Full Teardown Of A $100M Supplement Brand: Gorilla Mind

Gorilla Mind Business Teardown

Business Model and Growth

• Gorilla Mind launched in December 2017, founded by Derek, who leveraged his More Plates More Dates YouTube audience. Derek reportedly leads marketing, product messaging, and supply chain from Canada; co-founder Chris handles fulfillment, legal, and accounting from Idaho.
• The company sells supplements—including nootropics, pre-workout products, creatine, and testosterone boosters—alongside an energy drink.
• The brand grew out of Derek’s expertise in supplement research. He argued that many competing products used underdosed ingredients, while Gorilla Mind offered more effective doses at a modest premium.
• The brand expanded beyond its original audience into retail, with launches at Vitamin Shoppe (700+ stores, August 2023), GNC (2,500+ stores), Walmart (September; year unclear in the transcript), and later 7-Eleven and QuikTrip.
• The channel strategy separates products by distribution:
  • Retail: Primarily canned energy drinks.
  • Direct-to-consumer (DTC): Products better suited to shipping, including creatine chewables and powders. The auditor notes that cans can be more costly or difficult to ship.
• Derek’s publishing activity declined as the business grew. The auditor interprets this as a deliberate shift from creator-led organic sales toward retail distribution and paid acquisition, though that motive is an inference.

Revenue and Scale

• In a 2023 podcast exchange, Derek was asked whether the business made roughly $6–8 million per month and did not dispute the figure. The auditor treats this as evidence that the business was already around $100 million in annualized revenue at that point; it is not a published financial statement.
• In a January 2025 podcast, Derek reportedly described the business as having passed nine figures. The auditor speculates it could be larger but stresses that actual revenue has not been disclosed and retail sales are difficult to estimate from public ad data.
• Product-launch video views reportedly fell over time: about 500,000 for an early launch, then approximately 300,000, 170,000, and 100,000 for later launches. The auditor suggests this may have contributed to reduced reliance on Derek’s audience, but the connection to sales is not established.

Acquisition, Offers, and Pricing

• Gorilla Mind uses creator codes. The auditor describes a program that offers creators 20% commission on new-customer orders, with customers receiving a 10% discount.
• The auditor flags a pricing inconsistency: during a sitewide promotion, a one-time purchase was cheaper than subscribe-and-save. This undermines the subscription proposition and could deter customers from subscribing.
• The site uses quantity-based discounts, with progressively larger discounts at higher quantities. The auditor recommends testing a simpler structure—one bottle and a 90-day supply—rather than offering a middle quantity tier.
  • The rationale is that a 90-day offer could lift average order value (AOV) enough to offset a possible decline in conversion rate.
  • The auditor estimates this might produce 10–20% growth in revenue or profit under favorable test results. This is a hypothesis, not a measured outcome.
• The $75 free-shipping threshold is described as potentially too low. The recommendation is to analyze the order-value distribution, identify where orders cluster, and test threshold changes based on revenue per session and profit, not just AOV or before-and-after revenue.
• The auditor also recommends aligning ad messaging with subscription offers, product usage requirements, and a 30-day guarantee. For products that require consistent use over time, ads could explain the mechanism and connect it to a longer subscription cycle.

Paid-Media and Creative Audit

The auditor reviewed 188 video ads:

• 148 featured creators speaking to camera.
• 15 were lifestyle clips or memes.
• 12 were product-focused images or bottom-of-funnel assets.
• 10 were demonstrations or animated graphics.
• 3 used Joe Rogan clips.

The principal critique is not simply ad volume, but limited format diversity and uneven script quality. The recommendation is to improve creative quality and breadth before increasing production volume.

Some creators appear to produce multiple versions of the same video with minor text-hook changes. The auditor cautions against splitting budget across many near-identical variants unless the underlying creative is already proven. Tests should vary elements enough to generate learnings that can inform future creative.

The review identified 143 unique scripts, but only about 35 “live” concepts, by the auditor’s estimate. The auditor says concept diversity is weaker than the script count suggests.

Creative themes included:

• Stimulant-free pre-workout for caffeine-sensitive users.
• Energy-drink taste and experience.
• Effective doses and label transparency for supplement-savvy consumers.

Ads skew toward DTC products such as creatine chewables, while energy drinks receive little paid-media emphasis. The auditor notes that retail purchases are harder to attribute directly in Meta, making optimization more difficult.

Creative and Testing Playbook

The auditor recommends this script framework:

Hook → problem → promise → mechanism → objection handling (“denial”) → proof → offer → risk reversal → call to action

The framework is flexible for shorter ads, but the key recommendation is to write ads around a clear customer concept—not simply ask creators to “talk about the product.”

For example, a stronger testosterone-booster ad would address a specific consumer problem, explain why ingredient standardization and testing matter, handle the objection that previous boosters did not work, and provide relevant proof and a subscription offer.

The auditor praises an ad that demonstrates the size of a Gorilla Mind scoop against an underdosed competitor scoop. It quickly communicates the brand’s core differentiation and gives the viewer visible proof.

By contrast, the auditor criticizes a creatine ad that uses a snake as a visual interruption but leaves a long, static shot on screen. The recommendation is to use more movement, cutaways, and relevant demonstrations rather than relying on a novelty prop.

The auditor considers the overall distribution across awareness stages reasonably balanced:

• 14 unaware
• 49 problem-aware
• 49 solution-aware
• 31 product-aware

The recommendation is not to assume the brand needs more unaware ads. For established categories such as creatine, solution-aware messaging may be effective if it explains why the brand’s format or product is better.

Where relevant, use third-party testing, lab documentation, and ingredient-standardization evidence more prominently, and ensure the evidence supports the claims made in ads.

Landing Pages and Measurement

Traffic destinations were estimated as 54% product pages, 40% offer pages, and 4% homepage, with very little traffic going to collections, articles, or quizzes.

The auditor sees room to diversify the funnel:

• Keep lower-funnel ads directed to product pages.
• Test educational pre-landers for more top-of-funnel ads, particularly for products that need explanation.
• Improve product pages with clearer value propositions, mechanisms, usage guidance, reviews, and testing evidence.

Offer tests should not be judged on a single metric:

• A higher AOV can be offset by lower conversion.
• Measure revenue or profit per session, alongside conversion rate and AOV.
• For shipping thresholds, inspect how the order-value distribution shifts and account for shipping revenue and costs gained or lost.

Main Takeaways

• Separate products and acquisition strategies according to whether they are suited to retail or DTC; do not assume every product should be sold online in the same way.
• Treat the founder’s audience as an important starting advantage, not a scalable acquisition plan by itself.
• Fix the subscription-versus-one-time price inconsistency first.
• Build a deliberate creative system: define concepts, provide creators with strategic scripts, test meaningful variations, and broaden formats.
• Make better use of credibility assets—such as Derek’s expertise, creator partnerships, and third-party product evidence—without relying on any one personality or clip to carry the entire brand.
• The auditor’s principal 12-month tracking suggestion is to monitor the number and quality of distinct concepts active in the ad account, rather than counting superficial script variations.

Presenters and Sources

• Presenter/source: Blue Sense Digital’s unnamed auditor; the subtitles do not identify the presenter by name.
• Sources referenced in the video: Derek and Chris; Derek’s More Plates More Dates channel; Derek’s appearances on My First Million (including September 2023 and January 2025 discussions); Gorilla Mind’s website and ad library; the 4play ad-tracking tool; the Wayback Machine; and Joe Rogan podcast clips used in ads.