#26 Brook Bash | Founder of Earthy, Ultrarunner

Running 102 Marathons, One Performance Hot Chocolate: Inside Earthy with Founder Brooks Bash

TL;DR:
Brooks Bash is running a marathon every day until his startup Earthy sells 5,000 bags. He’s already on Day 102, juggling 26.2 miles a day, LA storms, and the chaos of building a bootstrapped energy brand. Earthy is his answer to the “Wild West” supplement industry — a cacao-based, performance hot chocolate powered by guayusa leaf, mushrooms, and beets, built for real endurance with clean, transparent ingredients. The running stunt is more than a gimmick — it’s his live demo of what the product can fuel.

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The Challenge: Marathon a Day Until 5,000 Bags Sell

Most founders launch their brand with a campaign.

Brooks launched his with 102straight days of marathon running — and counting.

The original idea was even more insane:
He set up on a track and promised he wouldn’t stop running laps until Earthy sold 5,000 bags.

• For the first three days, he was basically living on that track – running through the night, sleeping an hour, then getting back up and moving.
• When it became clear that could drag on indefinitely, the challenge evolved into an ultra a day (around 31 miles).
• In the first month, he knocked out 1,000 miles on that same track.

As life and business demands stacked up, Brooks settled into a still-ridiculous baseline:
👉 A marathon every single day.

He’s finally allowed himself to leave the track — now splitting miles between LA roads, trails, and the treadmill when the rain hits.

At recording time, Earthy was approaching 2,500 bags sold — the halfway mark. The deal stands:
No 5,000 bags = no stopping.

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What Earthy Actually Is

Brooks’ simple pitch:

“Performance hot chocolate.”

Earthy is a cacao-based energy drink that:

• Tastes like hot chocolate, not medicine
• Is designed for endurance, training, and deep work
• Uses real, organic ingredients instead of synthetic stimulants
• Has no sugar, no added sweeteners, and full transparency on sourcing and dosages

He built it to replace:

• Coffee that wrecks your sleep or stomach
• Pre-workouts that spike your nervous system
• Energy drinks loaded with mystery blends and synthetic caffeine

The idea is pretty straightforward:
Give people something they actually want to drink every day — that also helps them perform.

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Inside the Blend

Brooks built the formula from two worlds:
his own experience as an endurance athlete and a deep dive into natural, evidence-backed ingredients.

Key pieces of the Earthy blend:

• Cacao:
  Base of the drink. Warm, chocolatey, and packed with its own benefits.
• Guayusa leaf:
  A rainforest leaf and cousin of yerba mate.
  This is Earthy’s primary caffeine source. It delivers a smooth, steady energy curve without the jitter → crash pattern you get from coffee or synthetic caffeine.
• Lion’s mane mushroom:
  For focus, memory, and attention — helpful for long efforts and long workdays.
• Cordyceps mushroom:
  Linked to increased blood flow, oxygen utilization, and ATP production, making it a natural fit for endurance.
• Beets:
  For nitric oxide support and endurance, helping blood flow and performance.

That’s it. No “proprietary blends,” no hidden fillers, no vague labels. Every ingredient is:

• Organic
• Traceable down to the farm
• Labeled with actual dose amounts

After seeing founders at a previous supplement company lie about what was in their formulas, Brooks wanted Earthy to be the opposite:
Fully transparent or nothing.

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The Supplement Industry is the Wild West

Brooks doesn’t mince words:

“It’s the Wild West.”

Some of the biggest problems he’s seen:

• Angel dusting:
  Brands sprinkle a tiny amount of a “hot” ingredient (like lion’s mane), then feature it on the label — even though the dose is nowhere near effective.
• Proprietary blends:
  These let brands hide exact amounts of each ingredient so consumers can’t tell if they’re getting a legit dose or marketing dust.
• Bad extraction methods:
  The way plants become powders matters. Some extraction processes literally kill the active compounds, leaving you with a label claim but no real effect.
• Shady sourcing stories:
  Ingredients “from” a premium location that actually take a detour through multiple suppliers and factories — more storytelling than reality.

And then there’s caffeine.

Brooks isn’t anti-caffeine — Earthy uses it:

• But he’s picky about the form of caffeine, how it releases, and how it feels.
• If a label just says “caffeine,” odds are it’s synthetic caffeine from a lab.
• With Earthy, caffeine comes from guayusa and a little from cacao — for a slower, smoother effect that doesn’t nuke your nervous system or sleep.
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From Injured Athlete to Earthy Founder

Before Earthy, Brooks was:

• A college basketball player
• A CrossFit instructor
• The guy who’d “tried every energy supplement on the market”

That blend of high impact and constant training tore him up. He developed serious back issues and was told he’d likely need surgery and would have to scale back activity. He said no. Instead, he:

• Went deep into Chinese medicine and alternative ways to heal
• Started experimenting with adaptogens, herbs, and natural ingredients
• Slowly rebuilt his body through low-impact training like swimming

That led him into triathlons:He completed a half Ironman and was building toward a full Ironman — until COVID hit.

With pools and races shut down and a healthy fear of sharks plus boredom with the bike, he leaned into the simplest pillar: running.He skipped the standard marathon debut and went straight into his first 50k trail race. He was instantly hooked.From there, the running and the product began to merge:

• Endurance stunts became marketing vehicles
• The ingredients he discovered while healing his back became the foundation of the Earthy blend
• The long runs became his testing lab

Today, the running challenge is both:

• A live demo of what Earthy can fuel
• A story that cuts through the noise of a crowded energy market
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Entrepreneurship: Eating Glass, Alone

One of the biggest lessons Brooks has learned? “Companies don’t fail. Founders just give up.”He’s already had multiple moments where most people would have. The best (worst) example:

• Earthy launched the 5,000-bag challenge as a pre-sale.
• They needed at least 1,000 orders to have enough capital to produce the first run.
• Over 1,000 customers were waiting, hyped, and expecting their first taste — a critical first impression for the brand.

Then their beet supplier casually mentioned he’d changed the processing method. Brooks flew to Utah mid-challenge to test the batch.It tasted terrible. If they’d shipped it, Earthy likely would’ve been dead on arrival.Instead, Brooks and the team:

• Scrapped the batch
• Rebuilt the formula with new ingredients
• Ate the cost and kept going

All while he was still stacking daily marathons. Entrepreneurship, as one of Alec’s favorite founders says, is like “eating glass”. Brooks would add: you’re often eating that glass alone.
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Brand DNA: Transparency, Planet, and Performance

Earthy pulls inspiration from a handful of brands and people:

• Ritual – for transparent supplements and clean sourcing
• Patagonia – for mission-first business, environmental focus, and doing right by the planet
• Rich Roll – for his blend of endurance, holistic health, and storytelling

Earthy’s packaging is compostable, ingredients are organically sourced, and the company donates back to causes aligned with its mission. As Brooks puts it, the core idea is simple: “We’re here to treat the Earth as nicely as we can while we’re here.”
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Brooks’ Flow Stack

Daily Fuel

• Earthy – Brooks drinks it every morning instead of coffee and again before training instead of pre-workout. That’s been his primary energy stack for the entire 90+ day marathon challenge.
• Ritual protein – As a plant-based athlete, he leans on Ritual to help keep his daily protein intake high without overcomplicating his routine.

Training Gear

• Hylo running shoes –UK-based, bio-based materials, less plastic, and a tagline Brooks loves: “Run like the world depends on it.” He’s logged thousands of miles in them through this challenge.‍
• Currently Running apparel –friend’s running brand that he’s “stress-tested” through thousands of miles and says holds its own with the big names.

Recovery

• Cold plunge (legs only) –Every night, he hits a plunge filled just high enough to cover the legs. It’s become a staple for managing the daily pounding.
• Sleep (9+ hours) –While on this challenge, if he doesn’t get at least nine hours, he’s wrecked the next day. Sleep is non-negotiable.
• Coros Pace 3 –Tracks his sleep and runs, auto-syncing to Strava. Once the challenge is over, he actually likes to unplug from tracking and run more by feel.

Mindset & Focus

• Meditation (daily) –Helps quiet his ADHD brain and keep him centered.
• Morning Pages –Three pages of freewriting every morning to clear mental clutter and get into flow.
• Podcasts on the run – Diary of a CEO and SmartLess, He knocks out episodes and audiobooks on long efforts.
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The Playbook Take

Earthy sits at the intersection of endurance, ethics, and energy.

It’s a founder literally running his own product into the ground to prove what it can do, while calling out the darker corners of the supplement world and trying to build something cleaner, simpler, and more honest.

If the future of performance is sustainable energy, transparent labels, and founders who live their own playbook, Earthy is a glimpse of what that looks like.