

But my thought would be something to the extent of

I would figure out a way to do it where they get money or get part of the money as they get older.

As opposed, yeah, as opposed to stages and very well thought out and not something that I would

here's 84 million in one check no it's not I just feel like it's a right when you people and I know and this is a big question when a lot of people that have have generated generational wealth this is something that people really contemplate and think hard about because they don't want to do a disservice to their children which can for sure happen so I think for one making sure that they realize I tell my guys already because they already ask me oh am I going to get this will you give me this do am I going to be the CEO of Red Con I tell them all you need to work.

You're not owed anything.

Asher, my oldest, said, Hey, can I have such an, I forget the kid's name, come over and swim in my pool.

I said, You don't have a pool, buddy.

Where's your pool?

And he's like, oh, yeah, you're right.

Can you swim in your pool?

Yeah, he can swim in my pocket.

Come in my pool, right?

Because that's like Shaq.

He's like, you're not rich at that rich.

Right, exactly.

So I think that's important, though, telling them that at a young age.

So in terms of percentage-wise, it's very difficult to determine.

In Jewish, in the Jewish faith, we believe the first thing you do is you help your family.

Your tzadaka, your charity is to your family, and then it's to your community, and then it's to the rest of the world.

So I believe that

I would do something where at first I help out family, and then my community at large, and then the world.

So I would, if I were to throw out a percentage right now, and let's say I have billions and billions of dollars, you know, I would think I could do 50-50.

That's what I would think in my mind.

And of the 50 that I give away, I think a good part of that would be to additional family members, and a a good part would be community and the rest would be to bigger purposes and things that mean something to me in the world.

Yep.

All right, so where can people find you across social media personally and for the brand?

Sure.

Every one of my social media handles is just at sign Aaron Singerman.

And then the brand is redcon1.com.

It's also sold everywhere from Amazon to Walmart, 80 countries worldwide, United States military, Vitamin Shop GNC, grocery stores.

And it's expanding.

We're in 20 plus thousand Circle K, I'm sorry, C stores, not just Circle K.

We're also in Circle K.

And that continues to expand really rapidly.

Hopefully everybody's going to be seeing Red Con 1 everywhere in 2026 because our resets for the beverage business is happening right now.

And so we're hoping to go from 20 plus to 50,000 C stores by the end of next year.

So I like it.

Exciting, exciting for sure.

All right, guys, for these podcasts, just keep in mind it's not just for you.

These type of episodes could be useful for your friends, family, and followers, people from your past, present, and future.

You might be at a lunch one day and someone's like, oh, I want to start a supplement company or a beverage company.

You could then afford them this episode and have these discussions that are really important to them.

And that's what I call the butterfly effect.

If you might help someone out there learn how they can go scale a $100 million business like he did, that could be the butterfly effect that changes their life to help them save money, make money, and everything between.

So as you guys know, we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money.

I think that's ridiculous.

We have to have discussions about taxes, loans.

Should I buy this?

Should I lease this?

Should I rent it?

What should I do?

And we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about it.

You have to be able to talk about it.

It is not rude.

It is not, money's not the root of all evil.

It's part of your daily life.

It's part of your bills for your mom, for your children, everyone in between.

They need money for supplies, items, travel, medical supply, everything in between has some parts of money.

Now,

as we do this, and the reason for the podcast's success is you guys liking, commenting, subscribing.

When you share this podcast, especially an episode like this, where it is really big for someone that's in the CPG space, beverage space, supplement space, health space, people that are in your life, they may enjoy this episode by you liking, commenting, subscribing, it helps us.

Because right now we're number 55 in the world and it's up to you guys by doing this by sharing this episode and talking about money with your friends, family, and followers.

I appreciate you guys and we'll see you next Monday on themoneymondays.com.