Unlocking Longevity & Health Optimization with Humanaut Health CEO, Jim Donnelly

Welcome to The Society Pod, a podcast for entrepreneurs, marketers, and leaders. Here's your host, Jessica Yarmey.

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of The Society Pod. My guest today is a trailblazer and visionary in the recovery and longevity space. His current project, Humanaut Health, opened a couple months ago in Austin, Texas. And there's additional locations coming soon on the way. Welcome to the show, Jim Donnelly.

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be on.

How do you introduce yourself at this point? Because you have done so many things and you now are still doing so many things, leading the way with, with Humanaut Health. How do you introduce yourself in an elevator conversation?

No, I just generally say I'm a serial entrepreneur. I like to do the things that I'm interested in. I like to do the things where I think I can make an impact. That has led me to do a variety of things that were kind of tied family for that stage of my life. Obviously now I'm getting to that age where longevity and wellness and, and health are more and more relevant. I'm not the indestructible 30, 40-year-old that I used to be. I've had some life things like my dad dying. I'm just in a place where I'm just really into what we're doing right now and think we can do it better than others and excited to make a difference.

So what are you doing with Humanaut Health? What is this new concept that you have cooking?

Yeah. So Humanite Health is all about health optimization. We're an omnichannel offering. So both virtual and at retail, a person would come in and we would be able to help them holistically with all of their health and wellness needs. So we would start by doing very deep diagnostics, 100 blood panels, a bunch of different scans, everything from a full body MRI to a DEXA scan. We do movement diagnostics. We do gut health. We do epigenetic genetic testing. I can go on and on. But the point is we gather a ton of data so that we really know a person. And then based on that, we can help them with a plan that addresses all the fundamental aspects of health and wellness. So movement, nutrition, sleep, stress, cognitive health. We assign a coach to help you with behavior change. And then we monitor your progress. We focus on the most important things at the time. When we make progress on that, we move to the next things. We don't try to do everything at once. And then we can get into some really specific stuff. Like sexual health, menopause for women, joint pain, metabolic health, healthspan. They're very visceral to people. These are the things that you wake up one day and you never thought about menopause, and then you're a 50-year-old woman and that's all you think about. You never thought about joint pain until you can't do the things you love. Obviously everyone's thinking about healthspan. How do I enjoy more years of my life? But the cool thing is then we have this toolkit of all the neat stuff so we can utilize hormones, peptides, stem cells, all the other exogenous molecules like supplements and prescriptions. Our toolkit is very broad and deep, so we can create really great results given that we have so much data on you and we personalize things.

It needs to be long because there's so many things in there from basic assessment things to really, really cutting-edge assessment things. It doesn't seem like there's anyone else sitting in this space. What do you see as your competitive set?

There's actually ironically a lot of competition, but I kind of put it into 3 buckets. So one, you have your local functional medicine traditional medicine doctor, they're trying to look at all of these different things. They're trying to take a holistic approach. They're trying to bring in the traditional and non-traditional tools. The problem is they're sort of limited by the fact that they don't have a larger ecosystem to pull from. They tend to be one or two doctors in a local practice. They have limited ability to scale, limited technology capability, limited marketing capability. And to be quite frank, they get stale over time because they are so focused on their business. It's very hard for them to stay abreast of all all the great things happening. So obviously, Humanote is very different with a big ecosystem, many doctors, very high-level board of advisors, technology, and all the things that helps us provide a better solution. The other competitor is the slices of healthcare, I like to call it. So Aura is helping with sleep, Calm is helping with sort of mental health. I could go on and on. You could list 500 of these companies in this one piece of it. The problem is health is so complicated. When you do it that way, you have too many relationships to really integrate and keep track of. So we think we're better than that. There are a few things out there, like maybe Fountain Life, a couple of others like that, that are propagating a little bit around the country. But once again, it's really hard to scale. It's really hard to do this on a national level. And I think we're uniquely positioned to do it, do it quickly, and do it better than others. And that's what we're trying to do. I actually think of this a little differently than people. I'm not a zero-sum game kind of guy. I think a rising tide raises all boats. And this category is still so new, people even question, what do I call it? Well, why don't you call it longevity? Why don't you call it this? Why don't you call it that? And I said, well, I think health optimization is a little broader and it encompasses more. Longevity kind of has a little bit of a narrow sort of feel to it. It also feels a little creepy sometimes when done wrong. Feels like a bunch of rich guys in Silicon Valley chasing immortality, and that's a little less relatable to people. So we certainly have a longevity component to our business, you know, in the form of healthspan. But million-dollar question: what do you call the category and how do you build it? I will say, when I first started Humana, I did get one common sort of critique. I hire a bunch of Stanford MBAs and Harvard MBAs, and I like to say I hire the ones that have been around for a while, so they're the ones that are a little more seasoned. But the first thing is always, why not focus on one thing or a couple things? My response is always, well, little me, what you would take out? If we're really helping people with their health, do you take out nutrition? That seems like a pretty big thing to take out. Do you take out movement? Yeah, I get it's hard, but do you take out sleep? What do you take out? Do you remove stem cells? Do you remove hormones? You start pulling these pieces out and you don't get the results that you really want. We have taken on the really hard challenge of, of bringing it all together.

Is health optimization the phrase that you're using today describe? Is that the goal, or is that the mission statement, or what language do you use to summarize it?

The simplest statement of our mission statement is our mission is your healthspan. We firmly believe that we can add many good years to your healthspan, which is— lifespan is the number of years you live, healthspan's the age you live to where you can still do all the things that you love to do and have a fulfilling life. Our goal, when you go a little below that, is we think we can add roughly 20 years or more of good healthspan to a person's life. People always say to me, well, how do you measure that? How do you know? And I said, well, we're working on those sort of things. I always give them this analogy. Did you go to your 25-year reunion? Well, if you did, you remember walking in and seeing two types of people. The types of people that have taken care of themselves and you're like, hey, it's good to see you again. And you're actually like, yeah, we're the same age. And then there's this whole other group of people that you walk in and you go, holy mackerel, how can we be the same age? I don't recognize you. I just don't get it. We're the same age, but we're two entirely different humans in terms of our physical and other capabilities. And that is a function of what have you done for the last 25 years to take care of yourself. So we all intuitively know that these things are possible, but it's not easy. I'm not making a value judgment on anyone there. It's, it's hard. And there's lots of reasons for it. People get busy and kids and careers. At the end of the day, when people say, what's our value proposition? In addition to adding these years, we say we're your copilot. Because this is so complicated, you need a copilot to navigate all of this. We're your copilot with data, we're your copilot with coaching, we're your copilot with personalized care plans, we're your copilot for the moments that you have weakness and other things, we're your copilot when you have questions about things that we haven't talked about necessarily. I think that's what people really need to navigate something as difficult as health as you get older.

We're sitting really squarely in resolution season. I think the statistics are 50% of people will make a health and fitness and weight-related resolution, and then 90% fail by the first week of February. So what do you think is wrong with that math and how is Humanaut kind of positioned to help maybe make some progress on the resolution front?

Yeah, I think most resolutions are wishful thinking. A resolution becomes a reality when you invest the time and effort and energy to make it happen. And that includes sort of changing some things about the way you do things, includes getting a support system to help you. You know, I talk about community as a big part of Humanaut all the time. The people are like, oh, okay, you're going to have a bunch of people that can interact with each other. So yeah, that's the macro community that I like. Humanauts are a certain type of person. It's an ethos. It's a movement. It's like everyone should want to be a Humanaut. It's a way of living. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm actually talking about this notion of micro community. The way that you sort of live is a byproduct of the 5 people that are closest to you is what the studies say. You're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. So we are working on some community technology that allows your micro-community to be a part of your resolutions, to be a part of your health, so that they can be a productive, positive part of helping you change your behavior. If you don't put things like that in place, if you don't have some coaching, if you don't have sort of tools to help you stay on track, then you're generally going to fail. I think a lot of times people fail because they just give up super quickly. One bad day leads to two, leads to three, leads to four, and then you're done. One bad day is fine. Two bad days is fine. It's just how do you sort of tell people that you don't have to be perfect. No one's judging you. Coaches aren't here to beat you up. They're here to help you. They're here to understand. There's lots of things like that, that if you appreciate the right way to do it, I think you can help people with a resolution. I tell people all the time, I've lost more weight than anybody you know. The flip side of that is I've gained more weight than anybody you know. So I'm one of those that's kind of gone up and down. I am an imperfect carrier of this message, but I am deeply into what Humanaut does. I am a member. I am doing it, and I was shocked at the things I learned about my health when I got into all the data. Things that are precursors to some really bad stuff. Things that I took for granted for many years. Even the 20 pounds of extra weight that I carry, kind of look in the mirror and rationalize and say it looks good on me because I'm also very muscular, but it's like, no, it's time. And I had a member the other day tell me, Jim, you're my inspiration. But you can't be my inspiration unless you lose that 20 pounds. I tell you what, that probably will keep me more on my New Year's resolution than anything else. That stuff is powerful. You got to create your own version of that, and you got to find your why. I've always said, if you can't find your why and make it super important, then it's not going to work. You know, in my case, I tell people all the time, listen, I have a perfect life pretty much. I'm married to the woman of my dreams. I've got these amazing kids that are just absolute delights. I've I've got friends that I love spending time with. I love my mom, my sister, you know, all of that's great. I'm working on things that really give me like a great feeling of purpose. And I can do everything that I want to do physically. I even joke like, you know, if I'm 15 pounds heavier, I don't sort of have less physical interaction with my wife. And if I'm 15 pounds lighter, I don't have more. And so it's like, riddle me what my motivation is. To be quite frank, that's hard. So I've got to find my why in the middle of that context And things are pretty good. Now, what has become my why is the data is telling me, Jim, red lights, red lights, red lights. It's humming. It's time. And you do have this sort of multiplier effect of every month, every year you ignore it, you're digging yourself a bigger and bigger hole. Even a guy that's building something like Humanaut, and you see it with CEOs all the time, like you got to look in the mirror and you got to take care of yourself too. I'm certainly trying to do that.

Well, and so much of health is things that you can't see. It's below the surface kind of things. It's blood pressure kind of things. It's mental health kind of things. And to tie in the workload that you're taking on trying to launch this and build this from scratch, it's not just about the weight that you can see. And I think a lot of the fitness industry falls into this trap too. Let's microfocus on the scale or let's microfocus on our wearable data, how many steps you've taken when it is such a bigger picture of overall health that we need to give people as a good starting place so that they know maybe I haven't moved the needle on the scale, but I've moved the needle on these other important health markers. You know, you can make progress in more than just scale-related ways. And I think that's one of the things that sounds so interesting about what you're doing is kind of taking that complete picture of someone's health and kind of giving them, here's where you are right now as a starting point.

Well, I think people get way too myopic about how they measure things, and I think the scale is certainly one of the measurements. You talk about all these other things— if you have things, if you have too much stress, if you're not mentally in a good place, it's actually incredibly hard to lose weight. So these things are all related. That number on the scale is actually tied to not just one thing, it's tied to a lot of things. I would say my single biggest problem is managing stress. Until I manage stress well, I won't have an easy time losing weight. So my, my, my optic goal might be, hey, I want to lose 15, 20 pounds because that's easy, but it's all this other related stuff and it's hard. That's what also makes it super rewarding. I've seen many people at scale whose lives we've changed. It certainly happened at my health clubs, which I've owned for over 20 years now. I saw it at Restore. I obviously see it as Humanaut in an even bigger way. I tell people all the time, I could not have started as Humanaut. Those health clubs that I've owned, if I hadn't done those, I wouldn't appreciate so much about fitness. We did a bunch of med spas in Charlotte as well. If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't appreciate subtle things about how people's self-perception of how they look is very related to how they feel in terms of health. And these are all lessons that sort of built on top of each other. Restore is sort of elementary school level sort of wellness. Everyone's got to go to elementary school. That stuff's foundational. It's important, but you don't jump into your PhD. Humanize I've got like my PhD of all this. It took 20 years of learning and grinding to get to the point that we could synthesize all of this stuff. This is the hardest thing I've ever done, the most stressful business I've ever built, but it's also, I think, going to be the most impactful. It's going to have the biggest impact to society. I see our members coming in and we're going deep in these really, really, really big issues, and we think about it a little differently. I always use the example of hormones. We have a lot of men that come in for hormones And I think a lot of people equate like men's hormones issues with sexual health issues. Like, I want to take testosterone so I can do more of X. Our first question when a man comes in is, where's your partner? You know, where's your wife? We don't want to fix you if we don't fix your partner because we're creating societal harm. Because I know what that looks like. I know what that causes. I know what that creates. We're not just trying to solve these individual things. We're trying to be more thoughtful. We're trying to think of your ecosystem. We're trying to think of all the things that you should think about because if you don't, there some unintended consequences. I'm not saying that we're gonna always get it right, but we're certainly gonna try.

So you open the Austin facility. How many services are being offered there? It seems like as you're talking, it's in the 30s. Is that a good, like, rough estimate?

It's more than that. We have in-clinic services. We do things like ozone. We do things like methylene blue. Also, we have what we call a movement gym where we do all these movement diagnostics and you can work with a personal trainer around VO2 max testing and VO2 max training. I could go on and on and on. We have things like PEMF and shockwave, obviously stem cells. It's a lot. And within each of those categories, there are multiple things that you do as well. I think the last number I got was 76 different things.

That's crazy.

It is crazy. You know, you can put it in buckets and then it sort of gets more specific within the buckets. And once you're in a bucket, you tend to do a cluster of things. But once again, we get real problems. These are not trivial things. Take joint pain. For instance. There's a lot that goes into joint pain. The obvious thing is, well, let's jump right to regenerative medicine. Well, let's not start there, actually. Let's talk about what's causing the problem. Is it a movement issue? Okay, let's address that. Is it a weight issue? Let's address that. Something that regenerative medicine can help with? Great. Let's try shockwave as a precursor. So the idea is let's do the least invasive things first before you get more and more invasive. In my sort of construct with joint pain is let's try at all costs to avoid getting cut, to avoid a surgery. To the degree we can't, one day you may end up there. Start with the least invasive and work our way up the food chain. You'd be shocked at how many times you can actually help someone with that approach before going straight to what I would call the most extreme option. But it takes a lot of stuff.

Going under the knife, it should never be the number one step you take to solve a problem.

We're very complementary and friendly with traditional medicine. We do not wake up and bang our fists on the table and say traditional medicine is bad, we're good. We are in part traditional medicine. So there is a time and place for everything. There's a time and a place for some pharmaceuticals. There's a time and a place for surgeries. There's a time and a place, but we also think that there are a lot of things that you can do first. This notion of food is medicine and movement is medicine and sleep is medicine and all these other things.

I totally agree with what you're saying and how you're plugging in as a go-between almost between a traditional medical practice and fitness facility, maybe. How are you defining your core customer, or who are you targeting as you're putting marketing messages into Austin and beyond?

The age group of our customers tend to be 40 to 70, 75, and there's a reason for that because that's when lots of these specific things start to happen. But we certainly have younger customers and older customers. Think of this as sort of a few different groups of people. So one is a group of optimizers. They're trying to optimize their health. They're trying to be proactive about it. They're trying to get ahead of things. So that can start a lot younger than 40, certainly goes a lot later than 75. Then you have folks who have a very specific issue, and it's a big issue. I've mentioned a few of those examples, whether it be joint pain or menopause or sexual health issues. These are big, big things. These are existential problems. If you don't fix those problems, it completely changes is how you live and the trajectory of your life and how you feel about things and your joy. So we get that bucket where something very dramatic is starting to happen or has happened. Then we get what is most normal, which is a combination of the two where there are these things and there's also this notion of wanting to optimize. And if you can marry the two, I think that's the biggest group of customers. They've definitely bought into a preventative proactive approach is better. So if I can get ahead of these things, let's do it. I I already have some of these things, so I've got specific things I want to address. Let's get them done. I definitely think there's a mindset. I could have called this a lot of things. Humanaut was the name for a reason. We say an astronaut explores space, a Humanaut explores health optimization. So it is a certain type of mindset. I want to be better. I want to be my best. I want to be proactive. I want to know what's the latest and greatest and the best solutions out there. You're intellectually curious. You have this higher level joy for life. And this desire to be in it and be with the people that you love. I could go on and on describing what a Humanaut is. We think that it should be obvious that everyone should want to be a Humanaut. It's just such a more joyful way to think about life.

I like the astronaut comparison. That's very interesting. I think it brings it home to people who are like exploring their potential. You started in Austin, you have Dallas opening soon. Are there any other growth projections or locations you want to throw out there?

In 2025, we'll certainly open in Dallas and Florida. Palm Beach is already under development, and we've got probably 5 or 6 other locations around the country that we're not ready to announce yet. Order of magnitude, we'll open 7 or 8 locations in 2025 is the goal. And then after that, starting in 2026, our goal is to open 30 a year until we get to 125 and have the entire country canvassed. Scale matters. Being all over the country matters if you're going to provide this to people people that are mobile and move around and travel around. Scale brings all kinds of things. You can democratize things more. You can make it more affordable and accessible to a wider range of people. And we do have affluent customers, but we also have customers that probably wouldn't fit into that bucket. In some ways, that's more rewarding to me than anything. I want a schoolteacher to be able to afford HumanEye. I want a fireman who, by the way, he probably more than anyone else needs something like this. He's on his feet. He's very physical. My Goal is to make this as accessible and affordable to as many people as possible and to make, quote unquote, longevity accessible to the normal person, not just the rich guy in Silicon Valley.

And are you going to get to that via franchise growth or are you going to get to that via company store growth?

We'll do franchising. I'm a big believer in franchising. Number one, you have a partner on the ground that wakes up every day thinking about the business. Number two, I think we're really good at franchising. Not just me, but many of the people on my team have extensive experience in the space. And we've built our whole organization to scale, and I think that's unique to Humanaut. Number 3, there are some great folks out there that have the operational capability and capital capability to go fast. I think speed and scaling is important in this space for a variety of reasons. But having said that, we are very, very picky. This is not if you have a check, you can write for a franchise fee, you can be a franchisee in Humanaut. We will say no more than we say yes. I always say I don't want more franchisees than can fit in house for a Christmas party. If I have more franchisees that I can't have the Christmas party at my house, I've got too many franchisees. I just think this is the kind of business that you want multi-unit owners. You want them to own 4 or 5, and if it's 125 locations, you can do the math. I don't have a particularly big house. I love my house. It's plenty big for my family. I don't have some big McMansion or anything. If we start to have more than 25 franchisees, I'm going to have a problem. I also think there's connectivity in a franchise system. When you have a smaller number of franchisees, they can rely on each other. They can communicate more easily. They know each other. That all comes from sort of learning from earlier efforts. I think that's a big part of it. I also think that taking the complexity out of the operation for the franchisee is a big thing that we've learned and are manifesting in Humanart. So we will take on the most complex things and centralize them so that the franchisee can focus on their sort of four walls and the easier things. That is 100% a byproduct of having done franchising before and wanting to do it a little differently. You know that world too. You get the wrong franchisees, it's horrible.

But it is such a powerful way to grow as long as you have the right people aligned with you. So if you're someone who's listening to this and you want to be a part of the Donnelly Family 2025 Christmas Party invite to Jim's house. I'll link all of the Humanaut information into the show notes so you can inquire. Maybe you'll get that Christmas invite for next year. Zooming out from Humanaut, are there trends that you're watching in the health and wellness and fitness space that are interesting to you heading into the new year?

This change in mindset because of the information that's out there, the Andrew Hubermans of the world, the Peter Attias of the world, all the podcasts. I would say like, for instance, Amy Killen, who's our chief medical officer, she's an expert in hormones and women's health and sexual health. They're out there and more and more people are listening to them. So they're more open-minded. And I think the big sort of overall trend is they're more open to alternative approaches. For better or worse, they're skeptical of the traditional sources of information. They're skeptical of their traditional doctors. They're incredibly skeptical of the pharmaceutical business. They question institutions like the FDA and the NIH. And all these government organizations that used to be the source of truth. And I think that is the big thing. Now, here's the problem. Where do you go to get the right information when, you know, we're talking about biology, not physics? Physics is very specific. It's a bunch of formulas. Biology is a little more amorphous. And so what's right and what's wrong? And so I think that there's this quest for information, but there's this problem of where do I go that's reliable? I would actually say if you're going to a source of information that falls on their sword that they are 100% right, always, never wrong, I would question that source. I give a little credit to Peter Attia around that. I've heard him say many times, you know, 5 years ago I thought this, now I think this, and here's why, because it does change. So make sure you find an information source that is a little more vulnerable and can sort of evolve as new information comes out. I also think that people are looking for a magic pill still. That is just inherent in humans. And the GLP-1s are a classic example of that around weight loss. By the way, I'm a big fan of GLP-1s for the right person and in the right context and for the right amount of time. I'm very afraid of the long-term impact of people that aren't really obese. They're using it as a cosmetic thing to get that last 5 pounds off. I just worry about the implications of that. But that's an example of just an amazing tool that didn't exist, you know, even 5 years ago. So more and more of that, I think, is going to become available. And so which ones do you pursue? Which ones do you jump on? And when? At Humanaut, I say we do not want to be cutting edge. We're leading edge. We're generally not going to be first, but we're going to be early. And we're going to have to have our sort of what we call roadmarks or breadcrumbs that lead us to the right conclusions. It's always going to include science. It's always going to include data. What level of science and data? If you waited for everything to go through double-blind studies at the FDA, you'd be waiting for decades for some of the biggest breakthroughs in humanity. So we think we strike the right balance and help people navigate that.

Well, and you mentioned your coaches, and I think that's a critical part of all of this, where you have more information at your fingertips, whether it's podcast information or whether it's wearable information or, you know, your own personal data around your health and wellness, to have someone be an aggregator of all of that information and say, there's a good path for you and you don't need to pursue everything. Everything, but here's the top 3 things that you should pursue. It's one of the most ironic parts of wellness right now, I think, is we have more tools than ever before, yet as a country, we are more obese and less healthy than ever before. And so I think having a guide through the exploration is critically important, and I think that will be one of the things that really sets Humanaut Health apart from other offerings.

We get asked for the cool stuff all the time. Everyone wants the cool stuff, and the example I use, I think Peter Attia coincidentally uses in his book as well, but I'll have friends that come and ask me, what is the thing I should take? And they'll use examples like rapamycin. I'll say, listen, there are a lot of studies that say rapamycin is great, but I'm not going to help you get rapamycin right now. And they'll look at me almost hurt, and they'll say, Jim, why would you say that? I'm your buddy, I'm your friend. And I was like, because I can look at you and tell that you have bigger, more foundational things to address before you go to the last 1%. That's a last 1%, 2% kind of Let's start with the foundational stuff, and that is sort of weight and nutrition, movement. When we get that down, we'll move to the higher level stuff in the last 1%, but you'll start with the last 10% before you get the first 90%. As much as people want to say it, movement is still, in my mind, the most powerful medicine of all. People underestimate sleep. The good news is more and more people are learning that sleep is way more important than we thought previously. Obviously what you put in your body, I'm hopeful hopeful that the sort of new regime will make a dent in getting some unhealthy stuff off of the shelves in the grocery stores and that sort of thing. But we'll see. We'll try to do our part and we'll see what happens with everyone else.

We're very excited about this passion project of yours that you have going on. A few questions more just about you in general. If you weren't working in this recovery longevity space, what would you be doing?

It'd be something that was important to me or my family or my kids. My dream is that after Humanaut, I'd love to do something with my kids. Both of them are really big entrepreneurs. 15-year-old daughter's had a business since she was 11. My son's now in his second business, and I in no way, shape, or form want them to work for me. And likewise, I don't want to work for them, but I'd love to sort of help them stand up some things that are important to their stage of life and just kind of see that passion and, and help them harness it. I'll be the first to admit, people ask me, are you excited about Humana like your other business? Yeah, of course, of course. This is unambiguously a passion project and in it to win it, dedicated. Was the opening of the first Humanaut as special as the opening of my very first retail thing 30 years ago? I'd be lying if I said it was the same feeling, but it's still super special. I'd like to sort of do some stuff with other people where I'm not the CEO and I'm not the leader. I'm just helping them more. When I see my kids and, and they come and they have this idea idea. It is so like pure and innocent. I just love it. And I think it's real easy to get a little jaded as you get older. I need some of that to kind of continually remind me that, hey man, don't take this for granted. Just because you've opened hundreds of something, it's still special. Sometimes you're going to see it through other people's eyes to remind you. I don't know that I can continue to be the guy at the top too many more times. Maybe one or two, but We'll see.

So you defined yourself as a serial entrepreneur. What number would you count Humanaut at in terms of like things you've started?

It's probably 9 or 10. I've always on these podcasts, I've talked about my 5-year fuse and my 5-year philosophy on life. I think your life sort of operates in 5-year segments, college and high school, single for a certain number of years, you find somebody and probably wait a few years before you have a kid and then your kids go. And for me, I have just always operated in these sort of 5-year phases, which doesn't mean that you don't go longer in some. I was at Restore for 8 and a half years, for instance, but I'm just a big believer in that things change in your life and things that you are excited by and that motivate you change. And a lot of that for me has been driven by the phase of life I'm in. I did I Go, You Go, which won a Webby Award as the top travel site in the U.S., but that was because travel was so important to me as a military brat. I was still single. I did it with my best buddy. We traveled all over the world as a consequence of it. It was amazing. I don't have any interest in doing that right now. If you said I was going to be on the road, even in the coolest places in the world, 200 days a year right now, I would be like, oh my gosh, that sounds hideous. I like being home. That's what's most important to me is finding the thing that I'm super passionate about, that I'm uniquely qualified to make a difference. And so there's a lot of ideas I have that I'm just not the right guy. Humanaut, for a whole host of reasons, I think I'm uniquely qualified because of all the things I've done up to this point. And a couple other things happened. Number one, my dad died of cancer. I saw him have 4 and a half miserable years of living. I feel to my core that if I had had Humanaut at the time, I could have potentially saved him. I might not have prevented his cancer, but he would have known right up front, super quickly, that he had cancer, and we would have had a chance. So that kind of affected me pretty deeply. And then I got run over by a drunk driver. A drunk driver ran a red light going 65. I was on a highway going 65. We had a head-on collision and it almost killed me. I was destroyed. Part of the genesis of Humanaut was my search out in the world for the things that could bring me back. Stem cells was transformational for me. So I come by this stuff honestly. If I had not had those two experiences, I'm not sure I'd be doing Humanaut. I'm at right now. And then I look across the table at my beautiful kids and I'm like, man, it's never too early to start. It's never too late to start. So for them, I'm thinking the sooner the better. For my wife and my mom, I'm thinking it's never too late to start. That's the kind of construct for what motivates me.

That's a pretty important and big why for sure. I feel like things you learn in health are kind of like a gift that keep on giving, and things you learn in entrepreneurship is a gift that keeps on giving, especially if you take the lessons and you open 9 other businesses. Are there lessons you've learned along the way in entrepreneurship that you think have stayed with you and helped you as you've opened these 9 different things?

Number one, you got to be really self-aware. If you're not self-aware, it's hard to be an entrepreneur. And in that context, I'm pretty self-aware and that I know what I'm good at and bad at, and I'm also relatively egoless. And so I don't have a hard time building a team and bringing in really smart, great people around me that do certain things better than me. I think that's a unique characteristic of typically of a good entrepreneur. You've got to be to bring people in that they can do certain things better. I also try to be really joyful about things. This has got to be fun. If it's not fun, it's really hard to do it well and stick with it because every new business has ups and downs and hard times. And so if you're not having some fun along the way, it's going to be really hard to have the resilience that you need to kind of break through those periods. I also am a big believer of surround myself with good humans that are mission-driven. I just have zero tolerance for folks that aren't doing things for the right reasons and aren't really into the mission and living it and have their own why around it. I'm just a big believer in doing big things, able to bring in great people that are mission-driven. I would have a hard time doing like a manufacturing line that had the same widget again and again. It just wouldn't be interesting to me, and I would have a hard time attracting mission-driven people. And I'm not good at a lot of things. I really am not, but I am good at a few. But I would say if you look the breadth of my team, it's a pretty capable group of people. I'm very proud of them. I'm very proud of them on a personal level. I sort of look at them as great examples of how to live your life. If you can kind of talk about your team and the thing you're working on in those kinds of terms, you'll generally have enough sort of resilience and perseverance to get through what you need to get through if it's a decent idea. And that's the way I approach it. I've had failures. I've certainly had one business that I did a while ago. I thought it was my most beautiful thing I'd ever done, and it failed miserably. That's the final thing. Don't fall in love with your ideas. You do need to know when to sort of step away because it isn't going to happen. I've been pretty lucky. That's been the minority of things.

Are there any resolutions that you have for 2025 that you want to share?

I'm really leaning into this whole stress reduction part of my life. So I'm doing daily meditation for the first time. I think it's helping. I have reduced my heart rate. My blood pressure is a little better. Maybe there's a little bit more more of a hop in my skip. It's something that I used to just take for granted. I never really thought about that kind of stuff. I'm reading the Bible this year. I said that I am going to get through the whole Bible. I've never read the whole Bible before. I've sort of seen little pieces of it and say it was very different than I expected. You start reading it and there's a lot of fire and brimstone and things I didn't expect, but also some sort of lovely stuff as well that kind of keeps me sort of focused on maybe there's a bigger reason to do things the right way than money. I wouldn't really say it's more complicated than that for me. How about you? You have a resolution?

I'm always working on something, but I don't think they're going to be health-related this year. I think maybe similar to you, they're going to be mental space related. Just how I am looking at my place in the world and just showing up more authentic, maybe like removing some of the garbage that, that's in the mental space. So I love that you're doing the meditation daily. I can't seem to get myself on that bandwagon yet, but we'll work on it.

I'm not good at it. I'm still not good at it. It's a struggle and my mind does wander, but I have consciously decided to do it and I think that's the first step. And as long as it's making a difference, I'll keep doing it.

We are all cheering for you. Thank you for everything that you're doing to push these topics forward and these modalities forward and these services forward and trying to bring them to the general public. I think it's so important and you are truly a trailblazer in the space. So thank you so much for sharing everything that you did with us today on The Society Pod.

Well, thank you very much for having me. There's nothing I love more than evangelizing these types of things. And if you're in Austin, I will be very offended if you don't stop into Humanaut and try some things.

Absolutely. We'll be there soon.

Sounds good. We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Society Pod.