Questions about Nootropics Depot

You have to understand, I've been doing this over a decade now. That's over 3,000 days of fighting to try and make a difference in the nootropics and supplements community. Over 500 weeks of having a target on my back. I am not joking when I say it's a new fight almost every single week. I have fought so many bad actors over the years, it's crazy. Literally everyone in this piece of shit industry is doing something wrong. Even the brands I used to trust have all let me down. I'm just so jaded with everything now. I was so optimistic and excited when I got into this industry. I wanted to be a positive force for change, and to educate and protect consumers. However, after seeing the things I have seen over the past decade, I just find myself more and more angry. Brands don't care about protecting their customers, and doing proper lab testing and quality control. Consumers don't care enough to hold brands accountable. The entire internet is bought and paid for. Every site you see online reviewing products or writing articles are just affiliate marketing sites now. 95% of the reviews you see online are fake or paid for, and AI is only going to make that worse. Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. all don't give a shit about whether products are real or fake. They just care about making the most money. That's all these supplement companies care about, too. They just all want to make the most money they can. Ethics, morals, and a greater purpose don't mean shit to them. I try to do the right thing, and build something I can be proud of, and I constantly get attacked for it. I put my money where my mouth is, build a world class analytical lab, and even try to educate consumers on what really goes on and hold the bad actors accountable, but lies and conspiracies are started about me and my companies instead. It just gets old.

Regarding the the third party, and I understand what you’re saying about third party. I’ve seen people say that having in-house lab testing is not the same as third party testing. I think that people are saying if you test your own product over paying to send it out and have it independently tested it would be more trustworthy, but when I’ve checked out your website it seems that you might do independent testing?

Third party just means "someone other than me." It doesn't mean real or valid. The only real reason these brands say this stupid shit is because they don't have a lab of their own. They are incapable of creating what I have created, so they muddy the waters by trying to make people think that me spending almost ten million dollars to build an insanely capable analytical lab is a BAD THING! These people blindly send samples off to random labs they have never been to, using chemistry they are intellectually incapable of understanding, getting data they have no ability to parse through and contextualize, and then try to convince consumers that's BETTER than me spending a decade of my life learning analytical chemistry, finding insanely qualified people from all over the world that know more than I ever could, inspiring them to come onboard with me and push our mission forward, building a lab with some of the most advanced equipment available, then getting down into the weeds with my people personally to ensure I fully understand what we are doing... I mean, just think about that. It's insane when you take a step back and think about it. I don't just send a sample to some random lab and get a number back I don't understand. I did that at first, when I didn't know any better. I just sent to random labs like they do. However, I quickly realized that was not good enough. I was getting back data from these labs I didn't understand. I was getting back data that I was suspicious of and thought might not be real. I didn't just bury my head in the sand because it was easy. I took the absolute hardest route possible. Now ten years later I am glad I did, because we have uncovered so much fraud and bad science in the lab industry isn't not even funny. Brands don't want consumers to know about this, because they want to keep getting faulty or fake COAs from these labs to give them plausible deniability. They don't want people like me lifting up the curtain to show consumers what is behind it, because what is behind it makes the entire industry look like a scam. Moreover, who do you think is sampling the batches to send to these labs? THE BRANDS THEMSELVES! They talk about our lab being biased, but fail to mention the bias inherent in their way. They sample the batches and send to the labs. Consumers just have to trust they sent a real batch, and that the lab they sent to is a real lab, and that the lab is using validated chemistry to do the testing, and that the results are actually saying what the brands claim them to be. Yet these brands say that's more reliable than what I have done?!? Ask me anything about the testing for any of our almost 400 products. Pick any one of them, and ask me to explain the chemistry behind how it is tested. I can rant to you off the top of my head for hours! I don't just understand this shit, I LIVE IT! I put all this stuff in my body, too. I question the methodologies, methods, and validations to an insane degree. I don't just want a COA with a number on it to point to. I want to make sure that I have done everything in my power to ensure our products are exactly what we claim them to be, and that we have done everything scientifically necessary to be 100% confident in that. If I am not confident, I hold back till I am. You're telling me that's less trustworthy and reliable than some random ass brand sending to some random ass lab, then getting a document that says something these brands don't even have the knowledge enough to understand? It's ridiculous! Then it completely glosses over the fact that we STILL DO THIRD PARTY TESTING, TOO! Their half-assed arguments are predicated on the lie that we only do in-house testing.

I guarantee you we spend more on third party testing than any of them do, on top of all the costs of our lab. We also audit the 3rd party ISO certified labs we use, and question the data we get from them. We partner with these labs, and work together to solve chemistry problems. These other labs also send us samples to help them out when we need it. We are very well known in the lab side of the industry, and everyone knows that when we contact them, we know what we are talking about. Other labs trust us to give them data. Nobody else trusts these random ass competitors of ours for shit. Nobody asks their advice on scientific issues that come up. Nobody goes to them to help solve a chemistry problem. However, people come to us all the time for that, because we know what we are talking about. We also work with the manufacturers of lab equipment to help advance that side of the industry, too! My lab director has flown out to the Waters headquarters to consult on their next generation of UHPLC machines, and we have been beta testing their new equipment control software for over a year. We've worked with CAMAG on advancing the science of HP-TLC, and we are working with Chromadex on developing new reference standards that don't exist. We are members of the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) lab proficiency testing program, and attend ICSB (International Conference on the Science of Botanicals). We're not making any money off any of that. We are doing to advance the science and to be a productive part of the scientific community. We do many things just because we are interested in the science, and being a part of the community pushing it forward. Then our competitors, who only sell products, try to convince consumers that's worse than the absolute bare minimum they do try to and sell more product? These people have posted COAs from completely fake labs, then try to convince everyone we're not to be trusted. It's legitimately insane!

So anyway, we do so much more in the background than most people realize. I guess maybe many customers don't realize all that we do. Maybe we need to do a better job of showing that to everyone, because we are in a completely different league than our competition. I've always felt weird talking up everything we are doing. It just feels disingenuous. I'd rather let our work speak for itself. However, that doesn't work when you have an army of shitty competitors spreading lies and conspiracies about you. Like I said above, I wish I was the bad guy they say I am. It would be so much easier on my life. Doing it the way I do is more than just the hard way. It's exhausting! However, I can rest easy with the knowledge that I am a good person, who has built a good company, with a positive mission, that has made a difference, and that as long as I can keep myself mentally sane, will do more good in the future.