Expanding Horizons, Transforming Lives and Innovating Health with Rob Rogers of Real Ketones

Episode Overview

Episode Topic

In this episode of NutraPreneur, we get into metabolic health solutions via Ketones with Rob Rogers, the visionary founder of Real Ketones. This episode focuses on how Real Ketones is revolutionizing health and nutrition through innovative ketone-based products. Rob shares his experiences and the pivotal moments that led to the founding of Real Ketones in 2014. Learn the science behind ketones and their profound impact on metabolic health, providing listeners with an in-depth understanding of why ketones are considered a game-changer in the nutraceutical industry.

Lessons You’ll Learn

Throughout the episode, there are insights into the significant role of Metabolic Health Solutions via Ketones. Rob Rogers discusses how ketones can dramatically improve brain speed, reduce stress, and provide superior energy compared to sugar. You’ll learn about the rigorous research and clinical studies that back these claims, highlighting the importance of scientific validation in the nutraceutical industry. Discover how ketones can transform metabolic health and why they are an essential component of a healthy lifestyle. Rob also shares practical lessons from his entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing the parallels between athletic discipline and business success.

About Our Guest

Rob Rogers is the founder of Real Ketones, a leading company in the ketone supplement market. With a background as a professional baseball player and a serial entrepreneur, Rob has a unique perspective on the importance of discipline, teamwork, and innovation. His company focuses on Metabolic Health Solutions via Ketones, aiming to provide natural and effective products that support overall health. His dedication to research and development has led to numerous patents and successful clinical trials, establishing Real Ketones as a trusted name in the industry. His commitment to improving metabolic health through ketone supplementation is evident in his passion and drive to make a positive impact on people’s lives.

Topics Covered

This episode covers a range of topics centered around metabolic solutions by Ketone. Rob Rogers explains the science behind ketones and their benefits for brain function, stress reduction, and energy levels. We discuss the challenges and triumphs of building a business in the nutraceutical industry, the importance of scientific validation, and the future of ketone supplements. The conversation includes exciting developments and new projects at Real Ketones, including expanding into international markets and launching new product lines. Whether you’re interested in health and wellness, entrepreneurship, or innovative nutritional solutions, this episode offers valuable insights and practical advice.

Our Guest: Rob Rogers- Revolutionizing Health with Ketone-Based Solutions

Episode Transcript

Bethany Jolley: Welcome back to NutraPreneur, the premier platform for exploring transformative ideas in the nutraceutical world. I’m your host, Bethany. Today, we have the privilege of speaking with Rob Rogers, the visionary founder of Real Ketones, from his early days as a minor league baseball player to creating a leading keto-friendly dietary product company. Rob’s journey is a testament to perseverance and innovation, so join us today as we delve into how Real Ketones are revolutionizing health and nutrition. Welcome, Rob. It’s so great to have you today.

Rob Rogers: It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Bethany Jolley: So first off, I think it would be great if you could share with us how your experiences as a serial entrepreneur and athlete influenced the founding of Real Ketones.

Rob Rogers: Yes. You bet. So my background is I grew up in California and went to college at the University of San Diego, and then I got drafted out of there by the Cleveland Indians. So I played professional baseball for approximately four years. Being a pro athlete where you have to have a regimen, you have to get up early, have to work, follow a workout schedule, etc. So there’s a lot of parallels between being a pro athlete and then being a business owner. So I would say, being a pro athlete prepared me from being to be a business owner. When I started I would say the last 20 years, I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’ve bought a lot of companies. I would go back to being an athlete taught me about work ethic and gave me good communication skills. When I was a player, you have teammates, and there’s going to be some you might not like, and there’s going to be some you like, right? But does. When I say you don’t like them, I, I actually can say in all the years that I played, I don’t think there was a guy I played with I didn’t like. Maybe we just didn’t have the same personalities. So they weren’t guys I was going to hang out with once I left the field. But even with all those different personalities, you have to figure out how to play together as a team. It’s very similar to a company.

Rob Rogers: You know, I’ve had companies where I’ve had as many as 4 or 500 employees and they all have obviously different personalities. They all have to be motivated differently. You can’t treat everybody the same. So playing sports taught me some incredible skills to be a business owner. I think, fortunately, a very successful business owner. So I think it prepared me and running a business, it’s hard. It is so hard. It’s great. Don’t get me wrong. To be your own person and not work for somebody. I love that, but the challenges of going to bed at night and worrying about payroll and as a business owner, most of us always put our employees first. If there are any struggles, we continue to pay the employees. We don’t pay ourselves. The people today see Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos with Amazon. They see the ridiculous amount of money these guys make. But in my humble opinion, it’s justified because they took a lot of risk. And a lot of people don’t see that they don’t see that the challenges you have as a business owner day to day, especially when you own multiple companies. So in my case, I own eight different companies. So every day there’s one company that’s doing good. There’s one company that’s doing bad. So it’s like every day it is like a roller coaster. You’ve got 8 or 9 great things happening and then you got 8 or 9 challenges, so it’s never boring.

Bethany Jolley: Yes, absolutely. I think a lot of people don’t realize what goes on behind the scenes for all of these startup businesses. Are there any pivotal moments or challenges that led you and your partner to start Real Ketones in 2014?

Rob Rogers: Yes, that’s a great question. My partner and I had sold a company that we were in previously that once again had a lot of employees. So at that stage, I was just about 50 and was thinking about retiring which with my personality, there’s no way I’m ever going to retire. So I knew that quickly was going to be no. Then it was like, okay, we just got out of a company with a lot of employees. I don’t want to go back into that. So what I originally was going to do was just we were going to I was going to start a consulting company, and I have spent a lot of time in Asia. So I had a lot of relationships there, and there were a lot of brands in Asia that wanted to come to the United States, so I was going to help them do that. Then additionally, a lot of brands in the United States were looking to be introduced to factories, etc. in China, and I was going to do that. Then as I was embarking on that, I was like, ah, I don’t want to do this by myself.

Rob Rogers: It will be kind of boring. So that’s why I that’s why I brought my partner with me. But quickly everything changed. I got introduced to a scientist in Florida. This was almost exactly 11 years ago, and this scientist proceeded to tell me what a ketone was. As a former pro athlete who’s tried every supplement, I was that unfortunate, the majority of them didn’t work. So I was skeptical. When I met with him, he said, I don’t even know what a ketone is. He said, well, he goes, Rob, don’t worry about it. He said when you were being born and your mom’s belly, probably the most important time in your life when all your major organs were being developed, your heart, your brain, etc. Those are ketones. He goes, most people don’t know that. I go, okay, I didn’t know that. He said, were you breastfed? I said, yes, he said, those are ketones. He said the body’s preferred fuel isn’t glucose, isn’t sugar, it’s ketones. We all make ketones every day. Everybody does. But what happens is the brain and the heart prefer the ketones. So the little bit we make gets sucked up by the brain and the heart.

Rob Rogers: And he said, so what elite athletes have found out is when they do this thing called a ketogenic diet, which is incredibly tough to follow. Their body makes a lot of ketones and you feel like you’ve never felt before. So I listened to him and I said, I’m a black and white guy. I said, Dominic, I just don’t believe you. Why haven’t I ever heard about this? But fortunately, I took my partner with me, who was a lot smarter than me. As we got on the plane to come back home, I said, what do you think? He goes, man, I think there’s something here. You should get it. So we licensed that patent from the University of South Florida. I still didn’t know what I was going to do with it because we had a consulting business. Then literally I had five other companies at that time. So this kind of went on the back burner. Three years later, I put $3 million into it and we still had nothing. right about then, this ketogenic diet started to get very popular. Then everything kind of started clicking at that point. So all the money we had, which we put a lot into, this started to pay off.

Rob Rogers: And today we have eight different companies tied to the key ingredient called beta-hydroxybutyrate. We just call that a ketone. But we have eight different companies tied to that technology. We have over 80 granted patents. So we we control the whole ketone space And we have patents all over the world. Then today we’re doing business in probably 12 different countries. So it’s everybody says it’s an overnight success story. No, it’s not it’s taken a lot of work. But it’s it’s a great story. We’re just beginning. What’s cool is that technology does have a dramatic impact on so many of the health issues we have today, and obviously, we have an issue with obesity. Unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of kids that are obese, which is very sad. You have a lot of brain disorders. So think Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia I think diabetes. So if you combine all that, that’s that’s what we call metabolic health. There are so many issues with metabolic health, not just in the United States but all over the world. ketones can have a dramatic impact there. They are having a dramatic impact there.

Bethany Jolley: Yes. I’ve seen a growing interest and I know a lot of people that have followed the ketogenic diet with great success, and they are feeling a lot of the benefits. You mentioned that Real Ketones holds a prominent position in the market with several patents. So can you explain more about how these innovations enhance the effectiveness of your products?

Rob Rogers: 100%. So my parent company is a company called Axcess Global Sciences, and that company holds all that is called intellectual property. We call it IP for short. My partner and I spent millions of dollars to get those patents is very hard. So a lot of time and effort goes into just a single patent, which could take maybe as little as a year to get, but typically they could take two, 3, or 4 years to get. There’s a whole process you have to go through to get those patents, what are called grant granted. What that means is at this stage if anybody wants to put this ingredient beta-hydroxybutyrate in their product they have to get permission from me. So we have the parent company that owns the intellectual property. I have a company called Real Ketones, which is my brand, which is in every major retailer in the US where we sell products. All the products contain the BHB and those could be powders, capsules, shots, gummies, and drinks. Then I have an ingredient company called Ketone Labs, where we sell BHB to brands all over the world. So what I do there is we either sell them the ingredients or I do a licensing deal where they pay us a royalty. And both those companies are doing incredibly well. What’s exciting is people are starting to understand what the technology can do over and above the keto diet. So again, when you’re on a keto diet, it’s great, but it’s just very hard to do because you have to take your carbs almost down to zero. Unfortunately, the average Western diet is about 50% carbs. So can you go down to say 5%? Yes.

Rob Rogers: Is it hard? Yes. As somebody that’s tried to do it. Yeah, it’s hard. So what if you didn’t have to do that anymore? What if you could take a product that was 100% bio-identical to the ketone your body made, and you could just take it in either a drink or a powder? That’s what we’ve done. So you can put ketones in your body. within 30 minutes you feel it and it has. Yes. If you need to lose weight, it has a dramatic impact on losing fat. The key is you don’t want to lose muscle. You want to keep your muscle. But just as importantly, has a dramatic impact on your brain. So filling with a lot of energy without taking caffeine or sugar, has a dramatic impact on your brain. It also has a dramatic impact, which is important today on stress and anxiety. Unfortunately, so many of us have a lot of stress and anxiety And what we’ve done as a company, we have spent millions of dollars on studies. They’re called double-blind placebo studies to prove that our technologies work. A lot of people said you don’t need to do that. I said, no, we are going to do that if we’re going to build these products for people. We’re going to we’re going to prove that they, in fact, do what I say they’re going to do. So those studies are incredibly expensive. But we’ve spent millions of dollars to prove that our products do exactly what we say they’re going to do.

Bethany Jolley: Yes. I think the research and clinical study aspect is so important in this industry, and it’s often overlooked by a lot of brands because, as you said, it’s very expensive. But to truly back the claims that you’re making, I think it’s important to consumers that you have those studies. Is there a particular study that you can share with us that underscores the benefits of your products?

Rob Rogers: Yeah. Great question. So right out of the gate, I think there’s a couple we’ve done a lot, but two that I’m very proud of is one study, as we proved with that particular formula. When you take that formula the people saw a 10% improvement in their brain speed or brain function. So think as an executive like you are where you’re doing a lot of reading you’re talking to a lot of people every day where your brain can function at a minimum 10% better. That’s dramatic. Then we did another study. We didn’t want to study people with severe depression because we knew the product would work for that. But what about the people like you and me on this call who just have daily stress drive into work, kids trying to juggle all the things we have day to day? So we tested that group and they saw a 39% reduction in their stress anxiety levels. Dramatic. That’s that’s never happened before. I’ll tell you two recent studies we just did, one we did with the University of Texas at Arlington. We did a test on what would BHB do for the heart.

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Rob Rogers: And that study just actually just got released two weeks ago and had a dramatic impact on the heart. So as I said earlier in the conversation where BHB is a preferred fuel of the heart, we prove that. So what does that mean? We believe this could have a dramatic impact on BHB, on preventing heart disease, which is one of the number one killers in the world, people having heart attacks or strokes. Then we’re just releasing a study today. So it’s it’s kind of ironic you brought that up. We did a study on ATP, which is what drives the energy of the body. This study proved what BHB could do dramatically to improve the ATP in your body, which is amazing. So that study actually will be released tonight. So that’s kind of very exciting. We have a lot of other studies in the works that that are exciting. let me tell you one interesting thing that just happened about six months ago. Your audience, which is even I have to say, sometimes it almost sounds too good to be true what BHP does, and it does. But I always tell people, to forget what I say and either just try the product yourself and see what happens. But today you also can go to a site like PubMed and type in ketones or BHB and see the thousands of studies now that have been done on BHB. But about six months ago we got called by Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, a very prominent hospital. They said Rob, we understand you own all the IPs for BHB. I said, yes. They said, you probably don’t know this, but you’re saving babies lives. I said, okay, can you elaborate? And they said, there’s a very rare disease called MADD. What happens unfortunately with these babies is they can’t metabolize fat or protein, and they die. She said to one of the doctors, we are putting the babies on your technology, and the babies are living.

Bethany Jolley: Wow.

Rob Rogers: And so that was extraordinary. So we put a program together very quickly for Mount Sinai to get the product. We set up a foundation, we sent them the product for free, and our worry was that word would get out which it did, and that more hospitals would need the product. My worry wasn’t for that, but this is a special formula we had to make. So I just wanted to make sure we had enough of it to get to these children. So now we have hospitals in Michigan that just called us, and they have children. Unfortunately, even though this is a rare disease, only about 5000 people get it a year, unfortunately, it’s going up. So just it’s an incredible story. It’s cool. In all my as a serial entrepreneur, I’ve, I’ve done very well, but I. It wasn’t like I was doing anything to save the world. It was. I was making money. I was taking care of my employees, but it wasn’t like I was doing anything good for the world. So to be able to have a product in this case, that is, that is having an impact. In the case of mad disease saving babies’ lives is truly amazing.

Bethany Jolley: Yes, I agree, I think it’s always far more rewarding when your mission and your products are making a significant impact on the world, and it sounds like your products are doing just that. Based on these results and what you’re able to do with these children that are in these hospitals. So that’s incredible.

Rob Rogers: Thank you. I think I don’t think I know it’s just starting. So I met with a very prominent doctor from Beverly Hills, California, who was Paramount in getting a cure for HIV. He called me this years ago and said, Rob, can I come meet with you? And I didn’t know who he was, so he told me his name. I looked him up and I went, my gosh, this is one of the top medical doctors in the world. I said, sure, bring your team in. My headquarters is out of Salt Lake City, Utah. So he brought his team in and he proceeded to tell me, and I’m getting goosebumps what he’d been doing in his practice the last ten years with BHB. It was across the board people for weight loss, people with a brain disorder people with concussions athletes trying to have an impact on their brains. It was story after story after story. When he got done, I said I told him, I go the mistake I made is I didn’t videotape this.

Rob Rogers: And I said it almost sounds too good to be true after you’ve just told me hundreds of stories. He goes, Rob, that’s your problem. You don’t believe in your own technology. I said, no, I do, but I go when it comes from somebody as prestigious and credible as you. It just validates what my technology can do. He said, Rob, let me tell you what you’ve done is incredible. You’ve created a huge company. You’ve done very well. But he goes, it’s just starting. He goes to the medical community, which I’m in, Rob. He goes, we thoroughly know what beta-hydroxybutyrate or ketones can do. It’s going to have a dramatic impact on metabolic health. So the diabetes, the obesity we talked about earlier and he says what you’ve done is just starting. He goes word is getting out. He goes over what it’s going to do in the next year. He goes, you’re about maybe an on a scale of ten, you’re maybe at two. This is going to shoot straight up. We’re starting to see that by the way. So very exciting.

Bethany Jolley: Yes. No, that’s so exciting. How does Real Ketones integrate technology like your supportive app to enhance user experience and adherence to a ketogenic lifestyle?

Rob Rogers: Yes. When we first started, we were big about technology. So it’s all about the experience. What can we do to help somebody? Because we all have a limited time today. Again, we could we have jobs, we have kids, we have. So, unfortunately, on social media, we just got so much going on. So it’s what can we do to make the experience with the customer, which is what this company is all about. At the end of the day, it’s the customer. It doesn’t matter what we do if we’re not taking care of the customer. More importantly, the customer is we’re so privileged that they’re buying our product and then it has to work. If it doesn’t work, we’re a company that I don’t care. If you bought it five months ago, send it back because you and you want to believe that the product will work for everybody. But there’s going to be certain cases where probably it’s not. I don’t believe in that. So if the customer doesn’t have an incredible experience with any of my products, we take the product back and I don’t care when it was bought. So back to technology is what we were.

Rob Rogers: Okay. What can we do from a technology standpoint to help people when they take the product? So we created this cool technology where they can go to the app and there’s coaching, there’s menus, there’s workout programs, there’s everything. It’s an abundance of things that make their experience depending on what they’re taking the product for better. Then today, with everything that’s happening with AI ChatGPT Bard, all that. We jumped right into that from day one, and we embraced it. We didn’t with anything, with technology, we embraced, we don’t look at it as, oh my God, here’s something else. Nando, let’s embrace it. It already has had a dramatic impact on us from looking at formulas to new things to do with BHP to patents. So we’ve embraced it. In the beginning with I, it wasn’t accurate. It was um, all over the place. But today we have a team that is strictly using AI, and the results we’re getting from it are dramatic. So I think we were, by embracing it so soon, learning about it, working with it literally every day. Already for us, it’s been a tremendous experience.

Bethany Jolley: Yes. AI is everywhere now. I think that you had the right mindset and just embraced it. I think a lot of people are fearful of it or don’t understand it, but I think embracing all that it has to offer can be beneficial to businesses.

Rob Rogers: Yeah, 100%. There’s so much out there. I met a group last week in Dallas, and they’re they’ve created an AI technology. That’s pretty cool, but it helps small businesses to understand, how to use AI. Don’t be afraid of it. it takes you through a simple process. So I think they have something that’s good there. But my recommendation with people who are just thinking of starting a business or just have started a business is you have to embrace it because, upfront, you’re going to have to put some time in to learn it. But I’m telling you on the back end, how much time it ends up saving you is tremendous. So if you’re not part of, this AI revolution, you’re going to get left behind.

Bethany Jolley: Yes, absolutely. I think that Real Ketones is very mission-driven, very results-driven. right now you’re aiming to end the grip that sugar has on all of our lives. So what are the next steps for Real Ketones in promoting this movement?

Rob Rogers: Yeah, it’s a great question too. When I started the company again, we just got into it. I guess I’ll use the word luckily, but right from day one, the premise was my mission was to take on sugar, and when you start a company there’s a guy I follow, Patrick. Bet David. He says, know your enemies wisely. And he’s he wrote a book about that, and he is correct. So our enemy number one was sugar. We have to get people to understand how bad sugar is. We have to embrace it. Then we have to provide products that don’t have sugar in them. And sugar isn’t energy. So if you’re going to remove the sugar from a product that is providing energy, what are you going to replace it with? Well, beta-hydroxybutyrate or a ketone literally has 225%. Let me say that again 225% more energy than sugar. Right. So we got to get people to understand that. So if you can take this, this bad thing out and then put an incredibly 100% natural good thing in, and it’s also providing 225% more energy. That’s a good thing. So we have embraced this revolution, and we did that from day one with our products.

Rob Rogers: And people now are just because of all the money we’re spending in advertising as a when you’re creating a brand to get people to understand it, you got to spend a lot of money on advertising, or today you get involved with influencers or celebrities. So and that’s a mission we’re using today. So we are as big as we’ve gotten now we’re getting approached by celebrities. AI can’t mention their names, but they all. So we just have to be strategic. Which ones do we pick? Which ones do we use? And with that, you have to be very careful, because you don’t want to get tied to a celebrity that all of a sudden the next day does something bad which we see every day. So if you pick the right celebrity, who believes in your product, believes in your mission, which again, our mission is to get away from sugar. Then you can have a lot of success there. So we’re taking on that challenge. We’re still even as big as we are, we’re still a little guy today compared to the big brands that are 4 or 5, 10, $20 billion. But that doesn’t scare me. They were little at one time and they got big.

Rob Rogers: And we think we can get that big too. We think we have a great mission now we just have to get people behind us, more and more people, and we are. It’s people. You’re you’re you’re a lot younger than me and you’re you guys are just so smart and a lot smarter than my age group, which is I’m just under being a baby boomer. We did we did a lot of things wrong. We put a lot of things in our bodies that we didn’t know were bad. You guys today are so smart. You’re challenging the system, which I love. You’re saying, hey, we’re not going to eat this anymore. You’re very educated on what’s called a nutritional label or a supplement label. You guys are reading it, you’re seeing what’s in it. for us, it’s not just sugar. We’re also challenging caffeine. So all of our new products don’t have caffeine in them, and then artificial ingredients, and we’re not. So we’ve gotten rid of all those. What’s cool is seeing people like your generation that are embracing that and saying, we’re going to be very careful with what we put in our bodies. So that’s a Real Ketones is going.

Bethany Jolley: Yes, absolutely. I think more and more people are looking for those clean-label products. They want clean ingredients. They don’t want to see the artificial ingredients anymore, and they want to understand what they’re putting into their bodies. I know you said you still feel small in comparison to some of the other companies, but I think you’ve still experienced significant growth since 2014. looking forward, what new projects or expansions can we expect from Real Ketones that will continue to impact the ketogenic and wider health markets?

Rob Rogers: Yeah, it’s like almost every day something new is happening with us. So yeah, we’re very excited. We, the Real Ketones brand, are more or less focused on weight loss. We have a core customer base that grows daily. But that’s what that brand is focused on. I don’t want to get away from that. I want that brand focused on that. So we’re releasing two, two new brands that we’re excited about. One’s going to be called BHB science. That’s focused on the brain and anxiety. Stress that we talked about earlier. Then we have a new brand called Elevate that’s going to be focused on performance. What’s cool with that is that when I was younger, I was always we were taught that glucose was the body’s preferred fuel. Then I was taught that glucose and ketones couldn’t be in your body at the same time. It turns out that’s all wrong. Then you have a group of people that are big into glucose, especially as an athlete. We’re taught glucose is what you need to perform at your best. Then there’s a group that said, no, it’s ketones. Well, you don’t know what it is.

Rob Rogers: It’s both. You can today in what’s called a fed state have glucose and ketones in your body at the same time. For years we were told that couldn’t happen. That’s true. That’s what’s called dual fuel. So you literally can have this incredible energy glucose at the same time. You can have this incredible energy called ketones in your body, each one doing what they do. You can perform better. It’s it’s exciting. So that’s what the brand is going to focus on. So we have that. As I mentioned earlier we’re almost weekly starting or concluding a new study. We’ve had tremendous success in the United States. We’re getting ready to embark on Europe, which we think will even be bigger than what we’ve done in the United States. In Europe, they are incredibly knowledgeable about ketones and BHB. So that’s exciting. Then later this year, we’re going to begin the process of also going to Asia, China Taiwan. Those are going to be very big markets for us too. So very exciting. A lot of stuff on the plate.

Bethany Jolley: Yes. That’s fantastic. A lot of exciting things in the pipeline for you. Well, thank you once again, Rob, for sharing your incredible journey and the impactful work of Real Ketones. To our listeners, if you’re looking to transform your health and explore the benefits of ketosis, check out Real Ketones’ array of products. We’ve included links to their website and app in our show notes. Don’t forget to subscribe and join us next time on NutraPreneur for more insights into the evolving world of nutraceuticals. Stay inspired and keep pushing the boundaries of health and nutrition.