When you're passionate about something, education becomes a byproduct, and conviction its driving force. On this 154th episode of the E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Mark Olson, Director of KAOS at MRM (Metabolic Response Modifiers). What started as a successful doctors-only line, quickly gained recognition and demand from retailers and eventually became available to the general public

In this episode, Mark discusses the journey of MRM Nutrition and how commitment to education has played a crucial role in their success. Unlike other companies that heavily rely on advertising, MRM's growth has been organic, fueled by word of mouth and respect for its formulations and clinical studies. If you're looking to prioritize education in your brand strategy and connect with your consumers on a deeper level- this episode is for you.Watch the full episode below, or visit TheEcommShow.com for more.

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The Truth About the Health Supplement Industry with True Nutrition

Andrew Maff and Mark Olson

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com  |  Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff 

Mark Olson

MRM (Metabolic Response Modifiers) Nutrition was founded in 1996 by Mark Olson, with a loan from his father. Four months prior, he created Chemi-Source, selling "novel nutraceuticals intermediates." He noticed that there wasn't much depth to the supplement industry and became frustrated with the formulations that were on the market. This inspired him to develop his own ground-breaking and elegant formulas thus, MRM was born. What once started as a successful doctors only line, rapidly caught the attention of retailers and later became available to the general public. As time progressed, he was able to hire friends and family members who shared his passion to grow the brand. Advertising was never a part of MRM's growth, instead the company grew organically through word of mouth and respect for the formulations and clinical studies. Although Mark has never been one to draw attention to himself, speaking at store trainings, expos, conventions, schools, etc. has helped him spread his message of balance and fearless eating. Since the beginning, MRM's goal has been to provide high quality nutrition to everyone, no matter where they are in their health journey.

00:03

The biggest thing I learned out of it outside of business, was that life is all about relationships, ie our relationship to food. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I'm your host, as usual. Andrew Maff, and today I am joined by the amazing Mark Olson, who is the CEO over at MRM. Mark, how you doing, buddy? You ready for a good show?

01:16

I'm ready.

01:18

Awesome. Super excited to have you on the show. Love talking about the nutritional space. It's very interesting. It's always a different story. But I love starting these off in a very kind of stereotypical manner. And give you the opportunity here let us know about, you know, where you started, how you got into MRM, where you're taking it, that kind of stuff, and we'll take it from there. Okay, all right.

01:38

Well, I guess I grew up an average kid in Southern California, lots of opportunities, sports wise, and any interest you have, and so I grew up, graduated from high school and didn't know what I wanted to do. I tried this, I tried that. I had realized that I always had a knack for making money, going back to junior high, when I would make Frankenstein bicycles for extra cash. So just little, little ways like that, I could always make money. And I had started a clothing line with my sisters. I had lots of support from some of the people over at Quicksilver, who I used to serve for. And so it was, it was a it was a pivotal point for me, and that I made a really bad business decision, which was a catastrophe. I ended up going to jail and everything, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me, because it shook me to my core. It made me ask the hard questions, what am I here for? Am I here to just make money? No, am I here to just have a good time? No. Am I here to give to others? Yes. And my dad always said, Be a giver, not a taker. So with that focus, I did a lot of questioning, a lot of soul searching, developed my spiritual life into more vibrant, tangible thing, and I went out on a ledge and decided I was always passionate about nutrition, how it affected me as a as an athlete, and so I wanted to understand more, and that's what I was passionate about. And it just keep coming up during prayer time and and just thinking or paddling out outside the lineup, where you're outside by yourself is kind of a secret spot for me, so I do a lot of my best thinking there. And I don't know if it has something to do with the water or the negative ions or whatever, but it's it's a it's a place. It's a touchstone for me, and I felt fully confident that nutrition was what I was supposed to do. Contacted some friends from high school that I'd known gone into this area, and he was up at Berkeley, UC Berkeley, doing a master's in Nutritional Biochemistry. And so he told me, I should go the dietician route. And I had been a business major as I dabbled in college, so I had to go back and start all my undergrad over again as a science major. So it proved my dedication. It held my feet to the fire. Did I really want this? And I had to push myself, and I had to swallow my pride. Incredibly, I was 27 years old, sitting next to freshmen and in college, so it was a very humbling, very good experience for me. I learned a lot. I had some amazing opportunities. Even in my undergrad, I got a job at Harbor UCLA. It's a teaching hospital. It's a county hospital. Lot of gunshot victims, you know, gang warfare and. Stuff like that. And it's a it was a research hospital, so I got to experience there was a nutrition Ward on the fifth floor that only did research and subjects that were there gathering data on so the aid studies were very prominent back in the late 80s, early 90s. So I was involved in that, and made a lot of connections that way. I fast forward in my during grad school, I also got a job consulting to some nutrition companies, and from there, it led to consulting to contract manufacturers and ingredient suppliers and then ingredient developers. And so I had a baptism by fire, because the first company that I consulted for wanted me to represent them at the industry leadership meetings. So I mean, as a baptism by fire, it was an opportunity that I don't think anybody else has ever had. And so I learned from the beginning to the end how the industry works. And was very fortunate to be involved in the whole formation of deshay, which is the 1994 dietary supplements Health and Education Act, and it really formed the framework for what is a supplement versus what is a drug, and how we can differentiate with the FDA approval on claims and so forth. And it was ambiguous at first, so there's a lot of time where we were cutting our teeth on these laws and learning where the boundaries were. So in 96 I was working for another company, finished formula company, and someone came to me. We talked about some ingredients that I was all fired up about I had was just finishing graduate school, I was doing my thesis prog project, and they came and talked to me into starting this company, chemisource, with these other two guys. One was a money guy, another guy was a sales guy, and I was the the developer of ingredients and so forth. So that was that held together for about a week and a half, and then I just left holding the bag, and I had ordered ingredients on my relationships and reputation, and so I had to make things happen. And I did that for about three weeks or three months until I realized that the other Formula, Formula is in the in the industry, did not have the same vision and insight that I had. So that was the beginning of MRM, which stands for metabolic response modifiers, and it was originally a doctor's line, because I thought the all the formulas were condition specific. It wasn't just a, you know, vitamin A and B and all that was really a lot of nutraceuticals. And I had been involved a lot with functional foods groups in in academia, and so I had a different outlook. Plus my most valuable time was at Harbor UCLA, where at lunchtime I got to go out to the bungalows, which is more of the research facility, animal research, cell research, and a lot of new technologies for as imaging and other analytical equipment. So I'd go over there like a kid in a candy store. I'd sit and eat lunch with all these different, uh, postdocs that were doing really interesting work. But the most the best time was at lunch. We'd all bring out our food, and we talk about, oh, this is what my mom used to make. Or, Oh, this is going to make you feel better if you have a hangover. This is, you know, there's all kinds of anecdotal stories. And then they would start to explain their their own history of medicine in their countries, whether it was Koreans or the Japanese with their compo medicine, the Chinese with traditional Chinese medicine. The Amazon and Brazilians had a lot of ethno botanical stuff from the rain forest. And all over Africa, there's this wonderful, you know, India and ayurvedia and so a lot of these teachings, and really what they are their perceptions of how they see the body and how it interacts with the real world. And in western medicine, we have great techniques and great ways of deducting and doing our studies, but we miss the boat on the higher level stuff. Of you know, where they talk about meridians and and this is connected to that. And we didn't, hadn't mapped that out yet. So it was always kind of poo pooed by the Western medicine. But yet, researchers don't poo poo things they want to know more. And yeah, so that was just what form my philosophies and nutrition came from that and and also just growing up in Southern California and having, you know, year round fruits and vegetables and so forth, it was just a wonderful thing for me. And a lot of stuff's grown in Central Valley. There's a lot of food processing facilities up there. I initiated really interesting projects for some of the people I was working with. As far as working with there's a company in California that they process all the garlic. Most of the garlic in the world comes from California. You didn't know that, but all the cutoffs could be. Then I did not know that utilized for all the nutraceuticals that were left in the cutoffs. And so that was my big thing. And you know, oh, this is you could make money on this. That was my thinking, my my entrepreneur thinking. So given all this and then trying to get into the retail stores, because this was pre internet 97 and I got all my shelf space by relationship, and I really appreciated that, and I used it to the nth degree,

11:37

And I trade off because I was a requested author or doing talks educational talks, I would trade off I do talks for their staff to educate them on a plethora of things and one how to, you know, administer nutritional information and not get in trouble with the FDA, which is always important. So it was, it was, it was a trade off, and I would give them, and they would give me shelf space, and then I'd help support the sales of it. Although I never did advertising, and I did it first because I run a human clinical trial in the late 90s, and I was really proud of the data, so I wanted to get out there, and I advertised, but then I found other competitors were taking my data and melding it with some animal data and coming out with these astronomical numbers that made my product actually look impotent to theirs when it was actually the reverse. Yeah, so that's when I checked out on advertising, yeah. And that

12:46

was one of the things I wanted to ask you out too, because, like, the the nutrition space is it is so crowded, there's probably six new ones have started since you and I started talking like it's, it's amazing how frequent they start. And obviously, Mr. Arms been around for a while. You are not a small company, so it's been doing really well. What is it that is the big differentiator between your product line and everyone else's? And how have you been able to kind of educate the market on that? Well,

13:14

to get people to try the product that don't know anything about it was really the people at the stores, and they would say, Oh, I met this guy that he developed this and it's really good, and he'd tell them all about it. So was that relationship that made me successful, and my caring about not the managers, not the store leaders, the people on the floor, that was those were my people. So focusing on that, focusing on being liberal with we had a thing called try before you buy. We had sampling. We gave out tons of samples because we're so confident in how our products would respond to the person that was taking it for that specific issue. Yeah. So that that's what really, really compelled us and brought us to another level. But of course, you know, we get drowned out, and the Internet came in the 2000s and and then there is a line drawn in the sand, and either your retail or your E tail or mass market, and they try to defend, differentiate about between all those, but now all the lines are blurred, and everybody's doing everything. Yeah, the only reason I haven't I got into the ETL space only through having a social media and and there is some people that wanted to sell our products on the on the web, and I gave them okay to do that, but we'd watch them. We're very, we I'm very, I like to make sure that people aren't misrepresenting my products. It's very personal for me, obviously. And so we, I tried to. Follow up and see what people are doing. If they're e tailing, I would go to their website and watch, make sure they're not making irrational claims or unsubstantiated claims that they shouldn't be doing. So it was, it was, it's very, it's a very hands on tangible business. I had opportunities to go into distribution, but I denied them, and I had enough leverage with the retailers that they said, Okay, we'll order from you and the 15 other lines we have, we just go to the distributor. So to get the retailers take the extra effort to order directly from me was something that I had to do through my relationship, and we're able to do that, and we're still a direct company. That way. I can do deals that way. We can. We don't have, you know, 15 to 25 points, 35 points, sucked up by a distributor, and I can give it back to the retailer and I can give deeper discounts to the consumer, which was my goal, yeah. And so I developed a company, and we grew slowly because I didn't want to take a lot of other people's money. I my dad gave me 10 grand to bail me out at first so forth. And then I had some friends, like, a year into it that said, hey, you know, we'll help you out. And H gave me 100,000 and I bought one out, and it was a good investment for him. He got 3.3 million back in return. And so that's not bad, yeah. And it was a friend. And so you want to stoke out more than your friends, you know, yeah, exactly, and not a bank that's grind you for percentage points. So I've been very fortunate not to have to lean on banks, not to have huge lines of credit that haunt me and make me jump through fences, or whatever I have to do for banks and so forth. So I to try and keep that relationship proper with a bank. They can't have anything over you, like you owe the money or you, you need to give them your financial data and every you know, quarter and all that stuff. So it's, it's, it's worked out very well. I'd love to say that I was a genius by forming my business this way, but I was just being real to me, and I had the opportunity to do it my way. And yeah, it worked out. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't advise it to a lot of people, because everybody wants to, you want to see results immediately. You know, just the nature of our world right now. And you know, my first nine months, because I started this in April of 896, and closed out in December, you know, I did over a million dollars back in 96 so it was really the, the proper response was, I was doing it right, and so just doing that. And of course, as things change, and, you know, the digital economy and all this stuff is changing, just staying up with it and achieving the goals that I set out at first, which was really to have a nutrition company that we could do cool stuff, not the stupid stuff I had to I was constrained by before with other people, yeah, and have place for my friends to work, you know, smart people with good ideas and just good people I've met along the way. So hiring my friends and hiring people is has been a wonderful thing, and because it's all about the relationship and, you know, every decision I make as a as a owner and as the manager and the CEO is that I'm not playing with my money. I'm playing with everybody's so there's little kids that are depending on me to make good decisions, you know, for their next meal. So, you know, you take it, take things very seriously and and don't lose yourself along the way. You know, fortunately, I had a lot of that nonsense before I started this. So I had that out of my system. I spent time in Hollywood and surfing and ski patrol and, you know, all that fun was kind of out of my system. So

19:21

is the majority of the business, mostly on the retail side. Or have you started to really venture into more of the E commerce through your website, through marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, etc?

19:34

Yes, I've, I've met this guy who's a, what do you call it, FBA, or something, for Amazon. And he's a good guy, and he he managing the business well by advertising through Amazon and whatnot he does. So that's, that's kind of our big thing. Everything on our website is shipped through him on Amazon. So I. You know, I we're more of a pallet oriented shipping company, because we have big retail customers. And not only do we supply our products, but we make products for them. Also we do a lot of private label. We have a manufacturing facility, big one in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and it we do all our powders there, and all our super foods and and so forth. And it's, and it's wonderful to have that capacity, to reach out to these big retailers that have good volume and and you can, you know, we trade off. Give me some shelf space. I'll make this product for you. We turn down more business, and we've accepted at that manufacturing facility. So making money over there and keeping us cool and and working this whole relationship driven business is what's really worked for us. Yeah, and, you know, I don't know how long it'll last, because, you know, in the big box stores and everything's turning into, like mass market, they're all they change their CEOs every couple of years, so to maintain these relationships. And when they leave, the middle management usually leaves, and then people down below, they're, you know, they're transient, and so forth. So it's really, it's really the hard to maintain the relationships. And I guess the biggest thing I learned out of it, outside of business, was, you know, that life is all about relationships. Ie our relationship to food, and that's what I've been talking about a lot lately, is that, back in the day, food, water, shelter, you know, that was 90% of what we thought about during our waking hours, and now food is like an afterthought. It's like, oh, it's already two o'clock. Let me pull over right here. There's got to be something here, you know. And it's, it's just an afterthought, yeah, and the intention, intentional eating has gone to the wayside. It's really, what do you emotionally feel like? And it's not like, oh, well, how have you eaten today? What? What do you want for dinner to kind of top off your day, if you've eaten shitty during the beginning, and how you need to eat good for dinner, vice versa, you know. And you don't always have to be good. We live in a I don't want to say imperfect world, because that gives you the wrong perception. Another thing that I want you to understand is that life is about good and bad, and we label those terms good and bad, but it's really more. I see it as positive and negative, and is negative bad is is our troubles? Bad our challenges? Bad? Is exercise? Bad? Technically, yes, but in the big picture, no, it's good. So it's it's this relationship to good and bad, and we try to eliminate the negatives, but that leads us to an lopsided life. And the thing is, when you eat, you're like, oh, I don't like that, yeah, but is it good for you? Well, I don't know. Well, then figure it out you might be missing the best part. And so I get people to challenge themselves, to try things. Just try a bite. I mean, the worst thing you can do is spit it out. Big deal if you don't try. How do you know? And the thing is, is that I tried, you know, I'm teaching people who are maybe have a high school diploma, so I tell them you don't need a PhD to understand nutrition, and the more natural it is, the better it's going to be for you. Because when we process things, we're eliminating a lot of good things for it, even at the the simplest level, when we take the skins off, you know, the skins have all the protective parts of the of the plant. It is the fruiting body. So you got to understand all these things, what's on the outside, what's on the inside, what's in the core, the seed, whatever. So you understand the plant, and you understand how it would benefit to you, yeah, and, and, you know, don't be afraid of the skin. Wipe it off and try it. Maybe it's good. And, and, more than anything, what I've gotten people to do is start to think about their food and think positively when they do these things, give yourself positive re you know, response, so that you can feel good about it. And it's not about being satiated brings you happiness. It's knowing. You've done a good thing for your body should bring you that happiness. And so then you have the freedom to say, you know, a little sugar. I can take it. I can take a punch, you know. And that's what life is. Being able to take a punch, you're built to adapt. You're built to take a punch and repair. And that's what is in your 24 hour cycle. Every day. People forget this, yeah, forget to, you know, and my, my other thought is that people talking, as a dietitian, I had to know all these drugs and drug nutrient interactions and so forth. And I try and give people a clear picture drugs, because there's so much money invested in them, in the research that they have to patent these things. They have to protect their investment. So when they find this compound in nature, they have to go, oh, well, let's see. There's about 12 different isomers of it, you know, left handed, right handed, looking up, looking down, minor, minor changes. But it's the same molecule, you know, and it's just a chiral changes, you know, it's left handed instead of right handed. So they look at all these, and they find the ones that aren't in nature, and those are patentable, yeah. And then they test them against the original and they find that, whoa, it really drops cholesterol a lot. They don't know the 50 other things it's doing, but that cholesterol really dropped, yeah. So two things are, is that synthetics always will come with side effects, because nature recognizes nature. So when we nature, our enzyme systems, our receptors, the way our structure of our digestive tract is made for those compounds, you throw this alien in there, and it's always going to screw something up in the machinery, you know. And so it's just common sense. The more synthetics you expose yourself to topically through the lungs, breathing them in or eating them, you know, is, is what you need to understand. But those things aren't bad. If you keep them down to a small roar, you can tolerate it. You can take some synthetics and beat it off and but then give your body time to repair. And the problem is that most of these drugs you have to take daily, so there is no ability to repair those side effects? Yeah, and when they talk about side effects, they say, Oh, we just documented them. We didn't try and do anything about them, which, to me, doesn't make any sense. But that is, that is our health care, which I call sick care industry. I'm in the health care industry. I can't make drug claims about fixing your body, which they can, but they also have to say how much they destroy your body at the same time. Yeah, but that's, that's a managed response. You know, benefit versus detriment is what the FDA looks at things for. So that's, that's the, that's the dichotomy that I live within. The fortunate thing for me on my side, because it's all natural. There's really very little barriers to entry. I mean, look at all the celebrities that, you know, they're an actress and now they're a nutrition expert, you know. And I, I'm not putting them down, and they've had an epiphany. They went through the road I went, you know, personally, what do I care about? You know? So you really have to talk to people that know where your product's coming from. And with MRM, we talk about it, we have pictures of the different farmers from around the world.

29:12

I've been to the Andes to go get maca and meet with farmers and the processing facilities and export agents and all that stuff. And it's wonderful because I get to form relationships doing that, and I got to drag my daughter along with me. So these are wonderful things and and I think that's what people appreciate most about us, is that the consistent quality, it always does what it says. You know, the stores don't get a lot of returns. It's just, it's just a a well working machine. Love it. In addition to that, you know, everybody's like, Well, why don't you build it on up? And I learned early on, like 2008 That I need to stay in balance. And I had offices opened in the UK, Australia, Canada, and I was opening them in Brazil, and I said this too much. And I had a bar manufacturing facility, you know, making protein bars for GNC and us and so forth. So, yeah, so, but the goal is to enjoy life, have quality of life and maintain your relationships. That was the biggest advice I ever had, maintain your relationships. And so being able to do that, I can't grow that fast. So we've just grown like this. Each year. We've had a couple of flat years, nothing ever down, but it's just been a wonderful, wonderful experience. And as long as I stay in my sweet spot, don't get big head about things, I think that we just tend to reap the benefits of being honest and being who we are and industry's best kept secret as I love it.

31:12

So Mark, this was so much. I loved every part of this. This you were your passion is unmatched. Super enlightening, loved everything. I'd love to give you the opportunity here let everyone know, like, where can they find out more about MRM? Well,

31:29

there's MRMnutrition.com, and then, of course, we got our websites, our Facebook and Instagram. We're not on Tiktok. They're trying to get me to do that. So So there, we have some things planned. You know, me saying yes to to you, and this is a big step forward,

31:50

so we appreciate it. Yes,

31:53

my, my sales staff says we can, we can open it up a little bit more now. So nice.

31:59

Yeah, well, obviously, Mark, thank you so much for being on the show. Everyone who tuned in, of course, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual rate review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to theecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes. But as usual, thank you all for joining us.

32:19

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