He Fights the FDA with Science—And Wins! | Mark Young Exposes the Wellness Industry | Ep. 67

Intro and Guest Background 0:00

A consumer wants to hear stories of people who have actually had a similar story to their own. People want to see themselves. We need to learn how as brands to storytell in such a way that consumers feel like they are the center of the story and not me. Out of all the presidents we've ever had, who's done the best storytelling? Donald Trump? He's a marketing machine. Joining us today is Mark Young, CEO of Zona Health, a biohacker, entrepreneur, and marketer. As a leader in health innovation, he's focused on developing cutting-edge biohacking tools to optimize human performance.

Stay tuned for his insights. People who are doing low sodium diets because of the blood pressure drive me up a wall. It's not that the sodium is causing the pressure. There's a correlation. there's no causation. And the correlation in most cases... You have to hold Maha movement. I think one of biggest parts of Maja movement is the awareness part of it. Their entire purpose is education. What's funny about it is that with Zona, it's like, well, you hold it and you squeeze it, and people immediately go to, oh, one of those grip it.

No. Oh, no. Okay, if you're done guessing, let me explain what this does. Knees deep in the FDA. The reality is the F.D.A. is looking out for consumers. Their entire purpose is to protect consumers from predatory marketers. Would you say that there's potential corruption within the f.d.a.? ? Welcome to another episode of a healthy point of view podcast. I'm your host Sam Tahata. And as usual, we're bringing experts from all over the world about health, wellness, and beauty. Today we have an expert who's really, he's out in front, but he is also the guy behind the scenes.

You see a lot of these big biohackers and all these people out there. There's someone who is making sure they're moving the needle for them. Today we have a biohacker himself, which we're gonna figure out how he takes care of his health and how makes it happen for other people. We have Mark Young here in the studio. Mark, man, pleasure to have you here. Appreciate it, buddy. I appreciate the invite. It's nice, because you're local, too. Like, I'm right down the road from you. You know, there's a lot of, like, people in bio-hacking space here, in South Florida.

Oh, so I am from Detroit, originally, and I moved to South, Florida, about 12, 13 years ago, People here are just better looking. They take care of their health. It's just a more beautiful place to be, I gotta be honest. I go back home and I'm like, come on, let's get with it, right? No, South Florida's amazing. How long did he move here from, how long ago, from Detroit? Like 12, 13 years, it was late, now 2013, whatever that is, still 12 years now. Okay, and how many years do you live in Detroit for?

Oh, you're trying to do the math on me here. I get you. Yeah. Um, I was in Detroit for what? I went to New York for a little while. So I wasn't to trade for like 37 years. Wow. And then I ended up coming here to Fort Lauderdale. This is home now. You know, I'm originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so I am a mid-westerner as well. Oh, you totally get it. I actually used to work right outside of Milwaukee in Brookville. Brookfield, okay. Do you know the area? Yeah, there's Brook-feel? Brookveil. Okay.

Is that the name of it? There's Brooke-Feel also. Brookefield. Yeah. It's like Wabatoza area out that way. Mid-westers are a little bit different, man. Well, because we work ethic. Yeah. The work ethic is one, you know, a lot nicer. I always tell people it's like you could go to the Midwest and you'll like run into like, like a straight up thug looking person. It would be the nicest person ever, opening up the door for you. So, man, Detroit. so let me, I'm going to talk about that before we get into all the biohacking and everything else.

You know you 37 years in Detroit and. Yeah, that's right. And you can do the math on that. You don't look 50 though, man. That's all that matters. By the time I turn 50, I better look as good as you. But I know you've been going to look reader for a while, so I'm going take a little credit on that. Unused gift cards. Exactly. I was trying to wipe the dust off those gift card that you brought in today. Detroit Michigan man. It was a lot of manufacturing over there back in the day And if you were there for 37 years you remember when there was just so many jobs out there I went to Detroit probably a handful of years ago.

That's probably five or six years and man it was different Detroit, it's an interesting city. I actually used to, I was a college professor for many years. You can peel away the layers here. And I taught at a lot of schools up in the Detroit area. Detroit's got a really interesting history that a lotta people don't realize. Like Detroit they used call Detroit the Paris of the Midwest. It used be just this incredibly beautiful city, And then when Henry Ford ended up coming into the into say, well, there was a bigger thing Detroit being a beautiful, beautiful city.

There was actually a. The history lesson there is after Vietnam or after the Korean War actually was when it all began, there was a movement towards giving soldiers who came back land to start to gentrify suburbs. And what ended up happening was in most of those, I mean, people know Detroit's obviously very racially polarized, right? Like I'm a white guy from Detroit and it's like, but Detroit is the blackest city in the country or was at one point. And literally down the street is a city called Livonia that was the whitest city in all of the country.

And you're like, man, you literally like right down on the streets from each other. What weird polarization, right? And then in Dearborn, we have the largest population of Arabs outside of The Middle East. Wow. Um, and then it, in the Southfield Bloomfield area, We've got one of highest concentration of Jews outside Of the Middle east. weird how pocketed and segregated the city is. The Midwest is, you know, Milwaukee was actually rated one of the most, it was rated the Most Segregated City in the United States for quite a few years.

Same thing, I've noticed that in The Mid-West, well, all the Jews are here, the Germans are, here the Hmong people are over here. Right, just weird. But yeah, we had, in, In the City there, and especially when Henry Ford came in because he was, You know Henry for brilliant for all of, All of his whatever but, Henry Ford actually was very much a segregationist. And it's funny, because I used to show my students, actually, when I was doing this lesson. I would talk to them about segregation and how this happened.

The city of Detroit was here, and then the city Dearborn was there, then there's a city called Dearborne Heights that actually wraps around Dearbourne. That's where the white blue collar people were allowed to live. Then there was the Inkster-Romulus area, that's were all the black people had to lived. It was like it was structured intentionally that way. But even before that, when soldiers came back from war, which were predominantly white at the time, they were given land, an area that they could actually go gentrify the suburbs.

And what ended up happening to the city, the City of Detroit, for so many of its beauty, it was built for a population that it never hit. Wow. So the city was built for like a million million and a half people to live there was the infrastructure that was put in but I think the City never reached over 750,000 people. because by the time the city started populating, there was a migration out to war. And then when they came back, they never went back to the City, which is how the Citi ended up with such a high concentration of minorities because all of the white people ended going off to work and then coming home and moving to suburbs.

So there's this weird polarization that was never even intentional. That's interesting. It just happened. The city is still super weird. I used to teach at a place called Henry Ford Community College. And I used to always like there was a Saturday morning class that I just loved teaching so semester after semester I would always teach that class no matter what else I was doing professionally and It was funny to me because it was in Dearborn Literally down the street from Ford World headquarters So you would think Ford world headquarters, right?

That's where all the engineers that's wrong, but literally I don't know I could probably count on one hand in years how many times I had a white male student Really? Yeah. Weirdest thing, like my entire classroom would be either people from the city of Detroit, which tended to be black people, from The City of Dearborn, Which tended To be Arab or white women who were single moms trying to go back to school. It was the, and I loved it because I love racial diversity. You probably learned a lot too from different cultures and everything.

Absolutely. And it was just it, was amazing because I love having conversations with people of different opinions. So like, I loved it. But it is weird to me that a class was not integrated. It was in fact very much misrepresentative of the population. That's very interesting. Detroit's weird. See, this is why I wanted to touch up on it, because when you talk to people that have been in a city like that in the Midwest for so many years, you learn stuff from that. Well, and I'll add to this, I didn't grow up in this city of Detroit.

I actually grew up a in city called Taylor, which, again, talking migratory patterns, Taylor was where all the people from Tennessee and Kentucky moved

Detroit Roots and Midwest Perspective 9:00

up to get jobs in automotive industry, Which is actually how my grandfather ended up, in Michigan, cause he was from Georgia, Went up there for a Ford motor job after he retired. They moved back to Georgia, but my, my dad's family was from, from Canada where they came over into Detroit from the Canadian border. But yeah, so I grew up in what they call Taylor Tucky. Okay. So here we are with all this racial segregation all over the place, Shotguns and pickup trucks, right? Yeah, and now man you go there because you know, obviously a lot of that manufacturing is gone It's overseas and every since I boarded up you see the factories that are still they're still standing there But you you just board it up They were doing a a comeback with like Compuware moving down there then General Motors moved into the Renaissance Center building They did get a lots of business back and then they really started building like brownstone housing and stuff like that big foodie scene And then at 2020 in COVID, just the lockdowns in Michigan were so tight that the city just collapsed again.

And no one went to work. Everybody worked from home. So everybody at General Motors and Compuware and all these big industry, you know, white collar buildings that were down there. All the restaurants went out because no one was at work anymore. There was no lunch crowd. That sucks because they've tracked so hard to revitalize the whole city so many different times. Yeah. No, it's it. It's been an interesting thing to watch. I'd prefer to. Watch it from here. From the beach, especially during the winter, man, when everybody during.

The winter. Absolutely. My buddies that I grew up with, I'm like, they're like. Oh, yeah, got to go to work to stay. And I'll be like on A1A by the Likovita store. And it's like, hey, yeah, this is where I'm at. Palm trees, blue skies. So I live downtown and I do. I did those jealousy shots over the. Yeah, so that man, that's a good, you know, last time I went to to Michigan, I flew into Detroit and went. To a city called Utica, Utika. In the Utico, it was beautiful. It was very, like new side. Yes.

Cool, man. Let's get into a little bit more into what you do. You're telling people I'm an expert, then you just start talking about Detroit. Hey, but you know what, you came up with some expert stuff on Detroit, so you're in the marketing PR. Well, to begin with, your a serial entrepreneur. Your involved in a lot of different things. A lot health and wellness products, modalities. Sure, sure. And you participate yourself in biohacking. On the marketing PR side, you've taken a lead on really diving into this industry when it comes to the functional medicine biohacking space.

And I know that because obviously I knew a lot of people that you represent, and not only that, but every big conference or a lotta these private rooms that aotta people try to get into. We're there together. When we run into each other, it's like hey, Sam, hey Bart. So we see eachother. So, what got you into this industry? Yeah, that's funny you say that because that is a long journey. I will say what officially got me into the space itself. My dad was always the big supplement guy and so on. I never got into it like that wasn't it I'm always like 10 years later but years ago I ended up working with a client after I decided that I wasn t going to stay in the education world and most of that is because I m an entrepreneur at heart and if you're an entrepreneurs heart like bureaucracy is like kills your soul.

And being in education was like, I loved education because I could impact students and I can change trajectories of people's lives. It was, like I was able to have a direct impact. And then when I moved into more of an administrative role in Education, Like I Was Able To Empower People To Do That. Um, it was during a time that just the Department of Education like. I'll go on record and say I hate the department of education. So, you know, all this talk about should it go away? I'm like good riddance.

But I know I just, um, jilted. But but the reality is is like when I left that space, I really wasn't sure what I was going to do to be honest with you. Like I just want to reinvent myself. I don't know. Had done this for so long. And I started working in a consulting role for a company that was doing red light therapy. Now, mind you, that it was like 13 years ago. Oh, wow. It was a medical device that they promoted as joint detoxification, you know, within FDA code. And I ended up getting this huge baptism by fire into FDA and FTC and so on and really learned a lot about, you know, shortwave ultraviolet and red light laser, so, on, and, forth.

I got a real induction into that and I'm like, wow, this really works. And this is before redlight was trendy. Everybody and their brother nowadays is red-light something. This was way before that. So this was like magic. And we started doing and my dad actually owns an advertising agency that's based in Detroit. Oh, nice. Still are. Um, so I'd always been adjacent to this type of industry and then working on a consulting basis with this company partnered with what he was doing. I'm like, wow, this is kind of interesting.

I ended up, interestingly enough, this is back in the big, you know, call now to order TV days because it was before everybody was very acclimated to Internet ordering, particularly older demographics. And I'd opened a call center. because I'm like, man, we can't find a call center that can actually handle the volume we were driving. We were doing like a half million to a million dollars a week in media just on Fox. Wow. Do you do the call centers here in the US or overseas? It's here. Here in US.

And it was all distributed network and whatnot. So I started this call Center within like 1 minute and a 1.5. we had 165 agents on, you know, on the ground work from home. I know. It was amazing. Like it just happened. Yeah, that's right. That's what I do, right? Like laugh, laugh. And we started working with this client. It was like, well, that's interesting. And then, you know, our next client into the space just coincidentally was a hair regrowth shampoo called Pure Adora. and it was just like all interesting, so we worked with them and then I ended up getting into some other stuff and It's just people who you introduce you to other people they know and everybody's in a similar space.

So yeah, I mean that kind of happened and I actually work with a company called Zona House. Which is a medical device that uses isometric hand grip therapy and you know, I'll say fights or combats hypertension I got it. I made an investment in that company and then years later they came and were like, hey I know what we've got this thing, but we need to make some leadership changes and make them business decisions Would you be interested in leading this company? I'm like Not really, like I have a business of my own, but thanks.

And so we ended up kind of, you know, doing some, I use the word negotiating, But it really wasn't a negotiation. It was more of a, how can you help? And I'm like, oh, love to help. What do you need? Um, and that was a real short term, uh, intention. Um, but I've been CEO of that company too now for seven years, which is funny because it started as a six month commitment. Seven years later, I'm, you know, up to my knees and FDA, uh, whatever's, and I, look back to those 12, 13 years ago, dealing with red light therapy.

And even further than that, in all of the work that I had to do with, with auditing through the department of education and all this other compliance related stuff and regulatory visits and. I do the same thing now. I just do it with the FDA, right? You know now it's not the DOE. It's the fda now or it the FTC when it comes to marketing like but it is the Same type of regulatory and compliance things that we deal with. Yeah. So yeah, it has been an interesting journey along the way. Obviously my involvement with Zona has opened up an incredible amount of doors.

Just simply because I'm present at things sometimes just as a healthcare CEO. But as you mentioned, like as marketer, I end up meeting a bunch of people and it's become my passion and longevity has absolutely become space, if you will, but that's both personal and professional. Yeah, because you're passionate about it as well too. It's not like you just doing it to do it. But initially when I first connected with you, and I saw you speaking on stage, it was in regards to the Zona device. And it wasn't until we started actually communicating and talking more, I started researching you.

I was like, hold on, he does a lot more than just this product. What does he really do? What doesn't he not do. So let's talk about the Zona a little bit, just so people can kind of understand it. So this device, you say that it helps bring hypertension down. Yeah, well, I would never say from a claims perspective, so don't frame me. Which we're gonna go actually, because you brought up a good point about FDA, FTC, and a lot of the people that are listening obviously have clinics and whatnot. Absolutely.

And I think that's the topic that we are gonna have to touch up on. Because I've dealt with that a LOT and it's not fun. Yeah, so, but go ahead. Let's go. No, it's so Jonah itself. It's an isometric device. I mean, using it, holding it in the palm of your hand. Um, and there's a whole algorithm to the way that it guides you through a therapy. So it should say exercise, not therapy, you know, two minutes on your right hand, take a pause. Two minutes. On your left hand bit. Um, it's the ultimate bio hack.

If I can quote Dave Asprey on that and say, Dave Astor has been an investor in the company for many years. Like he was one of the earliest investors in a company. So I've known Dave a long time. Um. But what's funny about it is that with, with Zona, It is such a counterintuitive sale because it like, well, you hold it and you squeeze it in and people immediately go to, Oh, like one those grip it. Nope. It's exact opposite. And they're like. Oh. No. No, like I need you to get rid of everything you're thinking because the human brain wants to chunk things, right?

How Mark Entered Biohacking and Health Marketing 19:00

It wants draw associations because that way things are easier to understand. Um, and I'm always trying to unpack that going, no, No. Okay. If you're done guessing, let me explain what this does. Um, but the reality is, is it actually guides you and because it's all hand grip, it doesn't, I mean, grandma can do it, right? Because it not a, It's the equivalent of people think of grip as being this squeeze and release, squeeze, and released type motion. And that's considered concentric versus eccentric, Right?

Concentric is the up of a setup, eccentric being the down of the setup. And that's the the up down the expansion and contraction isometric is literally equal measurement. It is holding something at exactly the same strength. So it would be the equivalent of a plank to a sit up. But the problem is is planks don't give you biofeedback. Right? Nowhere in a plank does the plank tell you if you're doing it too weird or if your fidgeted or you popped your butt in the air for a minute or moved your shoulders around.

And then people will do a low plank and then they'll go to a high plank. Sure, you are doing a plank. I'm not disagreeing with that. Your abs are probably getting something out of that, but from the absolute benefit of isometrics, most people aren't getting that because they would need a trainer standing over them, kicking them every time they fidgeted, right? Because you break the isometric every times you move. You know, it's like balancing an egg on a spoon, like as you're walking across the room, sure, you can move around, but one bad move and the egg cracks.

It needs to be a perfect hold or you are going to have that problem. Now isometrics itself, what's interesting, and I'll give you some science on this because I actually enjoy this, Is isometric itself your body moves towards comfort not discomfort, right? And an iso-metric if you've ever done anything where you'd like imagine that you were just doing a wall sit We've all done wall sits, and you do it first 20 seconds. You're like, yeah, whatever I could do this all day blah blah You know, you're probably 45 seconds in and they're cool You know, a minute in, you're kind of, rubbing yourself against the wall.

You're kinda doing like, adductor kind movements, moving your legs back and forth. Cause it gets hurt. I mean, it starts to hurt, right? And the body wants to move towards that comfort. Using Zona, which is entirely a biofeedback exercise device, It's giving you audio and visual cues if you go out of range in the least bit. So it's on you. Nope, little more, nope, a little less, no beep beep, beep. You're like, so it requires that active meditation, if your will, to focus on it. But what happens when your body goes into a state of discomfort is it immediately triggers that fight or flight, that sympathetic nervous system response in So zone is triggering that sympathetic nervous system which is immediately putting your body into that fight or flight state.

One of the things that does obviously is because if you're holding this device in your hand, obviously your arm is going to start feeling that tension usually after about 60 seconds. And your brain doesn't know what's going on because that feels weird and why would we put ourselves in a state of discomfort intentionally? This must not be intentional. And your body flips into survival tactic and immediately releases nitric oxide throughout the body. So your buddy gets flushed with nitrous oxide, which increases vasodilation because the brain is trying to get blood to flow to whatever the areas that's feeling this weird constriction.

Nitric Oxide, we all know is the bodies own vaso dilator. There are so many great things that happen when nitroxide takes place. Um funny enough hypertension is the number one reason people use the zone a second is erectile dysfunction Because it's a blood flow issue. Yeah, like fix it with nitric oxide and you're good to go um So that's the surface level of the short-term benefit of it But from a long- term benefit and this is where I say it. It's kind of that combo shot to the corner pocket That is, the stress in the muscle group requires the release of sodium at a cellular level because otherwise the muscles going to spasm, right?

You're holding it here, muscles will spasms, that's why you need electrolytes when your muscles are stressed, so on. You end up releasing sodium in a cellular level, but at the cellular levels, sodium and potassium must always stay at steady balance. Right. So, when sodium releases, Potassium also releases, it has to in order to keep that balance. Potcium moving through the endothelium, which is the, endithelial lining is innermost, the lining of the cardiovascular system. When potassium moves through there, and actually I'll use the word rehydrates, because as we age, um because of lack of proper nutrition, or lack proper inputs, mineralization, whatever we want to argue about, The endothelium is like a sponge.

And over time, that sponge just begins to get a little brittle. Well, try to take a dry sponge and clean out the inside of a glass, right? It doesn't bend anymore. That's kind of how your cardiovascular system happens over the time. Endothelin is actually what manages the blood pressure system, if you will. It manages pressure in the body. So when pressure goes up, and the endithelial is hard, it doesn' sense that pressure is high. So pressure will just keep climbing and the endothelium doesn't even know that's happening.

So by pushing that potassium release through the in the helium, what happens physiologically is that your end of helium begins to soften kind of like you're dripping water onto a sponge. Little by little the whole thing starts to become more flexible as the endothelium Becomes more. Flexible and actually begins to go back to its homeostatic state What happens is that end of helium starts? Do you trigger the? Whole body go it's almost like a holy cow like when did the pressure go up? I didn't know this even happened, right?

So I say that we're literally turning back chronology that time is going backwards for your cardiovascular system because you don't Know a seven-year-old with high blood pressure You don't know a 19-year-old with high blood pressure. Save specific medical issues. No one needs to throw out the exceptions. But the reality is, is blood-pressure tends to be something that we just accept as being a hallmark of aging. And I argue and say that's not true. Healthy is healthy, regardless of age. That's interesting how you say that, about how age, how we've accepted that as being as a hallmark of aging, and really that shouldn't be the case.

What should be case is really having a good understanding of why it's happening and then figuring out what you could do to potentially reverse that or prevent it. Root cause. So so this device are you guys selling this to clinics to the direct consumer direct to consumer? We've got an affiliate network. We got plenty of clinics that use it. It's you know, it's a big deal. it has been around the market for a long time. The issue is the explanation of how and why it works is just so counterintuitive.

But as a marketer, it's a frustrating message. I'll be honest, because as market or I'm telling you, no, just hold this device in your hand and use this, you know, for 12 minutes a day. And your blood pressure goes down like we as society have just accepted. It's what we call standard of care. Now that if you go to a physician and your. Blood pressure is in any way elevated. You get a pill and we just take the pill. It's just so easy to do. And I tell people my grandfather died a couple of years ago and he was on five different types of blood pressure medications.

You know what he died of? What's that? Kidney failure. Go figure. That's one of the side effects that they don't highlight. Right. Well, because your kidneys are filtration devices. Right? Like your kidney's are filtering all this garbage. And again, I'm not anti pharma. I not, you know, hate the pharmaceutical companies like that. Stay in your lane. Like like pharmacology needs to have its place. It is not a surrogate for healthy living. A lot. a lot of people use it as a crutch. They'd rather take the pill versus doing the work.

In. and I want to argue one step deeper than that, though, Sam. But I mean, to say like a. Lot of. People don't even know that there is work There's such a mysticism around what actually is a thing that I actually believe that if you tell people you should do something instead of high blood intake taking antihypertensives, most people's response would be, well, yeah, I probably should cut a lot of salt out of my diet. No, salt is not the culprit. That's complete BS. People who are doing low sodium diets because of their blood pressure drive me up a wall.

Because like, sodium is not your problem. The reality is, is people with hypertension, they found elevated levels of sodium in their blood. That was a study that was done ages ago. Okay, well, here's your blood pressure, and we found the elevated level of the sodium. Well, what if there was the cause of both of those things? Like, it's not that the Sodium is causing the blood-pressure. There's a correlation, there's no causation. And the correlation in most cases is sugar intake. You have too much sugar.

Sugar causes your body to retain salt because salt balances sugar, right? I tell people it's like the spaghetti sauce. If it is too salty, you throw a little bit of sugar in it and it will take the saltiness out. Same way your bodies functions. You got too sugar your your will retain your salt, but your doesn't keep salt in the body. if you literally sat and just overdosed on an entire thing of salt right now, You'll just pee it out! Your body doesn't hold it. And Mark, you know the thing is, sugar is the true killer, man.

When you talk about inflammation. Everything. The thing, when people hear sugar, people just think about candy. There's a lot of other things that are going to spike up that glucose. You know, and there's even certain fruits and fruits that that will will be on the high side of the glycemic index that Will do it as well to eating too much of certain breads, you know bread itself, right? So so that's something that people have to understand.

Zona Health and Isometric Therapy Explained 29:00

It's like it's what you're putting into your body number one and then number two move your Body, yeah people are sitting around And then you know, you touched up on it's like making sure people know because a lot of people just don't know and I think that this is one of the things that you and i are doing a Lot of is bringing that awareness out there, especially right now where you have the whole maha movement, right? And I, think one, of, the biggest parts of The maja movement is the awareness part of it their entire purpose is education and it and that is such a I love the fact that there's such a tailwind to the wellness and longevity industry right now.

Um, because there is an awareness and I'm going to say ma has done a great job with it, but I'll, you know who the, who I think actually brought the biggest amount of awareness to the wellness and longevity industry. Who's that? COVID. Oh yeah. You know, a hundred percent. I want to push it back four years and say, if I can find a silver lining in anything, it's going be that COVID put a spotlight on maybe not everything I've been told is true. And I'll just say it, man, our revenues at Liquevita went up since COVID.

Oh my gosh, absolutely. COVID did have a direct effect because what was happening during COVID is the people that were very unhealthy were the ones being affected the most, right? The people who had deficiencies in vitamin D3, people were obese, you know, the respiratory issues and all kinds of stuff. Those were ones that we're really suffering the more and I think that kind of triggered a certain switch in a lot of people's heads where they're like, man, if another one of these things come around like this, another pandemic of some kind of virus, let me at least try to be prepared.

I think it even goes, and I'm gonna go one step deeper than that. And I say, yes, I agree with you on all of that, but I also think there was, politics aside, with none of it included, that when we go into the side of maybe the insurance company or maybe doesn't really know what they're talking about, because it doesn' matter what side of the argument you stood on, everyone had a question mark. Like, everybody was like, what's going on right now? Like this doesn''t feel good. And some people are like no, we need to get vaccinated 12 times.

Other people were like No, they''re just trying to kill you, don'''t take it, right? And you'''re like how can you have such skepticism on both sides of a conversation? Then it''s like if anything, that's when everybody should have been united and been like okay, hold on. But it just kept polarizing but what it did do to this industry and what we found from a marketing perspective was telling the story on anything. Became easier like everything became easier to tell the store because you could start a sentence with what you've been told.

And everybody's like, okay, what if they lied about now? Like, it was almost like the entire population was ready to hear about the next story because people just, they lost their, I'll say the older generation, my grandfather with five blood pressure medications, right? In his world, that's what the doctor said. And it was, you've never questioned the doctor. And I think post COVID, we found entire generations of people going, maybe my health is my problem. Maybe the insurance company doesn't always have my best interest at heart, and maybe the government doesn' t always has my interest in heart.

And maybe even if the physician has best interests at hard, maybe he or she just doesn t know everything. Maybe there's information out there that's available that I need to learn. So people started asking questions more, and I love that, again, no political side being represented, but the point of science is to ask questions. That is science. Questioning the science, is the answer. So let's make a little quick shift here. Earlier you mentioned about the FTC and the FDA. And now we're talking about science, right?

So it all kind of combines together here. You know, the industry that we're in, when we talk about functional medicine or alternative medicine, how some people label it, there's a lot of things that there hasn't been that full research behind it. We know a lotta these things work based off of a lots of anecdotical data, right? Looking at aotta case studies that physicians have within their own practice, they share it that, that's groups, those forums, But at the same time, when you start to try to talk about it publicly online, written marketing material, you got some of these three letter agencies out there that they don't play.

They don' like it. And you as, listen, you, as a marketer or as an agency, You have a huge responsibility when it comes to that, especially for your clients. We have responsibility to our clients to always pay attention to. But I don't think what a lot of people realize is as as. An advertising agency owner. Um, we have mutual culpability. If we say things and misrepresent a client or misrepresented claim, like sure, the client gets in trouble, but we too have responsibility. So it makes me laugh.

Like sometimes I'll have a clients that gets mad and goes, you can't do this. You're gonna get me shut down. And we're like, can we have conversation? Because if I'm telling you that if you don't want to say something that we recommend, that's fine. but also please understand we're making the recommendation knowing that we have responsibility in the conversation too. So we don't take those messages lightly because that needs to, we've got legal implications in there as well. And having done a lot of work with the FDA on multiple sides, but particularly Zona's in midst of an FDA clinical trial, this is our second FDA trial.

Trust me, I'm knees deep in FDA. The reality is the FDA is looking out for consumers. They really are. And I don't say that as I'm not stroking the FDAs ego, but I am also not here to dog them either. Their entire purpose is to protect consumers from predatory marketers. You know and the truth is is that's good that someone's doing that because as we just discussed Most people are kind of ignorant to what they're hearing anyways, right? They've been taught to believe what their toll what what? they hear in the media and whatnot that now let me ask you something about that with the FDA would you say that there's potential Corruption within the FTA, of course, there is potential corruption everywhere I mean from from the top on down, Of course There's a potential for corruption I believe there is corruption in the FDA.

I don't believe that there's a government agency where there isn't corruption. Because I think we are humans and there are people who are just drawn towards corruption My problem isn't like, oh my gosh, blow the whistle, there's corruption. My problems is we have a system that doesn't punish it fast enough and doesn' make a point of ferreting it out. So some people in physicians have more power than they're probably entitled to. What I find in working with the FDA, as I said, I always look at them as, sure I don't everything they have to say.

And I found some of their input is unreasonable. Um, but I'm always framing it from the perspective of I am on a conference call with a group of people who believe that their entire job is to protect consumers. And if I, I m approaching it, from a, a very conservative, i'm trying to, protect the consumer mindset, would I say the same thing that they're saying? And often I find they're misunderstanding something, or often, I found that they are giving opinions on things that perhaps they don't have enough knowledge on, but they do what they think is right.

I haven't personally run into what I feel is corruption. In fact, I've found most of the people that I deal with there to be quite amenable once there's a dialogue. And that is it, Bandy. I mean, you hit the nail on the head, because obviously being the chairman of The American Idea Association, one of things that we focus on is standardization and compliance. Yeah. Part of that same thing, this is what we've noticed, is there are a lot of people in these very powerful positions putting legislation forward that just don't know enough about what they're even putting in legislation.

It's our job to educate them. And that's one thing that I always speak on is make sure you govern yourself before you're governed by someone else. Making sure that we take a lot of this data, put it together, make we're having our comprehensive protocols in place. So now when these legislators or any of these people in these very powerful positions start to actually question what we are doing, we can actually work with them, educate them and you'll actually see how things change in our benefit. So under percent because well and what I found and I'll kind of wrap this up in in one package and say I'm a relational person not a transactional person right and and i will say that all day long and the reality is is when people go into situations I was told I Was crazy because in all of our early meetings with the FDA I attended every one of them and did most of the talking Every attorney, every FDA regulator, and every person I talked to was like, you are out of your mind.

And they're like you have no business. Part of me probably felt a little prematurely arrogant because I'm like man I would sit at the table with the Department of Education all the time. I know how to deal with regulators was my pride. But I would say what I find is that these are humans too, right? Like and when you approach them and say hey look, I don't know everything This is what i do know. This Is the data I do have and this is the help I need from you. I actually found an incredible amount of collaboration That's amazing.

Um, actually and This, is like unheard of I remember a particular conference call where a member from the fda review committee and whatever and I won't give names, but He actually said on the call, I see what the problem is. Do me a favor. Reach out to me when this call is over. I'll help you figure it out. And helped me write an entire section of our IDE, our study protocol. He's like, i get why everybody is struggling with this section. Let me just help with it. The FDA helped you write part of the protocol.

I'm like, yeah, they were very helpful. Like, isn't that normal? Like not at all. And I might. Well, yes, because I am not a jackass when I get on a telephone call and I m not walking into all these meetings, lawyered up and whatever. I genuinely believe that as an industry, we need to be willing to have conversations with those people at the FDA and the FTC the same. They're trying to protect consumers and predatory marketing. I get it. Why they do what they. You can't be at war with them. Number one, you're not going to win.

Correct. Who wins? They win, there you go. So the collaboration is a must. 100%. And I think in the, in, the health and wellness, longevity, alternative medicine, whatever we want to call it, like we, we tend to demonize those organizations and you know, Oh, FDA. And it's like, sure. We got to be careful with the FDA, but we also need to realize that the FD is just trying to watch out for the people. Like don't say things you shouldn't. Say, be. Careful over promising on things. I get it. And I also understand from a marketer's perspective that it's tough to sell a product if you can't tell anybody what it does.

That's how we end up working with brands. We want to story tell. I don't need to tell you, nobody wants to listen to how I just explained what Zona does, there is no consumer in the world that's like, oh how strange, my endothelium has actually hardened and if I only had a way to trigger potassium release, No consumer friggin cares. Right. And it's the reason why we're just going for the FDA endorsement on the marketing claim to say Zona is approved by the F.D.A. proven to lower blood pressure. Done.

That's what a consumer wants to hear. Yeah. But more than that, a consumer wants to hear stories of people who have actually had a similar story to their own. People want to see themselves. And that's when I get into the marketing conversation here, Sam, and that is like, we need to learn how as brands to storytell in such a way that consumers feel like they are the center of the story and not me. Yeah, I agree with that and storytelling so you know I read a book that I to me it's like the number one book when it comes to like creating storytelling.

It's written by Marcus Collins who's a he's got a PhD. He was Jay-Z and Beyonce's digital strategist for about 10 years. That's called For the Culture. and he goes in deep about storytelling. And he actually mentions, which he's definitely not on the Republican side, he is definitely a liberal on his end, but he mentions of who actually has, out of all the presidents we've ever had, who's done the best storytelling, it's Donald Trump. But he has done it in a way where people will actually congregate and wear his name on their chest.

Absolutely. He's a marketing machine. Whether you like him or not, he's brilliant at marketing. Donald Miller is one of my favorite authors, probably my favourite author. Funny enough, He was a great Christian author for many years and then pivoted into marketing and now he runs a company called Storybrand. I actually heard him speak at a Tony Robbins conference last year and it was so funny because like he is not a Trump fan He's not particularly a Hillary fan either, but he he made a comment to people he says even before the 2016 election and he's like, he''s gonna win like He'''s just going to win there

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and is like you never he like I never doubted that Donald Trump was gonna when the two thousand sixteen election because Make America great again is a story everyone can get behind. I'm with her doesn't include me. It's a bad story, it's bad marketing, and he's like, at that point, the candidate's almost irrelevant. The marketing won. And Trump was always a great marketer since the realistic dates. I tell you, I don't know if you've noticed this. Obviously, you noticed his part when he was running this last time around.

He was on every single podcast you can think of. Joe Rogan won the election, right? Right, now that his president Man, the content that he's putting out on his own page is incredible. I mean, it's state of the art content. He's a marketer. And he is getting to the people. Funny enough, I was just reading an article recently about Bo Lowden. You know who that is? No. Bo Loudon is he's like 20 something young, young guy who's huge into the digital Instagram space, big follower, but he is friends with Barron Trump.

And Bo has like an incredible amount of followers and stuff like that on social media. But he like the young guys who represents the 20-somethings Republican movement. And he's friends with Baron because they're contemporaries. And they say that during the election cycle for 2024, it was Baron and Bo that were like, This has got to be a social media campaign. This is a Social Media campaign and Trump leaned into it. And he's like, if that's where the culture is, then that is where we go. We're not going to play the stodgy old games.

Again, politics aside, from a marketing perspective, it's Trump plays guerrilla warfare like his sniper fire. And I mean, even the way that he nicknames people and everything else, whether it's a, you know, it it works. It's kind of a tool kind, a kind a game, because it is not my thing. I don't like that. But at the same time, I'm like, It works. He dehumanizes his competition, which makes them easier to dislike. Yeah. Yep. So that marketing, it's one of those things that everybody has to do it.

It doesn't matter what line of business you're in, you have to market. I always tell people, like when I first started liquid Vita, I would tell them I'm a marketing company first and a medical company second. Today I actually tell people we're a software technology company first, marketing second, market PR second and then medical third. Because without the first two, you don't have a business in today's world. So, I dealt with my own situations with the FTC. Obviously being a franchisor, the Federal Trade Commission is all over you.

You're heavily regulated as a franchise or. Well, yeah, because then you've got the potential for issues with companies that you're not even controlling. Right, exactly. And then my issue was actually during COVID. During COVID, we actually put on our website, our former chief marketing officer, he put that we can help boost up your immune system with high dose vitamin C. They didn't like that. We got the warning letter. But when you get something like that from the FTC, it's like, now you got to go to work.

So we had to hire an attorney out of Washington, D.C. that's very familiar with the STC and stuff. But you know, the route that we went is exactly what you said. It's more of a collaborative effort. And I'll tell you. they were super nice throughout the process. With us not flexing, I said, oh, no, this, we says, okay, well, what do you guys want us to do? They actually showed us like, hey, you gotta implement these certain protocols. These protocols have to go to your actual marketing agency so they understand how to market your medical business.

Then you have give these protocols to all your franchisees so that they can understand their marketing agencies. And you know what, everything went smoothly. That the warning letter was addressed and nothing else came up from it. Yeah, that collaborative effort went a very long way. You see the occasional rogue representative at those agencies that just wants to fight. But I think by and large, they're trying, their job is to protect consumers. And especially I would say during COVID, You tell people that this boosts your immune system and it gets translated as you won't get COVID.

That's their fear. What would the average person believe if they heard or read that message? For Zona, we had a marketing message at one point that said, what is it? Cardiovascular health right in the palm of your hand. Handheld device, right? And literally I remember on a telephone call one day, A, you know, one of the representatives was like, well, did people may think as long as I'm holding this in my hand, I don't need to take my prescriptions anymore. Oh, gosh. You know. And now personally, i want to be like well that person needs nominated for the Darwin Awards.

But like but but I kind of laughed and I m like. Well. Respectfully, ma'am, like I understand your position that I suppose that could be interpreted, but I'm going to go to the reasonable man standard. Would the Reasonable Man believe that simply holding a piece of electronics in his hand was going cure a cardiovascular problem and stop taking medications? Like, I, understand that you could go an extreme position and argue that. But is that reasonable? Is that really what we think the average person does?

Because I think we've got a really low opinion of the American population. If you think, that's what people think. And they immediately backed down from it. I remember my attorney on the call was like, I'm like being reasonable. That's what I mean. I've been reasonable because they're not trying to shut you down Yeah, they just want to make sure that you're doing anything that hurts anybody particularly with stuff like vitamin C, right? Like they they are not there to argue that vitamin c improves your immune system that with all of the studies that we have on zona From the Mayo Clinic, from Johns Hopkins, you know, I could run down the list of all of the places that have done studies.

In fact, today I was on a phone call helping FSU do an isometric cardiovascular study. Like, it's not a hidden truth. This is well-known science. It just needs to go through the gymnastics. The way that everything needs to in order to make the claims that it's making so the FDA again They were they were super amenable to us not to say that you don't understand that they are the elephant in the room Yeah, so while you're relational you are also incredibly polite, right? But you kiss the ring a little bit because that's just the way their game plays out.

Yeah you have to Absolutely. You kiss the ring, but at the same time, it's understanding that we're on the team. We're trying to make America healthy again, right? Them included. I agree with that, man. So make American healthy. Again, let's talk about it. Are you going to throw in your softball? No, no, listen, that's actually part of the podcast. That topic. And every single episode man because I want to hear the person's input the guests on the show Yeah, you know, yeah RFK jr. He got confirmed.

he's running the Show, right? What are your thoughts about it? I love it. I absolutely love I think I mentioned earlier this tailwind that's behind the longevity industry and I believe you want to talk about corruption and agencies and stuff like that. Having listened to so many of these talks, you and I have been in the same room a lot of times. As a matter of fact, we were just at the movie premiere for Toxic Nation. What a movie, right? Seriously. Everybody has to watch that thing. I laughingly say that I don't think anybody in that room walked away and learned anything.

Yeah, because we're all in it. Right? It was like, hey, wow. But the other side of that, I'm like man, This is going to be total red pill moment for so many like for So many people in fact, I had dinner at Eddie V's right over on Las Olas yesterday with a buddy of mine and we were going To order the tuna tartar and it specifically said that it's soaked in sesame oil And I asked her, I said, can I ask you a question? I'm like, is it possible to substitute the sesame oil for olive oil or something else in it?

And then she came back and she's like nope, actually it's pretty, and I was like okay, well don't serve us that. Like I'll do the steak tartare instead because that actually is extra virgin olive. Great, we'll substitute, that's fine. And she, the waitress even started talking to us and was just like there's a restaurant right down the street, forget the name of it, they just opened, like they're completely anti-seed oil, blah blah, But who in the general population even thinks that way? Cook my steak, but please don't do it in oil.

Please make sure that if it's cooked, it is in butter. And she started even talking about, oh my gosh, there's this, they're cooking, frying things in beef tallow and blah, blah blah. I'm like, exactly the way it should be. But I think the food pyramids been upside down for too long. Yeah, I definitely the the entire. Scope of what what children are exposed to is completely upside-down the chemicals in food. I mean, you know the stories about Philip Morris. after cigarette ads were banned, and then Philip Morris went and bought the food companies instead, right?

Well, same thing, if you can't addict them to cigarettes, get them addicted to food. They took all those lobbying people from the tobacco world and put them into the over to. We're just a fat country. You know, we don't move. We are too lethargic. I always think of that Pixar movie Wall-E that life just got so easy that everybody's just sitting around and can't even reach down to grab their remote control anymore. Like it feels like that's where we are. And I don' think you and I live in South Florida.

So I dont think we feel that as much. That's how we go back to the Midwest, right? But when I when i go, back, to, the midwest i got to tell you dude like i i Go to legacy fit the gym down here. Oh, yeah i guess he's all beautiful like everybody there's beautiful Like i, go there and i feel like, i'm like the damn old man but it was like The i-go up north and I go to like an f-45 up there, and, I'll tell, you every time i. Go in there I'm, like Everyone. I mean, again, I'm so excited that people who are struggling with their health are going to the gym, so I am not trying to criticize anybody.

But I go to gym up there and everybody at the Gym is overweight. Again, glad they're at gym. Yeah. How is this the entire membership of the Jim is over weight? That's scary. This can't be normal. And it's a mid Midwest thing, right? I'm sure you feel the same thing when you go 100%. I always say that that people are just preparing to hibernate or something, you know, something in the middle of the summer. They eat so much, it gets so big. Yeah, and it is. And its comfort food. It's whatever. Right.

Um, just it just, we don't feel it as much down here and maybe in California and Phoenix and stuff like that. You don' see it much. But it' like, when you move around the country and you and because I'm always traveling it's like and there are clearly cultural pockets of people who are just on. Yeah, yeah, you know my my own and OK who's liked 95 pounds, so I mean obesity is not her issue, but I had actually cut my finger at Easter which is kind of a funny story because they literally click cut the top of my fingers.

Like ER stuff and everything that's funny is that you can look at it. You can't even tell and Mike. It's part of being healthy, right? You heal faster. Yeah, that's true. But her first response, do you need a pain pill? I'm like, no, I am good. As soon as I start, you do need pain pills? Just take half. I was like no. Like I don't want a painkill. Well no that looks really bad. You need paing pill. It is the mindset of prescription nation. People have been programmed with that. I was just talking to somebody the other day on my podcast or otherwise and I saying that I'm a lifelong learner and am like, except I feel like I am in a stage of life maybe in the last little while that am unlearning more than am learning.

But it's sure am getting a bunch of new information but so much of what I found myself willing to do in last couple of years especially is question everything I thought I already knew. Yeah. And like, how do we get more people to unlearn the things that they think they already know? That's the goal. Yep. Like, and I think that is the maha movement. I love it. It's not about education.

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it's about uneducation. People have been indoctrinated into something. This is a deprogramming that needs to take place. this is not even a new education, it is literally a de-programming. And I tell you what, man, it's happening and it is going to happen, and there's going be a huge change in the course of medicine because of it. I hope that's true. And last week, talking even with Mark Hyman and stuff out at the Consumer Health Summit, Just listening to the way that people who are leaders in this health space are, and I'll say not a, I love our industry.

If I can, if I use that term, most of your listeners would understand that. It's like our right. Its health, its wellness, it's longevity. Not Western medicine. More the counter cultural approach to health which should be the cultural. But so much of what I'm seeing is we have forgotten that ancient wisdom Actually was truth. Yeah, and we've gotten too smart for ourselves And and the the things that grandma used to tell you to do are still correct Yeah like maybe those are actually true, right? Like the thing that we understood like I as dumb as this sounds I had a cough all week from Phoenix dryness And it's like the other night.

I'm like, I don't have anything and my man I would have taken anything just to get a night's sleep because I just kept coughing every time I put my head to a pillow and I like all right What would my grandma done? But it's so funny, because I'm like, I want to go make myself a cup of hot tea. Put a little honey, a lemon in it, right? And I put a bit of lemon it it. And then I'll put in a shot of whiskey in. There you go. I fell asleep because the cough subsided. It didn't require something from CVS, it didn' require an OTC.

That'll probably make it worse. Right. Yeah, that made more sense. Like I immediately was wondering what I had in the medicine cabinet. Then all of a sudden I was like or just tea with honey. Like maybe a little bit of whiskey in there to you know, trying to calm it down But it's an anti-inflammatory like you literally just pulled down the information in your own throat Just the use of honey like this is normal. This is ancient wisdom and we ignored it for too long It's time to start applying it.

Yeah. So mark you got your book here, man. I do man You just published this many faces Let's talk about it What is it about? Why did you come up with the title? I love provocative language, first of all. My first book was actually called Date Your Clients, which everybody who, ooh, is that a good idea? I made you stop, right? That's neuro-linguistic programming, I'm pattern interrupting to make people wonder. And when I use the phrase radical generosity, it's my third book, my second being a book called Lower the Bar, again, kind of makes you go.

Yeah, lower the bar. I gotta raise the board. Exactly. But radical generosity, again, I think is like some provocative language that makes people say like, wait a minute, generosity being radical, but I love that the purpose of this entire book is it's my heartbeat. The quote Michael Fishman, who's a good friend and I'll even go so far as a mentor of mine who uses the phrase that, the currency of success is impact. And we can build businesses, Sam, and we push all of this kind of science and witchcraft, some people would say, out into the ecosphere.

But the reality is that our value as men is going to be defined by the impact we had on the world. Absolutely. And radical generosity is really my homage to that thought. That it's the way we impact the world. It's, the, way, we show up and we tend to think of generosity as being, I'll say, a financial platform. Like, well, generous people are the ones who give more, right? They're the one's who are, who, are giving at church. They are one who were giving to the poor. There are ones, you were donating to big causes.

And the bigger the check, more generous they are. And I would argue and say that I don't find that to be true at all, because I think finances is one of five ways that i look at generosity. You know, the other four being, what are you doing with your time? What are your giving of your wisdom, even just being here on a podcast and not only being able to give your timing resources and hosting this, But you're bringing knowledge and wisdom, not just from you, but from other professionals into whatever ecosystem that you've created out of listeners, right?

I'm going to say generosity of presence and in relationships. How often are we willing to flip the phone over and just have a meal with somebody and be present? A person grieving over the loss of a loved one doesn't need a check. They don't even need you to clean their house. Sometimes they literally just need to sit there and talk, undistracted, or just sit their quiet. I remember a friend of mine's father died during COVID, in fact, and I left work as soon as I found out, because I've found from a friends who lives out of state, I went over to her house, of course, cry cry, whatever, she's dealing with this.

And I sat on the couch and said to him, how do you want to process this news? Cause her father lived in another country and she couldn't even go there while he was sick and then couldn t even attend the funeral. And I'm like, what do you need right now? I need you to tell me how, how can I be here for you? Is that you want a meal cooked? You just want to hug? Do you, do want cry? What do wanna do? Tell me, How are you going to process this grief right. Now? And, and it was funny because like her answer, I think surprised me.

But I would have surprised anybody because she just looked up and. I m hungry. I'm like, let's go eat. What do you feel like? Yeah. And it was like literally just, it, was it. It was just presence. Yeah, and you just being there and being able to support that process, man, you know, everything that you've just mentioned about the book, about. The impact. Right. In your presence and giving. That's everything. I believe in man. This is incredible that. You put this in writing for other people to actually understand it . So where can people get this book?

It's available you can go to the mark young comm it's my website and anybody can Go look at it. They can look up anything else and that's got all my contact information and social handles and everything on that website obviously as well Go to Amazon go, to audible go. To you know apple books anything like that. It on audio Yeah, we're gonna put all those links. Yeah listen to it in audio I'm gonna tell you put it on 1.4 X because then it actually sounds like the way I talk I But but yeah it's available out there and funny enough and I'll tell you the same just to go one step deeper and say because I keep doing that and that is like chapter two specifically in this book one of the things I love about it is it almost like the biohack of generosity.

Because I go into this conversation about. how generosity actually affects our physiology. And people don't realize like we get so stuck in our own drama that we genuinely get ourselves in there. When we focus on negative, we create more negative.

Storytelling, Radical Generosity, and the Book 1:03:00

It's that quantum energy field that create around ourselves. I'll get all woo and say like, We create that environment around our selves and then we attract more of it. but physiologically like the power of the words and the deeds that we actually put out in the world attract the same thing and it's like and I remember and i recall stories even in here of in my own life like man my life sucks right now like what I I can't think of a way and It could be because I'm just stuck in My head or I am upset or i'm mad or whatever.

I don't know how to fix my problems today but let's take a step out of my Life and figure out whose problem can I solve? Because maybe I can solve someone else's problem. And not only does that shift change the paradigm in our own head from reframing a situation, I think it also allows space for somebody else to come along and help me. Right. Because if I'm helping someone else, I am leaving my problem for someone to be able to help. But physiologically, it actually creates physiological changes in endorphins in the brain.

Like just the thought of me giving you a gift. releases dopamine and oxytocin. You know what's crazy man? That is my definition of what I say what is rewarding for me. It's not the financial component of making money, it's those things. That's what drives me and my father would always say, he said you can't receive with a closed hand. You know, so when you're talking about someone can actually come and help you while you helping somebody else, that is it, man. That's it. And just the idea that it shifts the brain physiologically.

Yeah. Just that helpers high. Is that that idea? That I'm going to help somebody like I am on my way to do a good deed and my own brain starts relieving, releasing love hormone. Yeah, man. I can't wait to read that book. That's that's something that I vibe with a lot. So yeah, I'm excited about it. It's more fun. And I want to I mean, to name some biohackers and you're going to answer with one word, only one. What comes to mind? All right. Just one more. This will be quick. Yeah. Gary Brekka. Gary Breca, one word, I don't know, this is a tough exercise.

I think Gary's a bit of a badass, gotta be honest with you. Badass. Joe Dispenza. Smart, wise, maybe the word I'm looking for. Love Joe Despenza's work. Yeah, go ahead. Dave Asprey. Controversial And I love Dave and I loved a but Dave is not afraid of saying what other people don't want and part of it I think is his marketing but I Think Dave I just saw Dave. I was talking to him a couple weeks ago and He's launching his new book.I think next week and it's heavily meditated Yeah, and actually told him I heard him speak and we were talking afterwards and like Dave like I gotta give you kudos like That's the best I've ever heard you speak.

Like I heard to speak for a decade now. He was just comfortable being Dave and it felt nice. Dave's energy right now feels balanced. Yeah, it's a lot of fun too, man. It's like a comedian also. Absolutely, he's funny. Andrew Huberman. Wow, that's good one. I want to say Reach. Like I think Huberman's got a platform that actually gets out to more, uh, more lay people, industry people. Like, like Asprey's has got like a cult following. Hüberman has a vast group of people he's gotta impact. So I just had a funny Peter Attia story the other day.

Um, so it makes me say unlicensed. Oh gosh. Peter Atiyah came up as a juxtaposition to Casey Means, that Casey Mean doesn't practice medicine. And so everybody is like, oh, you can't be surgeon general. You don't even practice medicines right now. It's like oh yeah, but if that was Peter Attia, would you be saying the same thing? I think Peter is super smart. I he's very longevity focused. Last one, Ben Greenfield. I'm going to give a good word for Ben. I love Ben, and what I loved about Ben most is Ben is a Christian man who has doubled him, so I am going say believer.

But I'm going to say what impresses me about Ben and the last time I talked to him, I actually had that conversation and like Ben, like I want to give you props because I've watched you lose followers in the past few years. Like Ben's Ben has started losing followers and in his loss of followership, it's because a lot of people have attacked him for standing up for faith and he's gone even harder into that message of faith. And it has been bold. That's gonna be interesting, because I'm actually gonna do a whole podcast on things that are biblical that reflect directly to health and wellness.

And there's a lot of it. I wanna be part of that one, cause that's all over radical generosity. Funny that you started with Gary Brekka and ended with Ben Greenfield, though. Is this like a 10X ad? Oh god, oh shit, I didn't even notice that. Like it starts with Garry Breka, ends with ben greenfield. What just happened? Cool, man. So hey, Mark, if there's one person out there that resonates with everything that we talked about today, what is that one thing that you can leave them off with? I'm gonna stick to my tried and true and tell you be relational, not transactional.

And I think that is everything to do with the health and wellness movement because we can't beat people into health.

Rapid-Fire Biohacker Opinions and Closing Advice 1:09:00

We have to be able to relate with people in order to get a paradigm shift out of their minds. When it comes to marketing, we need to build relationships with People, not just try to make transactions out Of them. We talked about generosity. Generosity needs to Be relational. It's not transactional. Every topic we've talked About, I think I can distill down into that message. Build relationships. Be present with It's not about the transactions. I love that. Where can people find you, Mark? Again, I'll say go to themarkyoung.com.

Everything about me is there. Maybe not everything, but a good amount of it. Awesome. Mark, it was a pleasure to have you on the podcast, man. This was really good. Appreciate you. Guys, you guys heard it from Mark, man. You guys know exactly what I believe in, and it's about relationships. I don't vibe with people that are transactional. We gotta always put relationships first. That's how I got where I'm at today. You guys have heard my TED Talk. It's only about relationships. I did 16 minutes of a TED talk on specifically relationships and talking about not being transactional.

So what Mark is saying is something that I believe in and it's something you have to tap into. Make sure you get his book, make sure subscribe, follow, do all that fun stuff and we'll see you in the next one.