Humanaut Health, CEO Jim Donnelly | Our Mission Is Your Healthspan | Episode #45

All right.

Hi, everyone. My name is Hannah Sisley. I am the CEO of ArmHug, and I'm here with another incredible guest today. If you're in the wellness space and you really want to learn a little bit about longevity and what's going on in the future with all the research and development, I want to introduce you here to Jim Donnelly, who is the former CEO of Restore. And the current co-founder of Humanote Health. He knows a lot, and he's going to sit with us for a little to talk a little bit about all the fun things that are happening in the industry. So Jim, you want to take it away? Tell us a little bit more about you.

Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. You know, obviously, I've been in the health and wellness space for a while now. It actually starts about 20 years ago. Started some health clubs in Charlotte called the Charlotte Athletic Club. And so that was my foray into fitness and started some med spas called Emerson Joseph, which were designed just for men. So got another sort of taste of, of that world. And then 9 years ago, co-founded Restore, which, you know, obviously is now propagated around the country. And stepped down from that a year and a half ago because I wanted to do something that was more medical and and different than Restore. And, and that is why I'm now the CEO and co-founder of Humanot Health.

Was there anything specifically that inspired you or that drives you to keep growing and building all these amazing companies?

Yeah, you know, I've, I've got a thesis in life is number one, I do want to be an entrepreneur. Number two, I want to work on things that are impactful. And I say that sometimes that's impactful to the larger society. Sometimes that's impactful for the world that surrounds me more closely. But it's usually shaped by the life stage or other things going on that are important to me. And I like to do— I have the mindset of I'm not a specialist in anything. So if I come across something interesting, I'm willing to jump in even if I don't have experience in that. But I will say the health and wellness arena is one where I have continued to build on previous experiences and, you know, consider myself a bit of an expert in that area. But I, you know, I did a company called I Go, You Go, which was an internet travel company with a, with a good buddy. We won a Webby Award for the top travel site in the US. I've done a bunch of real estate development. I've done an intergenerational you know, social network because I wanted my kids to be able to safely talk to adults when they were in preschool. And so you can kind of see that theme of the travel was because I was a military brat, lived all over the world. So I had a lot of heart for that. The intergenerational social network was because my kids were of that age. The real estate was because I wanted to kind of have an interesting impact on my local community. Restore, the Charlotte Athletic Club, Emerson Joseph, those were just different slices of looking good, feeling good, being healthy and being well. And, and now Humanaut's kind of the culmination of all of that, putting little pieces from each of those experiences together. And although they sound disjointed, like, like I Go, You Go is a travel company, but it was a really big travel community. I think community is a big part of how to make healthcare and wellness work. And so I take that experience, you know, the Charlotte Athletic Club movement is a big part of health and wellness. So we know Emerson Joseph, there were lots of wellness modalities there that, that sort of informed what I think works. And then Restore was a couple of things. It was number one scaling. How do you grow something and grow it quickly and make it really big? Because then you can have even more impact. But it was also a ton of learning around the medical dynamic, the wellness dynamic, and how you balance the two.

Yeah, I think my question goes to scaling because you mentioned that. How do you start even thinking about that, or does it just take a different mindset, I guess?

Yeah, I think people underestimate what it takes to scale. You know, there's scaling different types of businesses. You know, we had to scale I Go U Go to be an international brand in the travel space, but that's scaling a virtual brand. That's very different than scaling something like Restore, you know, Restore's retail physical locations. And to do 250 of them in 40 states is a very different thing than scaling an internet company. And I think there are very few people that have scaled a retail concept like that this quickly. You read about lots of folks that have scaled to multiple hundreds of locations, but they don't typically do it as fast as we did it. I do say, you know, like to say that scale in and of itself is not the end-all be-all. But scale does bring a lot to the party. It creates the ability to touch more people. It creates the ability to get better arrangements in place, whether that's arrangements with vendors and cost side of things. It allows you to pull together a bigger, better team. You know, there's just lots of things that come with scale that you know, make your idea better, make it work better, and make it touch more people.

Definitely. And when we're talking about more people, I wonder if this is the right time, but I kind of want to jump into, um, the science and research side of it.

Yeah. You know, the thing, the thing about health and wellness is there's, there's different layers of it. Um, I would say first of all, there's the foundational layer. It's movement, nutrition, sleep, stress, cognitive health. You, you, you know, you might throw a couple of other things in there, maybe a community, a couple other things. But these are the things that, that fundamentally make people healthy when you address those things. You know, then you can go a little deeper and you can think of more sort of specialized parts of the landscape. You could talk about sexual health, you could talk about menopause, you can talk about metabolic health, joint pain. And, and you can throw out the buzzword that's floating around everywhere now, healthspan. You know, those are different slices of it, but even though they're different, like more specific slices of it, they all still go back to the foundational stuff. You can't help people with those things unless you address the foundational stuff. And then once you address the foundational stuff, then you can get into the more specialty things. And so I, I guess a better way of saying it might be that unless you address the first 80%, all of the specialty cool stuff that you read about doesn't matter. If you don't move well, eat well, sleep well, et cetera, I don't care what you put in your body from a medicine supplement, peptide, hormone, stem cell perspective, you're only gonna go so far. So for me, I didn't wanna do something that didn't address the fundamental piece of it before getting into the more specialty parts of it.

Can you talk a little bit about the human lifespan? Like, why is that trending now, you think? Why does everybody now want to actually live to 100? Why is it so important?

Well, I, I, I think what people want to do is live more good years. Mm-hmm. And they're seeing more and more that more good years are possible. I think if you said to people, you can live to 100, but your last 20 years, will be the miserable years that many of us have seen with grandparents that include Alzheimer's and include little ability to move and do fun things. Like, no one wants to sign up for more of those years. But what people are seeing is that this notion of healthspan is becoming more and more real, where you can not only live longer, but you can live longer and live well and do the things that you want to do. So when you change that equation, suddenly people say, well, give me more of that. Like, well, of course. I'll take more of that. And I think it's trending for— because people see that as being more of a real possibility. They see examples of it more and more. And I tell people all the time, we have older friends, family members that we see going down very divergent paths. We see the group of older friends, family that have gone down the path of taking care of themselves, understanding the fundamentals, leaning into them. And at 65, 70, 75, 80, they live a wonderful life. And then the flip side of that is we see older friends and family that hit their 60s, 70s, 80s, and it's miserable. And you, you say to yourself, no thank you. And, and that is what is driving it as well. Not only are people seeing the possibilities, but they're also seeing the thing that they absolutely don't want to have. They don't want it to happen to them. And so if you've ever had a grandparent, or in my case, 3 grandparents that have gone through that and ended up with dementia and in horrible situations, you're like, anything I can do to avoid that, I'm going to do. Now, it's easy to say those words, but a lot of work goes into actually making that a reality because it really is more movement, i.e., more exercise. It really is eating better and not eating better for a day, a week, a month. but establishing these habits that are going to stick with you for a long time, that you can sustain.

Yeah. You mentioned before too, like how there's different parts of the world that may not have access to this. And then that's a little bit of part of what you're trying to do.

We're in Austin. It's one of the, the best places to live in the world, one of the richest places in the country. Tech-forward, progressive, all the things that you want to put on top of it, and you still see this massive disparity in the haves and have-nots when it comes to health and wellness. If you have more money, you tend to have more access and you tend to have better health outcomes. That is an indisputable fact. And on some level, it's not a good fact. It's not fair. And, and so, so whether it was Restore or anything that I've ever done, and obviously obviously human out as well. Democratization is really important to me. I want to make sure that the things we do over time become more and more accessible to people that aren't necessarily more affluent or quote unquote rich. Now, you got to start somewhere. Some of these things tend to be adapted or adopted by the more affluent parts of our society first. But sometimes that's not a horrible thing because what happens is they provide the runway way to, to achieve scale. And as you achieve scale at a higher and higher level, you can then start to adjust pricing, offering, and you can make it available to more and more people. You know, so that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to build a business that over time becomes more and more accessible to people. And we do think of Humanaut as a healthspan business. Our internal mission is to add 20 good years of living to our clients. And we don't just say it for the sake of 20 more years. We actually then attach it to a societal goal. Not only will those individuals have better lives, but imagine the societal impact if people have 20 more good years of living. Because the interesting thing is, is that people toward the end of their life, they can make a bigger impact. They have more wisdom. They tend to have more resources, they have more connections. And so if you are giving people 20 more good years of living at the height of their powers, think of the impact it can have on society, the impact it can have with families. And then obviously that flows down to the individual.

I'm starting to think, since sometimes there's a lot of myths, right, about aging, what's one that you feel like you've heard that you feel like you hope to debunk or change?

The biggest one is that it's all genetic, that your genetics kind of are your, or, you know, are your prison, that if you have bad genetics, you aren't going to live long and healthy. And if you have good genetics, you can smoke and do anything that you want, and, and you'll still live a long life, long healthy life. Now, there are anomalies and exceptions. Like, once again, everyone's heard of the 80-year-old that's smoked all their life and still going strong. But, but the data will tell you that as a, as a rule, those things are not true. So your environment and the choices you make have a much, much greater impact on the quality of your life and aging and healthspan than your genetics. That, that'd be the first thing. Because if you buy into the notion that genetics are inevitable, it really tells you that doing all the things that are required don't matter. And that's just not true.

Yeah, I really like that. I also think, obviously, another thing that's accelerating a lot of this is AI. And I know you had some things to say about that. But how is it— how is it impacting the research on aging and longevity? Do you think it's been positive so far?

I think AI has incredible potential and promise. I think that AI is accelerating research research exponentially. I think AI in certain areas of the medical arena are reducing errors, bringing better information more quickly to doctors and patients. There's all kinds of good things that can come from AI. Having said that, I don't think it's totally ready. I think that there are some things like it's, it's really good at reading, you know, a scan for a radiologist, you know, patterns will tell you like what's going going on. And it's already proven to be quite great at finding things even better than human doctors. But I think that this idea that AI is there and ready to replace humans completely is, you know, I think we're a little farther off on that than we think. I actually think that, and we embed this in human or in, you know, ingrain this in HumanOut that I think that the more technology provides part of the solution, the more people will actually crave human touch and human connection as well. So I think that the, the solutions that provide the right combination of human touch and technology, including AI, will be the ones that people embrace the most.

Yeah, that makes sense. And then since we're talking about people living significantly longer, like, what kind of societal shifts should we expect? Like, what do you think would happen if we glimpse into the future? Like, maybe population growth might be something that we might have.

You know, I'm 55 at this point. I've lived through a few phases. I've lived through the phase where population growth was the biggest concern. And, you know, the funny thing now is actually depopulation is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in industrialized societies. Like, if you go to Japan, it's an existential crisis because the birth rate is so low. And it happens really quickly. Population decreases, and it's a real problem. It's even happening in places like China because of their, you know, one-child policy for so long. You know, as people become more affluent, they tend to have less kids. And so I'm not sure it'll create a negative societal issue. It might actually solve some of the depopulation issues because fewer and fewer babies are going to be born. And I also think that one once again, you know, if you live a life of purpose, living longer is fine. If you're contributing to something and doing things that are part of the bigger, you know, good construct, I mean, I don't think living longer necessarily has to be completely negative. Now, the flip side of that is if you live longer, you have to have the resources to support that. So people have to be a little smarter about how they save for retirement or save for later years. I mean, there's— I'm not smart enough to answer how all of that plays out, but I also don't, don't view it as a fait accompli that if people live longer, that's going to create problems. I think there's much more opportunity for good things to happen than bad things. You know, going back to the societal impact and other things like that, there's lots of things that, that this could— it could be a good thing.

Yeah, I think it's kind of like what you're saying, like longevity beyond just living longer. It's like the quality of your life, like what you were talking about before, exercising.

Yeah, I think that people that have a doomsday view of, of like people living longer are the ones that are still living in the old days of longevity, not healthspan, where as people age, there was this very stereotypical view of what a 75-year-old looked like. And it tended to be someone that was frail and weak and deteriorating and not living an active amazing life. But if you view it through the lens of healthspan and people taking better care of themselves, those older years, like I said, can be very different. And so if you say to me it's going to be a lot of older people that are living longer but living miserable lives, that's probably a drain on the system. But if you think of it more in the healthspan context, I think it could be fantastic. But like I said, I've— that's above my pay grade and beyond my capability to predict. But I tend to be positive and optimistic. So I think it'll be a good thing.

Yeah. And I, I think you're, you're the right person though to ask about these things because you're in the weeds of it. Like you're probably doing and looking at articles or looking at what others are doing research.

Well, you know, the, a term that's kind of popping up more and more is what they call escape velocity for aging. And, you know, some people think that we're going to reach this this point at which we quote unquote have medical advances that increase our lifespan beyond the rate at which we're aging and dying. And so theoretically, you could live forever if you avoided getting run over by a car or some of these other crazy things. You know, I'm not sure I'm there. I'm not sure I think we're going to reach that escape velocity anytime soon. But what I do believe fundamentally is that people can live longer, will live longer, and centenarians centenarians, for instance, that are active and, and, and having a good life, I think will become something that's much, much more common. And, and I quite selfishly want to tap into that. I am doing a lot of stuff personally to make sure I'm on the right side of that equation. But I think that I've probably done a lot of damage up to this point. So I'm even more optimistic for my kids. I think that, that my kids are going to grow up in an environment where they understand how this all works and the levers to pull. And I think they can very easily live well past 100 and still be running, you know, 10Ks and hiking and doing all kinds of fun things.

And for listeners who want to start taking control of their health to live longer, what are practical steps they should focus on? You think?

Yeah, like, like I said, I, I've run into a lot of folks with that very question and a lot of folks trying to start. And what I have found are there are a lot of people that are looking for shortcuts and easy answers. It's not, it's never an easy answer. It is literally addressing those fundamentals and getting started and then finding a way to create tailwinds that continue to push you forward and trying to find ways to remove the headwinds that keep you from doing it. So some of the headwinds are pain, lack of energy, you know, several things like that. Some of the tailwinds are, you know, getting a workout partner that holds you accountable, you know, starting to move more and more each day so that, so that it becomes a habit. I mean, I could go on and on with headwinds and tailwinds, but, but the folks that don't sort of approach it like that, that are looking for a magic pill, be incredibly disappointed. And I, you know, I always use the example of I have friends who come and ask me, what are the longevity hacks? And they'll say, what about things like rapamycin? Can I get a prescription for rapamycin? And I'll say, sure you can, but I'm not going to be the one that facilitates that because I don't think you're taking care of the foundational things yet. So until you get your metabolic health, i.e., weight under control, until you get your sleep under control, there's no need to be taking things like rapamycin because they're the last 1%, 2%, 5%. Like, start on the basic stuff first. You know, if you're not walking, start walking. If you can only go a mile, go a mile. If you can only go 500 feet, go 500 feet, but just start. And then once again, find a way to get rid of the things that are holding you back. There are real reasons people have a hard time exercising, for instance, i.e., pain and injuries. You know, and so, you know, we've got to figure out how to remove some of those, once again, those headwinds so that people can get in a good habit. But, but I, I am a big believer in, in that it's a lot of times it's choices. You know, people say, I don't have enough time. Yes, you do. You just choose what you spend your time on. You know, I've gone through crazy things like 75 Hard where I've, you know, had to work out twice a day. And it includes you have to read a certain number of pages in a book and you have to do A, B, C, and D. And people are like, oh my gosh, that's insane. And I'm actually— it was fantastic. I chose to watch less TV. I chose not to be on social media for 75 days. And I found that I had this incredible reservoir of time And by the way, I, those things were counterproductive. Like I, I would fundamentally say less time on social media is actually healthy. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's less about you not having enough time and more about you making choices that are more productive.

That's great. So is human health, I'm trying to think. Are there other companies doing the same thing? How are you guys different?

You know, the, the healthspan, lifespan, proactive health and wellness category is exploding, like exploding as fast as anything in the world today. I would say AI and proactive health and wellness and healthspan are the two hottest categories in the world. Maybe I'm missing something, but just from my vantage point, tons of activities happening in this health.

Definitely everyone's tackling it differently, and I think they're marketing it differently too.

And that's, that's what I think is different about Humanaut. Humanaut is one of the few offerings that pulls everything together, and it's much harder to do that. It's a very complex business because if you thought about it, Humanaut could be 15 businesses. It could be a weight management business, it could be an exercise business, it could be a sleep improvement business, it It could be a coaching business. It could be a hormone business. I mean, I go on and on and on. But we fundamentally believe that having all of the key pieces addressed in one offering is the real secret. Now, that's a much harder business to build, which is why most of the businesses in this space, they do take on one slice of it. But I just fundamentally believe that if you're not addressing all or most of the, the key items, you can only take someone's health so far. And so I think we've got a really good plan and idea of how to help people in an integrated, holistic way. And, and by the way, the word holistic, depending on who you're talking to and what you're talking about, can be a little woo-woo, or it can be like a, just a solid construct, you know, functional medicine, which is sort of what we believe in, you know, depending on who's saying it and how they're saying it. It can be woo-woo, or it can be a really solid approach. I mean, you know, so we are trying to bring rigor to these things. We are trying to bring data to these things. We are trying to think of it in a more complex way so that we avoid the pitfalls and, and get really good results.

Right. Then I'm trying to think of like different cultures that approach aging and like like if there's someone out in a different country that's probably already doing this and we probably don't know of it because it's like we're going back to our roots.

Yeah, you know, the, the, the notion of Blue Zones, which are concentrations of centenarians, that does exist. And there are very specific parts of the world, or parts of Greece, parts of Italy, parts of the Philippines, Singapore, Loma Linda in California, which is a Latter-day Saints community. Like, there are these very specific use cases that these populations in these areas create more centenarians. And there are some things that go into that. There's less stress. There's more real food. There's more movement. And in some cases, it happens organically. And in some cases, like Singapore, it was a conscious government decision. Around what is public transportation. Like, let's make sure we build lanes for bikes for everybody. And let's discourage the ability to even buy a car, you know, and let's make the restaurants have to have communal dining tables so that there's always people connecting. Like, Singapore's done this really wonderful thing in terms of doing it. Now, it's a, it's, you know, it took like incredible government thought and effort to pull that off. And there aren't a lot of things that look exactly like Singapore, but it's possible. I would say the flip side of that are places like Ikaria, Greece, where it's happened organically. And like I said, people are walking and all that. And yes, there's less stress. Most of the people are like sheepherders and farmers and things like that, you know. So I'm kind of in the camp of I like to learn from that, but I don't want to be a shepherd. And so how do I apply those thoughts to modern society? And, and, you know, all of that, like, you can't apply all of it, but you can apply some of it. I think how, who, what you do for work and having purpose, how you create community, eating, how you dive into real food more than processed foods, how you make movement an essential part of your day, and not just like an intense workout in the morning, but throughout the day. I mean, I could go on and on. You can apply those lessons. But, but, you know, if anyone's interested, just go research the Blue Zones. You know, Dan Buettner and his team have put together a lot of work around Blue Zones. It's pretty fascinating. And it does show that that if you do the right things, you can get really good results.

Yeah, this is so exciting. Okay, so we only have a few minutes left. So this is my last question. But it's actually what excites you about the longevity research, lifespan research, and you've already kind of talked about it. But what's something that you look forward to? Specifically, we should be looking forward to?

Yeah, like I said, that it's more accessible and it's not like a rich guy in Silicon Valley thought. Like, you know, I see these obnoxious, ridiculous things that come out of, you know, these rich—

yeah—

ecosystems. And once again, Silicon Valley has created amazing things and all that, but I, I just look forward to the fact that more and more of the information around this is being democratized. The services are being democratized. Putting all the pieces together is being democratized. So I look forward to more and more people being able to have access to this. And, you know, a couple years ago my dad died of cancer, and I, I've always had the troubling thought that if I had gotten hold of him 10 years earlier and had Humanod, um, you know, maybe I could have saved him. And, um, you know, so that's what I look forward to, I think. Think more people are going to live long, meaningful lives and, and be healthier in their later years. And think of how joyful that, that would be. Yeah.

Thank you so much. Um, is there— are you at all writing any books or blogs about any of this stuff? Where can we find more information about what you're doing?

Yeah, so you can go to humanauthealth.com to find out about Humanaut. Obviously Restore exists and is still propagating and growing. That's restore.com. And then I did write a book with a former co-founder of Restore. He and I founded Restore, and it's called Restore: The Life-Changing Power of Right Away Wellness. And it kind of lays— it's not a propaganda book about Restore. It's actually much more about that whole notion of headwinds and tailwinds. Like some of these things help you, like, like, for instance, cryotherapy in and of itself isn't important. What's important about it is it helps people deal with their pain, for instance. And now because they've dealt with their pain, they can go move more. And then when they start moving more, they're motivated to eat more. And so it's about creating this virtual cycle of the more you do, the better you feel, the better you feel, the more you do. And, and so Restore, um, the Restore book that I wrote is, um, I think quite lovely in that regard. And I'm obviously biased, But we'll, you know, we're just ramping up. You know, we'll have lots of information that we put on the Humanod Health website. And, you know, you can follow us on Instagram. You can follow me on LinkedIn. I try to make my LinkedIn presence not all super businessy.

Yeah.

Try to make the more interesting emotional parts of business come to life. Like I'm about to published a story about one of our employees and, and how she volunteered her body to let all the nurses practice IVs on her. And there's a particular picture where she did like 8 IVs in one day. The good news is the nurses all did a great job with all the sticks. But like, who lets someone poke them 8 times? Well, it's someone that cares about what they're doing and, and really is a part of a really great culture. And so that's the kind of stuff I, I like to highlight in my LinkedIn presence.

That's awesome. All right. Thank you so much for joining me for a little bit of time to talk about this. It's so important. And I want to keep trying to reach people and telling them that, you know, there is hope for a lot of lifespan research or wellness or getting better, just getting better in general.

Listen, I'm pulling for you because I like what you're trying to do. And I've found that, you know, I've done some really big podcasts, I've done some smaller podcasts. I oftentimes, you know, find that the smaller podcasts tend to be really thoughtful and interesting. And anything I can do to support the ecosystem of making this message come to life, it's, you know, sort of the old saying, If we reached one person today and changed their perspective on how to live a healthy life, then this was worth doing, and I'd do it 100 times over.

Yeah, tenfold for sure. Thanks, Jim.

No, thank you. It's good. Good. Thank you for having me.