Blake Niemann: Founder & CEO of Levels

Episode 769

On today’s episode, Kara welcomes Blake Niemann, Founder and CEO of Levels — the leading natural whey protein brand redefining what clean nutrition looks like in the U.S.
Blake started Levels from his apartment in 2016 and bootstrapped it into a nationally recognized brand now sold across major retailers. His mission from day one has been simple: create high-quality protein made with clean, honest ingredients — no fillers, no artificial sweeteners, no gimmicks. Built on integrity, transparency, and long-term thinking, Levels has become a trusted name for consumers who care about what they put in their bodies.
In this episode, we talk about how Blake turned a simple idea into a nationwide brand, what it takes to scale a self-funded company in a crowded industry, and the lessons he’s learned about staying true to his values while building for the long game. It’s an inspiring conversation for founders, operators, and anyone passionate about creating meaningful products that last.

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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 we just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, 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, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show today. I’m joined by Blake Niemann, who is the founder and CEO of an incredible company called Levels, which is a or, I should say, a company leading the company leading natural whey protein, W, H, E, Y, protein, that is, it’s quite tasty and doing really, really well. So Blake started Levels from his apartment in 2016 bootstrapping it into a national powerhouse brand, now sold in the likes of Costco, WalMart target, Kroger and Amazon, as well as its own D to C platform. What makes level stand out is its commitment to clean ingredients and transparency and performance, no shortcuts, no hype. So I’m super excited to dive into how Blake has not only founded the company, but built it in scaled Levels, a self funded brand that’s made its way into major retailers and the lessons he’s learned about leading with quality and staying mission driven and playing the long game. So Blake, welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Super excited you’re here. So okay, so let’s start with the founding so like, what inspired you to start Levels and what problem were you trying to solve?

Blake Niemann 2:11
Sure, it’s everyone wants, like a romance story for me, like I couldn’t find something for myself. But honestly, I saw an opportunity in the whey protein category to to build a new product. And I think, like, contextually, like, it’s good to understand my my upbringing or background is like, I grew up as a tech head, like, grew up with the dawn of the 46 486, computer dial up. I was a gamer. I was a gamer nerd. I never played any sports, like, I played zero sports, but I was into, like fitness and the dawn of the internet, really, and and so I was very aware of whey protein. But my background was always, I was I built computers in high school and sold them to local businesses. I built websites. So it was always very kind of entrepreneurial and tech focused. But also, like hustling something, I was trying to, like, build products and sell it. So it’s very interested in product. And so I when I got into my my college background was in supply chain management, and then when I graduated, I spent time at Lockheed Martin and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in high tech sales as well as manufacturing. But I was always an entrepreneur at heart, like I knew I couldn’t, like follow the corporate path, and so I was doing that, you know, I was still into fitness and being a nerd, and I saw an opportunity in the whey protein category, where, basically, whey protein has always been the king of the sports nutrition category. It’s been the, you know, the the tried and true supplement. And in 2016 when organics and non GMO were really, really gaining steam in in food and beverage, because you even saw Costco bringing in those products, I said, I’m pretty sure this is gonna, this is gonna happen in supplements. And whey was so big, but everything looked the same. And so that was my immediate reaction. Was on a digital shelf, like everything was in a black canister, and a neon had neon branding, and it looked very like ice cream was on it. And it was like, very bro meathead, like, if you will. And, and I’m not against the bros or the meatheads, but it just had this pharmaceutical kind of look to it. And so when I assess the category, is like, Hey, I’m gonna make this look like food. I’m going to make it look like dairy. That’s what it is. It’s a dairy product. I’m going to do. I have all these things that I did with branding and packaging on purpose to tell the consumer something, because you need to tell the consumer something right away on your packaging. But I said I’m going to make this look like dairy. Going to make it look like food. I’m going to make it affordable or digestible for the American public. It’s not going to be overpriced, but it’s not gonna be cheap, and I’m gonna do with minimal ingredients and make it taste well. And that was sort of the business thesis to launch the brand. And I launched it in 2016 and, yeah, and launched it digitally first. I think I’d advise anybody who has a. Shelf stable product to start digital first basically take the Silicon Valley approach to building tech products and take it to consumer goods. So they call that MVP, or minimal viable product. Digital allows you to do that, and so digital allows you to see if there’s product market fit before spending money on physical retail, and it allows you to iterate in the early stages by consumer reviews and seeing like what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong, and improve the product before you go even larger. So digital was the name of the game when we started, and we just grew it from there. It sounds is easier than it was, but I bootstrapped it. I never took venture money or private equity and I did, I think I started my first purchase order to my contract manufacturers, maybe 10 grand, and now we cut purchase orders that are millions of dollars, and we are now, this year, a nine digit, multi million dollar brand, all emerging out of an apartment in Jersey City. It just took a decade to get there.

Kara Goldin 6:02
I love it, but you know what? It’s I think we’ve heard this from many, many founders, especially ones that maybe did go the route of taking capital and having to kind of continue to grow and do things that maybe they wouldn’t have done. So you can always slow growth down, and I think that you’re a great example of that. So the early days you’re in your apartment, you’re building out Levels you didn’t have experience other than your own personal experience, and getting the packaging together. How like going to market strategy, all of those things. You decided that you were just gonna launch a store online and see what would happen. How many SKUs Did you launch with? And how has that changed?

Blake Niemann 6:53
Today? I did everything myself in the beginning. For the first couple years, I even did the packaging design, and that was all the minimal viable product type approach is like, let’s see if this works first before spending a ton of money in different areas. So it was doing all of these different things. But when we launched, we maybe had six SKUs and but three of them were these weird sort of fruit and vegetable flavors. Was like, one of them was like, pineapple, apple, beet. It was like orange carrot. And then we had our traditionals too, like an unflavored, a chocolate and a vanilla. But the the main thing we found right away through that the consumer or the reviews online was no one. There were some people who loved those weird flavors, but everyone wanted the standards. So, like, we cut those really quick. We also had this, like, we thought we were going to be inventive on pack, pack, like, actual packaging we did, like a almost like a cereal box, bag, and box type packaging, you know, where cereal box has a bag in it. And we thought, oh, we’ll be different. We’ll put in a box and it’ll be a bag inside. But people were like, now we don’t really. We’d rather have it in a bottle. And there’s a traditional format for protein that is widely accepted by consumers, and that’s something they didn’t they didn’t care. They wanted it that way. But we did find really, well, really quick, like, what the price point should be, how the flavor should taste. And usually when out of the gate that the the American public is generally, like, they’re generally good people, and they’ll leave, like, honest reviews, like, there’s always gonna be bad reviews, but you’ll start to emerge and notice right away, like, if you actually have product market fit, because the good reviews will outweigh the bad reviews. If you have a good product, the good reviews always outweight weigh the bad reviews. So we found good, critical feedback in those things that changed, those, those, those weird things we did in the beginning to to improve, but we found out also that we had something going. And so we had six to start, then we reverted back to three. And now we have, I don’t know, but different pack sizes, 35 SKUs, maybe so, but our our focus is in our flagship, our whey protein powder, and we are, for all intents and purposes, a dairy protein company. So those 30 to 35 SKUs exists exist strictly in whey protein powders and in different pack sizes and flavors.

Kara Goldin 9:19
So you, you talked about customer feedback. And I always say that the customer feedback, of course, the the awful feedback is, you know, it hits you hard, right, but it also keeps founders going right? When you hear that people, you know, they write to you and they where have you been all my life and and thank you so much for creating this product. Do you remember one of your first I call them love letters, right? That you got that really said, Okay, you are doing it right? Blake, so I’d love to hear what that was.

Blake Niemann 9:57
Yeah, actually one that’s. Stands out is not even a lot. It’s like a negative review about our packaging. When we made a significant change to our packaging the way it is today, there was this review about it, and I read it, I said, Did we interpret what we were doing here wrong? Like you don’t know, it was almost at that Tropicana moment. If Tropicana has this, everyone in the design community knows about Tropicana, changing their their packaging and what that resulted in. And so we that was one that stood out, but only review ever got on it, and so and from there, the product, the company, just went up like a rocket ship. So everything you got to take with a grain of salt. But what I really look for I’ve read on Amazon, we have something maybe 18,000 reviews right now, and I’ve read every single one over 10 years. And the one thing you’ll notice is a consistency in proof on a certain flavor, like you’ll see, you’ll see just positive comments of the same type over and over again. It’s clean. It’s got minimum ingredients. I love the richness of the chocolate. The vanilla is tastes like real vanilla, and so it starts to assert your belief in the product, and SKU that you’re doing it right. And then you’ll run into those, those reviews that are, like, very pointed critical feedback, that you’re like, hey, you know what? This was actually a fair and legitimate critical feedback. Maybe we should improve here. And one such example is when we move to the bottles most protein powders have. Under the lid is an induction seal, and a lot of those seals are paperbacked. And the experience always, from my my standpoint, is the paperback, once you tear it off, there’s like, paper around the rim. And I just hated it. And a lot of consumers were like, I wish there was, you know, a better seal, or it was, it was just more consumer friendly. And so we moved the seal to it, what we call an easy peel seal now, so the seal comes off completely clean. It doesn’t leave any paper remnant. It’s the smallest little thing. It’s a micro change. But everything you do in a product is consumer perception and experience. It from the customer service and the office to every little detail, and that’s a deposit in your brand. If the experience is is good, people are depositing into your brand, and if the experience is bad, they’re withdrawing. And so we look at all the time like, what’s the smallest thing we do to just make this experience better? Because the holistic experience is your product, not just one thing

Kara Goldin 12:16
that’s so so so true. So I’ve heard you say that Levels was built on clean natural ingredients and no artificial sweeteners or fillers. So was there a point when you had to kind of make a decision about maybe the product you knew was going to be better in some way? Maybe there was a non negotiable that you sort of thought about, whether it was around sweeteners or fillers that that you were weighing, whether or not it was the right thing to do?

Blake Niemann 12:49
Yeah, yeah, it’s a good question. I think back in the I was always been an ingredient reader. So today, even if your product has all the macros in the right place, say, protein, carbs, fat, the T’s and C’s of the contract with the consumer now are the is the ingredient statement. And no one big brands don’t seem to understand that, that that is the terms of the contract. So everything could be right, but if the ingredient says something weird in it, even if it’s natural, the consumer will say the deal’s off. And one such example is xanthan gum. Xanthan gum is a natural ingredient. It sounds like it’s from a different planet, so we made conscious decisions, both on actual artificials and things that sounded artificial. So no xanthan gum, no gums in general. Gums, in my opinion, in whey protein, are just a way to thicken it and give it a like, almost an artif, a non artificial way of making it feel like you made a smoothie. So one thing early on, it was like, we’re putting no gums in our product, no guar gum, no Acacia no even if it’s natural, we just don’t want any gums in our product. And then the real mission statement on formulation is like, how do we do this with natural sweeteners like stevia and monk fruit. But then, how do we build this whole formulation with the least amount of ingredients possible to make it taste good and have the efficacy or protein content that most customers want? So that’s the main thing we thought about when we were building every flavor. Is like, how so our double chocolate flavor, there’s not even natural chocolate, like natural chocolate flavoring, it’s just cocoa powder flavoring the chocolate. So we made that conscious decision, where we can, can we just do it with, say, the powder? Can we just do with cocoa powder? Can we avoid even natural flavoring in here? Is that? Is that possible? So that’s some, some of the mantra,

Kara Goldin 14:40
I love it. So you came from a supply chain and operations background, not in this industry, but still, you knew enough about that side of the business. What has been maybe super helpful. Goal by having that experience, but also, where did you feel like you were kind of, you had a lot to learn.

Blake Niemann 15:07
I probably had a lot to learn in general, because my degree was in supply chain. But degrees are only really today. Feel I’m to my personal opinion on degrees is I don’t remember a single thing from supply chain class. It’s all been experience. So even my time at Lockheed Martin, where I was in supply chain, it was a different industry, and you’re kind of a cog and a giant wheel there. So I think everything was learned from experience on the ground. And so over 10 years, you start to get more refined in your contract manufacturing strategy. You start to get more, I guess, more advanced in the way you approach risk and risk mitigation with your contract manufacturers. I was also very, very fortunate too. I ran the company to about, I think, like, $3 million in revenue before I left my full time job. So I was at a full time job, and I built this to a place where I could actually leave my job so I didn’t take financial risk leaving. And the first person I hired was a supply chain manager, and now is our that that gentleman Max is our chief supply chain officer now, and he came from Amazon and Blue Apron, and he was, you know, my first person here, who helped me build the company out further in supply chain and operations, and took that off my plate so then I could go focus in other areas, like marketing or sales and so forth. So there’s, there’s probably more I learned on the ground, getting hurt or learning from my mistakes than there was in any prior job or college that I that I had

Kara Goldin 16:52
definitely So do you remember the first I’m sure you do, but share the first major retail deal, and obviously you went from a D to C Company and expanded out. I mean, that takes a lot of courage, because that takes investment, and it’s all very excited, exciting when you get that email or the phone call, but then you have to deliver, right? And I know that that is always, you know, a big challenge, especially the first one. But can you share a little bit about what that moment was like and how long into after launching? Did that come about?

Blake Niemann 17:31
Yeah, pretty long. So I waited almost seven years after launch to go into physical retail one because I was pretty happy doing what we were doing digitally, like we were making good money and we were building out, you know, sophisticated team. And while I could have gone in physical retail probably a few years earlier, say, year five, I just waited longer because I don’t know, something instinctually in me said I’m not ready. I think it was finding the my right hand person in sales, like I really needed to find that person that person that I could trust, because they’re gonna be the most important person for the next phase. So we waited about seven years, and then I brought in my vice president of sales today, who came from another large supplement manufacturer, and I remember our first big deal was with Walmart. Walmart, you know, they’re highly competitive with Amazon, and they were, they’re much more forward thinking in looking at Amazon competitive brands than, say, other traditional grocers, because they know that’s where the playing ground is now for new brands to emerge. And so, you know, having seven years track record and being at that time, we were the number five whey protein brand in the entire category on Amazon. So even artificials and established brands. We were the, we were the number one insurgent brand. And so that decision was more easy, easy, easier for them to make than, say, other grocers. And I remember that it was just we went down there for the category review. My, my VP of sales was like, we’re in. And I’m like, I don’t, I didn’t see anything. I didn’t, I didn’t see anything to say we’re in, like, and then I think it was like Christmas Eve or Thanksgiving Eve. I got a call from me. He said, Walmart. Walmart said, Yes, we’re going in. And we started at 2000 stores, and that was a year and a half ago. And then we became the number one new brand that they brought in through that reset in the whey protein category from dollars per TPD and performance. So we were allocated additional 2200 something stores. So that put us up that 4000 call it 4000 plus stores, with Walmart at about an 85% ACV. And so that was the major milestone. And then everything, everything from that Walmart win started to cascade from there, you know, if Walmart has you, then other folks want, want your product too. So that was the most significant win as we moved to physical retail.

Kara Goldin 19:44
So would you say that that was one of the bigger inflection points, you know that that first, that first retailer that you experienced?

Blake Niemann 19:54
Yeah, definitely. I mean, the the the size of Walmart and as well as. Like the weight it carries with other retailers and other folks that are trying to discern, other retailers that are trying to discern what’s the next brand probably the most important inflection point, the second most like, after digital, it was the first most important point in our company history. So I would say that was probably the catalyst that took this hockey stick growth and then just continued it upwards. So, yeah, definitely.

Kara Goldin 20:28
So when you You talked a little bit about this, you bootstrap the company, and, you know, there’s trade offs and and bootstrapping the company, I’m sure many outside investors have reached out to you, but I’d love your take on kind of the advantages and challenges of growing the way that you have.

Blake Niemann 20:50
Yeah, the advantages is definitely control, and control is a lot in the beginning, control and leverage. It also allows you to be thoughtful about your approach and take time on the way you’re going to approach any decision you don’t have, maybe private equity or venture folks to report to. You’re allowed to, from a founder standpoint, if you’re a good founder, operator or CEO, innovate and create the vision that you hope this company, the company sees the so I think there’s a lot of that, especially if the company’s generating good profit, like you’re making money and What’s there to worry about. The disadvantages, you probably just can’t move as quickly as someone with an arsenal of cash. An arsenal of cash, you know, unlocks a lot of doors quickly. But again, the Arsenal cash has its disadvantages. It’s someone else’s money, and so are you as thoughtful with someone else’s money that you are with your own money, right? Usually more thoughtful with your own money than someone else’s money. So it’s this. Either strategy has its pros and cons, but if you’re asking if I were to do it again, I would definitely do it to a point where you felt there was truly product market fit and and serious growth coming behind the company before I took on private equity like you be, instead of it being like the first year or seed round, I would wait a couple years to really make sure you’ve got it going before taking money. That’s that’s how I would do it again.

Kara Goldin 22:23
Yeah, definitely. So you’re, you have shared that, that you’ve made decisions around reinvestment, obviously, to grow the the brand. How do you make those decisions? Because I know that that’s always especially when you’re going into retailers, whether it’s slotting fees or marketing dollars versus adding staff. I mean, there’s always this decision on, I’ve got to invest somewhere in order to grow the company. How do you make those kind of calls?

Blake Niemann 22:59
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it can hamstring you a little bit, especially when it’s your own money. So you don’t have the sort of the, I guess, the mental state to be more free. You feel like everything’s at risk all the time. But definitely the investment, I would say our approach is we have to invest where we need to win. And so if you’re launching you finally get that that win at Walmart is don’t just walk in and and set it and forget it. You’d be better be ready to invest in either off shelves or pdqs or rollbacks or I bought a coupons. And so where you really need to drive velocity and new trial and invest in a retailer that could change and make it break the rest of the retailers. That’s where I would focus. And that’s what we did. Is like, Okay, since we’re on Walmart now, we really need to invest here, and then we take that same approach at every large retailer that comes after

Kara Goldin 23:56
so interesting. So what’s been some of the more surprising lessons you’ve learned as a founder, starting your own brand. It’s been, you know, 10 years, and you, you know, it’s, it’s not like you’re a brand new founder, I guess, at this point, but you’ve learned a lot over the last 10 years. What would you say is probably the the most surprising thing that you’ve learned, either about being a founder or the industry or about yourself,

Blake Niemann 24:27
I don’t know. I mean, maybe, I guess there’s no surprises anymore. After a decade, you’re like nothing, nothing surprises me at this point, I would say how advanced and complex the physical retail industry is not, from a logistics standpoint, is but the amount of, I guess, lead time and data driven type decision making that goes into bringing brands into retailers. How retailers think about product, their performance, not just on like units per store per week, but dollars per TPD a. I’m looking at performance and metrics that are different from what you typically see most folks talking about on, say, on LinkedIn and so forth. So I think the nuances and complexity of large retailers to make decisions to bring you in and continue with you is probably the, maybe not the most surprising, but the most the one area that I learned the most in and was, I think my my understanding prior to going in physical retail wasn’t as deep and complex as it actually is. And for those how, how amazing those retailers are from an operating standpoint, like they to do what they do, Walmart, Costco, etc, Target, like is not, is not an easy feat to bring product to consumers. And so you you gain a new respect from for great operators that are retailers.

Kara Goldin 25:54
Yeah, definitely. So most exciting thing coming up for Levels that you’re just like working hard on, and you’re really excited to see. Yeah,

Blake Niemann 26:05
outside of our expansion in retailers across the country, we have an insanely awesome marketing temple campaign that is coming next year, the early part of next year, that I cannot reveal, but this thing is totally differentiated from every other supplement and protein brand in the category. It’s unique, it’s creative, it’s fun, it’s it’s the most exciting thing I’ve I’ve done since probably founding the company, and so that’s what most of my time is consumed by, because our operation, supply chain team, is so sophisticated and well run that as the founder and CEO, I spent almost all my time with the marketing team, and I’m really excited to bring the the world what we put together for early next year. And our hope is that is unique enough of a campaign that it could be cemented in maybe the halls of great marketing campaigns. So we’ll see the consumer and the public will be the ones that judge. But we’re very excited about it. That’s awesome. And when is it launching? It will be the later part of February, 2026

Kara Goldin 27:14
that’s awesome. I can’t wait to see it so well. Blake, thank you so much for joining us today and your journey from starting Levels to sticking close to your purpose and obviously showing lots of integrity has helped you to really put a quality product on the market that tastes really good. So I encourage everyone to give Levels a try. It’s Levels protein.com. Is the website, and definitely follow the brand on social as well. Have a look for it in I mean, stores popping up all the time, but you’re definitely have national distribution. And don’t forget to follow and share and share this episode in particular, because I think it’s pretty great. So Blake, thanks again. Blake Niemann, founder and CEO of Levels, thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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