About Us

Multiple Brands & Companies. One Mindset. Built in Cleveland, Ohio.

Let me be straight with you this isn't your typical "About Us" page. You're not going to read a polished corporate story about a holding company formed in a boardroom by people in suits chasing a market opportunity. That's not how Be Forever Young Brands came to be, and frankly, that's not the kind of company we ever want to be.

Be Forever Young Brands is the parent company of several brands and businesses, supplements, custom apparel, commercial and residential lighting, distribution and fulfillment, cost management, publishing and creative services, and at first glance, that lineup might look random. It isn't. Every one of these companies was built around a pillar of a single vision: create great products and services, move them efficiently, and help other businesses do the same. And every one of them carries the same DNA, systems, processes, work ethic, and doing right by the customer.

And the name? Be Forever Young can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To us, it's about keeping that youthful energy while making our dreams a reality. It's not about pretending time doesn't move. It's about the mindset, the hunger, the drive, the willingness to get up before the sun and grind, no matter what chapter of life you're in.

Where It All Comes From: The Founder's Story

My name is J.R. Greene, and I've been in business since before most people start thinking about a career. My first official paycheck yes, with taxes taken out hit on February 22, 1988, which happened to be my mother's birthday. I was six years old, working in my dad's McDonald's in Northfield, Ohio, cleaning the lobby and loving every minute of it. While other kids were riding bikes and playing video games, I was watching training videos on my lunch breaks and begging managers to let me learn the kitchen. I was a sponge for how that system worked, and I knew before I was ten years old exactly what I wanted to be: a McDonald's Owner/Operator, just like my dad.

My dad is my hero. That's not something I say lightly. He grew up with nothing, hustled every job he could find, and knocked on the door of a McDonald's store manager one winter because he needed money for Christmas gifts. He worked his way up from crew to Director of Operations, served in Vietnam, and in April of 1983 on a handshake deal and a down payment borrowed from my mom he bought a struggling McDonald's that everyone else had written off. He turned it around, grew it into a multi-store operation, and showed me what it looks like to build something real through nothing but consistency and grit. I grew up inside that business, and it shaped everything about how I operate today.

I went to Gilmour Academy on Cleveland's eastside, then Kent State University, where I majored in Operations Management — which is basically the study of systems and processes, and yes, I genuinely geek out on that stuff to this day. But my real education happened outside the classroom. While in college I was working for my dad full time, running manager meetings, writing business plans, building schedules, going paperless before that was a thing — and on top of all that, I started my first company, Team Greene, a landscaping and snowplowing business that grew to roughly $300,000 in sales with twelve employees before I was old enough to rent a car. I learned early that I'm happiest when my plate is overflowing. Burning the candle at both ends isn't a problem for me…it's the fuel.

In 2007, the dream came true: I was approved as a McDonald's Owner/Operator, and in 2008 two locations became mine. I owned and operated McDonald's restaurants, took over stores and made them the most profitable they'd been in years, rebuilt cultures, developed people, and learned what it really takes to lead. After McDonald's, I went on to own and operate multiple Bar 145 gastropub locations across Ohio and New York. Some of those ventures succeeded. Some of them failed and failed expensively. I've signed bad contracts, trusted the wrong people, overextended, and lost just about everything at one point. I'm not hiding from any of it, because every one of those mistakes taught me lessons that no business school could: read every contract yourself, control what you can control, never confuse charm for character, and never fall in love with a company that doesn't love you back.

Around 2015, two things changed the trajectory of my life. First, I stopped drinking completely and health and fitness went from something I did to who I am. I'm in the gym seven days a week, up before 5am, and I believe what you put into your body and your mind determines what you get out of life. Second, for the first time ever, there was no outside pressure on what I should build next. So I sat down and did something I'd never done before: I wrote out my vision. Not a to-do list a vision. What I'm passionate about is creating products, building systems, distributing things efficiently, and living healthy. Every company under Be Forever Young Brands exists because it's a pillar of that vision. Nothing here is random. It's all part of one plan, built one milestone at a time.

We're not venture-backed. We're not chasing overnight success I've learned the hard way that overnight success isn't real, and the grind behind it is the part nobody posts about. We build slow, we build right, and we treat every customer the way Don Smith treated my dad back in 1983: like their success matters more than the quick buck. Because it does.

The Brands of the Be Forever Young Family

Each company in the Be Forever Young Brands portfolio stands on its own, serves its own customers, and runs on the same operating principles I learned growing up in the McDonald's system: consistency, quality, and doing the right thing even when nobody's watching. Here's the family:

 BFY Life

BFY Life is where the Be Forever Young name was born. Launched in February 2019, BFY Life provides clean, effective supplements built around one mantra: Better For You. We started with a plant-based line because we saw athletes searching for plant-based solutions that didn't sacrifice performance, and we've grown into a full lifestyle brand supplements, apparel, and workout gear alongside hand-picked brands we actually use ourselves, like 5% Nutrition, Alpha Lion, Bucked Up, Optimum Nutrition, and Rule 1 Proteins. No fad diets. No quick fixes. Just small, consistent improvements stacked into a healthier life. Co-founded with Paul Iatamosi Jr., a professional bodybuilder with over 14 years in the supplement industry, with my sister Amy a certified nutrition coach leading brand development.

Nirvana Life Nutrition

Nirvana Life is our wellness-focused supplement brand, built for the mind as much as the body. Its flagship product, Na, is a clean nootropic formulated to deliver focus and mental clarity whether you're grinding through a workday or pushing through a training session without the stimulant crash that plagues most of the category. In a market overloaded with hype, Nirvana Life takes the opposite approach: thoughtful formulas, honest labels, and products designed to help you find your flow.

Cuyahoga Valley Custom Apparel

At Cuyahoga Valley Custom Apparel, we believe your style should tell your story. Based in Northeast Ohio, CVCA delivers custom apparel and printing for businesses, teams, events, and brands quality designs, fast turnaround, and craftsmanship that holds up. This company exists because of a pillar I wrote down years ago: I didn't just want to design apparel, I wanted to produce it. Today CVCA prints not only for our own brands but for clients across the country who are tired of slow, sloppy, overpriced custom apparel. Whether you need fifty shirts for a company event or a full branded merchandise program, we treat your logo like it's ours.

 BFY Lighting

Better For You doesn't stop at what goes on in your body it extends to your buildings and your bottom line. BFY Lighting supplies energy-efficient LED lamps, luminaires, linear fixtures, and lighting solutions for commercial and residential applications. Having owned restaurants for two decades, I know exactly what utility costs do to a P&L, and I know that lighting is one of the fastest, most overlooked ways to cut operating expenses. Modern LED technology lasts many times longer than traditional bulbs and can dramatically reduce energy consumption which means BFY Lighting products literally pay for themselves. Better light, lower bills, less waste. That's Better For You.

Forever Young Distribution

Founded in 2016, Forever Young Distribution is the operational backbone of the brands. I'm especially passionate about Forever Young Distribution, because distribution is what I studied, what I love, and what I've geeked out on since my days touring McDonald's distribution centers just for fun. FYD started by purchasing goods in bulk, repackaging them, and selling on Amazon. From there we grew into a full fulfillment and warehousing operation, serving local Cleveland companies first, then nationwide, and now globally. We handle e-commerce fulfillment, custom packaging, warehousing, and logistics and we've partnered with carriers across the country and the globe to secure the best possible shipping rates, from a single package to a full cargo container. In a world where speed and accuracy win, our fulfillment systems are your competitive edge.

Forever Young Management

Forever Young Management is the silent business partner you don't have to pay. We're a vendor-neutral company that helps businesses reduce their operating costs — electric, gas, payment processing, and more by working with over 150 different vendors to find savings in expenses you already have. Here's why this company exists: I spent twenty years as a franchise operator watching money leak out of P&Ls through contracts nobody re-shopped and rates nobody questioned. Even national franchise programs don't cover every expense, and in plenty of cases we beat those national contracts with hungry local vendors. We track the markets, follow the data, and tell our clients exactly when to lock in rates, switch vendors, or stay the course. You run your business; we'll make sure you're not overpaying to do it.

Forever Young Publishing

Forever Young Publishing is the creative engine of the family. FYP builds branded websites, handles SEO, manages ad buys and backlinks, and delivers the creative services branding, photography, content that get a business seen. This company was born from a hard lesson we learned at Forever Young Distribution: if you only sell on someone else's platform, they can shut off your account and your entire revenue stream overnight. When you own your website, you own your data, your customers, and your future. FYP exists to make sure businesses control their own story online. Every site in the Be Forever Young family was built by this team and if you're reading this page, you're looking at our work right now.

How It All Fits Together

Here's the part most people miss: these companies aren't just a portfolio they're an ecosystem. BFY Life and Nirvana Life create the products. Cuyahoga Valley Custom Apparel produces the merchandise. Forever Young Distribution warehouses it, packs it, and ships it. Forever Young Publishing builds the websites and drives the traffic. Forever Young Management keeps the operating costs lean. And BFY Lighting keeps the lights on… literally and for less.

Every service we offer to outside clients is a service we use ourselves, every single day. We're not selling you a theory. When Forever Young Distribution quotes your fulfillment, we're offering the same systems that ship our own products. When Forever Young Publishing pitches your website, they're showing you the same playbook that built ours. When Forever Young Management says we can cut your utility costs, it's because we've cut our own. That's the McDonald's lesson that never left me: build the system once, perfect it relentlessly, and it works everywhere.

What We Believe

We believe in the grind the slow, unglamorous, daily kind that nobody puts on a highlight reel. We believe in reading every contract, all of it. We believe handshake deals should still mean something, even if you put it in writing anyway (trust me on that one). We believe in win/win deals, in being there when we say we'll be there, and in treating the people we work with employees, clients, vendors like their success matters as much as ours. Because the man who sold my dad his first McDonald's fixed a broken A/C unit he had no obligation to fix, just because he wanted to see my father succeed. That one act of decency shaped two generations of how my family does business. It shapes this company today.

And we believe in second chances because this whole company is one. I've been knocked down by franchisors, landlords, partners, and my own ego. I've rebuilt from close to nothing. What I learned is that failures are only failures if you don't learn from them. Every lesson from every setback is baked into how these brands and companies operate. You're not getting a founder who read about adversity in a book. You're getting one who lived it, paid for it, and came back stronger.

This Is Just the Beginning

Whether you found us looking for clean supplements, custom apparel for your team, a fulfillment partner who actually answers the phone, a website that drives real traffic, lighting that cuts your energy bill, or a partner to attack your operating costs welcome. Look around. Ask questions. Hold us to a high standard, because we hold ourselves to one.

Be Forever Young isn't about staying 25 forever. It's about never losing the energy, the curiosity, and the drive to keep building at any age, in any chapter, no matter what life throws at you. That's the mindset behind every company on this page. We hope you'll be part of the story.

Stay hungry. Stay grinding. Be Forever Young,
J.R. Greene
Founder, Be Forever Young Brands

Cuyahoga Valley in Ohio | BeForeverYoungBrands.com

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