Hyper Wellness in a Covid World with Jim Donnelly

Today on Make Impact, we have Jim Donnelly. Jim is the owner of Restore, a leading hyper wellness business focused on new, healthier, and more affordable options for taking care of our bodies. Jim's mission is to help every person achieve hyper wellness so that they can do more of what they love for longer.

From Make Films, you're listening to Make Impact, a podcast about creative problem solving and the leaders who are changing their industries for the better. Here's your host, filmmaker and entrepreneur, Derek Deener.

Hey, well, thank you, Jim, for joining me on the podcast today. I'm excited to have you on. And, you know, we've known each other for a little bit, but I'm excited for our listeners to get to know you a little bit as well.

No, me too. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

So, you know, I'm going to ask you a couple quick questions. We call them rapid-fire questions, just again for our listeners to get to know you quickly. Jump right in. So we'll start with an easy one here. Where were you— where were you born? Where are you from?

So I was born in Stuttgart, Germany. I was a military brat, and so when people ask me where I'm from, I can give about 20 different answers. But, um, I say— yeah, I say Charleston, South Carolina, although ironically I've never actually lived there, but that's where my grandparents were. And okay, kind of felt like the only constant place I went to again and again.

Wow. So how long did you live in Germany?

The first time, close to 3 years. The second time, another 3 years. So I spent, you know, babyhood in Germany. And then I spent my first, you know, young years of school in Germany. And so I— Germany is on the cusp of what I can and can't remember, to be honest. Yeah. You know, I've gone back a lot of times and—

Yeah.

Romantically. Yeah, think of, you know, all the things I used to do, but I was a little kid.

Okay, what part in Germany would you— were you?

Stuttgart, the— was where I was born. And I don't remember much about Stuttgart, although I've been back and it's really, you know, beautiful part of Germany. And then Schweinfurt is where I spent my first years to school. And, you know, like I said, I think of those times as, you know, all these big things in my life. If I went back and actually looked, it would probably be about a quarter-mile area and Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nice. Yeah.

So, um, oh, that's cool. Yeah, it was cool. I don't, I don't consider myself German, um, but, you know, I— that was just a manifestation of the fact that we lived all over the world. We lived all over the country. Yeah, in the United States. And I've been kind of a vagabond, you know, my entire life, which has been interesting.

Yeah, you know, I can relate to that to a certain extent, although it's not all over the country or world. I mean, my parents Moved a ton when I was a kid, but mostly within a certain smaller area, New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas, and moved like 11 times before I was 18 and 6 different school districts. And I'm curious, I'm curious for you, like, what, what do you feel like that added to your life now? Like, what are some of the things that you are good at now or that you, that you feel like you've learned from that upbringing?

Yeah, I mean, I moved a lot. I don't know why my dad moved so much, but we probably moved 30, 40 times in my life. It's crazy. But I think it gives you— yeah, it certainly gives you an ability to walk into any room. You know, I don't want to say you're comfortable, but on the outside, on the exterior, you're comfortable and you can blend in and you can talk to anybody. I definitely think it gives you a different perspective on just people and where they come from and their experiences. I mean, I grew up on military bases. Military bases are the ultimate sort of meritocracy. And, you know, I didn't know the difference between different kinds of kids. I mean, we were all together. It was normal, you know, white kids, Black kids, Asian kids, every religion. It just was just normal for you. And it's not like the people on the military base are are necessarily super worldly. You know, the reality of it is a lot of military folks come from small towns in the Midwest and that sort of thing. But I think it does affect your mind and the way you view the world, that there's just a lot out there. And my family was, you know, they were avid travelers and we've been, you know, every inch of the United States in a vehicle. We've driven across the country a dozen times. We went all over Europe. It was just a really lovely way to grow up, kind of build your sense of adventure, build your imagination. And you spend a lot of time in cars, you know, where you've got to entertain yourself before video games and all that sort of thing. So I think it's part of what made me, you know, creative and have an imagination and that sort of thing. And also we were kind of poor and, I'll never say we were poor, relatively speaking, but my mom was a schoolteacher, my dad was an Army officer. It's not like we had a lot of money. So we traveled pretty spartanly. And I think that also affected me as well. I said, when I grow up, I want to have more. I want to fly, for instance. Yeah. Yeah.

It's interesting. It's all the takeaways that you had about kind of— although I didn't move 30 times, but still like 11 times. But I still feel similarly to what you do with going into kind of new situations, not being afraid of like not knowing any information and jumping into a room that you don't know what's going on. It kind of is a sense of adventure. Like I had a, you know, you have to start over so many times and meet new people so many times. And so you kind of get used to that. Although I would say the negative side sometimes is you feel, as I feel sometimes, like never You know, some of my friends have like friends for 30 years or 50 years that they, whatever, that they grew up with. And you, you feel like a little disconnected to like those types of situations.

But that's, yeah, I totally relate. I, I don't have any lifelong friends. I, when I say I was a vagabond, I could pick up and move and not think one thing about it and leave everybody behind and in, in the next place make friends really quickly. And I was also lucky. I was a really, really good athlete. I was really good in school. So when I would arrive, you know, it was easy to make new friends, but they were superficial because I knew they were going to be temporary. And I think that helps you in a lot of ways. It certainly helps you as an entrepreneur. You have to be able to kind of blow through things, shrug off the last sort of, you know, setback and move on to the next. But I also think it it makes you a little shallower into— in terms of how your relationships are. And yeah, I've had to really work on that. You know, the one life, you know, feels like a lifetime relationship now is my wife, and she's certainly my oldest relationship.

Yeah, that's, that's— yeah, that's, that's interesting. I feel that— I feel similarly. A lot of you have probably heard of audible.com. I've used Audible for the past 7 years. I've read over 80 books. I actually learned from a friend, I've been listening to books 30% faster. So I do use the 1.3 times faster, and it's just a way to kind of get books faster with my efficiency brain. But it helps me, you know, it's amazing. I love to stay connected, informed, and inspired by audible.com. So you can sign up for your free 30-day trial of Audible Premium Plus at audibletrial.com/makeimpact. That's audibletrial.com/makeimpact. Happy listening. But so, so kind of fast forwarding now, let's talk about when you decided to start, you know, Restore. Like, what, what can you talk about that story, that journey, and kind of where you at? What began that process for you?

Yeah, so, you know, I, I became an entrepreneur, you know, decent amount of time ago. You know, I started my first company when I was in grad school, but But, um, you know, fast forward to the Restore time, you know, I was 46 at the time I was traveling, or excuse me, I was training for a triathlon. I was pretty beat up and a friend asked me to come try something. And I said, well, what is it? And she said, no, no, no, you don't want to know. Just come with, just come. And so long story short, she takes me to a cryotherapy place. And, um, and my wife came as well. And, and we were like, this seems nutty. Having said that, I'd been an athlete for, you know, at a pretty high level. And so ice baths were nothing new. So I'll try it. So long story short, I try it and I loved it. It made me feel great, but I hated everything else about the experience. I hated the retail environment. I thought it was extremely overpriced. I didn't particularly care for the owner. He talked about how much money he was making more than he talked about how he was helping people. And long story short, I walked away thinking to myself, this could be better. And you take that and you put my sort of entrepreneurial philosophy on it. You know, I wanted to do things that help people in society. Every business I've ever done, I felt had some mission and some component of helping people, you know, not necessarily with, with brain cancer or anything otherworldly amazing, but, but it was good for society. And, um, When I sort of stepped back and looked at what was going on in the sort of pain space and the chronic condition space and just literally how I felt based on that one single time of going to cryotherapy, I thought, man, maybe there's something here. And so I jumped in pretty quickly. I got my best friend in Austin to come and try it as well. He happened to be the chairman and founder of a pretty prominent venture fund that specialized in medical technology. And, and so he had access to a ton of data, a ton of information around what was going on in the wellness and medical space. And, you know, you get two entrepreneurs in a room and you get them clicking and get them talking about something fun like freezing themselves at -260 degrees. Good things happen pretty quickly.

That's exciting. So, so then You started your first location in Austin then? Is that kind of— was the path?

We did. We started one in Austin thinking worst case, we're going to have our own private cryo studio that we could let our friends come to and we could have and maybe make a little bit of money on. But we weren't looking for little businesses. We were looking for something big to do. So, we said, hey, let's either make this big or like I said, have our own personal little studio. So, we opened one pretty quickly. It was fabulously successful. From day one. Then we opened 4 more, a couple more in Austin, one in Charlotte, one in Houston. We wanted to kind of A/B test, see if we could break it, see if the first one was a fluke, maybe it was just a great location, something like that. But we couldn't break it. And it was successful from day one. And we had a different approach to things, which we'll get into in a second. But, um, we were kind of off to the races at that point.

So now, now, you know, a couple years— how many years ago was that?

That was, um, over 5 years, about 5 and a half years ago.

Wow, that's it though. That's crazy. That's amazing. So, so fast forward in 5 and a half years, what are some of the things you've learned? Where are you guys at now? Like, kind of what's the evolution of Restore over the last 5 and a half years?

Yeah, so, so, um, we, we knew early on that a cryotherapy business wasn't really a a business. It was more a hobby kind of thing because anybody can put a cryochamber in a space and run people through that. So we wanted to build something that was much bigger and much more sustainable and much more impactful. So we set about putting together all these different modalities that help people in a certain way. Um, so we, we do 12 things now. It's actually one of our biggest frustrations. Everybody still says the store cryotherapy, and cryotherapy is, you know, 20% of what we do. But, but, you know, as we pull all this together, we said, hey, we've got to have a construct for this. It doesn't make sense to say we're the cryo, IV, hyperbaric, sauna, you know, place. You gotta— so, so we call it hyper wellness now, and that, that's our name and our category. We created it and trademarked it. And the idea is that, um, we needed a compass. We needed to know what fit and what didn't. And, and so hyper wellness has four really specific characteristics. Number 1, our customers feel better right away. They come in, they do something, and when they walk out the door, they feel better than when they walked in. And that's a pretty powerful construct for a retail offering.

Yeah.

Number 2, everything we do is scientifically and medically validated. We did not want to make stuff up. We would— didn't want to have like guru stuff. Some dude in California says it's good, so try it. So, so everything we do is seminal stuff, been around for a long time, done in hospitals. And number 3, and this was probably the and probably the most exciting one was that it was democratizable. So we said early on, we do not want to create another business just for rich people and pro athletes. We want this to be accessible for everybody. And our mission is to make hyper wellness accessible for everybody in the world. And that is a very grand mission and one that will take, take time. We'll obviously start in the United States, but Restore will expand internationally later this year. And then finally, everything we did, we wanted to be scalable and efficient so we could do a lot of it. And if we open places in California, they would feel and look and perform the same way as California and New York and Florida and everywhere else.

Yeah.

So at this point we have 75 locations open. We have another 125 under development that'll go live at some point in 2021. And so we are unambiguously the leader in the wellness space. And the really the only player in what we call the hyper wellness space.

That's amazing. Congrats, Jim, on that. I know it's not for the faint-hearted to be an entrepreneur and to also be a franchise entrepreneur too. It's a lot going on.

Yeah. It's, you know, it's— I've always been an entrepreneur that wants to share with people. I like having a business partner, Steve. And I are the best of friends, really good partners. He's the engineer, the rational one. I'm the emotional, you know, marketing side.

Creative one.

Yeah, and it's really fun, but it's also really fun to have a business. We have our corporate locations that we own 100%. We also have our franchise locations. You know, the franchisees are like partners. They're like family members in some cases now. And it's, um, it's really exciting to be able to share this with them. And, and, uh, you know, they lift me up. We have a location in Lancaster, obviously, and, and they get so excited because when they are running their franchise, um, they get to experience what I got to experience back in the beginning, having all these people come in who have tried everything, by the way. They've, they've tried traditional medicine. They've tried everything they could to deal with their pain, their chronic condition. And it just, nothing worked. And then they came into Restore and these things that are very natural, that have no side effects, have no long-term bad effects like pharmaceuticals can at some time, you know, people are unbelieving. Hugs, tears, changed my life. And so, you know, everyone in the Restore system gets to experience that every day. And I actually, I'm really emotional. And when I get up in front of my team and I'm talking about this, I, I'm prone to tearing up. And I say again and again, that's a good thing, guys. We're in a business that we get to feel. And the day that I don't feel is a bad day. And you know I'm feeling when I cry. So I guess the day I don't cry is probably a bad day. Not a, you know, it's—

Yeah. No, I feel a similar way though with what we do that like the, The moment I'm not driving and seeing a gorgeous sunset that I don't want to film, or the moment that there's a moment in my life that I feel like I'm too busy to take in those things, I should get out of filmmaking. Because it's all about kind of experiencing the moment and taking it all in and capturing that so you can tell those stories. And I feel that similar kind of challenge to myself, that if I get out of that kind of emotional state, I need to kind of reevaluate, like, what I'm doing a bit.

I'm actually under quarantine for coronavirus right now.

Are you really?

Um, so do you have it? I do.

Okay, how you feeling?

I feel great. I, um, you know, once again, I, I don't tend to focus on myself, but I live what we call the hyper wellness lifestyle. It's not just a thing we talk about. It's not just a thing we do in our stores. It really is a way to approach life. And I think during these times, it's been particularly interesting because everything that we thought and everything we've seen happening in a non-coronavirus time, it really comes to life now. And so what I mean by that is, you know, I, I take all kinds of supplements. I do IVs every week. I hop into cryo multiple times a week. It's saunas, hyperbaric. I really do embrace all the things that we do. And so I, up until about a week ago, was like, man, I'm, I'm bulletproof. I can't get coronavirus, which of course was just more said in jest and certainly not to diminish it because it's a, it's a Oh, no, of course. Obviously, for some folks, it's very devastating. But the thought was that if I ever did get it, it's like, for God's sakes, I better have a good episode after all the preaching I do and all the evangelizing I do. And to be quite frank, it's been exactly what I expected. I do make sure that vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, magnesium, these sort of crucial micronutrients. Particularly for coronavirus. I have them in all the right levels. And this has been a total breeze. I've essentially had a headache for a couple of hours the first night. Interestingly, my Oura Ring data— so my Oura Ring tells me certain things like my respiratory rate— it went kind of wanky on Saturday night. So I knew something was wrong and something was off.

Interesting.

And my dad has stage 4 cancer. So he had just gotten out of the hospital after an emergency surgery. And I was like, I got to go see my dad, but I got to be safe too. So between the Oura Ring data, the headache, and just the world we live in, I went and got tested and lo and behold, I had it. And other than that, it's a complete non-event for me. I've been quarantined and eating perfectly and going— I've gone on a 4-mile walk every day out in the hills. And, um, you know, I, I wish, I wish this on everybody. If, if I could give this version to everybody, I would.

Yeah.

But I like to say I could give this version to everyone. I, I, it just really, really, really is important for folks to take care of the things they can control. Um, you know, and we talk a lot about that. Like, in this world we live in, you, you are in one of two camps. You're in a camp that has to cocoon and has to get away from everybody and everything and shut down, or you're in a camp where either you don't want to do that or you can't do that. And that's the camp that we live in. And that's the camp where we say control what you can control, because you are not a passive, you know, victim of this. You can— it doesn't guarantee success. It doesn't guarantee you won't have symptoms and that sort of thing, but it sure as hell puts you in a better spot and prepares you better and increases your odds of having a non-event. My wife has had it. She had the same experience as me. Many of my staff in Austin has had it. We've, we've essentially all had the same experience. But, but we say that's not by accident.

Yeah. Yeah, that's very interesting. I want to touch on something that we talked about like a year ago, but in terms of like the healthcare industry and some of the things you're doing in that in that way. But before I jump into that, some of our listeners might not know what cryotherapy is. Can you explain what cryotherapy is?

Yeah, so cryotherapy is, is basically cold therapy. Cryo stands for cold, so it's cold therapy. And, and it's a very specific sort of set of steps around cold therapy. So in our case, you get into a chamber, and we have a couple of different types of chambers, but you get in a chamber that goes down to -260 degrees and you stay there for 3 minutes. So that sounds horrific. That sounds like a James Bond, you know, sort of how we're going to kill James Bond today. But the reality of it is, it's 3 minutes for a specific reason. It's very controlled. It feels amazing once you get over the initial shock of it. But putting your body into an environment like that, your body has you know, things that it does automatically to fight the cold. And those things are actually really good for you. Your, your, your body goes into the sort of fight or flight mode. It wants to protect itself. Your blood goes to your core to protect your vital organs. That's a good thing. When, when you come out, your blood rushes back to your extremities with anti-inflammatory proteins. Collagen is released because your body thinks that your skin could have been damaged by the cold. I mean, I could go on and on, on the benefits, but, but there are a very specific set of things that are very, very good for you. Um, and, and that's why you do it. And the interesting thing about your body is your body is designed to handle stressors like that. It's designed to deal with the heat. It's designed to deal with the cold. In modern society, we stay in a sort of a homeostatic environment. We're always in heat and air conditioning and coats, and we, we try to keep our body in this sort of standard band. The reality of it, that's not good for your body. Your body needs to feel the cold. Your body needs to feel the heat, and your body needs to use its natural mechanisms. There are many theories that say the increased incidence of arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, for instance, is a consequence of modern society and not letting your body feel that cold and feel that heat and things that it was designed to deal with.

Yeah. Now that's, that's really interesting. I didn't, I didn't know that last part about, uh, the coats and the AC and the heat that it essentially— I mean, if you talk a little bit about not exposing ourselves to even germs and always— I've heard a lot of theories about overhand sanitization right now within COVID times. Is that really good for us over a long term? What would you say to that?

It's not. No, definitely not. Your body is designed to deal with environmental factors and things in the environment and germs and that sort of thing. It's, you want your body to go through that. And, you know, and you asked about cryotherapy, you know, once again, we do 10 different things, IV therapy, saunas, hyperbaric therapy. They all have their own set of reasons why they're really good for you. And in a lot of ways, like, you know, saunas, once again, that's the opposite of cryo. So you're putting people into heat, um, you know, IVs, it's, you're putting, things into your body like vitamin C and vitamin D, because your body is out in the world dealing with bad things, dealing with viruses, dealing with germs. And your body has an amazing ability to deal with them if your body is in the right condition. And the first part of that is put the right stuff in your body, the right micronutrients. And, you know, a lot of people take oral supplements. Oral supplements are the worst way to get micronutrients into your body in a lot of cases. And so we have these other ways of doing it. And it's all about making sure your body's prepared to deal with what it will inevitably have to deal with. The idea that you're going to avoid germs, you're going to avoid viruses, it's just unrealistic. And we talk about the protocol we recommend for people during coronavirus. The interesting thing is, take the word coronavirus away and then put in the word diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's. It's the same. It's the same set of things. It doesn't have a unique set of recommendations for today. Maybe a little more vitamin D and vitamin C and that sort of thing specifically for today. But the holistic approach to it It's the same set of things that are going to help you with all the big stuff, with all the little stuff, with, with not getting colds as much, fighting the flu, all of it.

Yeah. Now that's huge. And, and the reason why we met in the beginning was because I was just go finishing my, uh, you know, chemo from cancer and things, and I ended up going, you know, to the Lancaster location with Andy and going doing all the things like hyperbaric and sauna, cryo. And it was also just emotionally therapeutic for me to get an IV drip with vitamin C and vitamin D rather than chemo. And we shared stories with your dad and love to hear a little update on that as well. But that helped me. The hyperbaric chamber, that's incredible. The research I was just talking to someone this morning about that, about how you feel after that and Just, yeah, all those things combined, I feel like that kind of helped me kind of jump back, back out of the sluggishness that I dealt with after going through all my cancer treatments. So I'm a believer as well with, with the hyper wellness.

Listen, cancer is horrible, and I can definitely tear up about cancer given what my dad's going through. Yeah, but we see that across the country. We see— we— close to 70% of Americans have a chronic condition. Many Americans have an acute condition things like cancer. This is not something for people on the fringes. What we do is for everybody. And, and the sooner you do it, the sooner it helps you and the better it helps you. And I, to this day, I will go to my grave very sad that I didn't start Restore 10 years earlier, because I will always wonder if I had started 10 years earlier, could I have saved my dad? And wow.

Yeah, that's— yeah, no, it's— that's, you know, hey, you started it now and you're saving other people's dads, right? So that's right.

My dad— my dad is still the most optimistic human I know. He— he's a fighter.

He's—

he's— he looks a little different. He kind of looks like Groot now from Despicable Me with no hair and all that, but he's still got the same sense of humor. He's still pulling for people. He's still pulling for Restore and me, and he's still going in. And I'm incredibly proud of him for that.

Well, yeah, thank you for sharing that. That's incredible. And we all are connected to cancer in some way, like you said, and to chronic illness, to you know, chronic fatigue. I mean, I feel like everybody's tired, especially after 2020. We're all tired.

So, well, you know, the, the thing you say that we all are tied to it, the conventional wisdom, even as recently as 10 years ago, was that aging was inevitable. And aging was inevitable and death was inevitable because of, you know, primarily these 4 big killers: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's. Um, the conventional wisdom is actually changing and the science has changed exponentially and continues to every year at this point, there are many in the scientific community now that believe aging is a disease state. And as a disease state, you can tackle the causes and you can eliminate it. Now, whether you can eliminate it completely, or you can really push off what, what our traditional concept of what an old person is, that, that is, that is for sure that is already happening. And, and at the end of the day, that's what Restore is, is doing. Restore is actually more focused on one thing than anything else. And that's what we call healthspan. So the average lifespan in America is 79. The average healthspan in America is 63. Healthspan, those are the years you live when you can still do the things that you want to do for the most part that make you happy. So what that basically tells you is that most Americans have the last 16 years of life are pretty shitty. They can't do what they want to do because of their health. And of course, those are averages. So there are people that are active much longer and there are people that much less. But, but at the end of the day, we fundamentally believe that if you follow a hyper wellness lifestyle and we can track that and show you how it's helping you in the short term, over time, potentially we're going to be able to help you with your healthspan. And that's a really big promise. And one I'm certainly not getting on here to say, come to Restore, we're expanding your life. But one day I do want to be able to definitively say that, and I want to be able to prove it and show you the data. But intellectually, if you do certain things and the sooner you start doing them, it does in fact affect your healthspan. And so why not do them? Well, for the same reason that people have a hard time doing anything that's hard, because it takes commitment and you got to do a lot of things. But, but a lot of the stuff we do at Restore, we, we kind of remove the difficulty of it. It's difficult to go do an ice bath every day. It's a pain in the butt. It's inconvenient. Doesn't feel good. Cryo, cryo is actually kind of fun, and you can pop in for 3 minutes and be done. So we apply that to everything we do, make it convenient. Make sure you're transparent about how it's helping people. No matter what we do, you walk out feeling better, endorphins, all kinds of other things. It's truly been, been, been a lovely thing to see.

Well, that's amazing. It's a great, I think, way to end it. I really appreciate your time, Jim, and I appreciate what you're doing in this hyper wellness space because, um, like I said, I'm, I'm a, I'm a walking example of kind of what it did for me, kind of jumping back and feeling better and do all the, all the great things that you guys are offering.

So thanks, Derek. I really appreciate you having me on.

Yeah, I appreciate it as well. Thank you, Jim.

All right. Have a good one.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Make Impact. Follow our journey on Instagram at Make Impact Podcast. Make Impact is hosted by Derek Diener, written by Leticia Kreider, and produced by Leticia Latisha Kreider and Grace Wagner. Aaron Diener and Seth Bortner edit the episodes, and Lisbeth Beiler is our marketing manager. Make Impact is brought to you by Make Films, a team of filmmakers producing meaningful content to inspire and motivate. Learn more at makefilms.cc. Until next time, be kind to one another and make an impact.