Jim Donnelly - The Rise of Humanaut Health — Future of Fitness

Hey everybody, welcome to The Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over 4 years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futureoffitness.co to subscribe and get our interviews with summaries delivered straight to your inbox. You'll also find our free industry report on artificial intelligence. 5 industry experts, 5 different opinions, and tons of valuable insights for free at futureoffitness.co. Thanks for listening and onto the show. Hey friends, this episode of The Future of Fitness is proudly brought to you by TeamUp. Since launching in 2012, they've consistently had one mission. Facilitate the best customer experiences with the most cutting-edge solution for franchises, studios, gyms, and boxes. At its core, TeamUp is a tech solution for businesses looking to unlock their next phase of growth with the most reliable partner in technology on the market. Spanning over 4,000 clients in 40+ countries, TeamUp has a vast global network with its roots right here in North America. Whether it's AI, new features, new partnerships, and new markets, TeamUp's sights are set on raising the bar of the industry to enable their customers to perform and operate at the highest level locally, nationally, and overseas. Powered by the most reliable APIs on the market, you can deliver premium customer experiences and scale your fitness enterprise with the strongest technological infrastructure our industry has to offer. Empower your staff, engage your members, and unlock your next chapter of growth with software designed for you. Learn more at goteamup.com. That is g-o-t-e-a-m-u-p.com.

All right, Mr. Jim Donnelly, welcome back to The Future of Fitness, my friend.

Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

No, thank you for having me, because we are, uh, Where first of all, where am I right now? I'm in Park City, right? I'm at— I just thank you so much. I got to experience some stem cell treatment in my knees, these aching knees.

Yeah.

And I got to visit with you and the whole team now, leadership team, most of it, I think, from Humanaut.

Yeah.

And I was just sitting there at lunch as we were talking. I'm like, where am I? Like this, this team that you put together and we'll get into that in a little bit is just Remarkable, man. It really is. You know, it was one of those lunches you sit down, you kind of remember for a very long time because you're like, with some of the smartest people I've been around a very long time. So yeah, what's—

you know, I kind of look at your experiences as things that build on each other. And, you know, my ability to build a team like this 20 years ago wouldn't exist. But you get some things under your belt, you get a track record, and you attract other really great people that have also done really good things. And we're in a very mission-driven business, and it's something we're all passionate about. You see literally everyone on the team is not just here for a meeting. We're getting the same thing you're getting in different parts of our body. And that's part of what makes this so fun to work with this team because we're all very united. And how we're doing this and why we're doing it. And not just for us, but we've all— you see, my wife is here as well. This is for the people in our lives as well. And by extension, you know, we'll take it out to the rest of society.

Yeah, it's really cool. And, you know, the name of this podcast is obviously The Future of Fitness, but I feel like the future is right now. Like, I'm sitting— I'm sitting in it today. So let's back up a little bit before we get into everything that is Humanaut Health and the experiences. I love to share my experience so far here. It's been spectacular. The, uh, everyone knows you so far mostly for Restore Hyper Wellness and the massive success of that franchise and that, you know, paving ground for a fairly new model within the market. Uh, so we don't have to go over a lot of that cuz you were actually on this podcast 2 years ago, I think roughly, and we talked about that.

But let's talk about your exit from that.

Like you decided to leave, it's still growing. Restore Hyper Wellness is still a behemoth. Um, but you're just not there. So, Why?

A bunch of reasons. You know, I have a track record of creating businesses and that's what I really like. I like the grind of working through something new, the nuances of that, building a team, making changes, adjustments. You know, I just think of myself as a founder and I'm not particularly interested in opening the 250th and then the 251st and the 252nd. And so part of it is that's my sort of self-realization that that's probably not what I'm best at and certainly not what I enjoy. I also think that you've got partners. And if you went to my private equity partner and said, hey, what is Jim's highest and best use? They'd probably agree quite vigorously. Yes, Jim needs to be starting new things. And, and, and so when you have a good partner, you can sit down and, you can get on the same page and figure out what's best. And, you know, and also, you know, I had other, I had a co-founder. I think we started to see the world a little differently and that happens and it happens in real life and relationships and it happens with partners and companies. And, you know, I've always talked about my thesis around having a 5-year sprint on things because I think if you look at life, 5 years is kind of, It's something that a lot of things are organized around. Like you're a little kid for 5 years and you go to school and, you know, elementary school, then middle school and high school, college. Then you're out of college and you kind of have those 5 years where you're running around trying to figure out who you are. Then you get married, you wait 5 years to have kids. Like you could build your whole life on 5-year blocks of time. And certainly when it comes to my entrepreneurial things in my career, I very much have had a 5-year sort of timeframe for each thing I've done. And Restore actually violated that a little bit. I, I was at year 8 and a half when I stepped down from Restore. And I will say the things that I was doing were important, but, but not, you know, not quite as fulfilling as when, you know, you're coming up with the name, you're coming up with hyper-wellness and you create this construct and you, you know, all these little fun things that you're doing creatively. And then you're, you're testing hundreds of different things to put in the store and you're putting it together and the pricing and, and then you're hiring all these young, super talented, eager people. And it was just really lovely. And then, then you wake up and you're looking at spreadsheets every day and you're talking about returns and, and you're talking about what you can't do. Right. You probably talk about what you can't do more than talking about what you can do when you get to be something that's in 40 states in a medical environment. And that's probably not— I leave that to the folks that are at Restore that will grind through process and figure out how to continue that journey.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you did one hell of a job. And so maybe the day that you kind of finalized the deal, like, okay, I'm Yeah. Done at Hyper Wellness, right? What, what was your thought? Were you like, you know what, time to dust off the golf clubs, take some time, maybe travel, right? Or what were you thinking? Retirement?

Yeah.

Or would that, would that ever cross your mind? Or you're like, nah, I'm just small break and I'm, I have an idea.

Yeah. I, I will tell a funny story.

Please.

My co-founder at Restore actually said the words to me, well, 'You ought to just go sit on a beach.' And I literally looked at him like he had 3 heads, almost like, 'I really don't think you know me. Like, how you could even say those words and think that's what I would do.' Yeah. And I don't— I never really had that thought. You know, all the businesses I've built have been around things I'm super passionate about. So you take travel, for instance. You know, I did I Go, You Go, which was the world's top travel community in 2005 and won a Webby Award. And so for 5 years, I got to do all of the most interesting, coolest things you could possibly do in the travel space to the extent that it almost made travel a job. And so if there's something I'm passionate about, I'm gonna try and make it part of my dynamic and try to make it a business. And so it never occurred to me to retire. I think retirements, maybe for some people, but you get to choose what you do. So maybe you want to retire if you've chosen poorly, but if you've continued to build things that you're super passionate about, why would you retire? It doesn't feel like work. And I will say that was another seminal sort of thought for me. For 7 years, I'll say Restore never felt like work. For the last year and a half, it very much felt like work. And I even started to say, I'm going to work. And people noticed, like my friends noticed, my family noticed, and they were like, you don't seem the same. And so I think when you're doing something that's got purpose, that's mission-driven, that you're passionate about, it doesn't have to be work in the sense, all the pejorative sort of things when you think about work.

Yeah. When you, I mean, when you start to see that transition from something you're excited about every morning you go to, and to that point, like you said, we call it work. Is it like the boiling frog? Does it happen slowly, you know, or does it happen kind of like one day you're like driving and like, man, what am I doing? Yeah.

And let me be clear, by the way, I love Restore. I loved all the things that that involved. I still love many of the relationships. Many of those franchisees are, you know, they're classmates, they're long friends. Like, Literally this past weekend I did a 100-mile charity bike ride, and I did it with multiple Restore franchisees. And those guys will be— but it, it's a little bit of a boiling frog. I mean, the repetitive nature of, of what you're doing when you're building out a big franchise network, it, it literally is— you're counting down 240, 241, 242, 243, and it just doesn't feel the same as when you're counting 3, 4, 5. We're in our second state, we're in our third state. You know, it's, it just feels very different. So maybe there's a little bit of boiling frog and there are also kind of some bigger things that pop up. Right around that time my dad died. And you know, I was incredibly close to my dad. My dad instilled this entrepreneurial spirit in me. And you do have those sort of things where you sit back and say, What am I doing?

Yeah.

Am I doing what my dad would be proud I was doing? Am I doing sort of what makes me the most happy? Because life is, is, is not forever, as we all know. And I, I think that definitely was a big part of, of my decision-making at that time.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I, and when you think about retirement, like my, my father passed away a few years ago too, and kind He was a dentist.

Yeah.

Very good one. And very community-driven. You know, he's just more of a business person, I would say, than a dentist really. And he was kind of forced to retire because he started to get tremors in his hands.

Yeah.

And you know, no one wants a dentist with tremors in their hands. Yeah. That's the last thing you want. So he was kind of forced into retirement and I saw a pretty quick, you know, I always urged him like, you know, hey, you know, go teach, go do something, right? Go do something. And he, he kind of just didn't. And I just, you know, that was, you could see it.

Yeah.

You know, the spirit.

Yeah.

Kind of, kind of go. So yeah, I, I never, I don't think I'll ever retire. Although there'll have to be a very strong reason for me to sit on a beach somewhere. I, I've tried sitting on a beach somewhere and it lasts like 20 minutes. I go bananas.

It's horrible. It is horrible. I, I take great vacations. I'm a snob about a couple things in life, the way I travel and yeah, I really gravitate towards super cool experiences, but I tell you, I always am happy to come home. And once again, these are things you choose. Like, I live in a place, Austin, Texas. What I actually find is a lot of time when I go on vacation, I'm trying to do the things that I do at home. I want to go find a really cool place to ride my bike. I want to go find a really cool place to do X, Y, and Z. I want to find really good food. Well, that's Austin. And so I don't know. I don't have the same wanderlust. That I had in that way. But I, I do still have the same wanderlust when it comes to building things and creating new businesses.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the perfect segue. So when you started thinking about your next thing, was it kind of immediate when you finished Restore that you knew what you wanted to do? Or did you take a period of kind of looking around, soul searching, investigating markets, seeing trends? What, walk us through the process of, of deciding the next step. Yeah.

No, Number one, I think an entrepreneur is always thinking about what's next and what's out there. And I was actually pretty proud of myself that for a number of years I was very focused and not doing a bunch of things. When I was younger, I'd never had a period of time where I wasn't doing 1 or 2 or 3 businesses at a time. By the way, I don't recommend that. Like, focus is important to build something great and big. But of course I had things in the back of my mind. And I'll say the other context was, You know, I'm not as young as I used to be. And, you know, I'm 55. And you look great. Well, thank you. Thank you. I still work out really hard. Last time I was here, I climbed a mountain with Harry, our stem cell expert. All of my friends looked at that and like, you're nuts. Where were the safety lines and all that? And, you know, it's like, I'm good. But, you know, I, I was thinking about my next thing in the context of Once again, my father died. I'm 53. Things are changing. My wife's going through menopause. You think, good God, my wife's going through menopause. I never kind of— I intellectually knew that would happen, but then it happens and you're in it and you're like, okay, I got to think about things a little differently. And I do like to take the things that are, like I said, whether either they're important to me or they're important to what's happening in my life. And try to turn those into businesses. So it just seemed pretty obvious what I would work on next. And the one difference about Humanaut Health than any other things that I had ever done is I've had this series of businesses that were completely unrelated. And, you know, I go, you go in the travel space. I had this business pursuit group where I do interesting concepts in Charlotte to make that city more interesting. And I could go on and on, but this is the first time where I took, took something and then built on top of it. And make no mistake, Restore and Humanite Health are completely different businesses. They in no way, shape, or form compete. They are in the health and wellness business. But I, I talk about sort of the education analogy, and you and I talked about this earlier, where Restore's sort of foundational, basic things. So that might be elementary school. Everybody has to go to elementary school. The things you learn in elementary school are the foundation for the next things you learn, but they only take you so far. Human Not Health is the opposite. It's grad school. It's taking all of this stuff, all of the layers, and pulling it all together in this much more holistic, integrated way, and pulling in some of the truly cool stuff like stem cells and hormones and peptides and ozone. And, you know, you don't do that at the elementary level of wellness, even though it's a foundational layer. But Humanite Health was something that I don't think I could have done it if I hadn't gone through that earlier phase of health and wellness.

Yeah, yeah, it's a really good analogy. Is it a metaphor or analogy?

I'm not sure. I would say, now that you say it, maybe it's a metaphor.

I don't know either.

I don't know.

I get it wrong every time. Either way, I digress.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's an example.

It's good. It's good. It's good.

Same.

Unfortunately in Western civilization, a lot of people don't make it through elementary school.

Yeah.

Right. And you were, we were talking in the hallway about the basics of, you know, nutrition and sleep and hydration and stress and that's kind of elementary school. Right. But a lot of people don't get that training. Yeah. So it's like even more than that, I mean, it's okay. So give us the pillars of what Humanaut is. You guys have currently, you have your first location in Austin. Right now, to be clear, we're not in a Humanaut location, but we are with your stem cell, I guess, part.

I'll give you, I'll give you a little bit more history. So when, when I did step down, I toured the country and I met with many doctors in the hormone space, the sexual health space, the stem cell regenerative medicine space, the quote-unquote longevity space. And I first of all wanted to find or figure out if there were partners that I would want to do something with. You know, I know a lot of doctors, incredibly smart, but not necessarily the best business people all the time. So I wanted to make sure I could find someone that I could really feel good building something really big with. And, and this is an example of one of those doctors. So Dr. Harry Adelson is— he's leaned into this for decades. And if you hear his story, he didn't wake up one night as a stem cell expert. He's done all the work and time in Central America, South America. He's experimented with a lot of different things, worked with guys like Dr. David Katz, you know, at Yale. And, you know, so he's got this really interesting background, and he's really an interesting human being, and he's committed to this. And so, all right, there's one. Then I met this woman, Amy Killen, and I always say all the time, she doesn't look like a lot of doctors. Number one, she's a beautiful woman, but her physical sort of attributes are not what I'm talking about. She's got so much charisma and energy and intelligence. She did a rap video on the Women's Health Initiative from back in 2001 about how damaging that was to women's health for a whole generation. Like, that's not exactly the topic of a rap song, but she pulled it off. And I, I saw— I'm looking at things like that and I'm like, that's the kind of person that I really want to be in business with.

Yeah, she's really cool.

She's really cool. She's just lovely to spend time with. And then you kept going. And so I found this medical team that was really amazing. And then on the corporate side, that was a little more linear for me, but I found a group of people, same thing. And I say this about our corporate team, it's unlike any startup. You know, they're all Stanford MBAs, Harvard MBAs, Johns Hopkins. And I'm always quick to say that's not the end-all, but it is a pretty good indicator that these are smart people. By the way, I didn't go to any of those places. I've got my own sort of story, but, you know, super smart people. More importantly, they're all really humble. They've all done real things, both, in sort of the health tech space, in the traditional medicine space, and/or other entrepreneurial things that demonstrate they know how to scale. And they're all fun and interesting. I completely trust them. I don't worry that they're gonna go off track. I'm not worried that they're gonna sort of have the wrong motivations. I'm not worried that, that they're ever gonna sort of, you know, flake on me, so to speak. And, um, it's just a really good group of people. And, and I will tell you this, it's, it's a challenge, different challenge though. You can have a challenge if you don't have folks that have the right amount of intellectual capability or, or experience, or that's one challenge. Or you have everybody's a Type A, extremely accomplished person. To, to say that that's not a challenge because you've got to sort of let everybody have a voice and Everybody, you know, feel like they're a big part of things. And there's a little bit of ego, which is healthy.

Sure.

So it's just been a very different challenge for me, which has been interesting. It's not like rinse and repeat. And I say all the time, I am not the smartest person at the company. I may be one of the least intelligent people at the company. So when you walk into a meeting and you've got these just complete badasses, you can solve problems. And what we're doing is so hard. There's a reason that sort of this integrative approach to medicine, functional medicine, hasn't been scaled because it's really hard to do. And so you got to have a team like that to make it happen.

Yeah. Well, why is it so hard? Like, what is the— what are the major challenges that you guys are taking head on right now?

Well, if you looked at Humanott, you could think of it as 10 or more businesses in one. So there are businesses that are built around sleep. There are businesses built around nutrition, businesses built around movement in 100 different forms. There are businesses built around peptides, hormones, regenerative medicine, all of it. And so that's the first thing. You've got so many moving parts and all of them in and of themselves are a pretty complex business. And then you're dealing with the human body. And so if you sort of think of like, like to use the pharmaceutical either analogy or metaphor, whichever is the right example. You know, they're, they're trying to create a pill for the average person. Okay. But when you're in the kind of world we are, every single person that walks through the door is unique. We treat them as an N of 1, and we have to come up with a unique protocol and a unique approach to motivating them and coaching them. And so it's not figure out a widget, put it on a production line, and then produce millions of them. So every single time it's starting over with a person. By the way, as you do things to that person, you improve things. You then have to do other things. You don't get to stay on the same protocol. So it's constantly evolving, constantly changing. And you know, all of that's really hard. By the way, it's an incredibly regulated business.

Oh, I can only imagine.

Yeah. The US is, uh, is basically 50 countries. In one when it comes to that sort of thing. So Texas is very different than New York and California. You are actually doing real stuff to people, so you have to figure out safety and, and once again, really good medical protocols and that sort of thing, you know. And you, you have people come to you with really big problems. And, and, you know, we, we were talking earlier about some sexual health things, and You know, I think we have a different approach to that. Like when a guy walks in and starts telling us about the problem, it's actually pretty easy. Testosterone. Our approach is the very first thing we ask that guy is, where's your partner? Where's your wife? Because if we're going to fix you, we got to also fix her. Because there's nothing worse than creating a disparity in that particular area. You're creating like really consequential outcomes that have nothing to do with your business. And so anyway, those are the things that make this really hard. It's not just one simple uniform thing. It's so complex and nuanced. And, you know, I think we got a really good approach to it.

Yeah, it's super interesting. Do you, people come into the clinic, are they, do you call them clients, patients?

We call them clients. Clients. And I'll tell you why. Like, you just got your treatment here. Does this feel like your normal medical clinic?

No, no. I was, I was telling you that, like, I wish all medical, if, if it was like medical, I wish everyone was so friendly and nice. I got a call.

Yeah.

You know, 10 minutes before just to make sure I was on my way. When I got greeted, everyone was smiling, like welcoming and waiting me, waiting for me. It was everything from, from Dr. Harry to all the doctors that were in there, everything. And you know, I just got a simple, you know, not simple, but, you know, relatively small procedure compared to what a lot of people get here. It's just, you know, some stem cells in my knees. But it was, it was an amazing experience, man. And that's, uh, you know, so that's what I want to ask you about. What is, what is the client experience at a clinic, you know, like in Austin? If people walk in, what happens?

Yeah, so, so that is why we call them clients, by the way. You know, this is a cash pay business. Yeah, we have to provide real value. You have to walk away from here feeling like that exchange was worthwhile. And I think that's one of the big problems with traditional medicine, in that it's so invisible. And so therefore, people put up with a lot that they shouldn't have to put up with. But if, if you come in— first of all, if you come into the Restore— or actually, the Human Health Clinic in Austin, it's a, it's a, in a really nice center. It's, it's a center where really high-end sort of restaurants and neat You want to be there, number one. Like, it's not just to come to Human Eye Health, but when you walk out, hey, I think I'll go across the street and eat a Carve or something like that. So it's a nice environment. The sort of the clinic itself is done really well. It's very comfortable. It feels like a place once again that you want to be, not that you have to be. You know, we don't talk about things like waiting rooms. To me, waiting room is a pejorative. You know, why would you be waiting if you show up on time for an appointment? So it's— It's my biggest pet peeve. That's right. Words have meaning. So client versus patient, reception area versus waiting room. And so we've just been really thoughtful about all of those kind of things. Everyone is very curated in terms of sort of their approach to people, how they treat them, smile, all of that. We're in a business that we have to deliver a great experience. By the way, we're seeing people at their worst possible time when they're in pain, when they've got a big problem. So the last thing they want is to walk into somebody that's indifferent, that's not friendly and happy and empathetic. Our team knows naturally, like, they should know birthdays and how's your kid doing? And hey, last time you were here, your son was trying out for the golf team. Did he make it? You know, like we, we really go out of our way to make sure we genuinely and authentically care about our clients and, and they see that. And then we provide something that goes to an entirely different level for the traditional medical space. We leave no stone unturned. So you would come in and let's say, you know, it's a little different by membership level, but let's take the top membership level. You're gonna come in and you're going to, first of all, tell us how you tick. And how you operate. Like, do you like positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement? So in other words, what kind of coaching are you going to respond to? You give us your goals. Like, I think a lot of times people go to a medical facility or any facility and it is, you're here, we, we have something, we're going to give you what we want to give you. We need to figure out what you're motivated by and therefore how we should think about fixing your issue. And then we go really deep. We take 100 blood panels, we do epigenetic genetic testing, we connect your wearable device, we do a whole series of scans, everything from a DEXA scan up to a, you know, a full-body MRI if you need it. We do actual movement and balance and physical diagnostics. And I'm missing a lot of things that we do. We do cancer screening, all of the things that give us a picture of who you are and therefore what you're going to need from us. As a part of that, we also coach, coach, or connect you to a coaching platform and know that we know that behavior change is going to be a part of this. This is not come in and we're going to give you a pill or a magic pill. This is come in and we're going to kind of do the work together. And we're going to try to make that work as pleasant as possible, as engaging as possible. And give you agency so that you always know what we're doing, why we're doing it, and what your part is in it. And so we kind of call that an accountability protocol. We have our role. You have your role. This doesn't work if we don't both do it together. We give you a very personalized protocol. It is an N-of-1 type of protocol. We pull out what we call a Focus 3, the 3 things that we want to focus on first. Because if you try to solve everything at once, it's overwhelming. It's too much. And as we make good progress on those things, then we can move to the next. We start from a very foundational perspective. We start with fitness slash movement, nutrition, sleep, stress, cognitive health. For us, those are sort of the 5 foundational things that you have to address if you're going to make a difference with anybody. When we see good progress, we then can go after more specific issues like sexual health, metabolic health, menopause for women, andropause for men, joint pain, and healthspan. By the way, healthspan's the one that is the broadest. It's what we're all ultimately seeking. Sure. We want more good years for as long as possible. And, and, you know, we're gonna sprinkle in peptides and hormones and stem cells and ozone and many of these things that kind of have a common theme, which is we're going to help your body do what it's meant to do. We're going to help your body heal itself. We're going to, we're going to help the sort of way that your body uses hormones be accentuated. You know, all of the stuff we do is sort of playing off of that. And if you look at it in this holistic way, you're constantly adjusting, you're constantly tweaking, you're constantly measuring. You can produce really, really fantastic results.

Yeah. Amazing. And I don't want to call it a menu of services because that would presume that someone's sitting there and picking what they want because you're delivering a protocol, a custom protocol, like you said, any one to each. But what are the, the tools that you guys have at your disposal to help with all of these things? I mean, we've talked about stem cells, we've talked about, you know, you mentioned peptides. I don't know, what do you guys use?

Yeah, so all of those things, like I said, those are real things. So we, we talk about exogenous molecules. So of course, that's all the sort of things that you put in your body. So that's supplements, that's medications, that's peptides, that's a bunch of different things. Obviously, we talk about hormones, and we have a very specific approach to hormones, which we think is the right approach. Stem cells is you know, a whole thing in and of itself. And, and it's, it's not just stem cells, but it's other sort of regenerative, regenerative medicine, you know, things that accentuate the results. We have things like shockwave, you know, shockwave is something that people use for joint pain, but it's also an accentuator of, of, of, of our stem cell procedures. Like, yeah, we'll use that.

That was new to me. Yeah.

You know, once again, it's, we've, we've got years and years of experience of not only how you use these things individually, but how you stack them together to get better results. We've got a few wellness modalities that, you know, everything from Shiftwave, PEMF, a few other things that all have a particular purpose. Some of them are around stress reduction and cognitive health. Some of them are around pain reduction, but But it, it really is the combination of all these things done holistically in an integrated way that makes this work. And so you will have plenty of things that you can do and choose off of the menu. And by the way, the idea that every single person's gonna walk in and say, give me the full menu, go, like they're gonna want to come in and try something. They're gonna want to get a taste. And our, you know, and I, you know, I, I wrote a book with my former co-founder at Restore around this notion of right away wellness and the power of that. That. The idea is that whenever you come into a Humanott Health, we want you to feel the progress as quickly as possible and as regularly as possible. Because the whole idea is, if you have to wait for it and wait for it and wait for it— human beings are very impatient. Yes. They will not wait for it. So we need you to feel it. And the goal is to get you in this virtuous cycle as quickly as possible. And that's the more you do, the better you feel. The better you feel, the more you do. That was very much premise of Restore. It's very much a premise of anything in the health and wellness space or fitness space. If you're going to keep a person engaged and keep them moving forward, like I said, take personal training, take a gym, take anything. If you don't get people in a virtuous cycle, you're never going to produce really good results. And so we try to do that at Humanott, you know, as well. And, and, and we do that. Like, I suspect that you're going to walk out of here and very quickly over the next few weeks, you're going to know that your knee feels different. And that is kind of a thing that is going to help you do some things that you might not have been able to do. So now maybe your movement pattern is going to change a little bit.

Yeah.

And by the way, that's going to help your metabolic health and other things. And so it's just this whole thing that one thing leads to another, leads to another, and you wake up and you're doing several things and you're in a really good pattern.

You know, it's—

it—

that's something I picked up from you in our first conversation on this podcast, was, uh, you know, that people walk in, walked in and Restore Hyper Wellness, and they had an immediate Yeah, result, something changed. They felt better immediately. Right. And I've used that example in multiple conversations when we talk about the longevity conversation in general. And we're going to get into nomenclature here in a minute. But, you know, I've been given some supplements to try and things. I'm like, well, supplement I'm taking every day, I'm not going to know for 30 years.

Yeah.

If I know even. Right. So like, I'm so unmotivated to take. That's just human nature. That's just the way we are. Right. And I think that's really important. And you know, with the stuff like, uh, you know, I'm 47 now and kind of gave up on trail running a couple years ago that I love because it's just a little too rough on the knees. I've told you about skiing becomes very— I have to do a shit ton of maintenance during the ski season just to keep going. And I gave up back squatting this year.

Yeah.

Uh, finally after, you know, 20 years of back squatting. So I'm excited cuz you know, if I can get back to those things, I really enjoy doing them and they're fundamental. They'll probably just make me a better person to be around anyway.

Yeah.

That's my life.

I love skiing. Like the, if you take skiing away from me, that's a pretty big thing. You pull out of my life, it's part of my identity. I got teenage kids. That's one place where they still see me as a badass. I'm a better skier. I can go down faster than them. I can do things they can't do.

Yeah.

And one day that will not be the case. But my construct is now that, you know, I, I, I got some stem cell injections in my knees and I have no pain when I ski anymore. I can ski all day. I did the 100-mile bike ride this weekend. I have no issues with my neck or my thing. Now, I do not want to get on this podcast and say, go do X and you will not have any issue ever again. Of course, but you know, that's, that's not what I want to do. But I will say that for many people, there are things like regenerative medicine that produce really interesting results, and it lets you get back to living. It lets you be the guy that you are. Take away trail running from you, take away skiing, take away all these things, you're not as interesting. Let's not even joke about it. Like, you're gonna be a dull son of a gun if you can't do any of the shit that made you interesting in the first place. And then it kind of wears on other things. And, you know, so I'm a big believer that this— that's why this stuff is important. Oh yeah, it's, it's not how you do in the gym. The gym is a— the gym is a, a, it's a thing that you do because you have to. But what's— what if you're not in the gym so you can go out in real life and do badass stuff? I don't know, man. I just— doesn't feel like that's going to be interesting over the long term.

I mean, if I, if I lose those things, if I lose the, the skiing, the hunting, the biking, Yeah, all this stuff. Like, I might as well move out of Montana, to be honest with you.

Well, you're in one of the best— being in Whitefish, I mean, that's badass.

Like, it's fun.

That's right. If you can't be on your bike, if you can't be hiking, if you can't be skiing, if you can't be hunting— yeah, these are all the things that make me go as well. And like, for instance, when I go hunting, I don't just go hunting. I don't just go walk 200 yards and get in the duck blind. Like, I want to go through the mountains. I want to go and make this real work. And I want it to be a fair exchange. And, and if I am successful on that hunt, it's because I put in the work and I did all the stuff and I was physically capable to do everything associated with that. And then, by the way, like, I'm going to be very respectful to that animal and I'm going to eat all of that meat. So therefore I have to get it out and, you know, all that stuff. If I'm not the physical person that I need to be, that completely evaporates. Yeah, like, you know, I don't want to walk 200 yards and there's a feeder in front of me and I can, you know, that's, you know, hideous. That—

yeah, it's not, it's not even fun.

Yeah.

Nomenclature.

Okay, so let me try to construct this question well. Yeah, longevity is a big thing. The name. Yeah, the term. We are known in the fitness and wellness for hype cycles. Right. Very well known for that. I've had some recent conversations with people from Andy Galpin's team because they have a series of products and services that they're launching to consumers. And, you know, they're going— they're leaning into performance because they feel that performance is something that people feel immediately.

Right.

It's an immediate goal that sure, it may lead to longevity. But as we're talking about longevity is like this thing that we won't know for a while.

Yeah.

You've said healthspan is a big one, right? But once again, you know, how do you measure that in the short term? Uh, regenerative medicine. So when you guys— I'm sure I know you're careful about the words you use.

Yeah.

So how are you guys framing this as a, you know, as branding, as, you know, communications to, to people and consumers?

Yeah. I mean, first of all, you have to use some of those words. You have to do pull in the word longevity. You have to pull in the word healthspan. Those have become the vernacular of the trade. And so people do want to understand and hear those words, but But what I'll say is, no, first of all, I will say I think artificial intelligence and longevity are probably the two hottest spaces there are right now in terms of smart money and investments. And that is where a ton of activity and energy is happening. And these are sort of existential, like, magnifiers. Like, you know, we talk a lot internally. If we can literally add 20 years of good healthspan, to people's lives, think of the societal impact. It's exponential because you're adding time to people's lives when they are at their most resource-rich and capable. Like these guys that have money because they've made it, but then they get old and they can't really— and, and our society is not one that sort of respects the elderly unless they're very capable and all that. So if you can add 20 really good years to the people who have the wisdom and the resources, think of what you can do for society. So we do think about it like that. Like, this is real societal impact. I do think that unfortunately some of the longevity type stuff is a little ridiculous. It feels like super rich people pursuing something that's only attainable to them and may or may not even be attainable at all, the degree to which they are pursuing it. So we do try to stay away from the kind of magic pill, the live longer at all costs. You know, I, I don't, we don't know about all that, but the way I think about it and the way we think about it is what is super important is how you feel today. And if you are improving how you feel today, you are probably doing the foundational things. You are eating better, moving better, sleeping better, managing your stress. Yeah, that's all longevity is. It's managing that. Do that today. Do that tomorrow. Do that the next day. Put it together for years after years. The good news is that is immediate. That is every day of your life you are living better. That is what longevity— the secret to longevity is to me. Doing that every day is what you need, ironically, for healthspan and longevity. It is not, don't do those things, take a magic pill. It is not, well, I'll do it next week, next month, next year. No, that's not how it works. You, you, you selfishly should be motivated to be focused on your healthspan and longevity because it means that your life today is better. Your life tomorrow is better. And when you put that construct into place and you feel that and you see that and you compare yourself— and we talked about going back to a reunion, a 20-year reunion. There are two types of people at those reunions, the people that you can relate to because they've kind of taken care of themselves, and the people that you look at and you're like, we cannot possibly be the same age. How on earth are we the same age? Because something not so good is happening here. And, and so I, I always go back to selfishly wake up every day and do some of these things because you will feel better and perform better today. And just keep doing that. That's our secret to longevity. We, you know, Peter Attia used this example in his book Outlive, but I've been using this example for a long time. I, I have people that will come to me and ask me for certain things, and rapamycin was the specific thing. I had a friend come and say, hey, I'd like you to help me through one of your doctors, get me rapamycin. Like, no, I'm not going to do that. And he looked at me as, come on, dude, why are you being like that? And I said, honestly, you're way overweight and let's fix that first. And then how are you sleeping? He's like, not well. Of course you're not sleeping well. You're overweight. How's your movement? Not very good. So let's fix that. First of all, it'll make your life today better, your life tomorrow better. And then if you want to get into all the cool stuff, believe me, we've got all that. We know all the things. We know all the things that you can pull in and try and use. And if you want to do the sort of last 3% of stuff, great. But not until we get the first 97, 95% of stuff on a good path. And that's how we think of it. We could make more money. We could sell more stuff if we didn't care about that. That. That's just not the point. You know, I— it kind of goes back to the whole retirement or not retirement purpose. You know, I can make money lots of ways. I do not care about that. Uh, you know, I have done well in my life. I care about feeling good about what I do, except purpose, societal impact. And the day that changes is the day— put a bullet in my head. Because I'm not me anymore.

Yeah, yeah, well said. And I like the, the cool stuff. That's how I kind of think about it. It's like you do have to— you have to almost earn it, right?

You gotta earn it a little bit, right?

You got to get to that point where it's like, okay, you've checked all these boxes, okay, now, now you get to kind of play with this stuff. And I think that's a really fundamental message too to people, is like, listen, the fundamentals aren't going away. Like when we talk about human longevity, there's a few things that are truly proven that we know of nowadays, right? It's like strength training and creatine. Yeah, there's a few others, but you know, like, you know what I mean, right? It's like the fundamental basics.

Yeah. But it's funny, a word you said, play. Play is not a word normally associated with the traditional medical sort of world.

Sure.

Play is something associated with Humanod Health. And so we not only want to do all of these things, we do want to make it more engaging. You know, we have a whole strategy around how we create community. First of all, are you a humanaut or not? I love that name. You know, it's so good. You gotta— if you're gonna create a real community, it's got to be something people want to belong to. And when you define what a humanaut is and what the mindset is and what the ethos is, of course you want to be a humanaut. Like, you know, so, all right, so then we talk a lot internally about be a humanaut today and bring it back to the group. All right, cool. You know, and so that starts to feed on itself. And, you know, we've got all kinds of things that we're building that kind of capture a little bit of playfulness, certainly a bit of identity. You know, you know, the guys, the guys that really lean into healthspan and all the things they're doing, like it is a part of their identity. They want you to know that they know all the stuff.

Oh yeah.

And that's important. So great. Put them in a community where everyone's like that and it feels good to be a part of that. And it's not an ego thing per se. You don't have to take it too far. And it's, but it's, it's cool to feel like I'm with others who get it and we help each other. And so we talk about, it's not like a community where I gotta have, I gotta find friends, but it is certainly a community of validation, encouragement, inspiration. And then, you know, we're building a rewards program, a rewards program that rewards you both intrinsically and extrinsically to sort of encourage the good things and discourage the bad things. First of all, you got to once again be in a community of people who know what the good and bad things are. And, you know, you do feed things like, this is my identity and some of these extrinsic things. And then you can add some intrinsic rewards if you do this. Then go out and buy your new set of golf clubs.

Hey friends, Eric Malzone here. I've had the honor of interviewing over 750 professionals across the fitness, health, and wellness industries. There's one thing I know for sure, without a doubt, there is a tremendous opportunity to leverage a highly valuable and relatively untapped network of independent podcasters and content creators. Traditional advertising isn't what used to be. Costs are high, consumer trust is low. I've seen results firsthand and can assure you there's a much better way to connect with your target audience and emerge as a thought leader in our industry. That's exactly why I've launched The Podcast Collective, the ultimate solution designed to empower executives, founders, and thought leaders in the fitness, health, and wellness sectors. Our mission: to help you leverage the extraordinary opportunities within our handpicked network independent podcasts. We don't just place you on podcasts, we make you unforgettable. One-on-one coaching ensures that you show up the right message for the right audience with confidence and swagger. We create eye-popping digital assets and social media overhauls to ensure that you are optimizing each and every appearance. Key introductions to strategic partners and potential enterprise clients provide unparalleled value that only a professional network work like ours can offer. We work with a very limited number of clients to ensure the highest level of service. So please don't hesitate to reach out and learn more. Go to podcastcollective.io to learn more and contact me directly. That's podcastcollective.io.

Do this and the community that's supporting you in your particular challenge. Yes. Well, chip in and do that. You know, there's lots of ways you can make this more fun. And I say, The traditional medical space is so gosh darn, and I usually don't say it that nicely, but self-serious.

Yeah, it's cold.

For fuck's sake.

It's cold and sterile.

It's sterile. It's cold. It's not desirable. And you're dealing with the most seminal things like your health and what you can then go out and do and your connections with people and playing with your grandkids. You know, like this should be something that's more joyful and and more engaging and attractive. Like, like, be the beacon on the hill, you know, that is attracting people, as opposed to, oh my God, you know, you talked about, you know, the whole field of dentistry. Like, even dentistry, if you look at some of the new dentist offices, they've made it pretty cool to go to the dentist. Yeah, like, finally, because it used to be, when you think about going to the dentist It's the last thing you wanted to do. So, so I do take my cues from some of these other things. Like, I don't want to pretend like, like, you know, we're the only ones with original thought. There's lots of cool examples out there of taking a category that was previously not particularly desirable from a consumer perspective and changing that lens. And that's certainly what we want to do in the health and wellness space.

Awesome. Awesome. Dean, with the few minutes we have left, maybe give us some insights into the business side of this. So you guys are going with the franchise model. Maybe give us insights into what that franchise selection and investment looks like. Maybe some of the pricing to the consumer. Frame that up for us.

Yeah. So number one, in our world, retail is not dead, particularly in the healthcare space. You do have to actually come in and do things. Like, it is impossible to do a knee injection virtually.

Yes.

And so we, We, number one, we start with the fundamental notion that retail is alive and well and a part of this. We lean into this notion of omnichannel, and virtual is also a part of it. So we've created this really good mix of retail and virtual care, number one. I like the franchise business because you have a partner. And so I wanted to lean into doing a franchise again. This is a complex business. This is hard. And so having a really true partner in every sort of location, I thought was really important. Now we're going to vet those people very, very deeply. We're going to make sure that from a mission-oriented perspective, they're the right kind of people. We're going to make sure they have the right kind of capital capabilities. We're going to make sure they've got a track record of real operational excellence. And then we're going to go find a select number of those folks to do anywhere from 100 to 250 clinics around the country. We've got commitments for close to 100 clinics around the country already. So the goal is to open anywhere from 300 or more, or excuse me, 100 or more locations in the next 3 and a half years.

Okay.

There's still some gaps in that 100 that we need to fill. So we're actively out looking for the right franchise partners. This is a very attractive model from a franchise perspective, people look at certain things. They look at initial costs. More importantly, they look at payback period. The payback period for this would be the gold standard of franchising. Then people look for net margins and they look for total number of dollars that are going to come back to them. So this is a high margin, you know, high AUV, i.e., high annual income sort of thing. So if you do this well and make it work, your payback period is very short. The amount of money that you take from a net perspective is relatively high for the franchise space. And you're also doing something that is good for society, good for the community that you live in. And I think, I mean, it's freaking interesting because there's not a human alive that this doesn't apply to, you know? And so a lot of our franchises, they're like, or franchisee prospects, they're like, I'm so interested in this. And I'm like, yeah, everybody is. And so it's got to be more than that. It can't just be the most passionate about longevity because we're all kind of passionate about longevity. It's got to be all those other things. And, you know, you met our head of franchise earlier, Trey. Trey's a West Point grad.

Smart guy.

Trey's one of the largest franchisees in a pretty prominent system, had a multiple hundreds of millions of dollar exit for his franchise business. and, you know, once again, I lean into that West Point dynamic. You know, it's do what's right, do the hard good when no one's looking. The hard— I think that my wife's a West Point grad, and it's the do the hard right over the easy wrong, or some permutation of that. And so we've got a mission-oriented guy that's going to recognize the right kind of person, and then because he's done it, he's going to also very easily say you have the operational and capital capabilities to do this. This is not the easiest franchise model, to be sure. So then it's up to us to do the things that make this replicable, scalable, and consistent. And so that means that a lot of the things that we do from a, like for instance, a coaching perspective, that is a centralized function that we do so that all the franchisees can rely on us to consistently deliver good coaching. If you said to every coach, go, or excuse me, every franchisee, go figure out coaching.

Yeah.

You would have shit all over the place.

Oh my God.

It wouldn't be very good. So there's some other things like that, that we, I think we've got the right approach to the things that need to be centralized, that we can create consistency around that are key leverage points for your business. We will do that. And then the things that you have to do on the ground as a local franchisee, we want to make sure it's very clear and we help you where we need to.

Yeah. And from the— it's awesome. From the, the client consumer standpoint, I mean, who, who doesn't want this, right? So it's got to be— I mean, it's going to come down to discretionary income, affluence. So like, what, you know, if someone— I mean, if you gave a range of someone would invest in a Humanaut Health location annually, what do you think they'd be looking at?

Well, we, we have Multiple memberships. We have a membership, everything from $3,200 a month down to $200 a month. And that's a big difference. I will say what we deliver for $200 a month is incredibly unexpected, and it's way more than people expect. And what we deliver at that higher level, it is, it is, you know, there are these sort of longevity clinics out in the country where you walk in and it's $100,000. Just to be a part of the clinic, and then you pay for everything on top of that. So even at $3,200 a month, which is a little less than $40,000 a year, we have in fact democratized that high-level concierge functional medicine dynamic. And I would say that show me any offering out there at that high level, what we deliver is greater and more nuanced and more specific and personalized than the other stuff out there. So we're very proud of that. But to be quite frank, the thing that wakes me up and gets me excited every morning is the idea that that is actually the precursor to bringing a lot of that to the masses. So by doing that really well, it provides us the runway to continue to democratize things so that we can, number one, make that more affordable and accessible and bring that price down. But for the different membership levels below, that does give some, some coverage for why we can do these other things in a much more democratized way. So at that $200 level, I would say if you don't think that your health and wellness is worth $200 a month, then you're not a humanot and you're probably not the right client. If you don't— I always use the analogy metaphor of you should not know more about the chemical composition of your pool than the biology of your body. And so at that lower level, you're getting a number of rich diagnostics, you're getting a plan, you're getting a very specific thing that a coach gives you. You're, you're continuing to do that. You're making sure that you don't have any of the, the, you know, apocalyptic horsemen, so to speak, of cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, you know, those things coming.

Yeah.

And like I said, you get a personalized protocol. And, and the only difference between the different levels of membership is what level of physician, medical practitioner, how much coaching, and some of the really deeper diagnostics. But even at the lowest level, you will have exponentially more knowledge about what's happening in your body. You will have a plan. And you will have something that you can act on and make your life better. Yeah.

I mean, even at the, you know, $40,000 a year, that's a big step down from some of this money. You know, I've seen a quarter million a year, right? I mean, I'm sure you've seen more, right? And some of these, like, it's at $100,000 or they're not even retail. It's not even brick and mortar. You're not walking in anywhere. It's all digital.

Never come in. It's all virtual.

Yeah. So it's a big step. In this particular, you know, category of preventive health. It's really great. So last question for you, Jim, that I always ask people is how, you know, as an industry, if people are listening or they want to get involved or whatever it may be, what do you need help with right now? What would you like to hear from people about? What's critical?

A bunch of things. I mean, obviously we want as many Humanauts as possible. Like we've, you know, got 1,800 people that have signed up on our waiting list and we'd like more. We are going to be all over the country. You know, we have a variety of partnerships with some corporate partners, with some affinity groups. We're working on some partnerships with some traditional players, you know, in the hospital space. And, and so we really want to attack this from all angles. So on an individual level, we'd love you to come to humanhealth.com and figure out how to interact with us. We'd love folks to get involved in the Austin clinic and then get involved in the clinics around the country as they open. We'd love for corporate partners to be thinking about this as, hey, this is a different approach to making people healthier and more productive. Maybe instead of some of these other perks that we have, maybe this would be a good sort of perk to give to our employees and our executives. And we have some programs around that. And then once again, to some of the hospital executives and executives in the traditional medical space, How can we get past this perverse set of incentives on the traditional medicine side and make proactive preventative health a bigger part of what happens on that side? Because we don't view us as competing. We view that as a model that, to be quite frank, I don't think is the sick care model. I think it's as good as it can, but we would like to push them and put some of Humanout over there. And we'd like to take the best from over there and bring it into Humanout. I think those are the, the 3 big buckets of ways. But I try to be very generous with my time. I, I talk to people all the time that are in some way or another interested in health and wellness space. And so I would also say, if you have an idea, we don't pretend to be, you know, smart, so smart that we, we don't want to listen to other folks' ideas. Reach out to me. I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn, and I do a pretty good job of of interacting with as many people as possible.

Yeah, awesome. And you know, something we didn't— we've, we touched on here, which we don't have time to cover today, but just the, the team that you put together. I know you're very proud of like the elite pedigree of— yeah, I would suggest people go to the website and kind of look at the team you put together because having lunch with them, I was just, you know, once again sitting there and being like, this is a pretty incredible, impressive group of people, and humble and nice and kind, right? So there was, there was very little ego at the table, and we were talking about things you don't normally talk at lunch, like sexual health and It's really funny.

Well, I always tell the story about our CTO. Yes, like an example. And I would say, you could work with Tony for a year before you realized he went to Harvard Business School, he was a Cornell engineer, and he did all these things and he sold these companies. And that's kind of, once again, the, the thought is that, you know, he's smart, you know, he's kind, you know, he's funny. He doesn't need to tell you, you know. And that is kind of my screen for things. And, and yeah, if, if anybody that was a Humanaut were sitting at that lunch today and didn't enjoy that conversation, interacting with these very real humans that really do care, then I would say that's a you problem because totally it's, it's, I'm having so much fun. I don't think I've ever had as much fun at a business. And, and that's no knock on Restore or I Go, You Go or anything, cuz oh man, I tell you, those were so awesome as well. but this is, I don't know, it's just, it's really great. I think we've kind of nailed it. We, we had a venture fund that said, man, normally when we invest in a company, the first thing we do is try and uplevel and professionalize the team. It's like, I don't think that we should touch the team. Like you've done that. And so it's pretty good. And I appreciate your compliments. I appreciate you coming. I appreciate you being open to trying these things. I know you have access to a lot of different folks in the fitness and wellness and health industry. And so I'm humbled that you would come and do this with us. And I am looking forward to a trail run in Whitefish.

Oh, bring it.

In the coming months where you are like, man, thank you. Like, this is really great. And I'll be saying, hey, right back at you, brother, because I did the same thing to my knees. So that would be really fun.

Uh, the pleasure is all mine. It's, it's been a total honor. Thanks for inviting me here. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Jim Donnelly. Thank you for doing it.

Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, that's great.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet.

This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Fitness. If you did, I'm going to ask you to do 3 simple things. It takes under 5 minutes and it goes such a long way.

We really appreciate it.

Number 1, please subscribe to our show wherever you're listening to it, iTunes, Spotify, CastBox, whatever it may be. Number 2, please leave us a favorable review. Number 3, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it and we want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more or get in touch with me, simply go to thefutureoffitness.com. Futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me, as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is The Future of Fitness.

Have a great day.