Patrick Schwarzenegger: Co-Founder of MOSH

Episode 318

Listen and learn from Patrick Schwarzenegger, Co-Founder of MOSH, as he shares all about his entrepreneurial journey, including Co-Founding a company with his Mother, Maria Shriver. We hear all about MOSH, why he created it, and how building a company from scratch is tougher than he imagined. Plus, he shares about growing up with famous parents who have been focused on giving back, his passion for activism and speaking up about his acting career, and of course, his entrepreneurship. So excited for you to listen. Today on #TheKaraGoldinShow.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be, you just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi, everyone. It’s Kara Goldin from the Kara Goldin show. And I am super thrilled to have Patrick Schwarzenegger with us here today. He is, amongst other things, the co founder of Mosh and if you have not heard of Mosh you definitely need to try it, check it out all of those things. So Patrick is passionate about activism and acting, but also entrepreneurship. And he has been investing for years in different startups. But he decided to put his best foot forward and go ahead and start a company. he co founded Mosh with his mother, Maria Shriver, who we’ve had as a guest on the show as well. And she is absolutely terrific. And as I mentioned, he’s been an investor. So I’m excited to hear what he thinks about being kind of on the other side of things. And we learned along the way, and also just super excited to talk a little bit more about Alzheimer’s and kind of the work that he’s done also with Maria on that, too, so very excited to have you here. Patrick, welcome.

Patrick Schwarzenegger 1:50
Thank you. Thank you for having me. What an introduction. I’m blushing. I’m blushing.

Kara Goldin 1:54
So let’s start at the beginning, I guess the beginning of Mosh. So I’d love for you to tell everybody what is Mosh?

Patrick Schwarzenegger 2:01
Yeah, I mean Mosh is. It’s wild. I mean, we’ve been working on Mosh we’d like to save for 20 years in the making due to my mom’s experience in the brain health, you know, wellness and research area and specifically with Alzheimer’s. But really, Marsh is a mission driven company, we aim to educate consumers about what they eat impacts their brain health. Our first product line is a brain bar, which is an on the go superfood, nutrient dense protein bar with brain benefiting ingredients, we raise money for the women’s Alzheimer’s movement, we’re just really here to hopefully tell consumers that they’re in the driver’s seat, that there are things that they can do today that will impact their brain health tomorrow, and five years from now and 10 years from now. And diet is one of those top pillars. So that’s a little bit about Mosh. And like I said, this is a company that my mom has been dreaming of making and wanted to find a way to really create a for profit company. But that was also a B Corp. And that raised money and donated back and created research and all of those things.

Kara Goldin 2:59
That’s awesome. Well, as I mentioned, and you touched on your mom has been really, really active on the Alzheimer’s movement, specifically the women’s Alzheimer’s movement. Both of us share relatives who have been impacted. We’ve been impacted by Alzheimer’s. And what I’ve learned and very much learned initially from Maria was that just because you have a gene does not mean that you will actually get Alzheimer’s and so everything that you’re talking about around paying attention to what you’re putting in your system is really, really critical. Plus Mosh is just absolutely delicious. It’s an incredible bar. I should say. The the initial Mosh is absolutely delicious. And it’s great for your brain, as you mentioned. So that’s really, really great. It’s also so front and center with food trends right now. Did you have any idea that you were kind of jumping in when this is such a hot topic amongst other companies, too, that are really launching products that are specifically geared towards food trends like this?

Patrick Schwarzenegger 4:09
Yeah, I mean, I think you mentioned it in my my beautiful intro that he did for me, but I’ve been an investor in the CPG better for you health and wellness, food and bed space for 1111 years now. I mean, I started when I was in high school when I had absolutely no idea what business was what investing was, I was just a struggling consumer I was I was getting really into fitness and weightlifting and I was really struggling to find these delicious foods that still had the nutritional profile that I was looking for. That was really healthy and and so I became an investor based on that. I was really trying to find young entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs that were tackling this industry of providing Americans with a healthier, better version of what was out there on the grocery store. And so as the years have gone on and my my portfolio has grown, you know, bigger and bigger You know, really, like I said, we invest in the companies that are providing the healthier alternatives. So super coffee is the low sugar. You know, Starbucks Frappuccino liquid Ivy is the low sugar Gatorade, Blaze pizza was the healthier, more transparent Domino’s you know, all the pop or Poppy is the healthier soda so on so forth. So I stay really active and up to date with trends in the CPG space. And during COVID When I moved back home with my mom, brain health and cognitive functionality and cognitive decline was actually I think that that that year of 2021 was the third fastest growing trend in CPG, behind Kido and hydration. And she had always wanted to build a company around brain health and around cognitive functionality. And I said, you know, this is a, this is kind of a perfect time to do it, you know, I’m home, I’m living with you, I’ve got more time, you’ve got more time, this is a space that’s really growing some of these functional ingredients and mushrooms that we have inside our bar are really growing and gaining, you know, brand identity, like lion’s mane and UltraPro ganda and, and other vitamins. So I said, you know, this is the time to build it. You know, it’s definitely the hardest time to build a company. But this is, this is the perfect time to do it. And that’s what we did. So I don’t want to say that I called it with these ingredients, because there are brands that that were way more pivotal than what than what we are right now in introducing these ingredients, you know, for Sigmatic goalie, they they bought most of the supply chain with the ashwagandha mud water, which I’m an investor in have pioneered a lot of these putting these mushrooms on the map. So kudos to them.

Kara Goldin 6:38
That’s awesome. So did you always think you were going to be an entrepreneur?

Patrick Schwarzenegger 6:42
You know what I think was funny. I I met Warren Buffett once with my with my parents when my dad was governor and he he said can I give you the best advice that I could ever give you and he said start young and I remember my dad growing up my mom they would they would have me do lemonade stands my one of my big birthday gifts when I was a kid was the got me one of those kind of like self driving truck like little cars, you know that kids and they got me the truck version. So I could put my my lemonade stand table in the back of the truck and I could drive down to the end of the street and, and my parents would teach me about buying these Crystal Light packets and pouring it in the water and how much of those costs and and then now you put those in there. And if you sell it, you have to mark it up this much percent. And that’s what the profit is, and all these different things. So I was always in love with the business idea of things. I didn’t know where it was going to take me. But I always was just in love with it and kind of how to make $1 into two and, and my parents started me really young, they had me always kind of learning firsthand what business was. And I know lemonade stands sounds so small and silly, but it was my first grasp on what business was and how to generate a profit. And, you know, in in middle school, my dad put me in charge of his memorabilia, which was really cool to learn about. And he allowed me to use his likeness and image on T shirts and in photos and it was all for charity. But he allowed me to go in to learn how to use this image and mark it up. And then I started a clothing company in high school that I sold off. And then Blaze pizza was my first real external investment. And once that happened, that’s when I got consumed in this better for you health and wellness industry. That’s when I said you know what, I love this space. Because I was a consumer of it right now. And like I said I was a struggling consumer of it 15 years ago, you know, we’re thinking about when you started hint water there was there wasn’t none of these types of companies that were the better for you health and wellness. You know, Vitamin Water was the healthiest drink, you could find totally, that was still loaded with 30 grams of sugar. So this idea of consumers could go out there and find products that tasted really good. Without all the sugar without all these other artificial ingredients, artificial flavoring or all these different things was just non existent back then. And today, we have so many entrepreneurs that are pioneering new food technology and things that that are tackling this this space.

Kara Goldin 9:12
So a lot of what you’re talking about too, is not just launching a product, though, but also launching new categories. And you know, it’s hard, right? You’ve got to educate the consumer about what these ingredients are. There’s probably some people who are thinking that they’re, you know, what are mushrooms is this some crazy hallucinogenic thing that Patrick is is talking about right now, right? Like you’ve got to talk. You’ve got to educate the consumer when we were talking about launching hint and an unsweetened flavored water. I always tell people that it wasn’t until we actually got some competition that the category actually started to grow because the education when you’re just the only one out there doing it. It’s like, you know, you think when the competition comes up Oh boy, you know, this is gonna be tough. They’re they’ve got better branding money space than I do. But the reality is, is that your competition is actually a kind of good thing because it builds awareness for the category, but you’re doing something now that is really building out the category and the Y. How hard is it? To do that? I mean, I guess you’ve been on the investment side of things. Now you’re on the ground floor of the operating, what would you say to other entrepreneurs about this?

Patrick Schwarzenegger 10:30
Yeah, I think, look, I think you’re totally correct. And I think that when you started hint water, it was a totally different environment than what it is today, right? I mean, we have the benefit of being direct consumer, we get to build out a website that has a whole about us a whole section about our ingredients, a whole page about our mission, a whole page about the benefits of of eating a mind diet, or a healthy brain diet. So we get to educate the consumers once they get to our website. And for people that are listening, you know, are the mushrooms that are inside the bar, definitely not magic mushrooms or anything like that, you know, they’re things like ashwagandha, or Lion’s Mane that have had beneficial cognitive functionality events, and have been helpful in different you know, people that have been taking those those mushroom extracts. In like I said before, there have been plenty of brands these past few years that have really put some of these mushrooms on the map, and customers are hearing about it and knowing about it way more so than if we were to try to launch this brand 510 years ago would have been way, way more difficult. So I think, like I said before, being direct to consumer and allowing us to educate our consumers on our own website has been really big and huge. There have been plenty of other brands that have put these mushrooms and certain ingredients on the map. But as a whole brain health is something that’s an exploding category. Sure, right. You know, my age range. They really care about the short term benefits, you know, we want caffeine to wake us up right now we want things to help us study and focus at at work, we want things to help us relax in the afternoon and sleep at night. You know, in my people, like in my mom’s age range are way more interested as brain health, you know, kind of holistically and ritualistically. So the things that they can take each and every day to just help their overall brain health, we call it the long term brain health. And so it’s been really cool to kind of speak to two different generations and utilize my mom and myself and our relationship and kind of our co founder, dynamic to speak to those different generations. But I think that brain health is an exploding category, you know, mental health is an exploding category in cognitive functionality is and it’s gonna continue to grow. And we’re seeing different stores, you know, really care about that. I mean, CBS built out a whole brain health section of their store now, you know, we were talking with target and other people that are interested in doing that as well, because, you know, people are really interested in this in this space.

Kara Goldin 13:03
That’s awesome. No, and I totally agree. I think it’s becoming more and more important. So we talked about entrepreneurship. I know how close you are to your parents, but specifically your mom. I think it is so cool. As I was doing some more research on this, obviously, the everything that she’s done around Alzheimer’s, but I think you know, your legacy and building a company with her is just really, it hit me in the heart, right? It just, I think it’s really, really awesome. On many, many levels. Did you always think that you wanted to do that, like with one of your parents? Like, I’m looking at my kids right now. And I think, you know, I don’t know, maybe one day, but I think if you asked him now My oldest is is 23. Like she’d say, No way, I’m not building anything.

Patrick Schwarzenegger 13:51
It was never in my, my mind that I was going to do that. You know, the thing was that my mom had kind of pitched this company idea to a lot of different people. And a lot of people weren’t interested in going after her demographic, they weren’t interested in going for women that were 40 to 60 plus years old. They felt that it was way more hip and cool to go after the millennial generation and this new exploding, you know, space that was viral on social media and all these different things and, and it wasn’t until when when COVID happened, you know, I moved back home with my mom. And that’s when I said you know, Mom, I I know you have this dream to create a brand that’s revolving around brain health. And that’s mission driven. Like let me use my background in the CPG and it’s better for your health and wellness space to get it off the ground for you. You know, I want to make your dreams come true. I believe in you. You have 20 plus years of research in this in this space. Diet is becoming more and more of a thing that that’s interesting people low sugar you know sugar is one of the main culprits towards degeneration of brain health. So, the low sugar trend and diet as you know within water has become You know, exploding more and more year over year. And I said, let me just do this for you. And it’s been the most rewarding experience that I could ever imagine, both on this on the scale of getting to work with my mom, getting to make her dreams come true and actually bring this brand to life. And lastly is just the amount of information that I’ve learned. I mean, I thought I was a good investor before this, but you don’t learn nearly as much. And so your your boots on the ground, you know, when you’re going through the thick of it, and you’re you’re having to deal with, you know, working with the different commands and the comment agreements, and this supply chain disaster and ordering ingredients, you know, eight weeks in advance, 10 weeks, 12 weeks in advance how that impacts your cash cycle. Now, you know, there’s so many things that you’re just learning that you would never know, in a business course, or being an investor in a company or anything like that. So it’s been the most rewarding experience that I’ve had, and to see how much money that we’ve gotten to raise for Alzheimer’s, the lives that we’re impacting just the customer kind of journey and reviews that we’ve gotten, it’s just been such an amazing experience. That’s great.

Kara Goldin 16:12
So one of the things that I know, I think a little bit about you, but also loved seeing this, and the research that I was doing is that I think you, you just try a lot, right? Like you just throw stuff at the wall to see whether or not you’re gonna be able to do it. And I think that’s, that’s your life, right? You it’s not just as an entrepreneur, or it’s stuff that you believe in stuff that you’re really passionate about. And you have just decided I need this, I need to figure out how to make something happen, right? You take responsibility for it, and, and you go and do that. There’s a lot of people who won’t do that. Right. Like they, they think I’ve had amazing experience, maybe they have, you know, a giant name, that they’re worried about what that would look like if they went out and tried. But I admire that you’ve been able to just go and try and do something, even though I’m sure you have people saying, Patrick, why are you doing this? You know, you don’t need to do this. And, and I think it really speaks to the concept of failing and how so many people don’t want to fail. I know you don’t want to fail either. But But it happened some time, right? You you will try things, is there anything, anything that comes to mind that you can give as, as kind of thoughts of wisdom along the way, maybe there’s a story where something has happened, where you just feel like, you know, gosh, that didn’t work out the way that I wanted. But I learned

Patrick Schwarzenegger 17:45
a lot. Failure is such a tough subject for so many people and and, you know, whether you can, you know, really acknowledge fear or failing, or you can’t, I mean, it’s really what, you know, one of the root causes for, for so many people why they don’t do anything, right? We’re scared of failing, what happens if we fail, what do other people think of us if we fail, that’s usually the largest of it today is we’re so worried about what other people think of us, right, we start to allow other people’s opinions and ideas of us really impact who we become. And I think growing up, you know, just kind of seeing like, that my my parents had and just how my dad always was so confident in himself and what his path was, and his, his vision for himself for his life really had a massive impact on on myself. And I’m a big believer that, you know, self confidence is a just a huge, you know, driver of ourselves believing in ourselves. And my dad would always tell us kids, you know, when we were growing up, you know, what’s the worst that will happen? You know, if you fail and you fall down, you fall down to three feet, there’s, there’s the floor, and you get back up, that’s what he would always say to us kids, and he would have us, you know, hey, just dropped down to the ground right now. And we’d get down and you’d be like, That’s how far you’ll fall right there. And then you get back up, and you can go do it again, and never worry about what other people think of you. And don’t let that impact you know, your vision and where you want to go in life. Because the worst thing you can do is be like everybody else, you know, you need to utilize your life, your platform to go out there and make an impact help other people and deliver the life that you want to live. And so I’m always a believer, I’m never, of course, I’m worried about failing. I don’t want to fail, right, but I’m not scared of of failing. You know, I think that it’s exhilarating to go out there and try new things, you know, to step into new places that you’ve never been before. And that’s how you really learn and how you grow. And you know, with Mosh I mean God, we’re off to a massive start, and it’s been a great success, but we’ve had multiple multiple PIP falls throughout this first year. You know, and I’m a big believer that, you know, it’s not a failure, if you learn from it, and you grow from it, and you don’t make it happen again, right to failures, if you have, you know, something happens, and you keep letting it happen, happen happen over and over again. But, you know, from running a company, I mean, your first production never goes as planned, you know, your ingredients don’t come in correctly, you know, you’re all of a sudden, there’s a supply chain, whoa, and you have to get a new ingredient supplier, you know, we had flavor problems. In our first production we had, we sold out of our product in the first week, and we couldn’t get new product for eight weeks plus, so people that were subscribing weren’t getting their their second orders. You know, we had, I mean, we had every little problem that you could have for a startup. But again, the benefit of it was you you learn and you grow. And now we’re not making those mistakes. And I think that one of the biggest things was being transparent with our customers, you know, we would send emails, and we would do videos with marine and myself and say, you know, hey, look, as this is, we’re, we’re new to this, you know, we’re operating this company from from our house, and, you know, we just sold out and we ran out of product and ingredients, and we didn’t do their art, our forecasting, correct, we’re suffering, and we’re gonna get back to you guys. And people just really love the transparency and honesty, that kind of came from it. But yeah, I’m a firm believer that, that your everyone’s going to fall down in life, we’re all going to have errors that we make, we’re all going to have pitfalls in our business and our life and our relationships. And it’s always about how you bounce back. And I know, that’s kind of cheesy to say, but if you learn from that experience, and you grow, and you get better, you’ll end up on the other side, a stronger person. And, and I truly believe that team’s, you know, me and our other employees become way stronger through some of these pitfalls. You know, we look back and it ends up being some of the best times of our company is finding ways to actually get through those, those downtimes and make it out on the other side. And I think that’s what life is really about, you know, too often today. We kind of coddle each other and we find ways to not have failures, we do everything we can to make sure that we don’t have these fall downs in these these pitfalls in these in these failures. And yet, I’d actually think that they’re quite important, you know, there are what builds us and makes us stronger, and gets us to the other side. And, and, you know, I have had more failures within our first year of Mosh than I did for the years before my life, and I’m really thankful for them. And, and yeah,

Kara Goldin 22:32
I’m sure, you’ll also be a better investor for all of the things that you’ve learned along the way, if nothing else sympathetic stuff that you’ve been through, but also you’re you’re just much more knowledgeable. I was just interviewing somebody who is now on the venture side. And she has been on the operating side of b2b. And she’s really focused on b2b investments and being an operator on the b2b side. I mean, she’s just she really understands it. And she said, like, it’s amazing how many investors actually have never done the operating and haven’t, haven’t done the zero to 10 million haven’t done, maybe they’ve worked in a large company and done the 200 million up. And, you know, but but there’s a lot of things that can happen in the early stages. You’re learning?

Patrick Schwarzenegger 23:26
Exactly. And it’s funny, you said that, because when we started this company, was talking about that, exactly. She was like, you know, should we hire a CEO? You know, should we go out there? Should I talk to some of my friends and see if I can find someone from a big company and, and I told her, I said, Look, there’s there’s, it’s two different types of people, someone that grows a company from zero to 1 million, 1 million to 10 million is completely different than a person that grows a company from 10 to 50, or 50 to 100. You know, there’s no one that’s going to care about this company, in that zero to 1 million phase with that zero to 10 million phase then then we will, you know, it’s our baby, it’s your baby. You know, this is the company we’ve grown from scratch, you know, we’ve we’ve got to do the beginning. Let me do it, I want to learn anyways, and I’ll care about it more than anybody else will, you know, and and it just takes a different mindset and a different scrappiness and a different type of entrepreneur not bashing the people that take it from 10 to 50 million they have a skill set that I know that I definitely don’t have but I couldn’t agree more that it’s just getting in the weeds of it and and learning and just having to navigate each and every little thing in the beginning. You’re wearing so many different hats and the team is so small and lean and it’s just like it’s, you know, it’s

Kara Goldin 24:44
your involvement and your passion and your reason and everything you guys know I think is just absolutely critical. So I love love, love getting a little bit more information on the company and seeing you as well. Thank you so much, Patrick. We’ll have everything in the show notes. And everybody needs to try Mosh for sure and hear more about what Patrick is doing and what everything that they’re doing around the women’s Alzheimer’s movement, too. And thank you again, everybody have a great rest of the week. And you too, Patrick,

Patrick Schwarzenegger 25:18
thank you. Thank you for having me. And yes, please, anyone who wants to come we’re at Marshall life.com. Learn about Mosh you know, try us out. We raise money for the women’s Alzheimer’s movement. You know, hopefully we have a product that you really enjoy. And that doesn’t allow you to crash allows you folks better and that you’ll enjoy tasting. So I love.

Kara Goldin 25:37
Great, thank you.

Patrick Schwarzenegger 25:39
Thank you.

Kara Goldin 25:40
Thanks all for listening to this episode. We hope you enjoyed it. And I want to thank all of our guests and our sponsors. And finally, our listeners, keep the great comments coming in. And one final plug. If you have not read or listened to my book undaunted, please do so you will hear all about my journey, including founding, scaling and building the company that I founded. Hint we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks everyone for listening, and goodbye for now. Before we sign off, I want to talk to you about fear. People like to talk about fearless leaders. But achieving big goals isn’t about fearlessness. Successful leaders recognize their fears and decide to deal with them head on in order to move forward. This is where my new book undaunted comes in. This book is designed for anyone who wants to succeed in the face of fear, overcome doubts and live a little undaunted. Order your copy today at undaunted, the book.com and learn how to look your doubts and doubters in the eye and achieve your dreams. For a limited time. You’ll also receive a free case of hint water. Do you have a question for me or want to nominate an innovator to spotlight send me a tweet at Kara Goldin and let me know. And if you liked what you heard, please leave me a review on Apple podcasts. You can also follow along with me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn at Kara Goldin. Thanks for listening

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