The Freemium Trick That Launched LMNT with Robb Wolf

I kept poking around, and I found this, uh, group online called KetoGains, and it's this guy Luis Villasenor.

He is based out of Mexico City.

It's funny.

It was largely women.

It was probably 70% women, about 30% men, and he was coaching gals at world championships, doing their strength and conditioning and, like, nutrition, jujitsu, CrossFit, bodybuilding, and I'm like, "How the hell is he doing this stuff?" So I literally started stalking this guy, became friends with him.

He went on to be one of our co-founders at LMNT also.

I showed him all of my diet stuff, and I kind of explained my problem, and he was like, "Yeah, I don't think you have enough electrolytes, particularly sodium." And because I'm a biochemist, I was like, "Oh, no, no, no.

I'm good.

I salt my food," you know? Of course, what do we do when we talk to an expert who knows something about a topic that we think we know something about? We ignore the advice they give us.

Surely you don't go and try it.

You just ignore it.

So he tolerated me for the better part of a year still, like, floundering around, chasing my own backside on this, and finally he just said, "Hey, man.

Why don't you weigh and measure all your food, like, in Cronometer? Everything that goes down the pie hole, document it, any type of electrolytes.

Like, salt your food and all that stuff." And he wanted me at a certain level of sodium, magnesium, potassium intake per day, and I was less than half of what he wanted.

He said, "Hey, man.

Why don't you go swig some...

Are you working out today?" "Yeah, I'm working out." "Go take about four ounces of pickle juice and just, like, shoot that down and give yourself 10 minutes and then go work out." And I did it, and I was like, "That was the best workout I've had in probably, like, 10 years." Like, I felt great.

I got a pump.

I felt really plugged in.

I didn't get any cramps.

And so we started talking about this.

I got in and researched, well, what are the signs and symptoms of low electrolytes, particularly in people who are eating, like, a minimally processed whole food diet? And it was, like, brain fog, fatigue, cramping, lethargy.

And I was thinking about between my blog, podcast, books, and everything, there's a couple of hundred thousand, maybe a couple of million people that follow my stuff at least to some degree.

And I was like, out of the top 10 issues that they usually report, probably eight or nine of them are electrolyte related [laughs], you know? And it just, it just wasn't on my radar.

I was very well-versed with, like, the protein, carbs, fat part of this story, but not the electrolytes.