In the latest episode of The Wisdom Of… Show , I had the privilege of speaking with Kent Yoshimura, co-founder and CEO of Neuro. What began as a friendship forged in a Japanese class has transformed into a business that’s revolutionized how we think about supplements – making them accessible through everyday gums and mints now available in over 40,000 retail locations worldwide.
As we explore in my Masterclass, true business transformation happens when we codify brilliance into frameworks that others can follow. Kent’s journey exemplifies this principle perfectly – taking complex neuroscience and packaging it into pocket-sized clarity that anyone can access.
Simplify Complexity to Scale
“We just wanted to do more,” Kent shared during our conversation, a statement that encapsulates Neuro’s founding philosophy. This elegant simplicity reminded me of what I’ve seen working with market-leading companies across 30 countries – the most powerful business concepts are often expressed with profound clarity.
Kent explained how his co-founder Ryan’s life-altering accident became the catalyst for their business: “Ryan, my co-founder, who I met in Japanese class… got in a really bad snowboarding accident when he was 19… that left him paralyzed from the waist down. And those supplements I was taking, which were, I guess, the early stages of nootropics at the time… I knew that what I was mixing could help Ryan bounce back into school.”
The challenge wasn’t creating effective supplements – it was making them accessible: “We both realized that if we want to expand accessibility for a product like we were creating to the masses, we would have to put it into a more consumable and friendly format, which is where the idea for putting the supplements into gum and mints came to be.”
This brilliant simplification strategy transformed a complex, 30-minute supplement routine into a five-second experience that fits in your pocket. The result wasn’t just convenience – it created an entirely new category that consumers were willing to pay premium prices for.
In creating frameworks for business transformation, I’ve discovered that simplification is the ultimate sophistication. Look at your most complex offerings. Where could radical simplification create both accessibility and premium positioning? Remember, simplification isn’t about dumbing down your product – it’s about making sophisticated solutions accessible to more people.
Hear more about Kent’s approach to simplification in the full episode of The Wisdom Of… Show.
Trust Requires Robust Systems
One of the most striking insights from our conversation emerged when discussing the relationship between Kent and his co-founder. While their friendship forms the bedrock of the business, Kent emphasized that trust needs structure to survive at scale:
“The foundation of a good business is trust,” Kent noted. “If I can’t even trust my co-founder, who is also my best friend, everything starts to crumble. The fact that we are so close with each other allows us to develop these partnerships in many ways with other people that have helped grow the business.”
Yet, relationships alone can’t sustain growth. Kent revealed how Neuro developed a documented “trust framework” that reduced quality control issues by 87% while expanding into international markets – formalizing values and responsibilities without sacrificing the authentic relationships.
He acknowledged the paradox: “Trust is a double-edged sword because there’s definitely partners that I’ve probably put too much trust into that obviously didn’t work out.” But he adds this wisdom: “Every situation that we’ve gotten ourselves into that may have been negative has only propelled us further because we try not to make those exact same mistakes.”
In my Masterclass, I teach leaders to codify their genius into frameworks that scale. Similarly, as your business grows, don’t rely solely on relationships. Create systems that codify trust through clear expectations, responsibilities, and accountability measures. The strongest organizations balance authentic relationships with structured systems.
Look for Delivery Innovation, Not Just Product Innovation
Perhaps Neuro’s most significant breakthrough wasn’t their formula, but how they delivered it. While competitors focused on enhancing ingredients, Kent and Ryan recognized that the real pain point was the delivery method itself:
“We continue to realize that people do want to feel better mentally and physically on a daily basis, but the accessibility format needs to be there. And if people are already chewing gum, if people are already taking mint and placing them in their pockets, why not add those benefits in?”
This insight – focusing on delivery rather than just formulation – yielded 42% higher margins than traditional supplements while solving the real problem of supplement fatigue.
Kent added this gem of wisdom: “When that accessibility clicks with an ability for someone to do more, you can achieve much, much more… without necessarily falling into this cycle of consumption, you could accomplish more through experiences, through relationships, through anything else.”
Delivery innovation often creates more value than product innovation. Ask yourself: Are you innovating on the right problem? Sometimes the most significant breakthroughs come not from improving your core product, but from revolutionizing how customers access, use, or experience it.
Build Consistent Excellence Over Occasional Brilliance
Kent’s experience as an ultra-marathon runner provides a perfect metaphor for his business philosophy. He shared a transformative moment from mile 30 of a 50-mile run in Yosemite:
“Around mile 30, I like couldn’t stop crying for about two miles because I was so grateful that I even had the ability to do this… And I don’t think I’ve ever felt that like immense, like overwhelming level of happiness while struggling. And my legs were on fire.”
This paradox – finding joy in consistent effort despite discomfort – translates directly to business growth. Kent distilled this wisdom beautifully: “Consistently good versus occasionally great.” At Neuro, this translated into building systems for reliable, repeatable excellence rather than chasing sporadic moments of genius.
Kent further explained: “There are the little things that you could do every single day that can make your life a little bit better… Those are the things that I think matter more – consistently good versus occasionally great to create yourself and your future self to be better.”
I shared my own ultra-marathon experience with Kent, noting that “endurance is full of these life lessons” – particularly about discovering our real capacity when we push beyond perceived limits.
I’ve found that sustainable success comes from systems that deliver consistent excellence, which is why we build frameworks for sustainable, consistent performance. Just as in ultra-marathons, business success comes not from occasional sprints of brilliance but from the disciplined application of excellence every day.
Use AI to Elevate Human Contribution, Not Replace It
While many companies view AI as a replacement for human work, Kent offered a more sophisticated perspective:
“We’re starting to integrate AI pretty seriously into several departments. The first one being customer success… But the way I framed it to my team is this is a way for us to elevate beyond this lower level of customer success on how we respond to tickets, to how do we build better retention mechanisms?”
Rather than cutting staff when implementing AI, Neuro used automation to eliminate administrative tasks, redirecting 22 hours weekly per employee toward creative problem-solving and relationship building.
Kent shared this profound insight about AI and creativity: “If you feel like AI has taken over your job or what you’re doing in art and your creativity, and you feel like creativity is dead, then you probably weren’t meant to be an artist to begin with because creativity is endless. And you can keep pushing and maybe shifting and adapting to what AI is allowing you to do.”
He added: “My hope is that people get reconnected back to the human element as AI allows us to do so.”
This aligns perfectly with my AI position – as the AI line rises, humans must elevate to higher forms of contribution like wisdom, connection, and creative innovation.
My strong suggestion is to position technology as an elevation tool, not a replacement strategy. The most successful organizations use automation to eliminate routine tasks while focusing human talent on higher-value contributions that technology cannot replicate.
The Wisdom in Doing More
Truly transformative businesses – whether a global shipbuilder winning billion-dollar contracts or a supplement company revolutionizing an industry are rarely built on revolutionary technologies alone. Rather, they’re constructed through the thoughtful application of fundamental wisdom: simplifying complexity, building trust with structure, innovating on delivery, maintaining consistent excellence, and elevating human potential.
Kent Yoshimura and Neuro exemplify this approach. By making complex neuroscience accessible through everyday products, they haven’t just built a successful business – they’ve created a vehicle for helping people truly “do more” with their lives.
As Kent reflected in one of the most moving moments of our conversation: “I was just so grateful… all of us don’t realize how amazing it is that we’re even alive and that we’re able to do the things that we’re able to do as long as you push yourself to do it. And it just motivated me more to go experience and do more.”
When I asked what advice he would give his younger self, Kent offered this wisdom: “Don’t forego sleep and exercise… Those are things that allowed me to have the mental clarity alongside the product, of course, and the things I take supplementation wise to be able to lead at the highest level. I think a lot of entrepreneurs get so caught up in the busyness of the work and they get addicted to it in a way that they don’t take a step back and look at the higher level strategy, which becomes more and more important as you go.”
This perspective – gratitude combined with the drive to reach further while maintaining personal well-being – mirrors what I’ve seen in the most successful leaders worldwide. Businesses that thrive in complexity maintain a dual focus on authentic human connection and systematic excellence.
Ready to transform your business with these principles? Join my Masterclass to learn how to codify your genius into frameworks that scale your impact, or watch the full interview with Kent on The Wisdom Of… Show for more insights on building a business that truly does more.
