Secrets to Live Longer and Optimize Performance (with Dr. Darshan Shah)

All right, everyone. Today, I'm super excited to have my friend here, Dr. Shah of Next Health. We actually met at TED in line. Actually, you looked at his backpack, there's a little badge on it. One of the conferences that I went to, and we started talking at TED. That's how we met. But yeah, I mean, Darshan, Dr. Shah, super excited to have you here. I'd love to learn a little more about, or the audience would like to learn about your story and kind of, you know, what Next Health is.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it was so fortuitous meeting at TED in line, right? Yeah.

What are the odds of that happening? I'd have to have spotted that little Yes. To start the conversation. Otherwise, we wouldn't have talked.

It's so funny. And yeah, we immediately had a great conversation. But like I told you in line, I'm a physician. I've been a physician for over 20 years now. And I originally started out working in the emergency room, working in trauma. I worked for the Navy for many, many years. And throughout my entire medical career, seeing all sorts of patients, doing all sorts of different treatments and surgeries on people, you know, I never really realized How much in medical school we're taught to treat a disease and not really get to the cause of it and not really prevent disease from happening in the first place. So throughout my very stressful life of being a doctor, like I never slept, I worked 7 days a week, I myself became extremely unhealthy. I was on like 5 different medications for blood pressure and diabetes, and I, you know, weighed 40 pounds more than I do now. And just, I was a mess, you know, stressed out, not sleeping.

Yeah.

And I looked at myself in the mirror one day and I just said, you know, I had a life-changing moment when my son was born. I'm like, I'm a little bit older having my son. I need to stay alive for a long time to see this kid graduate from high school and get married and all this stuff. So I need to change my life. So within the course of a year, I immediately like quit my day job and decided to go on this health journey. You know, I think a lot of people do this sometimes. You're lucky. You're like, you've been on a health journey your whole life.

Sort of. Sort of. I think I had a come-to-Jesus moment too. You did?

I'd love to hear it anyway. So I had that moment and I did a deep dive into all of the research around nutrition, sleep, toxins, all of that stuff, and found out like I had a severe knowledge gap as a doctor about what actually keeps you healthy. I learned everything I could. I fixed myself. I started fixing the lives of so many of my friends and my patients, helping them lose weight. You know, weight is only just one indicator. Thinking better, like not having that brain fog all the time, right?

Yeah.

Having energy, being able to sleep through the night. All that stuff is just, you know, goes away in our modern lifestyle. And I helped a lot of my friends and myself get back into that mode where we felt great and healthy and energetic. And I thought to myself, like, there's a business around here because people, number one, hate going to the doctor. They go to the doctor, number two, and they don't get any information that's really helpful or preventative. And number three, unless you have a disease, you really don't get anything to help you versus a pill, you know, if you get a disease diagnosed. So I wanted to do something different. And then I sat down with my good friend Kevin. He and I are co-founders of this business and we came together, we wrote down everything wrong with going to the doctor and the medical system now on a whiteboard and we did the exact opposite to create Next Health. That's where we are today.

That's awesome. And by the way, I mean, I think when we first met, I told you I haven't been to the doctor for 6 years, which is bad, really bad. But it's like to that point, right? So just so the audience knows, what is brain fog?

That's a great question. Brain fog is that feeling that you have when you can't remember something immediately. When you feel distracted and there's really no reason to be distracted. When you are reading a book and you read a few lines and then you forget what you even read. And it's just that feeling that you're not at your optimal cognitive level like you were when you were a kid. You know, when you're a kid, you're like extremely focused. You can get into this flow state almost. I feel like brain fog is the opposite of being in a flow state.

So Next Health, you guys have so many offerings. Can you kind of explain at a high level? What you guys have.

When I describe Next Health to people, I just tell everyone that Next Health is a health optimization and longevity center where we have the latest tools and technologies that you need to live a totally optimized life and to also live longer. And, it all starts, number one, with our testing. So, we have body scans that we do here, very in-depth blood testing, genetic testing, all so that we get a really good idea of what your current status is. Now, a lot of diseases and a lot of problems that we have 30 years from now, they actually start now, like when you're young, you know, and you don't realize what's happening inside of your body because our bodies are very resilient to disease and to problems. But if you don't make changes now, in 30 years, you're gonna get Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart disease, all the things that kill us, right?

Yep.

So we wanna proactively diagnose and proactively give recommendations so you can avoid all those problems Can you walk us through the business model?

How do you guys make money? Because actually there's one thing I saw that I really wanted going to Peter Diamandis's— got it— the executive program, Singularity University. And then he's— I forgot what it's called again, but you end up paying $5,000, $10,000, or $15,000 to get a full scan of your body to find out all the things. What is that called?

I forgot. The HLI. Yeah, we actually partnered with Human Longevity Institute, and we do that same kind of package that they do in San Diego. We do that here in Los Angeles.

Got it.

So, that package is called a full-body MRI and full genome sequencing. Okay? There's some minimal blood testing involved, but what we do is we add on to that with doing our full-spectrum blood testing genetic analysis as well. So, we can add on to that. And then, we take it one step further. Not only do we do the testing, but we have the treatments and the technologies available here too. So, to answer your question about what's the business model, we have a membership because we really believe that health is not just a one-time event. Once a year. It's something you work on weekly or even daily, just like going to the gym.

Mm-hmm.

So our members, just like going to the gym— in fact, most of our members, they stop in here either before or after going to the gym, and once a week they do something really focused on their health. And, um, whether it be cryotherapy, infrared therapy, doing another blood test to get more data, we're doing something. And, uh, so we have a membership model, and then we also have Therapies that we add on à la carte, such as stem cell therapy, NAD+, which is one of the things we talked about a little bit earlier. Other things that we can do that if you need it and if we feel that it'll be helpful, we can provide it for you.

Got it. And guys, by the way, I was skeptical about this. So anyone that's in LA, or if you're visiting LA, you should check it out. I'm not affiliated, I'm not getting paid for this, by the way. But being able to do the cryotherapy, and then I got this IV, and then all of a sudden I felt like I had a pep in my step. So I just walking around like, you know, like super happy after. And it's one of those feelings I want to keep chasing. But anyway, that's how I felt. So that's my little testimonial. So Dr. Shah, what are the pricing models that you have? What are you starting with? $199? What do you got?

Yeah, so our memberships include— so we have a $199 kind of starter membership. And that includes our baseline test, which is our blood test that gives you like 50 different biomarkers. And we also do our scans on you as well. And then those members can come in monthly and use all of our different technology. And then we also have a $299 model, which is what we call our Premier membership that includes IVs. And then we have another $299, which is Hormone membership.

Mm-hmm.

So what that includes is, as you get into your late 30s, early 40s, our testosterone levels start to plummet. If you're a woman, you have estrogen dysregulation and also testosterone level plummeting. We actually treat that with a little pellet inserted underneath your skin to boost your levels. And we don't overcorrect, like, you know, testosterone has a bad name. Because people that work out and build, you know, want to use it to build muscle and they overdo it. We just get you into the normal range. And so that really improves your longevity. It, you know, takes away brain fog. It really helps reduce inflammation and helps people lose weight as well. Awesome.

So as most of you know, there's a lot of software founders on this podcast. And the reason I love Dr. Shah's model is because it's a subscription.

Yeah.

So it's recurring and it's great, right? That's also increasing Increases your valuation as a business too. But not only that, you start at $199, $299, you go even higher. So what are the other things people can buy? These are, let's call them the cross-selling and upselling things.

Like you mentioned before, we have the human longevity, we call it our Nucleus Program. And with that, you get the full body MRI. I mean, the data you can get from that is incredible. We'll diagnose tumors way before you feel them. If you have an aneurysm, which is a blood vessel that's ready to burst, we can see it way before it happens. And basically, you know, those are often fatal, right?

Mm-hmm.

So, um, it also includes full genome sequencing. So we can look at every gene in your body, in your cells, and see kind of what you're at risk for. Um, and then we go even higher than that. So, you know, for people that want to spend upwards of $25,000, we include therapies such as stem cell therapy, NAD therapy into the whole program. So we have people flying in from all over the world basically coming here Because they're not living in town, they're not going to be members, but they still partake in everything over the course of a day or 2.

Got it. And how much is that? I think you call it HLI?

Yeah. So, the Nucleus package starts at $7,500. And then, if you want to add in all the in-depth blood testing, it goes up to $10,000. And then, $25,000 includes the stem cell therapy and the NAD therapy.

And, people might think that's expensive, but you're You're paying to kind of protect your life. So I think it's logical.

And if you look at like people flying out of the country to get stem cells, I mean, they're spending $20,000 and it's a whole trip, you know? And so we're doing those types of things here in Los Angeles.

Got it. That's wonderful. How are you guys acquiring customers right now? Like what's been working for you guys?

What's been working really well for us mostly is social media. I think social media has really been a huge benefit to us, especially in Los Angeles. Huge influencer community.

Especially where you're located.

Exactly, exactly.

We're in Century City, by the way.

Right, right. We're in Century City, right next to Beverly Hills, and, you know, right in the middle of everything Los Angeles. And so lots and lots of influencers, people, you know, influencers are called influencers for a reason, right? People do what they want to do. And so people do see that where they're— people that they're following are going, and they come in and kind of partake as well. Another huge part of our kind of outreach and marketing plan is I actually go speak at different events. And like tonight, I'm speaking at a club down the street from here.

That's why you're dressed so nice.

There you go. No, I dress nice for you. And I think speaking engagements also brings people in so they understand our mission, they understand what we're doing here. We also have a lot of people in their 40s and 50s, CEOs of businesses that I've networked through organizations like YPO that I can definitely, you know, tell them what we're doing. And if they think that It'll benefit them, they'll come in too. So it's a lot of just organic relationship building more than plastering ads on TV or the radio.

Right. And how long has this business been around?

About a little bit over 2 years.

Wow, okay, that's fast. I mean, I imagine, like, for me, I like software and I like online 'cause I don't have to deal with a lot of the infrastructure costs.

Yes.

So, I mean, can you walk us through, like, you went from basically practicing to, Dealing with all this. So like what kind of struggles or headaches did you run into?

Yeah, so you know, like with every business that requires employees, infrastructure, locations, inventory, you know, there's a huge backend infrastructure element associated with this. And then you have to find the right employees to manage that infrastructure. So, you know, you need to have someone that knows how to manage HR, that knows how to manage inventory, that knows how to manage daily rituals that the employees goes through, like location managers, a lot of stuff you probably don't have to have in the tech world. But I think that what I really believe in is if it was easy, everyone would do it, right?

Sure, yeah.

And so the harder it is to do something like this, the more barriers of entry you have into the competitive landscape. Another big part of our business is we are a medical business, right? So you have to be under a medical license. So unless you have a physician that's willing to go through all of this, you know, which a lot of physicians do, but a lot of physicians also don't, it'd be very hard for an individual to set up a business like this.

Okay, I mean, we're both Asian, right? So Asian parents push you to become engineers, doctors, whatever. And then, but then you realize when you start practicing, to your point, you can't really scale. You're still getting paid on, you know, hourly, right?

Right.

So I guess, can you walk us through how you were feeling and maybe Give some advice to people that are, you know, kind of going down that path right now of being a doctor or engineer.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, being an entrepreneur, one of the biggest kind of buzzwords right now in entrepreneurship is scalability, right? And obviously, if you're in a service business where you're one-on-one with each client all the time, you can't scale that, right? So you have to look for ways to scale. The first way that— the first thing that every doctor, lawyer, or anyone in a service business needs to do to scale is start reading and educating yourself.

Yourself.

That's what I did for years and years and years. You know, I read books like The E-Myth, which is one of the first books I read. I also, you know, Good to Great, all these different amazing books I'm sure you've talked about. They really educate you on how you need to completely change your entire mental process and your mental thinking around entrepreneurship. And then a lot of you might not— might realize it's not for them because it really is a second job. You can't, you know, you can't just do a few little pieces of it, you have to spend another 40 hours a week developing the infrastructure and the ability to hire people to scale beyond just what you can do. And so, you know, when I was hiring doctors and when I was hiring nurse practitioners, then you have to train people as well. So if you're unable to train people and do things the way that you want to do it, again, another reason that you're probably not going to be able to scale yourself in a service business. So I think it's a huge uphill educational curve, but once you get there, I mean, the benefits are huge because you can scale. Right.

And scale— I mean, scaling a business, I mean, it's often lonely too. So you're, you're in a group, uh, you're in YPO. So can you talk a little bit about the benefits, or first what YPO is and kind of how you benefited from it?

YPO was a— has been a game changer for me. Um, and not to make this an ad about YPO, but you know, I always talk really positively about it. Um, you are— you're on an island when you're scaling, and especially if you're a professional, because most other doctors, they have no idea, you know, what scalability or scaling really means and what it involves. So when I joined YPO, I was all of a sudden now in a group of people that are scaling a business, and a lot of them are scaling service businesses and software businesses.

Mm-hmm.

And you learn from their challenges, and you discuss kind of the challenges you have in hiring employees, for example. Or, you know, getting a loan from a bank, etc. And the collegial atmosphere of it is extremely beneficial and rewarding. There's no way you can get all of this from, you know, from trying to do it yourself. You're gonna have a lot of mistakes before you make the right decision. It really cuts out a lot of the mistakes when you have a group of peers that are going through the same processes. Right.

You guys hear me advocate about these types of things all the time. So join a peer group, even if you're You're starting out, there's still people at that level that you can still put a peer group together. Struggles-wise around the business, what's the biggest struggle you faced so far in the last 2 years?

Ah, it's a great question. So, you know, finding the right people is always a big struggle. I mean, luckily we have, I think, the best of the best working for us, but you have to go through a lot of applications, a lot of interviews. You know, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the right people. And I think, I think Once you get the right people in place, it feels amazing, but it takes a lot to get there. And we're there. I feel like we're really there. I would say that's probably our number one struggle. Number two is I would say raising money, right? Because to scale a business like this, every location there's a certain amount of money you have to spend to open one. And if you want to grow faster than you know waiting for the money to come in, you have to raise money. I've never raised money before. I'm not. I'm not a professional money raiser in any way, but that was a fun challenge 'cause it took me out of my comfort zone. And we were able to do it, which was great, but I think that that was a, I wouldn't say a struggle, but a challenge for me.

I'm assuming you drew this subscription model from maybe your peers around YPO or looking at these other subscription businesses?

I'll tell you, you know, the subscription model is something I've been looking at for years. And there's a great book, it's called The Automatic Customer. It's a guy that wrote another really great book sell your business and get it ready for sale. Anyway, I've been looking at subscription models for a long time because looking at the software industry, it's really about customer acquisition costs, how fast you can scale, how fast you grow your customer base. And just getting educated in that made me, made me think like, how do I turn the medical model on its head a little bit differently and do something different and generate that recurring revenue?

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, you can actually breathe a lot easier when you have, you You know you're getting X dollars a month in subscription revenue, right?

Yep.

So I liked it, and I read this book, and it really helped me kind of craft the model a little bit better, and it's been working out well for us.

Got it. So the one thing that's different for you guys is you have to have locations, right? But I think for subscriptions, you have a lot more capacity with one area, right?

Yes.

So it's not like, you know, there's like a 30-minute meeting each time, so that can last a lot longer. But I'm guessing you still have to have like more locations, right? It's not like software where like it scales quickly and then your marginal cost goes down. So how do you think you're gonna deal with that in the future?

Yeah, so I mean, that's part of our plan, right? So what we look at is our locations generally pull from a 5-mile area, so we can open a location every 10 miles or so, right? So we're looking at 6 more locations in the next year, not just in Los Angeles but also New York, San Francisco area as well. I think that it's actually, you know, I know it sounds kind of daunting to a software person where, you know, you build it once and then it scales all over the world, but But for us, once again, it's about capturing the market. And there's not a place like this, you know, as you know, like within 10 miles around here. So where's everyone going to go if they're interested in this service? It's our location. So the quicker we can put more locations up, the quicker we scale.

What do you think is one new tool that you've added in the last year that's added a lot of value? So it could be like an Oura Ring, it could be a Peloton bike, or it could be an app.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So I would say my top My top device that I love more than anything, and there's all different versions of this, is get some sort of sleep monitor, right? Something that's going to score your sleep every night. People can argue about how accurate it is and all that stuff, but it really doesn't matter because it's forcing you to look at your sleep critically and you're looking at trends, right? So it doesn't matter if you have an 85 or 90 and how accurate that is that night, but are you trending in the 90s? Are you trending in the 40s some nights and and going all over the place and what's causing that, really taking a deep dive and using a tool to tell you, give you a quantifiable measure of how you're doing with that. So whether you use an Oura Ring, I actually like the Beddit device or the Nokia Health device, which is a little pad that you put under your mattress because I can't wear rings all the time because sometimes I do surgery and I end up losing rings all the time. So, but anything that you can use to monitor your sleep.

I like that. So what's it called?

It's called a Beddit. Or Nokia Health has one too.

My problem is I have a chili pad under. So do I like stack that? Like, anyway, I'll figure that out myself.

I have a chili pad in and this on top of it.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, it works.

Great.

It works. Because this just works on motion, so it doesn't matter what the temperature is.

Yeah, okay, that's awesome. We'll drop that in the show notes. You recommended 2 books already, so Automatic Customer, E-Myth Revisited. We'll drop them in the show notes. What is one other book you'd recommend to everyone?

I really like Good to Great. You know, it really changes your mindset about what it is to have and to build a great business. So that's another great one. I'm, I'm a big fan of different, you know, employee scoring measures and giving them different ways, different ways to compensate them and scoring them on different types of goals, not just like what are you bringing in revenue-wise. So there's a lot of great books from Harvard Business School that, that talk about that and their kind of system for doing that. I actually went to Harvard Business School as well as a doctor.

Nice.

I did the executive education kind of entire process.

So that was worth it?

Totally worth it. Totally worth it.

Because some people look down on the executive education programs, I don't know why, but it's— you pay what, $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 or whatever, and then you're there for how many?

3 years.

3 years, okay.

3 years, and you go 1 month a year and then you have homework the rest of the year. And you know, like, I'm a doctor, I would have never known the balanced scorecard existed if I didn't go to Harvard Business School. Right? And then it completely changed my mindset around how to run a business and how to get everyone aligned. I think, you know, if you're using it to get a job, maybe it's different. You know, people look at it differently. But I think if you're looking at just self-education and self-knowledge, executive programs are fantastic.

Bonus question. You talked about self-education. So, I know you're a learner. How are you constantly getting better?

I'm a huge conference geek. So, you'll see me at all different conferences whether it be TED or Summit or, you know, a lot of longevity conferences, business conferences. I go to all of them. I love it that people work very, very hard to curate knowledge and present it to you in an engaging way. We live in such an incredible society that people are willing to do that for you, right? And so why not go to TED where your mind is blown by hundreds of different topics and in, you know, dozens of different categories of the world? Why not go to something like Summit where you're hearing from masters of business that tell you how they did it? You know, it's just fantastic to have all this available for you. Even if you can't go, all this stuff is online, you know?

Right.

So I can't tell you the amount of podcasts and YouTube videos I watch in a day. It's just, you know, it's for me a way to really fill myself with as much knowledge as possible. And every podcast you listen to and every YouTube video you watch every single day, Gives you that much more of an advantage over the next guy trying to do what you're doing.

Totally, 100%, which is why I like listening to my competitors on podcasts too. What is your favorite podcast?

So my favorite health podcast is Ben Greenfield. He has a great one called Ben Greenfield. Yeah, oh, he's incredible. I mean, this guy is an absolute guru of health, wellness, biohacking. So I would put that on your list.

I will do that right after this.

Yeah. Yeah. And then I love this podcast called Planet Money. I listen to it every single day. It talks about economic issues and how they affect the world, and just really, really interesting stuff. Awesome.

Well, Dr. Shah, this has been fantastic. What's the best way for people to find you online?

Yeah, so I'm at, you know, next-health.com. There's a website for our business. Our podcast is a great way— Next Health Podcast, Forefront Podcast. And then my Instagram handle is Darshan Shah, MD. So you can find me at Dr. Darshan Shah on Instagram as And you can always email me, drshaw@next-health.com.

All right, thanks so much for doing this.

Thank you, buddy. It's so good seeing you.

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