Interview with Jim Donnelly – Humanaut Health Founder and CEO — The Irresistible Factor

be a little patient. Don't be so quick to want to jump into raising a bunch of money and not grinding through it a little bit to better understand it. I get that's okay.

Welcome to the Irresistible Factor, a podcast where I talk to founders and investors and retailers about what it takes to launch successful brands, from developing a compelling proposition and brand identity to raising capital to getting distribution and more. My name is Christy Bridges and and I'm a marketing expert with tons of experience and a true love for all things health and wellness.

Okay, welcome to today's episode of the Irresistible Factor. I'm so happy to have a return guest, but with a new venture. So I'd like to welcome back Jim Donnelly to the podcast, and he is now the CEO and co-founder of Humanaut Health, which is a premium clinic for health optimization, which is one of my favorite subject. So welcome back to the podcast, Jim, and thank you for joining us to talk about this incredible new venture that you have.

Thanks a lot. It's always a pleasure. I really enjoyed our last talk and look forward to this one.

Me too. So why don't you give us a little bit of background? You transitioned from one company that was doing a lot of things in wellness that I thought was pretty breakthrough to something else that I think is even more breakthrough from a longevity discussion perspective, which there's plenty of talk about now. So can you talk a little bit about the transition and what led you to create Humanaut?

So a few things happened. Number one, I had been building the store for 8 years and we had gotten to the point where we were opening our 225th location. And to be quite frank, that's interesting to me than creating a company that's doing something new and interesting. I'm a little more of a founder than an optimizer. And so it was just time for me to step aside, let the folks that are better at process and operations run the company that was more mature and let me go start something fresh and new. That was one thing. The second thing that happened is I had my 55th birthday and I am finding more and more that things are affecting my health. And I'm intellectually curious and wanna solve those things. And as a byproduct of me being 55, my wife is close to that, going through menopause and just these health issues I realized are much deeper than what something like a Restore can help with. You know, Restore, it will always be near and dear to my heart. It's sort of what I call foundational wellness. Everyone should be doing hot, cold, and pressure and light, these are really good things for you. But there are higher level needs from a health perspective, from a health optimization perspective. And I wanted to really dive deeply into that. So literally I spent a year, I traveled the country, I met with experts in hormones, peptides, stem cells. I talked to lots of concierge medicine doctors. I talked to doctors leading longevity clinics. And I kind of formed a few sort of ideas about what was good about what was out there and what needed improvement. And that ultimately became Humanaut Health.

What made you think there was a real need? Like, what were you seeing in the market that made you think, okay, this is something that people are going to be interested in? And this— because it's a bigger— I don't know if I would say it's bigger, but it's different than what you did before with Hyper Wellness, right? Can you talk a little bit about what Humanaut's going to be able to do for people so that there's a really good understanding of the differences?

Yeah, you know, health optimization is really making you your best self. And once again, when you're younger, that is a different dynamic than as you get older. I mean, we really want to help people live as good a life as they get a little older as they've always lived. And we want them to maximize what people call healthspan. And we literally think we can add 20 good years of living to a person if we do what Humanaut does. And so step back for a second and give you an idea of what Humanaut does. So a client would come in, you would get a very rich set of diagnostics. So 100 blood panels, epigenetic testing, genetic testing, functional testing, several scans, integration to your wearable devices. Long story short, we will know you and everything about you. Then we'll take all of that data, and it's a ton of data, more than you can digest, to be quite frank, and we'll put it into a health dashboard. We'll curate the data in that health dashboard so that you can focus on the things that are the most important for you at that time. So what we call a Focus 3, and you can't focus on everything at once. You do have to pick the things that are the most important. Then we'll give you personalized protocols. And this is where Humanite Health starts to be very different. The protocols are going to be around all the foundational things when it comes to health. So fitness, nutrition, sleep, stress, cognitive health. Each one of those is a big thing in and of itself. But when you start to help with all 5 of them in a holistic, integrated way, that's a pretty complex challenge. And then we're going to make sure that you're making progress and we're going to adjust along the way. And once we feel like foundationally you're in a good place, we're then gonna go after some really big problems. And these are the big societal health problems. So metabolic health, menopause for women, andropause for men. By the way, 99% of men don't even know the term andropause exists, but it's a real thing. It is the male version of menopause. Joint pain, sexual health, and health span. So those are the 5 big societal issues that we're going to help people with. And we're going to do it by sprinkling in stem cells, peptides, hormones, all kinds of things that clearly can help your health in a big, significant way for many years.

And can you talk about how consumers will interact with the centers?

Yeah. And so I think that's another big difference with Humanoid Health. We are omnichannel, so you can interact with us virtually and you can interact with us in a retail environment. You would come into the retail environment to do things that can only be done at retail. For instance, it would be very hard to joint injections with, you know, in the regenerative medicine space. Well, you can't do that. You have to come in and do retail. There are other modalities. There are, you know, things like ozone therapy. Things like shockwave therapy. You know, these are things that have to be done in a clinic. We also have a fitness component to these clinics where we do very rich fitness diagnostics. You have to physically be there to do that. We take those diagnostics and we help you with your imbalances. We help you with your fitness protocols and we train you on how to go out into the world and exercise. And people say, well, exactly what does that mean? Well, you hear terms like VO2 max training. I say to all my, when was the last time you did VO2 max training? The first thing they say to me is, I don't even know what that is. The second thing they say to me after I tell 'em what then it is, they say, oh, that sounds hideous. And so we're trying to make it more approachable, understandable, and palatable. And so we have an area within the clinic where we do train people on how to go out and be more physically fit.

It sounds like a combination of a lot of things that you'd have to go to a lot of different practitioners for, like a chiropractor or a physical therapist or a fitness trainer or a concierge doctor. Like, will you have all of those things in one place?

Yes, that is the big kind of umbrella thing that brings it all together. I think people use the term Frankensteining their health.

Totally. 100%.

Piece here, a piece there, a piece here. And they have 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 relationships in order to pull it all together. I did not want that to be the case. So we have most of the things that you need in the clinic and through all of the other things that we do virtually. If we don't do it, we do what I call the curation of health and wellness. We will navigate it for you. We'll tell you how to do it. We'll tell you the best option. And so we really do bring this whole solution to you rather than leaving you to your own devices for various pieces of it.

I think it's really cool because when you do it now, the way that people are doing it, what you're calling Frankensteining it, the practitioners aren't talking to each other. So you're responsible for trying to communicate all the things or not. And I think that it's really interesting to have one person thinking about and collecting. It's almost like, you know, a brand having multiple agencies and having to figure out how to communicate everything. It's kind of the same, like you're trying to aggregate all of the human data to make sure that people are being optimized in a way.

Yeah.

And, and I would take one thing you said and kind of add to it. So you said one person. So what I would say is one relationship.

Yes. One relationship.

Yep. Alongside, there's a big team.

Yeah.

It's very different than like a typical functional medicine practice that tends to be a doctor.

That's true.

They call it kind of a cult of personality business. That doctor's great. You know, he has a really good relationship with patients. He does a lot of good things, but he doesn't have the benefit of an ecosystem to support him. He doesn't have the benefit of a tech stack that helps uncover things that he might otherwise miss. He doesn't have the benefit of literally, like, being able to go on vacation. Like, what happens when your functional medicine goes on— doctor goes on vacation? He's gone. You know, once again, recognizes that as well. And so we have a team that is helping you behind the scenes and then gives you a single point of contact. So you have a relationship with someone that you know and appreciate, but it's very different in those ways.

Yeah, it is. And tell me what you've learned about where people are at that leads you to believe that this is something that people are looking for now. I mean, I think that it is, but I'm a, an N of 1. So what has led you there?

There are so many stats about the deteriorating health of American society. You can go straight to the obesity, the diabetic stats. There's all kinds of stats about the impacts of menopause, and these are big problems. Like, there's nobody over 40 that couldn't list dozens of people that they know that are having problems with all of sexual health. Like I said, you know, hormone issues, you know, related to perimenopause, menopause. And these are existential problems. If you're a couple, let's say you're a 50-year-old couple, and let's say you as a woman are having problems with your hormones. By the way, your husband's probably starting to have some problems too. But here's the unfairness of the world yet again when it comes to women. There are a bunch of easy options for a guy to go out and get testosterone. It's not quite that simple. But it's not much more complicated for men. Men are pretty easy to solve. But let's say the 50-year-old husband goes out and solves that by getting testosterone. Well, the woman now has to go out and solve her problem. Otherwise, she'd create an existential issue in your marriage. She'd create completely disconnected sort of people in terms of their sexual health. And now when the woman has to go do it, it's much more complicated. Now you're juggling 4 and 5 hormones. You're titrating up and down little pieces. You do one thing and it starts to make a woman's hair fall out. So you got to adjust and you got to do this other thing. And it's just really hard. And if it's not done well, you're not going to get good results. And then what I would say is that's just the hormone piece. What people miss again and again is that all of these other things that affect your health are actually important to the things you're doing with hormones. So you can't just look at a small slice of it and not be healthy in a lot of ways if you expect to get really good results. And it's really hard to find a doctor that can tell you about nutrition and fitness and sleep and cognitive health and stress. Like, those are big topics. And then you take the specialties of these things around things like sexual health. It's just a lot. And we believe an integrated holistic approach is much better in terms of results.

What's your plan for getting to people? So I know you have a website up now, coming soon. Are there any centers that are open yet, or is that to come?

It's coming. First one, end of August, beginning of September in Austin, Texas. We'll open 3 more pretty shortly after that. One in Dallas, one in Houston, one in Palm Beach, Florida. And we have commitments for 100 locations. So we'll open roughly 100 locations over the next 3.5 years. So we've done that before. We created a team that's built to scale. They've done it again and again with various businesses. So what would seem very daunting to most people, 100 clinics in 3 years, you're insane. You know, we've done that before and we know how to do it. And we built a team to do it. I've never been more proud of a team. We've got an incredible team. If you go to the website, that team gets annoyed with me sometimes because I say, oh, it's a bunch of Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School, Johns Hopkins, you know, and by the way, I didn't go to any of those places. I just went to Texas and Georgia, which I think are good schools. But these are incredibly intellectually capable people. More importantly, They've gone out in the world and they've done big things. They've worked at seminal companies. They've worked at the top marketing places. They've worked at the top hospital systems. Many of our founders have started companies. I think we have 7 companies that exited at over $250 million that founders were a part of as founders. That's a super special group of people. You know, and I always give the folks that go to Harvard and Stanford and those kind of places a compliment on our team. I use my CTO as an example. He's a guy named Tony. I've worked with him for 20 years, and the best compliment I can always give him— he's a Cornell engineer, Harvard Business School, multiple companies that he sold. And I always say, you could work with Tony for a year, you'd never know where he went to school. Or the accomplishments that he's got under his belt. Now, they would come out and you'd be a little surprised and you might even say to him, well, why didn't you tell me that stuff? And he would kind of look at you and be like, well, why would I?

Yeah.

I don't need to tell you I'm smart. I just need to be super effective and do my job well. And you know that I can do it. But me telling you all these things doesn't make me any better. Have you worked with that dynamic?

Yeah, it's nice. It's surprising, right? That's surprising for someone of with that kind of background in a way.

Because everyone knows someone who went to like a Harvard and they'll wear a Harvard sweatshirt. On top of that, they'll have a Harvard hat. Yes. They'll have a Harvard license plate. Once again, they should be proud of the fact that they put in the work and they went to a great academic institution and all that. But it's being really capable and humble, I think, is way more attractive.

I agree. Are there things like this that exist in the market right now? Are you guys really sort of breaking new ground?

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I think there are, once again, going back to what we talked about with frankenstein, I think there are a lot of options for individual pieces of it. I think that there are options that are all virtual. There are options that are all retail or all medical facility. I don't think there are a lot of things out there that bring together all of the pieces that are omnichannel, that will have a very rich technology stack so that not only do you have a lot of data that is telling us and informing your protocols, but it's literally living on your phone in your pocket as a companion. And then the one thing that I haven't mentioned yet is we have a very rich coaching component to it. So this is not one of the, let me tell you what to do and then good luck, go do it places. We really do believe that behavior change is hard. You need help. You need someone holding your hand to do it. You need it done on your terms. You need someone to meet you where you're at. And we've created a really rich coaching capability that does all of that stuff. So it's one thing to tell you what to do. It's an entirely different thing to actually help you make it happen. And that's where all the magic occurs.

You mentioned that it was a premium service. Talk about that a little bit. Will, Lots of people be able to do it? Will it be for people who have higher incomes and have had interest in this kind of thing? Are you trying to get it to the masses?

Listen, my life mission is to democratize health, wellness, longevity. There's nothing I hate more than the idea that the guys getting really great longevity medicine, for instance, are the rich Silicon Valley guys that go out and do all the crazy stuff. That is not how it should be. And it is literally my life's mission to democratize it. Having said that, you do have to start someplace. And in the beginning, we will have a notion of higher dollar membership. So we have 3 levels of membership. I think the first level is pretty accessible. You get a lot of stuff for that. It's a really great offering. And then you have a middle tier that it starts to get a little more like, okay, that's a real commitment. I think once again, accessible. When people look at the way they prioritize things and the way they spend money, I think in the grand scheme of things, those first two levels are very approachable. Now, the third level is sort of concierge functional medicine, longevity clinic dynamic that you've seen. It's a little more expensive, but I will say this, even at that level, compared to all of the alternatives out there. And when I talk about some of these alternatives, some of these alternatives are $50,000, $100,000, $125,000 a year. We're significantly less than that, and we provide significantly more value, significantly more capability, significantly more coaching. So my joke there is we sort of democratize longevity for rich people. Not a very funny joke because we're really trying to do this for everybody. Okay.

Interesting.

It is a little more— it's still got to be scaled. As we scale this, the plan is to continue to bring the price down, continue to bring the cost down, and continue to pass that on to the consumer. For what we're going to be offering at every membership level, I'm very proud of the value people will receive. You know, once again, I hope we do a good job of helping people understand that I talk about health all the time. It's never a matter of time and money not being available. It's just how you choose to spend your time and money. And some people make health a priority and it's a lot easier for them to pull the trigger on things. Others, I did an experiment for 75 days, zero social media. And at the same time I did this thing called 75 Hard. You have to work out twice a day. You can't do social media. You have to read every day. The funny thing about it is even though I was doing way more stuff physically and for my health, because I had cut out things like social media, I had tons of time.

That's interesting.

And it was also interesting in that the social media probably wasn't particularly good for me anyway. And I'm not a big social media guy, to be fair, but, you know, I lean into things like LinkedIn and some of it because I have to for my job. But just cutting out even a little bit of that stuff gave me the extra time that I needed to take my health to the next level.

That's very interesting. 100 locations you mentioned. How are you doing that? Are they all going to be owned by you guys? Are they going to be franchised or something else?

They'll be franchised.

Okay.

So I'm a big believer in franchising. I think that franchising done well is a really great business model. I think unfortunately there are a lot of franchises out there that aren't done well. That don't provide the level of support that's needed for a franchisee to go out and be successful.

Yeah.

But what I like about franchising is that you have a partner on the ground. You have somebody that wakes up every day and their priority is to make this business work, deliver the best experience to the customers, and then all the other stuff kind of takes care of itself from there. We will create a franchise system that has all of the right levels of support. We'll be very careful about the franchisees that we choose. You know, I always go back to the example at Restore. When we started, we leaned into the West Point network. Essentially, you had to be a West Point grad to be an initial Restore franchisee. And so that's a great way to establish a foundation. We'll do the equivalent of that at Humanod. It won't necessarily be you have to be a West Point grad, But we have ways that we will vet our franchisees to make sure that they're highly capable, that they have the financial capability to do this. They have the operational sophistication to be a really good operator. The goal is to not have too many franchisees. So the way that I say it to the team is I never want to have more franchisees, an amount that I could have my house for a Christmas party. If I can't have the Christmas party at my house for every franchisee, then we've got too many of them.

So are you expecting them to have multiple locations?

Yeah, that's essentially what I'm saying.

Yeah.

Franchisees that are going to go and open multiple locations and once again have the capabilities and sophistication to do that.

So once you get these first few open, what parts are you going to? Specific geographies?

Yeah. I mean, we're based in Austin, so obviously we'll start in Central Texas, and that's why you've got Austin Austin, Dallas, and Houston. And then we'll start to spread out and you spread out in a couple of ways. Number one, there are obvious places that you want to go be at. You know, South Florida is sort of after Central Texas. There are lots of obvious reasons in terms of the demographics, in terms of, you know, I would also say the state and the regulatory environment. You gotta be very thoughtful about those kinds of things. But at some point you have to be in the New York cities and the LAs and the San Franciscos of the world as well. I would just say that's probably not our first locations because they're harder. Yeah. And harder for all, once again, all the reasons that I think everyone understands. Can you talk a little bit?

So you're obviously a serial entrepreneur, you can't stop, and I think that's awesome. Can you talk about things that you've learned from your last venture that have led you to make some decisions and choices that may have been different than what you did the first time?

I'm a lifetime learner. I've done lots of businesses. I've learned things every time. And if I were to try to do the same things to build Humana that I did at my last company, that would be foolish. And so, you know, to give you an example, at Humana, from day one, we are leaning into our technology stack. We will not open the doors until we have a very robust technology stack that is both internally facing, so it helps us do our job better, it helps us provide better care, it helps us provide better personalization, it helps us understand the data better, all these things. And then also that's client-facing, like an app that is very easy to use. It has all the stuff that a person would want to see. It has the capability to track progress and It has some fun built into it, some community built into it. Those are the kind of things that we talked about a lot at my last company, but it kind of could never get to it because we were on this rocket ship of opening locations so quickly, which you accumulate, you know, in parlance of startup, you accumulate what you call tech debt. And it's hard to make that up as you're—

Yes.

And operating the business day to day. So that's an example of something that we'll do very differently. You know, I could go on and on with the lessons from previous businesses, but I usually do a business where I have an idea. I go find a buddy, a partner. We own 50% of it each. We put a little bit of money in, we go kind of slow, we get a little traction. And over time we prove that it works and we get some capital and it grows. Now we didn't do that with Humana. Humana from day one went out, have multiple partners, by the way, amazing partners, incredibly talented, filled every gap in terms of needing to be good at something. We filled that gap with somebody. We went out and raised a significant amount of money from day one, and we will come out of the gate as an incredibly complex, interesting proposition. We're not going to go super slow like we have traditionally with companies I've built. And there's a couple of reasons for that. Number one, this opportunity, what's happening in the longevity space and the health span space, now's the time. Yeah. Number one, we do need to jump on an opportunity in the right way with the right force. Number one. Number two, I have a different track record. I've done enough. Yeah, it's easy for me to go out and raise money. It's easy for me to go out and build an incredible team. So for me not to do that from day one would be somewhat silly. I know my weaknesses. I always say my superpower is that I'm self-aware and that I'm relatively egoless. That means that there are a lot of superpowers that I don't have. And so going out and getting these incredibly capable partners is necessary for something as complex as this. If you broke down HumanUp, you could literally say this could be 15 different businesses. Back to the Frankenstein thing. That's the way it's typically done, but we're bringing it all together. It just required more capital and more intellectual and capability and more experience than previous companies I've had.

And that's incredible that you have the ability to do that at this point because you've had so much experience and you have a great track record. And obviously this is a great space to be in. There are a lot of people who don't have all of those things under their belt already, and the ability to raise right now is definitely harder than it's been in the past. What would you say to people who have a good idea and don't have all the resources you already have?

Well, listen, I talked about the way I typically do a business. I like to think I've earned the right to do it differently. I didn't just snap my finger. Yeah. And say my first company, I'm gonna go big and I'm gonna do all of this and raise all this money. I do think that there is sort of a step function in the terms of the way you build your entrepreneurial career and the way you build companies. And so I'm unapologetic about being able to jump further downstream faster. I've earned that right. And I've taken my lumps, by the way, taken lots of lumps. Everything I've started has not been a success. Like I'm actually more proud of a couple of things that I've done in the past that weren't successful. I thought they were beautiful. I thought they were well done. I worked my butt off, but for whatever reason, everything didn't quite line up. Maybe there wasn't a little bit of serendipity here, you know, maybe just slightly too early, slightly too, you know. And so I will say to people, you know, be a little patient. Don't be so quick to want to jump into raising a bunch of money and not grinding through it a little bit to better understand it. Like, that's okay.

Yeah.

And I always say the phrase that I use to sum that all up is a lack of options provides clarity. If you can't raise a lot of money, you got to find a better, a different strategy. Like, how are we going to bootstrap this? If you don't have access to a bunch of really capable former founders, okay, find somebody that's sort of high potential that you can grow together with, that you're going to enjoy rolling up your sleeves and working in the trenches with. You know, I've had some good partners in the past. I've had some not so good partners. I'm good friends with most of my former partners, but not all of them. But I learned from all of them, and I did learn from being in the trenches with them and sometimes taking my time. Bigger isn't always better either. I would actually say careful what you wish for. As much as I like the way I'm doing this, I would say, you know, I'm kind of jealous sometimes. That small team that's taking their time, everyone truly loves each other. And you look to the left and they're kicking butt and working their butt off. You look to the right, same thing. And you're like, careful what you ask for. That's actually lovely as well.

Yeah, it's fun energy to be around and exciting, right?

Yeah. And by the way, at Humanite, we have that. We have— everybody is mission-driven. Everyone has a personal narrative for why they're doing this. And I literally, when I hear some of my co-founders talking about why they're doing this, it makes me tear up. I mean, I'm like, oh my gosh, I thought my reasons were pretty good. That's really powerful. And so I do love the energy we've created, the capabilities we've created. You know, it's lovely. But like I said, I'll use the example of my son. My son came to me the other few months ago and said, Dad, I don't want to go to college. And I was like, whoa. And he goes, I just want to be an entrepreneur like you. So, you know, once again, it kind of brings a little tear to your eye. I love it. But then I said to him, listen, Griff, I didn't just get here. Yeah, I put in a lot of effort and time. I took my lumps and I said, how about we make a deal? You're going to college and you're going to graduate, but you've been a really good kid in high school. You've taken all these college courses, AP courses. So I'm not going to have to pay for 2 years. So I'm going to take the 2 years of money that I would have paid for your college. I'm going to put it in a fund, and that's your investment fund for your first business.

Amazing.

2 conditions. One, you got to graduate. And 2, you got to convince a stranger to invest in you first. I'm not your first investment. I'm your second.

Wow, that's awesome.

And then in that way, it takes out the, you know, I love you, I'm going to invest in whatever you want. No, you've got to actually go prove to somebody that this is a good idea. And then you get that second tranche of money. And then I might put in more of my own money. You know, that's fine. But, you know, it's the same thing I say to young entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs that don't have access, like, you know, like putting in the work is not a bad thing. Starting slowly is not a bad thing. Your options are, are what are gonna drive the decisions you make. So that's okay.

That's awesome. I think that I was surprised at the second part of that where you said you have to get another investor first, and it's brilliant because it means that the work has to get done and the proof has to be there. And that's a really cool thing to do.

Listen, I'm super proud. I've got a 16-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl. I'm about to post on LinkedIn in a few days. About entrepreneurship being a learned thing. My 14-year-old girl has a business. I'm literally—

Wow.

In the far corner of the house because she's doing her fish camp right now. She does 25 kids at a time, $250 a kid. She does camps all throughout the summer. She hires her other 14-year-old friends and they do various parts of it. And this has become a real business. And she went out and she got Yeti to sponsor it. She got—

oh my God. Wow.

So it's like a real thing. And tens of thousands of dollars. This is my 14-year-old girl. Now, once again, she's the perfect example of a small entrepreneur. She didn't have access to a lot of money. She had to come ask mom and dad for a little help. But now she's been doing it for 3 years. Oh my God. Doesn't ask for help anymore. Like, she's like, I got it. So my son, he also has a little business. You know, he's real simple. He's like, he had a power washer. We live in Bee Cave. So he opened a business, Bee Cave Power Washing, you know, and I was like, awesome. And then he went out and hired a bunch of the high school football players that he was friends with. And it's kind of this thing of, we'll work hard for you. We're scrappy. And he's out doing jobs every day and that business is growing. And I'm super proud of it. My wife's about to announce her new business. And so when we sit around the table, there's a lot of entrepreneurial talk. And to be quite frank, Humanaut's kind of the bottom of the food chain.

Wow, that's cool. That's awesome. You're producing more entrepreneurs, which is amazing.

Yeah. You know, once again, entrepreneurship, I think, is a lovely dynamic. I'm pretty unemployable at this point. But, you know, it is hard work and it's not for everybody. And it's not all, you know, sunshine and butterflies. Like, there are hard days and hard times and, you know, you just got to work through that.

How do you keep smiling through that? I mean, you've done it a bunch of times, but you still must have days where you're like, oh, well, I do think I have as close to perfect a life as you can have.

I always say I'm married to the woman of my dreams. I've got two delightful children. I've still got a mother that's living that I'm super close to. I love, you know, my sister. I've got great friends. You know, at the end of the day, I really have— I want for nothing. I, you know, it's just a great life. And, you know, I have my priorities straight. I tell this to everyone who works for me. If you're going to work for me, you've got to understand a couple of things. Number one, get your priorities straight. You know, your family, your faith, they're 1A, and work is a distant, distant, distant second. Now, what I am not saying is you don't have to work hard because you do. If you come work at a company that I start, you have to work your butt off. But if I ever see you missing the big stuff, if I ever see you not putting in the appropriate amount of time for those higher level priorities, then you're just not going to be compatible with me. And I firmly believe that. I lean into that in my own sort of personal dynamic. And I think the key is if you're a more happy person that's got their priorities straight, I actually think you'll be a much better employee. I truly believe all that. I tell people I've been sad one time in my life. That is not the same as I've only been challenged one time in my life. I went to Ranger school. I was in the military. I, you know, had to work to pay for college. I could list all kinds of hard things I've had to do, but I've had such a beautiful, wonderful life. And the only time I've been sad really is when my dad died of cancer.

Yeah. You know, I think it was surprising to hear you say that about the priorities. I'm sure there are many entrepreneurs who don't think that they can have any other priority except the business. And I think it's interesting to hear you who have had several successful businesses exits and now are starting something really exciting, that your priority is not that. It's not that it isn't a priority, but your number one priority is not that. And I think that's really important for people to hear.

Well, listen, when I was younger, I probably didn't appreciate that as much as I do now. I do believe in the work smarter, not harder dynamic. I'm way more capable of getting a lot done in a shorter period of time, those sort of things. I don't want to send the impression that I don't work hard, but I include my family. For instance, my kids, they get the same quarterly investor meeting that I give investors. I have them come, they'll work in the clinics. So, you know, sometimes there's smart ways to kind of bring the two together. And yeah, that works for me. Everyone's going to find their construct. And I also say when I talk about prioritizing things like your faith, Your faith isn't my faith. Like, I'm not preaching about what you should believe. But what I am saying is have some kind of higher purpose, have some kind of guiding principle, because if you don't, it's really easy to get distracted and really easy to get down when times get hard. So for me, I have a very clear picture of what that means to me. But I tell people, listen, I'm not your pastor and I'm not your parent. I'm not. But I do think part of building a really great culture is making sure people understand kind of the ways that the founders of a company think about things. And sometimes people are a good fit for me and sometimes they're not. And I'm not everybody's cup of tea. You know, I always say enthusiasm matters, lead with enthusiasm and positivity. You know, my saying that I often say as well is a day that I don't Cry is a day that I don't feel, and a day that I don't feel is a wasted day. And I'm very quick to say, think of that both literally and metaphorically. It's not that you literally have to cry every day, but every day you should have the feeling of something that means something to you that could almost bring you to tears. Because if you don't, you're not working on something interesting or meaningful. It's like, for gosh sakes, we live once. Why would you spend years and years working on stuff that doesn't mean something to you. And, you know, once again, I say that I don't want to be on a soapbox because I've had the good fortune of having a supportive wife who, you know, has had a career. It's easy for me to go off and do all these things. But I do believe that and I do push that. And so I tend to get folks that come to work, you know, at the companies that I'm a part of that are very passionate. They're mission-driven. You know, obviously they're very capable and all those sort of things, but culture requires a construct.

Yeah, that's interesting. And I don't want to take up more of your time, but I want to ask you one more question on that topic because that's really specific, the way you talked about culture and what you expect from people and how you manage through it. How did you learn that? Were you coached? Did it just come from experience and doing it? Was it something that you sort of always felt and didn't— like, you really crystallized it in a way that I don't think a lot of people can. So is that something you learned, or is it something that just sort of happened?

Well, I think it's a few of those things. So, so number one, my dad was a crazy entrepreneur, tried many businesses, and by the way, failed at pretty much every business that he started. But he always woke up the next day and he had the same level of enthusiasm He didn't talk to me a lot about things like the birds and the bees and those kind of lessons. He talked to me about things like, remember, there's no debtor's prison in the US. And I was like, hmm, interesting thing for a dad to tell a son. What he meant by that was, as long as you do what you say, you work hard, and you tell your investors, for instance, what's going on, like, they're very graceful. Like, okay, you worked hard, it didn't work. Okay, no big deal. Let's try something else. And, and so I saw that with my dad. And by the way, there were implications to that. Like when you have a bankruptcy, it means that you don't have money. So as a kid growing up in that household, there were multiple times where, like I said, you know, my parents told me you're going to college, but you have to pay for it. And so I think some of those observations watching my dad, like informed my style. Some of the things that I had to do because my family didn't have a lot of money kind of made me who I am. And then I wanted to be different than the way my dad did it. So I said, I'm going to have a path. I'm going to go to a really good school. I'm going to get my MBA. I'm going to work at companies that are the top marketing companies. And so I'm going to build my skills. I'm not just going to show up and think that charisma and energy is enough. Once again, I married a West Point grad. Like, I've been in this sort of ecosystem of amazing leaders for the last 30 years and I surround myself with people that I consider to be high-quality people. And so you learn as long as you're open to learning and evolving. I think I become slightly better every year, and I think that's the key. But the overarching thing is authenticity. You gotta lean into like your authenticity and people know that this is real. The positivity, the authenticity, this sort of approach to things, the way that I find partners and engagement, like, that's all like, that's me. And I've had partners in the past that I actually had found like, yeah, they say things, they think there's something, but it's like, nah, they're kind of a fraud. Push comes to shove. Are you really loyal? Push comes to shove, do you really have good balance around your needs versus the needs of your colleagues, your employees, your clients? Or is it money? By the way, nothing wrong with money. There's nothing wrong with making money. But at the end of the day, I will tell you that's probably one of the last things I think about in terms of how am I doing today and how's my business doing today. I'm a firm believer that if you build an impactful business, the financial part, the money part, that's awesome.

Well, that is incredible. I cannot wait. So I think Humanaut Health is your website, right?

Humanauthealth.com. We have a waiting list right now. We'd love for people to come check out the website, join. I'd say in the next 2 to 3 weeks, we will start to communicate more and more details. As we get closer to the opening. And I will say we've gotten amazing, amazing sort of support. And, you know, it's become kind of a high-profile thing in the health and wellness space.

Amazing.

If there's one thing I've done wrong is I'm not sure I've managed expectations really well. I think people expect this to be an incredible thing. And normally I'd try to dampen the expectations. But I'm not. I think the work that's going on, the progress we're making, this is going to be a truly impactful thing. We are going to add many, many good years to people's lives, and we're going to do it in a way that is as affordable and accessible as possible. And over time, we're going to continue to lean in that so more and more people can take advantage of it.

Well, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. I'm really excited for you. Cannot wait. To have my own experience with it. And thank you.

Thank you for listening to The Irresistible Factor. I'm Christie Bridges, and I can't wait to see you next Wednesday.