This is the full transcript for Episode #289 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Dr. Juan Salinas – Food Scientist Bodybuilder, Founder of P-nuff. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Dr. Juan Salinas 0:00
There’s always a way. Even when it seems impossible, there’s always a way.
Max Branstetter 0:19
Well well welcome back to the Wild Business Growth podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning, who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer, at MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode 288 point no just getting to 90 and no 289. I messed that one up. Today’s guest is Dr. Juan Salinas. Juan is the Founder and CEO of P-nuff, or P-nuff Crunch if you look on the bags, and they are the crunchy, puffy, peanut puffs that are absolutely delicious. And they’re made from navy beans, peanuts, and rice. And in this episode, we talk everything from his basically stripping on Shark Tank. More on that in a bit. Some Mark Cuban tales, experimenting with all sorts of food and tastes and his entrepreneurship journey. And everything from his fitness tips. He is in decent shape, I will say to life as a food scientist and sports nutritionist which does not roll off the tongue. It is Dr. Juan or Dr. J. Enjoyyyyyy the showwwww! Aaaaaalrightyyyyy we’re here with Dr. Juan Salinas, Founder and CEO of P-nuff or P-nuff Crunch if you see it on the bag, but super cool, delicious, dare I say crunchy company doing some really, really cool things in the space. One, so excited to talk to you for lots of reasons and lots of different stories and insights today. Thanks for joining. How’re you doing today?
Dr. Juan Salinas 2:16
Thanks, man. Thanks for having us, bro. This is awesome. I’m excited that it’s up to you, man. I’ve been waiting for a long time for these guys.
Max Branstetter 2:24
Yeah, yeah, of course, I made you wait for about 10 years, that’s when we first met. We were in a bodybuilding competition together is a really cool kind of origin story of how we got connected in the first place. So people ask me all the time, like how do you find your guests? Like you find them online? Do you like use like an agency? Like how do you and like there’s a million different ways to reach out to guests and to have fine entrepreneurs, people doing cool things in the space. But not often are you going to the grocery store your weekly Sunday routine to the shop right in Hoboken. And there happens to be a really cool brand sampling there. So shout out your buddy Vincent on the team who I spoke with and then tried your product and was blown away and found out about your story. And the rest is history. And here we are today. So so obviously, sample sampling works not just for selling product, but for for getting on podcast too.
Dr. Juan Salinas 3:15
And that’s how you usually would have met me in person there because I do a lot of those sampling events to some of the time we’ve been since I’m by myself, but um, I like doing them and I like getting in touch with with people, the consumer, you know, you learn a lot from sampling. Yeah,
Max Branstetter 3:31
it’s a great thing to do. And you get the you get the pulse of the people and, and the corny podcasters out there, sometimes. But another thing that I learned from Vince in that day was that you were actually on Shark Tank. And another thing that’s really cool, as you know, we’ve interviewed plenty of shark fellow Shark Tank entrepreneurs on this show. But I think you’re the only one that has ripped his shirt off and flex to six pack for the sharks. Where did you get? Where did you get the courage to go? I guess half buff on national TV.
Dr. Juan Salinas 4:09
I’m gonna answer that question. But it’s funny that you mentioned that because yesterday we were talking to you know, one of the one of the guys from Mark Cuban, you know, we meet with them weekly basis. He was telling man, like, yes, like, I don’t know if anybody has actually taken off his shirt in Shark Tank. And it’s like, if they have then hasn’t been as memorable as you because I don’t remember the others. It’s like and I’ve seen every episode. So I was like, I don’t know, man, that will be pretty cool to research and see. I don’t know, am I you know, do a lot of bodybuilding. You know, I’m a natural bodybuilder. So, to me big enough to share there. It wasn’t completely out of whack, you know, because I’ve done some competitions before. It was kind of an idea that developed with the producers of Shark Tank. Because they were you know kind of asking me about out, you know, my life and who I was and everything else. And that came up and they were curious about I was still active doing that. I was like, Yeah, you know, do a show, once a year. And it’s like, well, you know, if you consider doing something similar, you know, the show, and I was like, really? Are you really asking me this was like, you know, it could be a cool, cool thing I like, like, I’m in the prom last man that was during COVID, you know, and every game was close. And obviously, you can’t stay like ripped me like 24 hours, like, every day, right? Like, usually go through some periods where you’re trying to gain muscle, so you’re getting a little fat with it, you know? So I was just chilling man, you know, COVID time and, you know, trying to do my workouts at home. And then I agreed to do this, I was like, oh my god, it’s like, I don’t even have a gym, how am I gonna do this? You know, but uh, I kind of came up with my own little fitness plan that I did at home, I kind of follow that man and the diet that I usually do before competitions. And that’s how I went, you know, prepare myself for shark. And I have that, by the way on our website, and I have the fitness plan that it is, so people can check it out in there. It’s kind of interesting, you know, approach to getting credit. Perfect.
Max Branstetter 6:19
That’s a little teaser, I definitely want to talk some fitness stuff later. But appreciate the behind the scenes there who knew that there was such a sexy side to Shark Tank. People don’t tune in for the the stripping aspect of it. But you’re a real innovator in this space. So that so there you go. Speaking of that, I’m a huge you can say I have a man crush on Mark Cuban, I went to Indiana University. So you know, always looked up to him as as an entrepreneur, and I even learned about him back in my high school entrepreneurship class. And just he’s just incredible. We can talk about Mark forever, but just a little, like, peek behind the scenes, like how would you characterize who mark is like in person and actually working with him in business versus kind of like just what you see as the Hollywood version of Mark if there is one?
Dr. Juan Salinas 7:09
Wow. Mark, when the first the first thing that Mark did after we made a deal with him, you know, I’m from Honduras. He knew that, you know, I even told him that in the beach. Soon after, there was a big hurricane that happened in Honduras, it was a major disaster. We, you know, man that he sent me an email is like, Yo, so like, I know that this happened, and there was I want to donate X amount of money. You know, it was a pretty large amount. And it’s again, put me in contact with some organizations that were there. I was like, Oh, my god, this guy is amazing, you know, and then, you know, the other thing that he does still is like, he’s always responsive, you know, to your questions, most of the time, you know, he likes to, to communicate through email. And I’m sure everybody wants to, like, talk to him. So it makes sense, right, that, you know, he reads his emails probably at night after watching the maps and broadcasting, but he always responds, man, within a day he’ll, you will have a response. And I’d gotten responses that are coming to me at two o’clock in the morning, you know, three o’clock in the morning, so I know, he’s still working at that time. So that’s pretty cool, man. And the other thing is, like, his email man is is open to anyone. Yeah. If you have something to say, that he would do to you when it catches interest. I mean, I’ve known people that have asked me about as like, I’m sorry, I’m an email, you know, just do a catchy subject or something so you can get his attention. And he actually responded to them, you know, that it’s that kind of guy, man. You know, it’s a it’s really a people’s guy, you know?
Max Branstetter 8:48
Yeah, that’s, that’s a really heartwarming, really cool story there. And, yeah, I had heard that about his email that he was way more accessible than you’d think. And a little embarrassing, but I’ve said it on the podcast before. Like I’ve reached out to him in the past to see if he wants to come on the podcast and of course talking about the IU ties and entrepreneurship and everything and like, he politely respectfully declined, but the fact that he responded at all and responded within like 20 minutes I think it was it was like just can’t do it now. Sorry. Thanks, Max. I was like, wow, like this This guy’s a real one.
Dr. Juan Salinas 9:28
And I made a deal with him. I get the same answer sometimes.
Max Branstetter 9:34
Oh, no, that’s okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, go Hoosiers. I want to go back to day one with enough what kind of planted the seed for you in the first place about creating some sort of like your own food snack line.
Dr. Juan Salinas 9:51
You know that the idea? I guess it was already in my head for a long time. It wasn’t exactly that idea. But I knew I wanted to do something related to the sports nutrition space, I know that because I might, you know, my last job before I became an intrapreneur, I started my own company. I was working for Nestle, and I was working for their performance Nutrition Division, which is pretty cool. Because we used to work with a lot of athletes. And we were working on developing products for them, like you and I remember powerbar, you know, that was the first bar that was a bar that was made strictly for by a marathoner. And that was the whole thought, you know, that you can eat this bar while you were running. And it wouldn’t upset your stomach, again, it will give you the energy you needed to run the whole marathon. That was the first bar, right. And eventually, Nestle ended up buying that company. And that set up the base for what it will be, you know, a whole incentives of creating products for athletes of all kinds. So that’s where I came in, you know, I came in as a product developer r&d guy coming up with new ideas, and new products that we’re testing with, with, you know, athletes, which is pretty cool. They also had another division in Australia called Musashi. And that was more of a bodybuilding division. So I was really interested in that because I was doing bodybuilding back then, I wanted to create like a 50, patent 50, gram bar, you know, protein bar, and we did it, we did it. And actually, there’s still sell it there. It was a really good, they still are working around so many products, and so many ideas. I’m used to like be like, Man, how can we can do this? You know, okay, what can we do something a little more, you know, more friendly to not just the athlete, but every day warrior, you know, you want to call and I remember attending a, we used to do a lot of consumer testing. So we’ll bring, you know, consumers from straight into like a facility. And we’ll have a whole bunch of questions that we ask them, you know, just trying to find out more about their preferences, you know, what they thought about protein, what they thought about carbohydrates and things like that. And one of my takeaways, man, one of the sessions was like, you know, every product has, like 20 grams of protein at the time, you know, there was a few that had 10 grams, so they have five grams. And we were like, well, everybody should probably prefer the 20 grams. Yeah. And I came from the bodybuilding was like the i 150. But what we find out is that, you know, your average, you know, person that goes to the gym, that have a family that have kids, you know, anywhere between five grams to 10 grams was sufficient to them. And actually, they didn’t want any more than that. And we didn’t have any products like that we were trying to develop products with higher levels of protein. So that kind of, you know, implanted an idea on my head about like, Hey, man, you know, what if we had some really cool, tasty product that will deliver some protein not so high, you know, for like for an athlete, but for the everyday get person? And that’s how can I started the whole thing. I think, I don’t know if every entrepreneur goes through the same process. But to me, it was like, I know, I want to do this, when is the right time to do it. And if you have a cushy job, you know, making good money is pretty hard. So what did it for me is that there was there was a shift and the company, they wanted to sell off the division. And they ended up selling it off to post. And at that time, we’re like, okay, you know, you can go to a pose, or you can just take a package, and I was like, you know, I’m gonna take the package, and with some of that money, I’m gonna use to start off with my idea and just go from there. And that’s how we’ll start it. And then then it was like, okay, which idea? You know, I had like, a whole bunch of different ideas and the peanut PAF idea came from, I went to a trade show, and there was a company there that was a peanut company that’s trying to sell you peanuts, you know, and they have been working with another big corporation in trying to develop extruder products, which are like, you know, like Cheetos, you know, that kind of texture. And they have may one that had peanuts in it. And it was not very good, tasty, but I was like, Oh my God, this could be a really cool idea, you know, especially because they knew the properties from nutrition point of view, I was looking at products you know, and I was thinking you know what peanuts are like really good nutrition. And then they have mess around with with beans. So it’s like, oh, man, beans and also another super food. So that’s how you know it all started and then you’ll it’ll come down to start trying different ingredients, beans. I started combining beans with rice and started combining beans with peanut and then I created this matrix, you know, that I called it a complete protein profile. You know, I went to make sure that, you know, whatever protein I was offering, hat and Every amino acid that is important for your body. So that’s, that’s how it all came about. And you know, the main thing, like you said, they’ll have to be like tasting, you know, and so I was like peanut butter, everybody loves peanut butter. So I was like, I gotta make sure that, you know, this thing tastes good. And, and the peanut, you know, was just like a no brainer.
Max Branstetter 15:20
And as you enter that, I know, your main combination of ingredients is navy, beans, peanuts, and rice, which is, we’ll call it your, your holy trinity of ingredients. I know, like, if you’re making any Cajun food, they call it like the holy trinity of like, onions, bell peppers, and celery. It’s like, that’s what you got for years. But like how much and we don’t need to extend this interview for like, you know, several years. So you can give us all the details. But like, how much experimentation was there in there and getting that right mix that trinity of, you know, main ingredients for you?
Dr. Juan Salinas 15:56
Yeah, I mean, it took me probably about a month store. And that included some, you know, testing in the kitchen, to go in into a facility where, you know, because this product cannot be just made in the kitchen, you know, it has to be made by a real processing machine, which is called an extruder. And so I had to go find a company had an extruder and then start experimentations. There. It took me about a month to kind of come up with the final recipe,
Max Branstetter 16:26
and what was the big like, Aha moment within that journey of like, Okay, now we’re now we’re on to something,
Dr. Juan Salinas 16:34
ya know, so one of the biggest challenges we had was to, you know, I wanted to have my label be, you know, beans first, you know, and then I wanted to have the ingredients after, like, beans to me were like, so important. And we were having a really hard time, you know, basically making that first ingredient. Because every time we did the product will come out flat, you know, too hard. It didn’t have that texture that we wanted it was we started trying different things. And once we got it, man, I was just like, yes, you know, finally, I was almost like, everybody was just like, just don’t worry about it. It’s like it’s still in the label, you know, just like, you know, the mauri like, leave the rice first or whatever. I’m like now that’s like persistent, like I wanted to be first. Well, it’s gotta Cool, man, we finally got there. I was like, Yeah, tell you guys, we knew that we could do it, you know. And that’s a lesson learned to make. Because, you know, if you have something I know you have to pivot. But, you know, for me, it was so important that the nutrition piece, and there’s always a way, you know, and even when it seems impossible, there’s always a way. Yeah.
Max Branstetter 17:46
Yeah. And how do you I mean, I’ve never create other than just like, you know, cooking concoctions here, I’ve never, like, developed a food brand or anything like that. And I’m always amazed, just like, how do you find that right mix where it’s like, there’s the positive benefits for you health wise, with it being you know, like low calorie or like some brands, low sugar, you know, like, how have you been, in your standpoint? How have you made sure that like, there’s the emphasis on like, health and like good amounts of protein, while also making sure it’s like on the lower side, calories wise? Yeah,
Dr. Juan Salinas 18:20
to be honest, man, the beginning of it, the stars, just like you described it. You know, like, I know, a lot of Intrapreneurs have started with a recipe the their mom had, you know, and so that’s your base, right? And now, if you want to make that, let’s say healthy and nutritious, then you got started looking at okay, the first thing is, okay, what does my nutritional facts panel looks like, of this recipe? And then you see, okay, this is this is good, it’s got enough fiber, but maybe too much sugar, you know? So it was like, Okay, how can I reduce sugar? And that’s when your food, you know, us food scientists. So what we did? Okay, what are some of the tools out there? That will help me reduce the sugar? You know, maybe he’s using stevia? Or maybe he’s using monkfruit or something else, you know? Are you can you go down the line that way, you know, and that’s, that’s kind of how you do it.
Max Branstetter 19:14
And that’s actually you stumbled on another part I was wondering about is like, taste like taste is so important. Like, no matter how healthy how protein heavy something is, like, something’s not going to fly off the shelves if it doesn’t taste good. And it’s not going to get recommended to people. So like, what was your approach? And you and even like, as you expand it to different varieties, different flavors, what’s your approach of being like, alright, this is you know, this is doctor wants certify this hits the flavor profile I’m going for.
Dr. Juan Salinas 19:41
Yeah, and it’s funny, because the I was talking to today, earlier a couple hours ago, suddenly to a director from one of the flavor companies, a mother raising a panel, you know, later in the month, I was talking to him and he was okay, you know, but at the end of the day, everything’s about you You know, people only cares about the flavor, right? And obviously, you’re right. It’s like, that’s the number one thing, it doesn’t matter whether the product scan, you know, all this great nutrition and all these awesome ingredients, if it doesn’t taste good, people are not going to buy it. And they’re saying, and the other thing is cost. As they give you still expensive, you know, people probably want to try, but they’re probably not going to become part of their their everyday product. So there’s a balance there. And you know, the problem is that a lot of the healthy and nutritious products are very expensive, because the ingredients are expensive. So for us to make a healthy product, we had to buy ingredients that are probably three or four times the cost of the alternative. You know, like for me, I could have used corn easily in on people, you know, it’s a well accepted flavor, right. And most snacks that you see like mine, like the strudel type, like the genotype, they’re all made from from corn, and corn, it’s really cheap. You know, yeah, it’s a little corny. But there’s no nutritional value to it. But you know, the way that I stuck when I started, I went to make sure that the product that I made was well accepted in terms of flavor, right? So what I did is I went to a local high school in Caldwell. And I had a friend there. And she was a teacher. And she was like, Yeah, I want to just come in and say, you know, let’s try let the kids here. I tried the product. And, you know, it’s like, we’ll develop some questions. It’s like and figured out, you know, how much they like it. So I did that man, I just went to, for a whole day, I went from class to class. And I just had this mean, my products and throw prototypes that I’ve done. And I basically had them taste it. And then you know, they basically answer some questions, and then analyze the results. And I was like, Holy crap, this is really good. Like, you know, I had, until I used to work for Nabisco. So I used to work. You know, our gold standard was Oreo, you know, like, the scores that you get from Oreo, it’s just like, every product that we develop, we wanted to score as good or better than Oreo, because we knew that that was going to be a really good receptive product. You know, I had, you know, I was trying to see, you know, okay, can I beat Oreo with my product, you know, there’s a taste of it. And I came, I came very close to it, man, very close to what Oreo is, which is amazing sauce, like, we got a good product on here. You know, that’s how I knew that product was gonna be good. And then, you know, the other line extensions of our different similar approach. I didn’t go to the high schools, I don’t get that. But I always do, like, a lot of inquiry, you know, to people that I know of people that I don’t know, like, I want to make sure that, you know, people don’t don’t care about give me their feedback, you know, whether it’s good or bad, like family usually don’t want to hurt your feelings. So you want to go to people that, you know, don’t care. You
Max Branstetter 23:00
want to go to people that hurt your feelings. Yeah.
Dr. Juan Salinas 23:05
I want to know the truth because I don’t want to spend all this money developing the product, and then only my family.
Max Branstetter 23:13
By the way, you were, I think, just in the nick of time with the, we’ll call it the focus groups of school students eating because my, my wife is a teacher in Jersey as well. Like, one of the things that blows my mind about schools these days is like, I don’t know, maybe this is more her district or her age group, but they don’t like give out food anymore. Like they don’t give out snacks or anything like that. So like I like I remember growing up, it was like, oh, Valentine’s Day, like, we’d all give each other a little treats and stuff like that. Or like Halloween, there’s candy everywhere. And I feel like that’s tougher these days. So it’s like, I feel like you you got in at the right time before it’s like, less acceptable everywhere.
Dr. Juan Salinas 23:49
sucks, man. It’s getting out of control there, man. You know, one of the things especially piano do you think, right, I’m gonna write this one. I did it like, this is a high school that I went to. I didn’t go to elementary school, you know, which I’m sure they have more strict rules about food and especially peanuts, because some people are allergic to it.
Max Branstetter 24:10
Yeah. But by the way, my shout out my brother Andrew, who’s – he’s a doctor as well. And he is allergic to peanuts. So he’s gonna love this interview is like in your face. No, no, but everybody else is huge. in advance. Yeah, butters.
Dr. Juan Salinas 24:24
Well, you know, unfortunately for him, I don’t know, you know, whether he’ll be able to get rid of that allergy everybody.
Max Branstetter 24:30
Right? Yeah. He always he always likes my mom here. He believes my mom so well. Partially
Dr. Juan Salinas 24:37
is right. Partially he’s right. Because there’s a lot of research now that’s come up, where it’s like, the issue is that when we’re going on, you know, when we’re born, you know, we’re still protected from everything. And one of the things that the dogs are telling moms is like, Do not give your kid you know, peanuts until they’re like five years old. So by that As they’re five years old, and you know, they haven’t built an immunity to peanut protein, so there’s a very good chance that you’re going to be allergic to it. So you know, the new studies, what they’ve done is like, they actually have changed now the recommendation to be six months. So when a baby’s six months old, they’re saying, start introducing little bits of peanut in their diet. And that way they can develop that immunity. I
Max Branstetter 25:27
have one more addition to this tangent here, because it’s way too relevant. We just interviewed back in episode 283, Katie Thomson from a company called Square Baby. Like her whole premise is, I mean, healthy and like well balanced baby foods that are like, you know, delivered. It’s like a subscription service, but also comprehensive allergen introduction. So like, we talked in detail about like, yeah, like, you got to, you know, there’s different types of foods and ingredients that like, you got to introduce your kid to certain points, and like, she’s got a whole base about that. So that’s really cool, we come full circle here.
Dr. Juan Salinas 26:06
They should drink water, you know, out of the faucet, man.
Max Branstetter 26:11
We’ve got to guess about that, too.
Dr. Juan Salinas 26:14
You know, I grew up in Honduras, man, I can’t even I mean, probably the dirtiest water out of the faucet that you can get. And we used to drink it, you know, right out of it. And like, I got any it’s gone through man, I don’t get sick.
Max Branstetter 26:28
Right, flawless immune system. In terms of though, beyond schools, in terms of actually getting your product into customers, and by quote unquote, customers, I mean, retailers and stores, how did you start to get momentum now, like not considering Shark Tank, which obviously provides spikes there? But how did you get your first like big customers like, again, is like how I found you at ShopRite here,
Dr. Juan Salinas 26:55
you know, that’s, that’s the hard part of the not so much fun part of being a food intrapreneur. You know, it’s pretty tough. It’s not easy, there’s just too many products out there. Too many good products and too many new innovation. And too many also products that are like, owned by big companies, you know, so you’re fighting for shelf space, it’s like real estate, and there’s only enough amount of real estate. And if there’s already products that are, you know, are producing money for, for the groceries, then, you know, the amount of real estate available is very small, you know, for new brands, so you’re trying to get into that new brand new real estate, and what you have to do is like previous prove to them that you are worth being there, and they’re making a good bet by you being in there. So, that’s hard when you start because you have no traction, you know, so what I did is that I, you know, I literally just put a backpack on man, and then walked out, and I went from store to store, you know, trying to just present my product and try to sell product. And I got into a bunch of independent stores that way. So I had a group of like, I don’t know, 2030, you know, stores, and I was doing to deliver it to them, you know, I didn’t have a distributor back there. So that kind of game started, you know, at least I had a little story not to tell. And then I got a distributor and with the distributor there start expanding into more independent stores, you know, and eventually now I have a prequel story that could go to a shop, right? You know, and tell them, hey, listen, you know, we’re selling here, we’re selling there. You know, we live in Nam, and some of these big companies like ShopRite, Whole Foods and all that they’re looking at independent stores to that, I think keeping an eye on some of the good independent stores. And if they if they see that you’re doing well, you know, over there, they might be like, okay, you know, that’s interesting. Let me see your product. And the other way that I got into some of the bigger, you know, stores was through trade shows, like I go to this big trade show in California, there’s another one here and in the East Coast, you know, used to be Baltimore than Philadelphia, and you meet buyers there. And it’s not easy, but at least you make that first connection. And then it’s just about falling off falling on Open. At the end of the day is it’s almost like you gotta become friends with the buyer, and have him give you a shot, you know, and if you have data even better, yeah.
Max Branstetter 29:40
Those relationships are so important. You mentioned that you’ve used I mean, you still are in many ways, but you used to be so hands on to the point that you’d be like distributing yourselves and like going to all these places yourself. I guess more like mentally for you. Like, how has that transition been to get More people on your team get more help to the fact that like you don’t, you’re not doing everything, how have you evolved as a business leader with that in mind,
Dr. Juan Salinas 30:08
you know, the thing is stuff now, I wish I had, like, shoot, you know, a full crew of people, you know, that are dedicated to every part of the business. But the reality of every startup, it’s like, you just don’t have the money, you don’t have the money to go get, you know, everybody that you want. So you got to learn how to do everything. You know, I think every entrepreneur starts that way you learn everything, and then you lean on the expertise of your friends, you know, maybe you have a friend that, you know, has been in sales, and then you know, start asking questions and figure things out that way. That’s where they’ll start. Eventually, you know, as the company starts to grow, then what I’ve been doing is that I actually do what we call fractional, hire fractional experts. So fractional sales guy, or a fractional, you know, Chief of marketing or, you know, I mean, you know, because because you still can’t afford someone full time, you know, with all the talent. So, basically, you get somebody at a fraction, because there’s different companies that they’re working for. It’s different, because you don’t have full control either of your staff, you can enforce your, your way of, of doing business, well, you know, somebody else’s is an outside business. That’s a difficult bar, but from the economics, it works. And, you know, eventually we’ll want to bring more people and staff, you know, and have him be full time with us.
Max Branstetter 31:43
In any full time gig as an entrepreneur, or a podcast host can be really, really, really tough. And if you’re looking for a little pat on the back, encouragement, encouragement, and one of those if you’re an entrepreneur or a podcast host, or both, then the podcasting to the max newsletter is for you. And I just, I am totally sober and I slurred the word newsletter so that’s a little preview of what’s to come there. You can sign up and Max podcasting.com/newsletter It is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship tips, as well as some of the corniest puffy as crunchy as jokes known to humans, you can sign up at Max podcasting.com/newsletter. And then it’ll come to your inbox. Every Thursday might even be a voice crack or more slurred words there. Speaking of corniness, let’s get to this incoming alliteration. So let’s go from fractional to fitness. And I couldn’t resist asking some fitness questions here. So let’s switch it up a bit. I want to start off with like the mental side of fitness, like fitness has been a huge part of your life, bodybuilding competitions, you know, like Olympic level swimmer, you gotta you know, I’m I feel like I’m like hyping you up for a boxing match years like standings? 7.3. And I’m just gonna, no, no, but obviously, in great shape fitness has been a huge part of your life, how does fitness help you out just from like, a business and work life balance standpoint,
Dr. Juan Salinas 33:18
I tributed everything to sports, and fitness. You know, it’s amazing, because when I think back, one of the one of the things that I think my dad, you know, forced me to start doing sports in a way, this is one of the things that I have to thank him for the most is because, you know, sports gives you everything that you need to be a good intrapreneur I think the fact that that is, first of all, you know, it’s a long road, you know, it’s not instant gratification, right? You got to train and train and train and train and train to get better, you know, and eventually reach a goal. And then you keep going, you keep going. And it’s a long process. When I was swimming in the swimming team, you know, it goes from learning how to swim all the way to trying to be, you know, the guy next to you. Right? So that takes a lot of time and training. And that’s the other thing, it’s about putting in the time, you know, and sacrificing like, we had to go training twice a twice a day and once in the morning was really freezing. And but you know what your sacrifice, you know, you learn to sacrifice and not to be comfortable doing you know, not to get things being comfortable, you know, you gotta feel uncomfortable and, and suffer, you know, and, you know, you can I’m sure you could talk to every entrepreneur and they’ll tell you same thing, man. It sucks. It sucks to start a company because there’s a lot of you give up a lot. You know, you give up your time you give up your vacations, your money, your financials. You know, some people have even given up their relationships, you know, because of business. They Find that I’ve had some sort of experience with that, through sports, it kind of set my mind up to Okay, yeah, I know, I could go through this, you know, I’m not quit, I know, I could go through this and not quit. There’s a direct relationship, I think, between, you know, exercise and sports. And we in a good enterpreneurship, the only thing that it does now for me, because I go, I work out just about almost every day, right? I love hitting the gym, after work. And what it does for me to the man, it’s like, that’s the one time where I’m not fully thinking about the business, every one of the time, you’re always thinking about it, you know, there’s always something, but when I’m at the gym, and I go in a different mode, and he helps me calm down, it helps me look at things better than looking from it from a different view, rather than trying to solve a problem and that you get into it. Now, I’m like, I step back, and I can look, you know, after the gym, I kind of like have a different issue with it helps me with stress, you know, I think it just stresses you, and just helps you, you know, mentally and physically, you know, I love it, man, I will regret for anybody to get into a routine exercise program. It’s,
Max Branstetter 36:19
it’s a real shame that you don’t enjoy working out and you’ve never seen any results from it. So sorry about that. Well, someday, one day, one day, maybe maybe one day, you’ll even be on TV. But I think that’s a really, really good way of characterizing it. Both fitness sports and entrepreneurship have, its sucks. But I love it. You know, it’s like there’s that like anybody who did sports growing up or fitness now it’s like, Ma, my wife’s the same way with running right now. Well, she would argue that she hates running, like there’s no positive. But obviously, there’s perks that come out of it. But entrepreneurship, sports, when it’s really, really tough. Like it’s, it’s really, really tough. And there’s a lot of people out there that want no part of it, but also in like the long term or like when you have those moments where you’re just kind of in that flow state or think of new ideas or just having pure fun. Like there’s so many benefits of it. And you look back fondly on that, like I, one of my favorite sports to play growing up was football, American football, sorry. But I think that like one of the, I look most fondly back at like, two days, you know, like those two, two and a half weeks of the football season where you had to practices every day. And I mean, me growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, it is so humid. And you know, it’s like 90 degrees and humid. And you have all these football pads on and they literally weigh you twice a day to make sure that you’re not going to faint and like, you know that it was really tough. But I also look really fondly back on those moments. And it also taught me the skill of discipline, which I feel like discipline is something that for any entrepreneur is like so crazy important. And so I’m with you like there’s incredible parallels there. But I am curious as well, on your side, you mentioned going to the gym after work pretty much every day. Like what’s your routine, it doesn’t need to be the need to lay on every rep. But what’s your routine look like? These days? Like how long are you typically there? What’s what’s, what are your favorite exercises to do really, really cool. I gotta learn from the master.
Dr. Juan Salinas 38:25
Row, the time that I spend at the gym hasn’t changed since I was like, you know, 17, which is when I started working out. And I spent about two hours, you know, and a lot of people say that’s too long, but I enjoy it. And it’s my time, you know, now the way that I work out is different now. Because you know, I’m 55 now so I can work out like I used to when it was a teenager, you know, with like heavy weights and just like trying to max every time you know, every time was just like less Max’s Max. Yeah,
Max Branstetter 38:55
yeah. Well, that’s what I say too, but it’s just my name. So
Dr. Juan Salinas 39:00
but like, I can’t do it anymore, man. Like, like, I will injure myself, I’ll probably break something, you know. So I learned that my body now is the reacts better if I go like lower weight and do a little more reps. You know, I still want to get that burn. I still want to get go to the max, you know, but I go to the maximum a different way. So I do a lot of this tabernas stuff. You read the Tabatha training style? Yeah,
Max Branstetter 39:25
yeah, that’s, um, I know on the peloton. workouts, they talk about that. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Juan Salinas 39:30
So I have my own version of it, which is, you know, I use the principle, but I still use it with like, you know, heavy weights, and I go, you know, instead of going 100% Maybe I’ll go 50% On the weight, but then I’ll do you know, four minutes with 22nd on 10 seconds res like that for four minutes. A man I’ve seen great results like that. And I actually incorporated that into into my train. Any program, which I’m going to use for Mr. America this year, you know, I’m going to try and who was the American trying to get the classic bodybuilding metal then? I think it’s gonna work out.
Max Branstetter 40:12
Perfect. Well, I’m going to train for that too. So well watch out we’re you know, arch enemies now let’s see. Exactly. Use I’ll be the guy ripping my shirt off at an inappropriate time. Let’s, let’s wrap up with some rapid fire q&a. Are you ready for it? Yeah, let’s do this. All right. All right. These are all slow question asker. So this is perfect. Well, maybe we will speed up the tempo. And we really question exactly. This is just called q&a then. What I know you one of the places you study was a pretty, pretty unique situation to look like pretty unique opportunity that you did some studying with the International Olympic Committee, IOC. What was like the coolest part of that experience that you still take with you today? Oh,
Dr. Juan Salinas 41:11
and like, everything was so awesome. Like, I was learning stuff that I was like, oh, man, that’s why my muscle hurt. Oh, that’s why I’m not getting bigger. Oh, that’s why I’m getting tired. That’s why I hit the wall when I was running. Man, it just basically explains everything to the you, buddy, as a machine, you know, works like and what kind of things you should be doing to it. So that you don’t, you know, you can improve performance. You know, and then I was working with with like, at the I was working with like the top nutritionist from Australia, the one that was like creating all these meals for the athletes and for all the Olympians who believe that, you know, we’re like, kind of like talking back and forth and creating ideas and, and creating new products for them. And like, this is pretty cool.
Max Branstetter 41:56
And then were you on the Michael Phelps eating regimen where it’s like a trillion calories a day. What is it? What does he have like three large pizzas? You know if there ever was in St. Yeah, that’s more of a workout that is swimming.
Dr. Juan Salinas 42:12
I remember Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson. No. This is Mike Tyson routine for food. For him was like steaks used to eat like shitload of steaks, man. Potatoes, that was what it was, like 10 times a day.
Max Branstetter 42:31
Sounds like an ideal day for me now that I’ve been a stick never gets old but But speaking of swimming, what if you could only do one type of swimming stroke for the rest of your life? What would it be?
Dr. Juan Salinas 42:45
Breaststroke. How come? I can breathe, man I had to put my water you know keep my water in the water all the time. And I was like, I was like, Yes, this is cool. I’m going out.
Max Branstetter 43:04
And then what is the most beautiful place in Honduras?
Dr. Juan Salinas 43:09
Oh, are you well, you know, wrote and is is considered one of the nicest areas there. But I love I love everything we you know, we have a house down in the south and in the south southern part of Honduras, which not a lot of tourists go to. And it’s just beautiful man. It’s just it’s kind of like on touch nature. You know? So I love that but you know, most there’s go to a draw town which is also amazing.
Max Branstetter 43:38
Is there like a national meal like food dish from Honduras? That is like really really tasty. Oh,
Dr. Juan Salinas 43:44
yes. Baleadas. Check it out.
Max Branstetter 43:46
How do you say it? Baleadas. What type is that I’ll have to look it up after take
Dr. Juan Salinas 43:53
a look at it man you might have there might be a place near Hoboken where you can buy im which what
Max Branstetter 43:58
would you compare it to?
Dr. Juan Salinas 43:59
I don’t know. It’s kind of like a burrito but it’s not this is a flour tortilla. And they put like refried beans in it with like some cream and you could put meat you can put eggs in there and you’d roll it up and you
Max Branstetter 44:12
could crunch it up for something enough that’s like all things burritos. There you go. New new new lineup idea for
Dr. Juan Salinas 44:26
social media.
Max Branstetter 44:27
Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it anytime. But last one here. Food Science. I always thought food sciences like a really cool area to study or have a career in what what’s your favorite aspect of being in the world of Food Science?
Dr. Juan Salinas 44:43
Yeah, I mean, I wasn’t an engineer man before I switched to food science. So the reason why I liked it is because it’s real and it’s like stuff that you would all eat all the time. And then to see the stock your stuff in the shelves of supermarkets. I thought it would be pretty cool. And it involves everything from physics to chemistry, biology, you know. So I liked that, that it was all all the different sciences. And at the same time, it was like, you know, something that you can tangibly touch and see and produce, you know, like, it’s cool. And you know, that’s why I liked it.
Max Branstetter 45:21
And you could even get crunchy with it. Well, why do you Dr. Juan Juan, thank you so much. This has been an absolute blast. I did try enough before and we had some of the cinnamon ones, which were delicious. Now we got to try some of the other ones as well. I think at the store, we might have had the peanut ones too, but so so good, and so puffy and crunchy, and just Yum, delicious. So really appreciate all you doing for coming on today? Where is the best place that people want to try pay enough for them to get their hands on it and their tongues on it? That doesn’t sound right. As well as if they want to connect with you online. Where’s the best place to for them?
Dr. Juan Salinas 45:59
Okay, so if you really like tri-state area up here in Northeast New Jersey, New York, ShopRite will be a good place to go to we just started with kings Wegmans, right? So and then in August, we’re going to be in Whole Foods. If you’re outside the tri state area, Amazon, and our website, which is p enough.com. Bn ufl.com. We offer all the flavors there, which you can find in the grocery, usually groceries only carry two or three. But we have five total. So you can get all five on Amazon or on a website.
Max Branstetter 46:37
That’s like Pokemon gotta catch them all. So you got to try and get up enough Amal gotta crunch them all. Just the whole marketing agency for you right now.
Dr. Juan Salinas 46:47
For contact though, like you can contact me directly one, pinata calm. That’s my email. But you know, we have all the social media stuff. And so peanut crunch, which is, you know, peanut funding crunch on all social media, you know, tick tock, Instagram, Facebook, you know, we have a YouTube video, we provide a lot of really cool content, Matt, we make the content, but I actually like making the content because it kind of gets me back into the sports nutrition thing. And we talk a lot about stuff that people have questions about sodium, you know, carbohydrates, protein, sugar, you know, all that stuff. So check it out. For sure.
Max Branstetter 47:30
Perfect, all great stuff. And we’ll say with email, you’re just as responsive as Mark Cuban. So good company there. But and then last thing, final thoughts. Just a quote, a line wherever you want. Just like one piece of words of wisdom to send us home here.
Dr. Juan Salinas 47:45
You will make any shot that you don’t try, right? So definitely. If you have passion for something, try it. Don’t be scared. Try. What’s the worst that could happen? You know, you didn’t make the shot. You fell What are you thinking? For all you know, I think everybody’s a winner if you take a shot. So just do the shot man. Take that
Max Branstetter 48:12
Original quote made popular by Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott, and Dr. Juan Salinas. Thank you so much, Dr. Juan, for coming on the podcast, sharing your incredible P-nuff-excellent story. And thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the Wild Business Growth podcast on your favorite app, and subscribe on YouTube for the video versions on YouTube that is @MaxBranstetter. Make sure to tell your friend, all of your friends all at the same time or at separate times about the Wild Business Growth podcast and to subscribe follow on your favorite platform. You can also find us on Goodpods where they’re good podcasts and podcasts recommendations. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship and corny puns, even puffy puns. And you can sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
