From Golf Balls to $141M: How Jim Donnelly Changed the Future of Wellness | Ep. 55

Opening and introduction 0:00

When the money gets big, it does change people. I had a partner at Restore that I haven't talked to in two years. Probably never talk to him again. We were best friends. And tell every employee that works for me, if you don't see me crying from time to time, that means I'm not doing something that's meaningful. Meet Jim Donnelly, CEO and co-founder of Humanaut Health, author and keynote speaker dedicated to redefining health and longevity. With his innovative approach and extensive experience, Jim is transforming how we optimize well-being and extend lifespan.

Health care has to be engaging. It's what health care is missing. it needs to a little more playful, more enjoyable. More collaborations too. I feel like that's the industry needs. So let's change the course of medicine. Let's come together and make that shit happen. Just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you should do it. So three things I think have to be in place. Number one, what are your thoughts about the biohiking space where it's at today? My construct is simple. If you are not doing the fundamentals and the foundational stuff first, none of it matters.

It's so ridiculous. And it doesn' have be overwhelming and you just have start. Like at Humanoid we always say, let's meet people where they're at and let just get them started. A guy like you in the health and wellness business, how do you even get sick? Man, I tell ya. Welcome to another episode of a Healthy Point of View podcast. I'm your host, Sam Tahata. And today we have a guest who flew in all the way from Texas. This guy here is a serial entrepreneur. He has done some very massive things in our industry.

Right now he has a business that's really taking off doing some very forward-thinking things in Publish author. I mean you've seen them in the news. You've see them all over the place He's doing a lot of big things and most importantly you seen him in my book He has the chapter in a book today. We have Jim Donnelly Jim Sam good to see you buddy. Thanks, man I was waiting for this one man. This is me too. It got sick last time we were gonna do this I had that we had to change Listen man, a guy like you in the health and wellness business, how do you even get sick?

Man, I tell ya, haven't been sick in 10 years. It was not something I wanna repeat. But it was quick. You know how it is, if you're healthy, you bounce right back. I got kids, they're always around sick kids bringing it home. Hey, your back in action man. That's all that matters. So Jim, man, I want people to kind of know who you are, Ben, because you're an interesting businessman. Like you get a start from the actual medical business. I remember hearing you talk on stage and you were talking about you had like a barber shop and had Something else.

Let's talk about it, man, because it's like a lot of the times people see you and just think like wherever you're at today is what you started with, but that's not the case. Well, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My dad was a military officer for 20-some years, retired.

Entrepreneurial roots and first businesses 3:00

And he was an entrepreneur and he wasn't a very good one to be quite honest. He tried hard, he super charismatic, could always sell, but as a kid I saw him multiple times do businesses and fail. But he would always wake up the next day enthusiastic and he had some crazy stuff like we had a propane powered car you know not too many people have heard of that but you literally can put a Propane tank in the back of your car and He thought everyone was gonna do that cuz he thought it was cheaper more efficient Well, there are no propanes stations next to highways so there's all kinds of reasons why that's not gonna work and But I kind of grew up in that environment and I knew I would be an entrepreneur and, you know, I always talk about dads give sons advice and a lot of times it's about women and this.

He didn't really get into all that, but he did tell me one thing. It's like in America, there are no debtors prisons. So you can always wake up the next day and try again. And what he meant by that was in some countries, if you're an entrepreneur and you fail, that's it. You don't get a second chance. But in the United States, as long as you don' break the law, so long you work hard, you tell your investors, all the things you are going to do and do them. If it doesn't work out, you get to try again.

So I kind of grew up in that household. And so I've never really been constrained. I never thought that I couldn't do the next thing or try a bunch of things. My thesis has been to do businesses that are important to my stage of life. When I was in my 20s, I had very different interests in the 30s and 40s. You know kids have been a part of that a desire to make the sort of city I lived in a little more of a cool city had a Part of it in one case as you get older you start to have Parents grandparents start To get sick and die so health care and wellness becomes a big thing and I and i've just kind of always had this compass around What's going on in my life is what I want to build a business around?

That makes sense because especially if you're spending the time doing those things, why not make a business out of it? Right? Yeah. You know, you got to be a little careful because I, um, I always tell people cause they ask for entrepreneurial advice. Just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you should do it. So three things I think have to be in place. Number one, it has to an interesting business that you care about, because entrepreneurship's hard work. You gotta bust your ass.

And so being passionate something helps, number one. But you gotta be good at it, if you are not good it you will fail. Right. Then three, its gotta something that people want. If you don't have those three ingredients, it is horrible advice to follow your passion. So be passionate, but be good at it and make sure it's something that people want. And, you know, sometimes you can be a little early. Sometimes you could be little late around that what people won't phase. But I've been pretty lucky.

I have tended to do things that People wanted at the time I did it. And have had, you know, probably four or five really big businesses that have won, national and international awards. And and, yeah, I'm super psyched about that. Yeah. Well, what was your first business? My first. Business was very low tech. It was a golf ball recovery business. So you'd go around, get the golfball recovery rights at all the. Golf courses. You'd dive into the water hazards with the gators. Oh, gosh. And you get all the balls out and you take them back to a factory that we had, we'd reprocess them.

We packaged them and then we sent them to Europe and sold them in all of the big sporting goods stores. And how old were you when you did that one? I was 21. It was a business school project. So I wrote this business plan. it was called Repeat Performers. And we beat all the Stanford and Harvard kids and all these business plan competition. They had all of these fancy ideas. And, we'd roll in with repeat performers with this little golf ball logo that, you know, kind of had a little face and said, give me another chance.

It was pretty interesting business. But, It was cool in that I got to do lots of things. We got the set up a factory. we had offices in Sweden, we got offices and France, We had office in England. It got be a really big business but I did not want to spend the rest of my life having to send people or to sent myself into golf ball water hazards. You know we would go into some and you'd literally see 30 alligators on the bank across from you and walk in and they'd walk and Or you'd see snakes or you see other things.

And at some point, you know, that water's probably got chemicals in it. It's not the kind of thing that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So I had a military commitment. The military paid for my school. I sold that company to another army officer and went and did the military thing for four years. You were an officer in the army? I was an army Officer. Yeah, I I, was a quartermaster officer, so I did logistics. But I went to airborne school, went ranger school. So I tried to do some of the hard, crazy stuff, because I think that's important to kind of be a good, strong person.

And I that that is part of being a great entrepreneur. I thing perseverance and sticking to it is probably the hardest part about being an entrepreneur, so. You probably learn a lot of discipline in the military, right? Yeah, I probably was never thought of as the most disciplined guy. I like my hair a little long. And like being told what to do by someone I didn't think was as smart as me. Not that I think I'm that smart, but I was glad to have done the military, But definitely very glad too. Have gotten out.

So what was the next business after the golf balls? I had a corporate career first. I worked at a bunch of places, I developed new brands for Coca-Cola, ran a marketing group for Citibank. And the idea was I wanted to learn some real skills. So I watched my dad fail, and I knew it was because he didn't have the foundation he needed. If you go work at these blue chip companies, you might not like being there, or you may not be cut out for corporate America for the long term. But you're around incredibly smart people and you learn.

So I was at Citibank in 2001 when I finally said it's time to leave. And it was a funny thing. I had a friend's wedding. He put me in the cart with the other entrepreneur and the entrepreneur said, well, what do you do? And I said well I work at City Bank and he said what did you before that?

Lessons from corporate America and early ventures 10:00

Well, I worked at AT&T. What'd you do before that? I worked at Kraft Foods. You know, what'd do you before? And he said, why the hell are you in the same cart as me? and I said man, you're right. I haven't been an entrepreneur for a long time. So I quit the next week. And I started a company called I Go You Go with a buddy of mine. He was also at Citibank. From the day that I Started at City Bank and the date that Tony started at city bank, which was the Same day, all we could talk about is what are we going to do?

So we had this idea of a travel community where people would write very detailed quality travel journals about their trips, take great pictures, and then other people could read those travel journeys and follow in their footsteps. That's pretty cool. Yeah, and the idea is that like, why do I want to read a travel magazine like voters at some 75 year old person is written about I have no interest in traveling like them. And so, I go you go is really cool because it was this really interesting set of travelers.

And we had this matching algorithm, so we would match you with someone like you so you knew that you could really pay attention to it. And the funny thing about that business was we started it about three months before 9-11. 9 11 happens, everything in travel gets shut down. You can't raise money. So interestingly, we had to bootstrap it. And four years later, We won a Webby Award, which is like the award in the internet world for the top travel site in world. When you win that, you get a lot of attention.

We sold it to Travelocity. Everybody knows who Travelocity is. And they do what big companies do. They sort of took it and they ruined it, and then they changed the name. I love the names. It was so cool. But they just made it the Travelocity community. That's one thing you gotta understand the rules of the game. When it's yours, you can do whatever you want. But when you sell it to somebody else, it is theirs. You can either be okay with that or you cannot be ok with it. Either way, they are going to do what they're going do.

And you obviously have tremendous experience with dealing with private equities and everything else. So let me ask you, that business, how old were you if you don't mind me asking? When you started it, when decided to leave Citibank. Yeah, I left Citibank. So that was 24 years ago. I'm 56, so I was 32 at the time. 32. Yeah. For the listeners, there's a lot of people out there that are nurses in the hospital and stuff that want to start their business. And these are people that have sometimes thinking about it in their 20s.

You are already in your 30s where people have families and things of that nature. It can be done. Well, I was 21 when I did the golf ball company, 32 when i did I go you go. And I've been an entrepreneur full time since 32. I have done it as a single guy, as married guy. I've done it as a married guy with kids. I'd done with a marriage guy, with teenage kids, and I would say all of those are slightly different experiences. And I was lucky, once again, I married a wonderful woman, very capable. She went to West Point.

she had her own career and it was always easy for me to get on my high horse and talk about, hey, if you want to go do it, just go to it. When you got a woman that you're in love with that's making a bunch of money. So our construct would often be you pay the bills, you make the money that sort of feeds a decent lifestyle, and then I'll go out and I will shoot for the moon. I love that. And I would hopefully not do anything that will jeopardize all of our sort-of money and everything, although a couple times I came pretty close.

But that was kind of the construct that worked for us. And she's now an entrepreneur. She's an entrepreneurs. Interestingly, my two teenage kids are both entrepreneurs as well. They have companies. So in our household at any time, we have four different companies that we are operating. As crazy as it sounds, I'm like the fourth rung of that ladder. Oh, really? They got their thing going on. And I would have thought you'd like the chairman of all of them. No, I I will say this. Kids absorb an amazing amount of stuff, but they absorb it by watching and listening, not by you telling them, and so my kids don't like for me to tell them how to do something.

But they've definitely absorbed a lot of how I've done things. That's pretty interesting. The stuff that works, the stuff doesn't, you know, when to trust people and all those sort of things, but you do over time as you business after business, You do create a playbook. You create style and You know, I lead with my heart. One of my favorite sayings is a day that I don't cry is the day I feel, a wasted day. And I tell every employee that works for me, you're going to see me cry. If you don' see my crying from time to time, it means I'm not doing something that's meaningful.

I say to them, doesn't mean you have to cry! But if you're not literally crying metaphorically, you should be feeling it inside. So some people cry. Some people don't. But, if your not feeling, then why are you here? And I think when you are an entrepreneur, that construct helps you build a really great culture so you can get folks that really care about things. Now, You gotta give them something to care. And so I've tended to do businesses that were for the good of society, the goods of my community, you know, something that people could be really passionate about, like travel.

So you get the sort of passion in the people that you hire. You give them something to be very passionate and you create an interesting culture and a culture that does involve hard work and all that sort thing. And you can create amazing things. That makes sense, man, and by you opening up and saying, you cry, even if your employees are not physically crying, but they feel it, it's an emotional connection to what they're doing. I tell them when you need me to be strong, I will be. When I stepped down from Restore, all of the franchisees, for instance, when I was doing the announcement on the Zoom call because we had franchisee's all over the country, they were actually doing a poll.

How long will it be before Jim cries? Over and under. And they did it in a loving way, because a lot of them were my friends, and I didn't cry. And afterwards, many people asked me, well, how could you have not cried then? I said, you didn' need me to cry then. You needed me be strong. You needed me to tell you why I was leaving and why it was going to be okay and how you guys were going be successful. You didn't need me crying there. Now, let's go have a drink. Let's have some dinner. I promise you, you'll get some tears.

And I think that works. Employees love the fact that the things that tend to make me cry aren't necessarily work things. It's a baby, your first house, A big accomplishment at work for sure, but they know that I care, they give a damn. They know I'm not going to compromise my principles. And by the way, you mentioned private equity earlier. You've got to be comfortable with who you are and be authentic and know what your limits are. Know what you're okay with. Because when you start taking big money from investors and big from private-equity groups, You are going to have some moments where your values and their

Restore Hyper Wellness and leadership philosophy 18:00

values may or may not align. And I always say, you know, what do you do then? What do do in that moment? That's kind of the real measure of a person. I'll never forget a conversation that you and I had. We were out to dinner somewhere, I think it was Texas. And I was telling you about me wanting to raise capital and probably doubling into private equity. You straight up told me exactly that. Then you said, Sam, you gotta be careful what you wish for because it changes. It changes a lot and you're no longer in control.

It happens you know like yeah in in that has stuck since you've said it and it's made me I don't want to say scared to go that route, but it makes me really Evaluate if I'm ready to do that well You know it some it such as a private equity group you got to deal with you. Got partners You've got other sort of folks that you care about, employees. You got a lot of people that really have a vested interest and are a stakeholder in those decisions. So you've gotta figure out what your construct is for all of those folks.

I actually have never had any heartburn with a private equity group. I might not like their style sometimes, but I understand what they're doing and what their objectives are. And I get it. Their job is to come in and invest in really good companies, put a lot of money in them, and get a return. Right. You can put all kinds of sort of veneer on that that you want, that at the end of the day is what you're there for. Now, employees also want to have a good job and make money and hopefully have some profit interests and money, but it's a little more nuanced.

They're not singularly focused on what's the greatest return. And I like to think I'm not either. I've always done a job of recognizing what my investors wanted and and trying to give them good outcomes. But I think one of the keys is I'm very upfront, like this is what I am trying do, are we aligned? And if we're aligned, then okay, we should have a pretty good dynamic here. When the money gets big, it does change people. I had a partner at Restore that I haven't talked to in two years. Probably never talk to him again.

We were best friends. and I don't talk about that a lot. He had his reasons for how he thought about the way we should go forward and i had my reasons and you know I always say, I quote Tupac, um I dont want to keep you from eating, you'll just never eat at my table again. And that is my way of saying, like, I'm okay with people having a different reason for how they do things and how approach it, and we can diverge, but understand where I am coming from and understand what I value. And if you violate that, then we're probably going to diverg.

Jim, is it safe to say with a lot of the viewers and listeners that are getting into business that who you're in business with today will most likely change in the near future? Well, I mean, once again, as you get older, you know what you're looking for. The people I'm in business with at Humanaut, these are people that, number one, are incredibly experienced and successful in many of the things that they've done. They've gone out and started, we've got seven companies that have exited for $250 million or more.

on the resumes of the executive team at Humanaut. And so there was part of that, like I at this stage of my career want to be working with people that add to me, that are complimentary, can do a lot of things better than me. That have experiences that will help us go bigger, better, faster. and in all the right ways than I could do by myself. So that was a big part of it. The second big of part it for me is I want good human beings. I need to see a lifetime of good, human behavior. And so if you look at My partners, they tend to be guys who've been married for 20 years.

They tend be. Guys who have lots of long-term relationships and friends that have been around for a while. You kind of get a feel for what kind human a person is and I'm looking for good humans. I am looking guys and girls who love their kids and they understand that work is important, business is, but damn man, go home to your kids. Like you gotta get your priorities straight. And if you don't have kids, that's okay. What is important to you? Make sure you're taking care of some of that stuff. So all of them balance those kind of things.

Also, I want people that will push back a little. I might be the CEO, but we're all partners in this business. It helps you grow. Yeah, that's right. I need people that are going to raise their hand and say, dude, like, no, we could do this better. Or, hey, have we thought about it this way? I'm probably not... I am like everybody. Like, I say I m ego-less, my superpowers, and I' m self-aware, but no one who builds big things is totally ego. There are times when I grip my teeth a little bit when someone pushes back, but at the end of the day, with 24 hours, I can typically come back the next day and be like, all right, cool.

Let's look at this differently and let's go do it. Yeah, well, not for nothing. you're allowed to have an ego, because you've done some amazing stuff in the industry. Going back a few years, you were the co-founder of Restore Hyper Wellness. This is a brand that is nationwide, hundreds of locations. You had the biggest deal in this industry, everybody was talking about it, $141 million raised. It was a big thing for the industry, and I've had hundreds of people thank me. And not because they got anything directly from that deal, but they did all say to me, it opened my eyes to what's possible, It opened the world's eyes, to whats possible.

It brought lots of sophisticated money into the category so that people could raise money. And I'm super proud of that. Restore I think still is the brand name in the health and wellness business. It is at the top of the food chain. We're 225 locations in 40 states. They're still opening locations. There's a really good team there, so I'm super proud of that. I think that we always set the standard for how to do things right. We always followed the law. You know, I always say, what do you do when no one's watching?

We did the right things when nobody was watching. You know, and everyone saw the end, you know the first five years, I kind of did that. You, know I was a one man gang, like I, was I a store manager, the contractor, doing everything in the beginning. And I had a co-founder, but his role for the five first years he put some money in and I sort of had to do all the work. At about that three and a half to four year mark, we both knew this had the potential to be really big. And we just plugged away and we got there.

And it probably involved a little bit of luck, but honestly, we had a great group of folks. They were super passionate, very inexperienced. Like, Humanot and Restore, I could write a book on the whole sort of dynamic of how they're different. Restore was a bunch of just incredibly passionate, young, run-through-walls kind of folks. A lot of military, right? I mean, you sold a lot. Lot of the military. We sold our franchises to West Point grads. You know, we had this construct of if you're gonna do a franchise, You have to build a solid foundation.

And in the beginning we said, if, ya know you have a West point grad. If you get Westpoint grad to be franchisees, They're not all going to be perfect, but you're going have pretty good they're gonna work. They are going work, they are gonna be smart. they aren't going get too rattled by the little things that happen day to day. A lot of them have been shot at, a lot have gone to things like Ranger school and done great things. And we did have a lot of military folks on the team and we built something that was really special.

And I woke up at the eight and a half year mark and had taken that large amount of money and three or four things happened. Number one, the private equity group is looking at me like, hey, are we now gonna make some different choices now that we're trying to professionalize this and take this to an even higher level? I said, I don't know. I might not be the right guy for that. Like, and I'm really good at creating things. And really get it at sort of building brands and all that, but I know at eight and a half years I may not the best guy to optimize.

So, all right, let's have that conversation. Then two other things happened to me. number one my partner and I started to see the world a little differently and like okay that's probably another sign that it's time to think about let's go create something new and then on a personal level I got run over by a drunk driver so 65 miles through a red light I'm going 65 through our green light we hit head-on crushes me and for eight months I am just not my normal self and I'm in pain all the time. And I go in and tour the country and i meet all kinds of folks and stem cells was the thing that actually did it.

I got a stem cell injection in my neck, I've got stem-cells on my shoulder, i did some other interesting work to get my chest back and um I was like man I love this. There is something here. This transformed my life back to being the guy that I was before the accident. So there's something here. And so I had this this feeling in my gut like I love restore. It doesn't do enough for what I want to accomplish in the health care system. There's bigger and better out there. There's different, there's a different and capable of doing more things than Restore was doing.

And you know what, I do think that it's mix of all of it, because stem cells is not just gonna cure the world, but a lot of the other modalities that Restores offers are important. I use the education analogy, I kind of say restore does all of these foundational fundamental things, light, heat, pressure. That's kind like elementary school, like everyone should be doing these things. These are obvious. But They're pretty straightforward, pretty simple. Humanoid, I kind of say it's the PhD. Let's let Restore and others do the wellness stuff.

By the way, we should compliment each other. If you got someone who's really broken, send them up to Humonoid. And if I've got somebody at Humenoid that needs cold therapy, i don't need to put that in Huminoid let me send him to Restor. What is Humoid? Yeah so Humanoid is, it's omni-channel so it is both virtual and in clinic. We say that we feature, we focus on health optimization and so we do this integrated approach to making you as healthy as you can possibly be so you could live your best life.

So a typical customer will come in, they'll do up to 100 blood panels. They'll up do to 75 other diagnostics, epigenetics, genetics, gut health, full body scans, DEXA, Full Body MRIs, you name it. We take them through these very sophisticated movement diagnosticks that all of the Stanford athletes do. And so at the end of day we create this incredibly rich picture of each individual human that comes through the door of Humanoid. We then create a care plan that's your careplan. It covers movement, nutrition, sleep, stress, and cognitive health, i.e.

Building Humanaut Health and personalized care 31:00

the foundational aspects of being healthy. And then we're going to assign you a coach and help you with behavior change and all the things you need to do to implement the plan and stick with it. Behavior change. Yeah. That is so important. That's the hardest thing. And then at the end of the quarter, we're going to redo the testing and make sure we are making progress. If we make progress, then we can get into some deep things. We can go into even more specific things, sexual health, menopause for women, andropause, joint pain, healthspan, metabolic health.

And we sprinkle in peptides, hormones, stem cells, other exogenous molecules, prescriptions, you name it, i.e. the whole toolkit. And not just the woo woo toolkit, like the traditional medicine toolkit the functional medicine tool kit, all of it. because there's merit in a lot of this. Everything has its place. And it seems like, based off what you're saying, this is very personalized to the individual. It's not a lotta this cookie-cutter medicine that you see aotta these wellness centers have. This is a very personalizer precision.

Yeah, we get over a thousand data points from each individual customer that comes in. We do do a lot of AI enablement, so we have a pretty robust tech stack. That AI enablement helps us get organized. So then these very experienced doctors in the health optimization space can then take that organized data and help make sure that you have the best care plan. And we experiment like if something's not working we are very quick to change to something else and and each quarter We have you know a certain number of things that we focus on we say if you focus On too many things you focused on nothing and so you it's all about making progress and how many doctors do you have?

with human currently Well, we've got one clinic and we got members, obviously, that are virtual as well, but we probably got an order of magnitude five doctors. And if you throw in NPs, you know, a few more. But, um, But you we have got doctors that top of the food chain in the regenerative space, regenerate medicine stem cell space. We've got one of the top doctors in female health, sexual health peptides. We got the one top pain doctors, in the country. Um, we've one the of top longevity doctors.

In the, country we got several NPs that kind of come from functional medicine that have been doing this for a while. And then we have an advisory board with, you know, folks like Dr. Katz from, from Yale and Dr Fredrickson from Stanford. And I could list a whole bunch of others. But whenever we aren't sure, we've got a real ecosystem that we can pull into the mix and go get answers to our questions. So was this all your idea to put human that together? It was my idea, but I don't think about it like that.

Ideas are cheap. If we took 20 minutes in this podcast, I could come up with a business idea. But it's sort of how you add texture to it and how to tweak it, and then actually going out and doing it. I had lots of folks that weighed in, and I would say this is a we, not a me thing. We do have an incredible team at Humanaut. Everybody has their own personal narrative as to why they came to Humanault. There's a passion there that goes beyond just making money. And by the way, most all of our co-founders have made money and so money is not the thing that is top of.

Our head, you know, it's what kind of impact you said earlier. I mean, You lead with your heart, right? There is passion behind this. Like you actually care to give back to society, to the community, humanity. Right. You help people, you create great impact, You make people healthier. You're going to have a good business. Now, it's hard in the medical space. you got to you gotta deal with a lot of different sort of regulatory compliance type things. And every state is different. Every state is different.

I would say that there are a lot of things like stem cells that traditional medicine hasn't necessarily embraced in what I consider the right way. But the things that we do and the process that is put together is so effective, you can't hold it back. We are now seeing things, like, stem cell help people at scale. And when you do that, that bubbles up and bubbles out and more and people then do something. And at some point you just can't say, well, we don't have a FDA approved double blind study, blah, therefore it can work.

Well, if you look back through history, there are so many things that were effective before that happened. Right. So that stuff is happening. Now you've got an entirely different Level of momentum because of the new administration you know i'm always very quick to say like. No matter what administration were elected we were doing things in a way that we could do our business we're going to be fine. But anybody in the healthcare industry that doesn't think. There's sort of a different, like, dynamic going on when you've got the people that are in charge now.

They're crazy. There is. And these are people who do stem cells, that do peptides every day. For themselves. So that was part of one of the questions I was going to ask you. You know, obviously we have the new administration, and there's a big movement going, the MAHA movement, Make America Healthy Again. What are your thoughts on that? First of all, I love it. I grew up in a family from the South. Every male in my family died before 60, before my dad. My dad was like the oldest male of my Family.

He lived to be 80, died of cancer. And even he was pretty unhealthy. Didn't really, after a certain point, you know, exercise and eat well. You know, just and I grew up with morbid obesity. I had an uncle that 500 pounds died in his 40s. And so I was always super sensitive to I will not let that happen to me. Even today, my mom looks at me and goes, I thought you said you'd never get fat. That's like, Mom, i don't think I'm fat like come on, give me a break. Like, you know I might be 10 pounds heavier than I want to be.

But but I so i just kind of grew. Up knowing like this is not the path. And then you look around society and it's crazy. It's like the obesity problem, the sort of the metabolic issues out there, issues that are probably with people's livers. I mean, I could go on and on. This is a big issue. And for me, it is like this is the true change in the course of medicine. Yeah. that we need to take more of that metabolic approach to disease versus what we've been so used to, which is this reactive medicine and putting a bandaid on it.

Yeah. So but it used. To be a little more like straight line like you used know, people had a bad liver. You can almost always say, well, that's alcohol. But it's not anymore. No, it is. There's some, you know, like 60, 65 percent of adults in America are starting to show signs of liver disease. Right. And the vast majority of them. It has nothing to do with alcohol. That's all this toxic. All the processed food. So all of these different things are adding up in a way that they didn't used to and and so it's got to be a systemic approach It's gotta be I think it has got involve some governmental action.

It has gotta involve a new approach in the health care system I Think there's gonna be some personal responsibility. I thing parents gotta think about food differently schools gotta. Think about school You know everything it is a big big problem. What role do you see yourself and Humana playing in this make America healthy again? You know, whether it was Restore or Humanod or anything I've done, I like to think we'll be kind of a lighthouse on a hill. Like, we will show people a way. Now, it might not be the only way, might be not the best way but it's gonna be a the way that works.

It's going to be good way if someone becomes a human. And by the we, called it Humanot for a reason. I did not want it just another crazy medical name that's hard to decipher. Are you a human or not? That is a question we ask our team every day. And if you're a Human, what are you doing? And we say go be a Humanoid today. So that's how do you live? How do You move? how to eat all of these things? So we do want to be that lighthouse on the top of the hill that shows a better way. And we want to create this movement and we.

Want people to become human nuts and. We want them to embrace this lifestyle. And when that lifestyle is attractive, it's pretty easy to attract people. To the human way. So we are very much looking to build a big business. You know, we won't open 100 locations between now and 2029. Are you looking for franchisals? We are, we are. We'll be a little bit different in our approach. You know, Humanaut's a concept. It's not thousands of locations. Restore can be over a thousand locations, humanauts a couple hundred.

And so it's easier because you don't need as many franchisees. you can much more selective. The franchisee's we have in system today, they're very experienced. They've done other systems. they've got the operational and capital capabilities to be multi-unit. Owners right and and they'll be true partners helping us scale this and grow this amazing But but you and you're in the franchise business if you get the wrong franchisee It's 25 times more work than getting the right one And you cannot build a system if you have the wrong franchisees.

And so we've said a lot, we're gonna go slow to go fast. We're going to get Humanaut to where it's a real system, it scalable, its replicable, It's easy to create consistency. Were doing a lotta things to enable that. were doing alot of the things that I would have previously put on the franchisee. we do it as a centralized corporate function because a franchise can only handle so much complexity. So you've got to handle some of the complexity that's beyond their capability So like I give an example the coaching platform if I were to leave the Coaching platform up to the individual franchisees that would be suicide because it's too complex It's two hard behavior change is one of The hardest things you can possibly do so we have to create a coaching Platform that we can give to all of our franchisee right and you basically control it from the hub you control from The hub hundred percent so There are other examples of that, but I think we've got the right dynamic around what we control centrally, what leave to the franchisee, and sort of how it all works together.

Because when I first started Humanoid, the question I got most was, are you doing too much? And I would always say, well, riddle me what you would take out. What are you going to take? You're going take nutrition? Are you gonna take movement? Hormones? Simpsons? Because once you start pulling things out, we don't have an integrated full... It's no longer humanized. It suffers from the same problem a lot of the one-off solutions have. I love that there's an aura for sleep.

MAHA, biohacking, and the future of wellness 43:00

I loved that. There's a talk space for something else. And I could list I'd love if there was a liquid Vita for all the wonderful things you do. By the way, you're doing a lot of the stuff Puma does. So, so you know, You're in the same boat as me. You know this. Your your your kind of coy over there and, but you, know all this stuff. No, I do. You know how hard this is. It's not just having a med spa, because we have the med-spa components as well, too. Just having the Med Spa, there's a lot, right?

And then you start adding the wellness of functional medicine stuff, all of the different specialty labs and the Texas scan, the VO2 max. And it's like, number one, you gotta have a medical provider or multiple medical providers that even understand all this stuff that they don't even teach in medical school. So you're looking for people who've gone through certain fellowships and all these other stuff. It is a bit complex, but I am just like you passionate about it. And I do think this is what our medical system needs is more of this proactive preventative approach, you know, diving deeper into the person's data, their own personal health data.

So I get you. You know, it's, um, biology is not physics. Physics is, is a little more, the formula is the, formula biology's a, little, more. You, know you've got to experiment. It's not now a biologist might say, Jim, you don't know what you're talking about. Biology is very structured, but, I think the analogy is that. An individual's health requires a lot of different inputs and I think it requires experimentation. You've got to try different things and you've gotta recognize that everybody's a little different, everybody responds to things that are a different.

you clearly can start to see patterns. That's why I thing AI is so important in the medical space. But you will also once again see lots of things that don't fit squarely into the perfect pattern. And so you have to be a little more flexible when you're doing what we're. Doing then once. Again, if you were doing something as a physicist. Right. Jim, I'm going to ask you a question. You know, you've seen a lot develop in our space, our industry. What do you think about biohacking? That terminology, bio hacking.

We run into each other at some of these conferences and stuff. And right now, I mean, the bio-hackin' space has grown tremendously. I personally go to some these conference and I walk through the exhibit hall and it's just like, There's all kinds of stuff out there. Some good and some other things where it's just like you start questioning it. And the biohacking space has grown to this level where I do think there needs to be a little bit of awareness at my end. Now, what are your thoughts about the Biohackin' Space where we're at today?

I have a really simple construct around this and I'll throw another word that is in some ways like bio hacking and that's literally the word longevity. If you look at some of the things people are doing for the sake of longevity, it is kind of like the biohacking stuff. It's the crazy stuff, the blood boy stuff... I can go on and on. There's a lot of stuff! My construct is simple. If your not doing the fundamentals and the foundational stuff first, none of it matters. But it's so ridiculous. I see people all the time.

The number of pills they're taking, the type of bills are taking the quote unquote biohacking things, longevity things they are doing. But they don't eat right. They don' move right, they dont sleep well. If you don''t move and understand sort of what you're trying to accomplish there, if you dont put the right things in your body, and I'm not saying perfect, you know, like I love food, I''m a foodie. I, If, You say I can't ever have like bread pudding again, i'm going to be like, all right i'' m tapping out.

But I understand how it all works together and i generally put good things on my body. sleep, cognitive health, mental health. All these things. Get your fundamentals under control first. That's awesome that you're saying that. I had Sandy Martin, founder of the Biohacker Expo, on the podcast a few weeks ago. And she brought up a good point. She said, people are so concerned about taking this pill, buying this machine, this technology. And the first step, she said it. The first is say no to a lot of things.

Say no the McDonald's. No to this. It's free, that first part. So the fundamentals, I get it, man. Once you do that, then I'm all in. Go crazy. I think it's great to go crazy, if you come to my house, I've got a wellness room, hyperbaric chamber, red light, sauna, cold plunge. My wife just, she just launched the company Chili Box. It's like the first at home cryo chamber that's under $20,000. Gets just as cold as a professional one. And you can plug it into a 110 outlet. So it's like super cool.

It's, like, when I say we're in this world, my wife is literally building cryo a cryochamber business. Like we we love it. And and you could put that in the biohacking world. You could say that therapy is potentially part of bio hacking. But but it is the same. If you're not taking care of the fundamental stuff. Crowd therapy doesn't matter, you know. Now, I even say it was one of my frustrations with Restore. People would confuse the thing for the things before the think. So cryo is the the before thing.

Cryo helps you have energy, might help you not have a painful knee or a painfull joint. But then you gotta go exercise. When a guy says to me, I did cry out today, am good. I'm like, dude, no, you're not. Now go do the go over your body, go with your. Body. And I think that sometimes biohackers confuse the things before the thing or the. Thing after the, thing for the . Thing and you got to do. The fundamental foundational thing. No, the think I do give a lot of bio hackers a little bit of grace around is that they do tend to.

Do a. Lot of the thinks like most of. Of the bio. Hackers I run around with. They are in pretty damn good shape. They're taking care now. I'm not sure they got all the mental stuff down sometimes, like they're a little obsessed with stuff. You really do gotta have all this stuff in place before the biohacking stuff's gonna work. If you lay the foundation and then you start putting that very specific bio-hackin' type stuff on top of it, awesome, you're gonna get some really good results. And hey, if you got the time and the money, no problem.

Because that's the other thing I say about bio hacking and longevity. Most of the longevity stuff, most of biohacking stuff. It's not like it's hurting anybody. So if you got the time and the money and you want to do it, okay. Where I do kind of put my foot down is if it is dangerous. If there is no science behind it, if there's no sort of like, why are we doing this? And I do think there are charlatans in the biohacking space. I think people are selling a dream. And and I that's kind of bad for our industry.

But I generally think most people at those conferences have real conviction that what they're selling is pretty good. But, you know, it's awfully hard to, wrap a myosin is one I always talk about. I had a specific friend, can you get me wrap-a-myosins? I was like, dude, no. And he was, like why? Come on, I thought you could get anything. He's like I can, but you're 30 pounds overweight. You know I haven't seen you exercise in two years. Right. Like you complain about your sleep all the time. We'll get to that, But let's take care of the other stuff first.

Yeah. So when you go to those conferences, You now how it is. It's, hey, take this, Take this. Take that. Oh yeah. It becomes too much. You know, one of the things you were talking about, your own house, how you've set it up with all these different technologies and stuff. And I've noticed one the big things that's happening now is people, I remember going back like about 10 years ago, people were creating smart homes, now people are creating their own biohacking homes where they have the infrared sun or the cold plunge or cryo.

So are you seeing a lot more of that? Yeah, I think, you know, You've heard the overused phrase, but it's a nice phrase health is wealth. I Think experiences sometimes are more valuable than the next handbag. You know and I'm seeing that in my world where people would rather spend more money on their health and be able to do the things that they enjoy doing with their friends and family then and once again have more positions. And I do think that people, whether it's builders, architects, hospitality businesses, you are definitely seeing more and more of an emphasis on let's create a wellness dynamic here.

Once again, it can go too far, and it is expensive if you put everything in your house. I don't even want to say how much money I spent on all the stuff. I want To say How much Money I spend every month on taking care of myself. It's kind of my business to do that. But I think you got to pick your moments, you gotta stack it, You gotta get good at the foundation. And then if you wanna turn part of your house into a wellness area, then do it. What's better than that? Have you noticed that a lot of these big biohackers out there come from the tech world?

Yeah, that's what I mean. That's why I say the longevity thing and the biohacking thing. Those words can kind of get conflated sometimes. What I don't want to have happen is I want bio hacking to become a bad word. I Don't Want Longevity to Become a Bad Word. doing all kinds of crazy stuff and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their home and for all kind of treatments. I want it to be accessible for everybody. That's my mission is to democratize this stuff. When we started at Restore Crowd Therapy it was $85 a session.

You can go be a member at Restore, buy a package, you can spend as little as $12, $13 for a session. Most people can afford that. I'd like to do the same thing for stem cells. So I would like do do same things for peptides. Do the the thing same for lots of different things in this space. When my mother, who's a retired school teacher, can't afford a lot of these things, I'll know that I got there. By the way, my mother is a member at Humanoid and she is starting to do these things. And she's getting good results.

As much as I love all the cool stuff and the things you can do your house, I get much more fulfillment when I see a fireman. You know, you take a Fireman, for instance. What is the thing that is most important for him? It's physicality outside of their work. They're generally physical. At their work, their physical. If they are broken, they cannot be the human being they're designed to be. And so I get way more fulfillment when we can do a stem cell treatment on the back of a fireman, and he can go back to playing all the sports and doing the firemen things that he needs to do.

Going to work saving other people's lives. Yeah, I'm not gonna tell you anything about being a firefighter, you were a Fireman. But I've had a lot of folks like that come to me and say, man, I can't afford to fly to Panama and spend 25, $30,000 and I look at them and say,

Accessibility, advice, and closing thoughts 55:00

you don't need to. We can do all that stuff right here in the U.S., come to Austin and we'll make it work. Jim, as we wrap up here, if there's anyone listening, any medical providers that are out there that in business or any consumer that potentially wants to get involved in some of the stuff we talked today, what is one thing that you can leave them with today? It doesn't have to be overwhelming, you know, and you just have start. And that's true for a consumer, like find what's gonna work for you.

Like at Humanoid, we always say, let's meet people where they're at. Right. Let's just get them started. Because if we start and it's way beyond where their at, they will not stick with it. They will quit, tap out really quickly. So for consumers, I'm like, find a resource that will meet you where you're And sort of build from there and then just get started and I would say the same thing for the medical professional. Are these doctors like they're in some shitty practice that they spend half their time doing stuff they can't stand doing.

They're dealing with payers and insurance like. There's another world out there. Find someone, find someone to talk to, and then put your toe in the water, it's a real thing now. It might not have been a business, a practice before, but functional medicine's here, man. And it is where all the momentum is headed. And so go find somebody that you can talk to, go put your toe in the water, because it's viable now. You do not have to be locked in to a system that is killing you. I agree. Amazing, amazing.

Jim, if people want to find you, where can they find You can find me on LinkedIn and obviously you can go to humanothealth.com and you Can find human not and they will always get you to me if if you need to get to Me but most people Come and find Me on linkedin and i'm pretty good at responding absolutely Cool man, hey, it was a pleasure to have you on the podcast. We're gonna put all the links of everything that you mentioned down below. So Jim, man. Listen man it's been a pressure. Yeah, I consider you one of the good guys in the business.

I don't consider one the guys because you had me on my podcast, you've always had an enthusiasm. You've had a charisma. By the way, its what healthcare is missing. Healthcare has to be engaging. It needs to a little more playful. it needs to be a little more enjoyable. More collaborations too, right? We're all working towards the same goal. Like when I go to Texas, I wanna go check you guys out. I want to go over there, hang out, and I feel like that's what the industry needs. It's like we can't be so fragmented, we all know from history, what would they do to make people not succeed?

Divide and conquer, so for us, if we're over here preaching, hey, let's change the course of medicine, well heck, lets come together and make that shit happen. I agree man, you know you're always welcome. You're welcome at Humanoid, your welcome in my home, and thank you for having me. Awesome man. Guys, this was another great episode, us having the legend here, right? To talk about business, talk what we're doing to change the course of medicine we had Jim. Make sure you follow all these links that are down below, make sure to share this, subscribe, do all the fun stuff, we'll see you next time.