909 - Dan McCormick (Create) On Unlocking The Power of Creatine For The Masses

Mat Sherman: Alright, how's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Forward Thinking Founders, where we talk to founders about their companies, their visions for the future, and how the two collide . I'm very excited to be talking to , Dan McCormick, who's a founder of Create. Welcome to the show. How's it going, 

Dan Mcormick: Mat, thanks for, thanks for having me. Excited to to chat with you. Yeah, I'm excited to have you on as well. You're the, the category in which you're building is gonna be newer to, to the audience here. So I'm excited to dive in. Uh, I guess for my first question is, what are you working on? What is Create. Yeah, so Create is trying to [00:03:00] be the first modern creatine brand.

Our first product was a creatine monohydrate gummy. It does not come as much of a surprise that your audience likely isn't primed for a deep conversation on creatine. A lot of people have heard of the supplement, but definitely , new to, uh, a relatively large percentage of the population, at least in kind of the form factor and approach that we're taking.

Mat Sherman: And like, this is one of the reasons I wanted to have you on, is like, just my own education. I think it's a super, super cool product that you're building. I wanna learn for myself too. Right. So, I guess two questions here. One, what is creatine? Um, and like, what does it do to the body? Why would someone want , have creatine and then we'll talk about how you kind of, uh, deliver that through your product.

So yeah, to start off, what is creatine?

Dan Mcormick: Yeah, so creatine is a naturally organic compound. The body naturally produces it. If you're eating meat, you're already basically ingesting one to two grams of it a day. , it can also be synthetically produced, which is how most people take it. Exogenously meaning via a supplement.

[00:04:00] Historically it's been used as a bodybuilding supplement, a sports enhancement supplement. , the thing about creatine, uh, uh, kind of jux juxtaposed a lot of supplements is that it actually does what it purports to do, and it does so relatively safely. So the benefits of creatine, you know, increased muscle, increased strength, and improve muscle recovery.

All these kind of physiological benefits that one would look for if they were, you know, working out three to five times a week. It's one of the most proven, scientifically proven, anecdotally proven, sports performance supplements on the market. It's also, , kind of a grown body of literature and research around the benefits of creatine and cognitive function.

The research is still kinda being proven out on this point. Uh, actually, Darren Kendo, leading team researcher, uh, just dropped new research today on kind of the well-rounded benefits of creatine on brain health. But it's this, um, Supplement. Historically that's been viewed as kind of this [00:05:00] quasi steroid.

And what we're doing at Create is rebranding, um, re wrapping education around this supplement that's kind of widely beneficial for populations that have never considered taking it before. From everything from improving athletic performance, improving, um, body composition, all the way up into improving cognitive function.

Mat Sherman: That's very helpful. Appreciate that. So how does someone, I guess, engage with your, uh, engage with your product? Like, do you work out and then when you're done, like a store drops, like a creatine bond that you could take or like, you know, walk us through how do you deliver the creatine? How can someone purchase them? Like, what's the UX of, of your, of your product? 

Dan Mcormick: Yeah, so historically, folks are taking three to five grams of creatine, usually mixed into a pre or post-workout shake, is how the majority of people are taking it. Our product is a first of its kind, creatine, monohydrate gummy. So, uh, we're recommending customers [00:06:00] take three to five of these gummies per day.

That's three to five grams of creatine, , and on a daily basis. So consistently, Five to seven times a week optimally every day. And the reason that is, is that the benefits of creatine are cumulative. It's not an acute benefit like a stimulant or pre-workout, where you take it and you kind of immediately feel the impact of the supplement that you're taking.

Creatine, you need to basically build up the creatine stores in your muscle to, to feel and experience the whole benefits of the supplement. So this is more akin to. Call it a, a daily multivitamin in terms of dosage and, uh, kinda dosage schedule versus, you know, supplement that you're taking right before you go to the gym to feel those acute benefits.

Mat Sherman: And I'm curious, you know, someone that has the ability to build companies like, you know, start new things, there's a million things you can work on. You decided to work on this, why Create, and what's, what's the origin story for this company? 

Dan Mcormick: Yeah, so I've been [00:07:00] taking creatine for well over a decade. I, am someone who's always taken my health and wellness really seriously, but was not a bodybuilder, was not a super serious athlete, was not someone that you generally think of as a quote unquote creatine user, but always had a really positive experience with the supplement.

Again, as I said, creatine does what it purports to do with relatively low, if at all, any side effects. Um, and so that kind of, that, gap between the perception of creatine within the general population and my own experience with it, , I thought presented a really unique opportunity. And when you look into the supplement, only about 2% of the general population today is taking creatine and kind of the founding thesis here.

Something that I believe really deeply is that much, a much higher percentage of the population can. Benefit from proper creatine supplementation. But when you look at the category and the brands operating within it, um, they're usually only speaking to that very niche bodybuilder, extreme athlete population.

And our goal [00:08:00] is to cast a much wider net such that, you know, we are speaking to athletes we are speaking to fitness enthusiasts, but we're also speaking to, you know, your 65 year old mother. Um, a woman that. Is perhaps just going through menopause, a man who's just getting back from the gym for the first time after having a few kids.

The Benefits of pre teen are kind of, the benefits are widely desirable for multiple different types of, people and populations, but for whatever reason, has kind of been sequestered to this small niche, bodybuilder stream athlete, um, group that takes it today. 

Mat Sherman: Sounds like an opportunity for you to evangelize like the message and evangelize the benefits, uh, of creatine for the world, kind of to kind of see, which leads me to wonder, like, how do you spend your time on the day-to-day?

You know, this isn't necessarily a, um, it's not like a software company where you have developers and you, you know, it's like kind of a, you're selling this product, so what, what do you spend your time doing on an average day if, if you do have an average day? 

Dan Mcormick: Yeah, it's a good [00:09:00] point. A lot of it is evangelizing the benefits of free teen supplementation. Frankly, I'm not doing 99% of the evangelization when it comes to creatine. It's become a very popular subject for a growing group of creators online. People like Andrew Huberman, people like Peter Artia, people like Joe Rogan, people like Tim Ferris have all, for whatever reason, done segments on creatine supplementation in just the past six months.

They have a much larger megaphone than I'll ever have, and so a lot of the evangelizing happens. You know, outside of our company how I spend my time, I like to think about, about it as like a project prioritizer. Um, so I'm a one man team at this point. Uh, by design I have, you know, agencies, consultants, freelancers that I'm working with on a daily basis.

But as a core team, it's, it's just me. What that allows me to do is to basically ruthlessly prioritize whatever project I think is most important for the business at that time. So without getting into too [00:10:00] many specifics on the day to day, that's how I spend my day, is basically prioritizing projects that are important and then working with stakeholders to, to watch them come to life.

Mat Sherman: And I do have one question on that front, not necessarily on what your day-to-day is made of, but like what's it like being a one man team working with freelancers and agencies and do you have any tips for other people? Like there's this phrase like, I made something up a few years ago, like one man media company, and then there's a lot of people saying like, oh, like one person company is one person.

Media company is curious, what tips do you have for these people that are building large companies for their size, but are only ran by one person?

Dan Mcormick: Yeah, I, I, I think that's a good distinction. I think you can actually build a big business, without building a big company. We're seeing that more and more in just the past year or so, that philosophy of you don't need a huge headcount or huge employee base to build an impactful and big business.

Tips for working with stakeholders that aren't necessarily full-time employees. Treat them like they are part of the team, even [00:11:00] if contractually they are not. Get them excited about the projects that they're working on. Get them excited about the overall kind of vision of the business, fill them in on things that are happening perhaps outside of their specific area of expertise within the business such that they feel invested in the overall success of, of what you're all are trying to achieve.

I mean, I think there's some more tactical things like every person that you work with should be in Slack, right? Like Slack Connect is one of the greatest things that's ever happened for building these, call it like more modular teams of employees and freelancers and consultants. Basically everyone is, you know, operating in the same workspace via something.

Let Slack collect or connect and to, to work with someone and not have them in that space is, is probably just, you know, leaving productivity and, and communication on the table. Um, but yeah, I think those are kind of the two main things is, you know, have them invested in the overall success of the business, not just the singular project that they're working on.

Then keep lines of communication open, such [00:12:00] that, even if you're not, you know, sitting in meetings with them as you would usually be with a regular employee, there's open lines of communication to make sure that everyone's on the same page at the same time. 

Mat Sherman: That makes a lot of sense. And kind of looking out into the future, um, you know, 5, 10, 15 years, what do you see as the big vision here. What direction are you rowing in with create

Dan Mcormick: yeah, so I, I, the, the mission of Create is to reverse the creatine stigma. I think, you know, if I were to kind of riff on that mission, live on this podcast, it's to make the world 10% stronger. And that's kind of what Creatine does, right? Like all else equal, you take creatine and you're basically going to be 10 to 15% stronger.

and so that's, that's a mission, uh, like how can we make the world 10% stronger to think of all the second and third order effects of that being the case? I think from more of a business perspective, we have an opportunity here to take a compound that's widely under penetrated. And bring it to the [00:13:00] masses across multiple different channels.

So right now we're e-commerce, but if you walk into a Whole Foods, or really any grocery store today, about 15% of the footprint seems to be occupied by a supplement called Collagen. Right? About five years ago, you walked into a Whole Foods. There wasn't really collagen. Shelves today. It's, you know, a, a pretty substantial piece of the grocery store.

And at the same time, you walk into that, that same whole foods, and there's not one creatine product on the shelves. So our mission, or maybe our vision of how we bring that mission to life is that in the next couple of years, you'll walk into a Whole Foods and there'll be creatine gummies, or creatine products on those shelves.

Mat Sherman: I love that. And then in order to make that happen and bring the vision to life, Need some help, right? It takes a village to make a startup work and scale. So my question for you is, how can the forward thinking founders community help? Are you hiring at all for contract or full-time? Are you looking for customers, investors? Like how can we assist here at forward Thinking founders? 

Dan Mcormick: Yeah, I mean, [00:14:00] always, always looking for customers. Um, yeah, I mean, I, I, I think I'm opportunistic about the, the projects and opportunities that we, we take on. So if this is a company and a mission that's compelling to you, I'd love to hear from you to, to see how, how you think we can work together and advance it.

But yeah, I, I think, you know, talking to a friend or a colleague or a sibling or a parent about this new supplement that you heard about called Creatine, that previously you may have heard about it, or maybe you hadn't, but you learned a little bit about it and, and you wanna bring that education to them.

I think that's probably the best thing you can do. Just bring up a conversation about creatine. See what the people in your orbit think about it and, and potentially send 'em our way so they can learn more. 

Mat Sherman: Cool. Then for my last question, if, if someone was to send them your way, like what does that look like?

Do you have a website? Do you have social media email address? Do you work on telepathy? Like how, how, how does, uh, how does someone get in touch with you? 

Dan Mcormick: Yeah, I work on telepathy only. Um, now, uh, our website is try [00:15:00] create.co. , there's more education and obviously you can purchase the product there. Um, you can also reach out to me. Da McCormick 13 on Twitter. I'm doing this whole build in public thing where I'm, I'm very accessible on Twitter and LinkedIn and always down to jam on, the company business building in general or, or really anything that, that you'd like to. Um, so yeah, Twitter or, or uh, LinkedIn. 

Mat Sherman: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

I really appreciate it and best of luck for building this out. 

Dan Mcormick: Thanks, Mat.