This Former NFL Lineman Was On the Brink. Now He's Helping to Feed an Island. After nearly burning out trying to grow his company, Jeff Byers reconnected with his core mission.

Jeff Byers has spent most of his life surrounded by elite athletes. As an All-American at USC and later as an NFL lineman, he trained alongside some of the best in the world. And when he co-founded Momentous—a science-backed supplement brand used by pro teams and the U.S. military—his mission was to give people the tools to perform at their peak.

But even Byers was blown away by what he saw in Hawaii.

On the latest episode of One Day with Jon Bier, Byers recounts his visit to Maui Nui Venison, a company that humanely harvests invasive axis deer to restore native ecosystems and feed the local community. He joined the crew for one of their overnight harvests and watched as they carried 140-pound animals down steep volcanic slopes in the dark—again and again.

"These guys are absolute machines," he says. "What they do is physically and mentally harder than anything I saw in pro sports."

And they were using his product, Fuel, to get through it.

Related: A Deer Invasion in Hawaii Has Turned Into an Environmental Crisis—And a Sustainable Business Opportunity

Performance with purpose

Fuel is Momentous' endurance supplement, developed for workouts lasting over an hour. It's 3:1 carb ratio provides steady energy with fewer spikes or GI issues—something that appealed directly to the Maui Nui crew, who endure loads of brutal physical exertion.

Byers left that trip with a new sense of purpose.

"We started this company to support high performance," he says. "But this was about something more."

He partnered with Maui Nui to create a tropical-inspired flavor of Fuel, Passionfruit Orange Guava. For every pack sold, $10 goes to the Holo 'Ai program, which distributes wild-harvested venison to families across the island. The goal is to raise $200,000, enough to provide a meal for every resident on Maui.

"It's not just a collab," Byers says. "It's a commitment."

From the NFL to nutrition

Byers' journey to building Momentous wasn't ripped from a playbook. After leaving the NFL, he went into finance before co-founding the biotech startup behind PR Lotion. That venture eventually merged with Momentous in 2021, and the newly combined company took off.

But growth came with pain, sometimes worse than what he experienced on the field. The merger nearly broke him.

"That was one of the darkest times of my life," he says on the podcast. "I was working 80 hours a week, burned out, trying to hold everything together—and failing at it."

He had to rebuild not just the company, but himself.

"I realized I was never taught how to lead people at this scale," he says. "I had to change. I had to become the kind of leader the company needed—or let it fall apart."

That meant making decisions that hurt in the short term. He pulled top-selling products when the clinical data didn't hold up. He scrapped an entire production run of a nootropic when purity tests missed the mark. This cost Momentous time and money, but ultimately paid off.

"We're not chasing trends," Byers explains. "We're chasing trust. That's harder, but it lasts."

Today, Momentous products are used by every NFL team, hundreds of collegiate programs, Olympians, and even NASA. The company has landed on the Inc. 5000 list two years in a row.

But Byers says success isn't about the metrics—it's about the mission. And that mission came into sharp focus during his visit to Maui Nui Venison.

"You don't leave Maui Nui unchanged," he says. "They're feeding people, healing an ecosystem, and doing it all with purpose and grit. It reminded me that performance isn't about the spotlight—it's about showing up for what matters, even when it's hard."

Related: The Supplement Business Has a Trust Problem. This Tech Startup Wants to Fix That.