Rob Mohr on building Huberman Lab: the business of science-based health content at scale

uh sound effects. So, we got Rob Mower joining right now. Hey, Rob. Here he is. How you doing? What's going How are you guys doing? We're doing great. Doing great. It's great to have you. Uh why don't you you introduce yourself uh before I do and do a silly one. do it more uh more clean. Yeah, definitely.

Uh so I'm not sure if you guys have given any introduction here, but uh I created the Huberman Lab podcast with Andrew. Uh I now run run the podcast along with the media company that Andrew and I created called Sycom Media. Mhm.

Um, the long and the short of it is, uh, Andrew, as I'm sure many are familiar, neuroscientist at Stanford, uh, natural-born teacher, uh, who has a real gift for explaining, you know, how to better your physical health, mental health, and performance.

So, my job with Huberman Lab is basically to get out of his way and just make sure that he has the tools he needs. And I'm running the business to make sure that uh, we're putting out, you know, really a high quality episode every Monday.

And then also now on Thursdays with uh with our Hebrew moon lab essentials which are our 30 minute episodes that go out on Thursdays. Was was there a key turning point in the business where it was taking off or was it gradual? Actually start maybe go a little bit earlier than that.

I I I've heard I've heard it but like I I'd love for the audience to like get talk about the story of uh of of just like how it all kind of like started. Yeah, let's start there. That's great. Okay. Yeah, definitely. Uh so let me bring I guess best starting place in 2019. Uh I met Andrew.

We had lunch together because I was helping interesting people get booked on podcasts. Uh after about 10 minutes of talking to Andrew, it was clear to me that he was uh one of the most knowledgeable people I've ever met on topics that were of interest to me.

he uh you know like whether it was how to manage stress, how to optimize sleep, he had studied David Gogggins uh in his lab researching fear, he had done uh MDMA tests on mice studying the like thermogenic effect of uh that compound on them.

So basically I was like this this uh this guy knows more about things that are of interest to me, interest to my friends, and probably of interest to folks like, you know, Rogan, um Tim Ferrris and other uh podcasters.

And uh my goal from then became, okay, how do I help in terms of brokering some of these introductions? And just selfishly wanted to hear him on some of these shows, uh chopping it up with folks like that.

uh in 2020 when uh COVID broke out uh Stanford basically you know encouraged Andrew to get out and start talking to media um and that's when Andrew and I reconnected uh just given the fact that his lab and a lot of his research was around fear circadian biology things that people were struggling with during uh the early days of COVID um being kind of like locked down indoors a lot of stress going around um so it uh just kind of seemed like a natural fit to go on a lot of these podcasts and um after doing a bunch of them and you know getting just really positive response from audiences uh Lex Freriedman actually encouraged Andrew to start a podcast and then uh Andrew and I talked about it you know end of 2020 launched the show in 2021 and it was kind of off to the races from there.

Uh did you guys have instant product market fit? It's sort of historically extremely difficult to grow podcasts, right? Like people don't really realize they they see you guys at the top of the charts. They just imagine you get a couple viral clips, all of a sudden you have a big show. It's very difficult to grow.

I'm sure you guys had the benefit of like getting Andrew on these shows and and maybe having those other podcasts promoted or whatever, but how how quickly was was you know, was it a rocket ship or or maybe slow and steady steadier than people might think? Yeah, it was definitely a bit of a rocket ship.

I think, you know, a lot of times, um, people will look at the success of the show and kind of see it as this, you know, uh, overnight success in some ways.

But I think what, uh, is important to remember is that at this point, Andrew had, you know, 30 years of researching biology and, um, speaking to it from like a deep love in terms of understanding the mechanism of how these different systems in the body work and how to kind of optimize health based on those.

and had, you know, at least a decade of, um, teaching experience, um, doing lectures and things of that nature.

and then um just kind of like putting the camera in front of him and his you know ability to speak to these topics that are you know rooted in science but kind of coming at them from the angle of um you know how people can better their health in both the short term and long term through using them I think is where the uh kind of like product market fit was where um you know uh whether it be on YouTube or on uh the p you know RSS podcast platforms people were interested in these topics and Andrew could speak to them from a from a place of, you know, deep experience and understanding and yeah, just kind of thinking it through in terms of what what topics are going to be of interest to folks, but really just kind of per uh kind of following the path of where his interest lied as well was uh was key.

Give yourself some credit too cuz uh you had a like a decade like you know basically you know managing uh you know diff various brands and whatever. Uh how how do you guys think of uh just sort of like distraction and and avoiding distraction and and focus? You guys spent a very long time just doing the show.

Uh sort of simple. You've branched out more recently, but it still feels very focused. And then at the same time, I'm sure if you guys said yes to all the great opportunities in front of you, you would never even be able to be in the studio.

So how do you think about uh what's what's been your framework for deciding what to do, when to do it, when to say no, that kind of thing. Yeah, I would say our default answer is no.

Um basically we look at it through the lens of uh everything is a uh is a if we look at it through the lens of our goal is to put out the best possible episode every Monday morning.

um everything that is competing for our time against that is um really needs to be fantastic for us to for it to make sense in terms of us pursuing. Um Andrew wants to spend all of his time prepping for either guest interviews or solo episodes on the podcast.

So uh you know basically we see everything as competing with that. So, uh, our goal is always to, um, weigh opportunities to not, you know, uh, just foolishly pass things up, but really to think about it from the context of this is pulling us away from, uh, what our main goal is, which is those Monday morning episodes.

And, um, if we have the bandwidth to take on something that's not going to interfere with that, uh, and maybe even will be additive to that, then fantastic. Otherwise, uh, it's a no.

And I think, you know, you hear a lot about this from folks like uh, you know, Steve Jobs and uh, other uh, leaders where it's, you know, the the challenge is not saying no to things that are easy to say no to.

It's saying no to things that seem like fantastic opportunities and um, ultimately are going to pull away from, you know, what our bread and butter is, which is just, you know, creating that best episode every Monday morning.

Can you talk a little bit about uh the evolution of the product with the introduction of the essentials show and then distribution and how you think about repurposing the content and everything that happens downstream from that one really canonical piece of you know Monday show.

Yeah, this is something I think a lot about and um it's something that our team is very focused on.

We view it as like we put out these, you know, threeh hour plus episodes um and then all the way down to a tweet that Andrew does and it's like how do we fill in the um various kind of like subsequent like time domain elements that uh span that spectrum.

So it's like uh everything from you know fulllength episode to essentials episode which is 30 minutes to clips on YouTube or X or wherever we're kind of you know putting those out on social media um to a newsletter and basically you know all the way down again to you know a tweet.

And the goal is always to get the information out to as many people as possible and help people um regardless of how much time they have to allocate towards uh consuming the information get the information. So, um, you know, there's obviously, uh, the like monetization strategy that kind of spans across those, too.

Uh, because at the end of the day, we are a business, but, um, the real goal is like, okay, how do we just get this information out there to as many people as possible?

And, uh, the Essentials episodes were a genesis of that where we're looking at our content saying, you know, a lot of people just do not have time for a three-hour episode.

We were hearing from a lot of folks, this is actually pretty funny, that uh they'd love an episode, but they were like, "If I'm sharing this with someone and it's a three-hour episode, it's almost like I'm giving them like a a to-do or like an obligation where we were hearing, especially from like a lot of um, you know, CEOs or business leaders.

They're like, "Listen, you know, I loved this episode, but I'm not going to share this with my friend because it's basically like, hey, I'm going to suck three hours of your time away, basically be requesting this of you.

" So, um, the essentials episodes were were kind of like birthed out of that, uh, concept of like how do we make our content more sharable? How do we, uh, make it, um, you know, more digestible for those who have limited time? What do you think the future of RSS is?

The actual underlying technology as as we've gotten, you know, we're a new show, but working with Apple Podcasts and Spotify and all this stuff, it's just genuinely hilarious and feels wrong how little it seems like Apple cares about just podcasting despite it being such an important media medium.

Do you think it all kind of like shifts more towards streaming or or you know what what's your take broadly on on RSS? Is it sort of the cable technology and and maybe there's a future or are we stuck with it forever? Oh man, I have so many thoughts on this, especially the Apple piece.

Um, you know, it's funny because like I I got into podcast in the very very early days where it was like you download on iTunes and you kick it over to an iPod to listen to it. Mhm. And I just became obsessed with podcast. Again, this is like probably 2010 time frame.

Um, and obviously at that point it was like Apple was the only player and then you know uh they launched their podcast app and slowly over time uh other players have entered into the space and Apple's kind of just like been caught flatfooted.

Maybe I think probably some of it has to do with the fact that um it was a part of their business that was you know never earning money.

So if you start with a zero um revenue stream then you know anything is a benefit whereas uh a company like Spotify or YouTube um they are you know very focused on P&L and looking to do things to dominate the space.

Uh to get to your question directly though, you know, it's interesting like I think uh this is how you guys view your show and how we view our show. Uh even calling it a podcast is weird because it's it's b you know a podcast is just the medium through which it's being presented to an audience.

Um and we see ourselves as you know content creators and we're always going to uh put ourselves on the um the platforms that make the most sense. uh whether that be you know RSS feed and people are getting it there.

Um and I do think that you know there are a lot of people just who listen to podcasts while they're you know doing various activities and whatnot and are just listening to them.

That having been said, I think there's a huge uh percentage of most shows now that offer video where, you know, I would say half of our audience is either watching our content um on YouTube or um on X uh and, you know, another half is is uh is listening. It's the the benefit of the RSS feed is it's far more consistent.

So, we'll have episodes on YouTube that get like, you know, 15 million views. Um, but then we'll have other episodes that are kind of, you know, in that 300 to 400,000 range. Whereas on audio, it's a much tighter window. So, it's like a kind of more consistent basis.

That having been said, uh, RSS feed is set up in this weird kind of like re it prioritizes re uh, uh, recency over relevancy. So, it's basically like here's the most recent thing as opposed to serving it up in a meaningful way like YouTube does.

YouTube is really good at understanding the algorithm and serving it up in terms of, you know, what's most relevant as opposed to just what's most recent. Um, and I think RSS feeds need to figure that out. I think Spotify is working hard on that. Um, but you know, we haven't seen much movement from Apple on that front.

Uh, I put a I put a tweet out recently on the fact that I believe X is going to be a dominant player in the podcast space in the future just by virtue of the fact that it's inherently social.

Like if you think about it, we'll put out an episode on Spotify and on Apple and on YouTube and we uh in large part are announcing it to our audience on X and we do that uh as a means to you know broadcast it and then people oftentimes we also put our episodes on X but often times people are then leaving the platform of X to then you know pay attention to the podcast elsewhere.

And I think as Axe gets better and better at um allowing users to easily, you know, navigate content and watch full shows on their platform. There's no reason why people should be then migrating off platform to pay attention to the content.

So I think that that's a major thing that um you know Spotify will have to contend with. I think that you know um YouTube has a pretty dominant place in the market with just their their monthly active users. I want to say it's like 2.

5 billion or something was uh the most recent number on that whereas X and Spotify are kind of in the like 600 million range over the course of a month. So a lot of ground to make up but um I think it's a lot harder to build a social platform than it is to build a you know content hosting platform.

So like I think X would find an easier job of creating um the ability for people to easily consume content on their platform as opposed to something like Spotify trying to build a social network as part of their app. Yeah, that makes sense.

Last question uh for now uh quick 30 seconds of advice on how you guys have handled uh AI impersonation. A lot of people have an incentive to generate an image of video of Andrew saying, "I love this product. I take it every day. It's like it helps with my tea and then it's just completely fake.

" H how uh any words of advice for people that might be uh dealing with um impersonation or or just sort of fake AI content as well. Yeah, I think being vocal about it. So like we've made sure that Andrew's been pretty vocal about it.

U we had this thing where it was the jawser sizer which was a complete nightmare on our end. we, you know, basically filed legal action against him numerous times. They kept like shut, they'd basically like file bankruptcy and spin up another company and kind of like all this craziness.

Uh, a lot of people to this day still believe that Andrew was like promoting this, you know, plastic ball that you put in your mouth and chew on where basically um, a large part of that was, you know, AI generated or clip out of context from a podcast. Um, no affiliation with the company.

So, we've we've basically been vocal about like, listen, if it's not being put out on a Huberman Lab handle or it's not listed on our, you know, hubmanlab. com/sponsors, it is not a company that we have any association with. We also very intentionally have very few sponsors.

Um, most of them you're going to be familiar with. They're the sponsors that are, you know, basically always featured in our episodes over the course of a month. And, you know, we're highly highly selective with who we allow to be a sponsor of the show. And you know, if you ever question it, just go to hubbermanlab.

comsponsors. That's where the sponsors we work with are. And you know, if you're seeing Andrew say something ridiculous and it's being put out by, you know, some bizarre company, then it's probably AI or it's probably just like, you know, uh, faked in some manner. Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

That's right. Words of wisdom. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. And we got uh last thing, we got uh Andrew himself in the chat on X. He says, "Rob is the secret weapon behind human lab and no one can steal him.

He's a loyal bulldog and he's also super generous with knowledge to help others and he's a great triathlete. We didn't get to cover your your athletic career, but uh would love to have you on again uh you know anytime. Fantastic. There's so much more to talk about. I mean, we in the same business.

I'll see you back in Malibu. You're the man. Thanks for coming. " Of course, man. Yeah. Thanks, Andrew. Andrew is the best. We'll talk to you guys soon. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. That's great. We got another Andrew coming on. We do. Andrew Reid from Sequoia Capital, creator of Reed's Law. Are you familiar with this?

Yeah. Yeah. We got We got to try to find that post. Oh, yeah. We got to find that post. It was to run. Run was saying uh sometimes the person who popularizes a phrase had accrs more value than the person who creates the idea. And Andrew replied and said, "I call this Reed's