Superpower with Max Marchione | Episode 206

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Welcome to the Wired for Success Podcast, your show for ambitious, mission-driven entrepreneurs who want to build million-dollar businesses without sacrificing their health, relationships, or happiness, who understand that in order to build their empire, they need a solid foundation, and that the more they are thriving, the more their business is thriving too. This show brings you the very best from science, self-development, and entrepreneurship to to set you up for sustainable success. Hi, I'm Claudia Garbutt, the scientist turned mindset and high-performance coach for entrepreneurs, and I help you get wired for success. Hey everyone, and welcome back. This episode is brought to you by L-Nutra, nutrition technology for longevity. Are you looking for a smarter, science-backed way to support muscle health and longevity? Meet L-Protein from L-Nutra, the only plant-based protein powder of its kind uniquely designed to enhance muscle growth and slow down the aging process. 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Without further ado, let's dive into today's episode. Hey everyone, and welcome back to a brand new episode of the Wired for Success podcast, where we talk about all things science, self-development, and entrepreneurship that help you get to that next level of success in your life and business. My guest today is Max Marchione, the co-founder of superpower.com, a new healthcare system to prevent disease and enhance human capabilities. Previously, he founded Next Chapter, an incubator for talent to help shape the trajectory of young people, and Ultraviolet Ventures, a venture capital fund for investments in companies that nobody else sees. So welcome, Max, and thank you so much for taking the time to be on my show today.

Thank you for having me here. Excited to chat.

Yeah, me too. Max, before you became a serial entrepreneur, you dropped out of law school to study mathematics and statistics. Statistics, if I'm not mistaken. So my question is, why? What happened that made you change your mind?

Um, really, opportunity cost, which is, um, law is a 5-year degree that takes an extraordinary amount of time when you're in it. And mathematics and statistics for me was a 2.5-year degree because I was able to do it a little bit faster. That didn't take an enormous amount of time whilst doing it. And what that meant is that there were so many other things I could do on the side. I have this belief that, um, the best of learning is self-directed learning that happens outside of the four walls of any classical institution. So really what I was trying to do was create time to work jobs on the side, start companies on the side, et cetera. And that's what I did. So whilst I was doing mathematics and statistics rather than law, I worked 10 jobs or had 10 different internships. And that is where the real learning happened rather than sitting behind a desk reading textbooks. Yeah, I love that.

Now, I read that your mission is to build beautiful things that change the world. And I find it really interesting that your mission statement includes beauty. So how is beauty connected to meaning your mind, and what is beautiful to you?

That is a great question. So there's this, um, idea that things are either beautiful or they're useful, right? They're either aesthetic or they change the world. They don't do both. And beauty and utility are opposed. I think the opposite though is actually more true, which is that beauty and utility are synergistic. And Um, the, the first job I ever wanted was to be an architect, and the reason why is, is in architect— in architecture, it's well accepted that you have function and form that go hand in hand. If something is functional, it increases its form or its beauty, and if something is aesthetic, it increases the feeling or sense of function. Um, so I, I really believe in, in this model of building technology products, of potentially one day building physical spaces And that's where that statement comes from. If I look at what is beauty, I think it tends to be things which are opinionated, tasteful, are in the right proportion and not overdone, unique, feel right. I think there's like this subconscious sense we have um, two designs, uh, that, that make it feel either natural and normal or subversive. And I think the reason why a lot of ancient designs or ancient monuments, um, feel so potent is because they get proportion right. Yeah. And subtle changes in proportion, whether something's in the golden ratio or not, um, completely change the way our body intuitively responds to that thing. If you go to Vegas, it feels so subversive because there's no sense of proportion, right? It's just extravagance, but the materiality is wrong. The materials are fake and our subconscious knows that, right? The proportions are wrong and our subconscious knows that. Whereas you'll go, go to Italy and, um, uh, I spent a little bit of time living in Florence and there's this, there was this church around the corner from me and it was like really plain and unadorned. But every time you walked by it, there was some potency about how it felt. And my hypothesis is just, is that the proportions were perfectly right and something deep within our intuition actually knows or feels when a design is, is done that way. And when it's, uh, when it has that natural, um, sense to it.

Hmm. That's so interesting and such a great approach. But in general, I always wonder because They also say like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? So many people find different things beautiful. So I'm always curious about what's going on there. Are there things that everyone finds beautiful, like nature or like architecture? I mean, there's so many different styles, so it's really hard to define beauty.

That's What I'm trying to say is, yeah, I think like it is in the eye of the beholder, but there are still well-accepted standards for what a critical mass of people think feels right. Looks right, sure, but feels right. And I think when we get beyond the level of what do we think to the level of what do we feel, we start to actually tap into something far more primitive, which is the way our subconscious responds to a certain design. And it goes to what you said, which is nature, right? Most people find nature beautiful, and my sense of why that's the case is because nature is always in proportion, right? Nature is always following the golden ratio. So I think that, um, when we have designs that are more biophilic or more nature-like, that's when it feels more natural. I think that's when we start to tap into a more universal feeling or sense for is this beautiful or is this not. And I think this is part of why a lot of people would say Apple's products are beautiful, right? They get the micro details right of spacing, proportion, size, curvature, radius, consistency, materiality that creates this almost intuitive sense that this feels right.

True, good point. And I always say that like Entrepreneurship is the biggest self-development journey that you can be on because it constantly forces you to face your fears, to solve problems, and to overcome challenges. So I'm curious, what have years of successful entrepreneurship taught you about yourself and about the world?

It's taught me how little I know. Every year I feel like I know a little bit about myself and a little bit about how to do things and a little bit about the world. And every year that goes by, I realize how little I know about myself and how to do things and the world. And I think what that means is, is the only underlying learning is the importance of like constantly obsessing over learning and rate of growth and rate of learning. Because the reality is I know one— I understand the world 1% of the level of what Elon Musk understands the world, maybe 0.1%. And the implication is all that matters is how do I get up the learning curve as quickly as possible? So I think the overarching learning is actually learning how little I have learned and how little I know. Yeah.

And I think one of the most important skills in life is learning how to learn. And it's one of the things that people usually don't get taught at school. Now, in general, you seem to be a person with a strong action bias, meaning when you follow, meaning that you follow a when in doubt, take action anyway philosophy. Is that correct?

I have tried to cultivate it. I think that typically there's this idea that we get clarity by thinking there and twiddling our thumbs and strategizing. And I think often we find clarity in motion. Often action actually precedes clarity. I agree. The same applies to fear, right? There's this sense of, well, I minimize risk and I minimize fear by thinking through every scenario and thinking there and strategizing and thinking. But I think the opposite is more true. We actually minimize fear by taking action. A friend of mine recently said to me, you know, you are bluffing enough in poker when you no longer feel scared and you no longer feel like you're bluffing. You no longer even notice the bluff. And I think the same is true of risk-taking and action. You know, you're taking the right amount of action, the right amount of risk where it no longer feels scary. You no longer feel that it's a big, a big action. The thing I think about often is shortening the distance between thinking about doing something and doing the thing, right? I, I see also often someone has a great idea or they, they know what to do and they sit there thinking about it. They think for 5 hours what they should write in the email. They put a calendar invite on their own calendar for a week out to message so-and-so person or to call so-and-so person. And I think one really powerful thing is just shortening the gap between thinking about doing the thing and actually doing the thing. And then the final thing I'd say here is in the context of company building, I think it's really easy for people to just create requirements. They say we need to do Z, and rather than saying let's just go A to Z, let's just do Z. They say, let's do A, B, C, D, and they just like create requirements. Oh no, we can't do that because we have to do all of these things first. I think a lot of the time if we really objectively question the requirements, they don't have to exist. We can actually just jump to doing the thing.

So true. I agree that most times it's useful to find the smallest step that you can take right now that takes you in the right direction, and then do that straight away. But I also wonder, like, has this philosophy ever led you astray? Are there things you did in these situations where in hindsight you think, well, maybe inaction would have been the better choice?

No, just about every regret of mine is still one of being too slow to take action. I think I'm above average in terms of action bias, but I think I'm nowhere near an Elon Musk in terms of action bias. And I think that people chronically delay action and move too slowly in doing what has to be done. So I think, uh, for me, the mistake has tended to look more like taking too long to take action rather than taking too much action.

Gotcha. Now, when you make important decisions, how much of your decision-making is based on logic And how much of it is based on intuitive judgment?

Most of it is based on logic today. Um, and I think that increasingly it becomes based on intuition. I think as you get more reps and start to learn how the world works, your intuition starts to grow because intuition is access to experience stored in subconscious. I love questions that we can answer that allow our intuition to do the talking, right? And there are all sorts of these questions. One question is, would you, in the context of investing, would you work for this founder? Again, your intuition is kind of doing the talking. Or do you feel a little bit of envy about this founder and this idea? That allows your intuition to do a bit of talking. In the context of a relationship, do you feel more yourself or less yourself around this person? Again, the feeling question allows your intuition to do a little bit of talking. In the context of whether to let someone go in the company, how would you feel if they weren't at the company tomorrow? What would you do? Right? So I love the kinds of questions that allow your intuition to do the talking rather than ones that, rather than like 30 questions that are like logical criteria. Yeah, I totally agree.

Because sometimes it's easier, like when you have two choices and you can't quite decide which path to choose, you imagine yourself taking one path and you just notice the emotions that come up. Like you choose that path, how does it feel? That's again, just listening to your intuition and letting your intuition do the talking. But then sometimes you get to the point where logic and intuition are not coming to the same conclusion. For instance, something looks really great on paper, but it just doesn't feel right. Is that still a case where you would trust your intuition or would you trust logic?

There's no simple answer to this. I know. If something looks good logically, but doesn't feel right to me, that's a sign that I've missed something logically, right? It's a sign that my body or intuition is telling me to double-click, to dive deeper, to see why that feeling is coming up. So my sense is that, um, intuition basically allows us to process more logical variables than we can, uh, when using solely the faculty of logic. But if we spend— and it allows us to do that faster But if we spend enough time processing, weighting, discovering the variables of logic, my sense is the logical answer and the intuitive answer should more or less result in the same thing. So I think when there's incongruence, that's a sign typically to get more data on the logical side, to weight variables differently, to collect more variables, to interrogate whether, whether I'm appraising the output of the logical system correctly. Rather than to just like trust one or the other. That's—

those are good points, and I, I agree in general. But then there are also times where I feel that something like subconscious trauma or something can really influence your intuition, because that's also like based on experience and something that shapes your intuition. So if you've had something terrible happen to you in the past that's somehow related to the choice you're going to make, that can also influence your decision-making process, right?

Yeah, I, I totally agree. Right. And this is why it's very hard to use purely, um, a logical reasoning, emotional reasoning, or bodily, i.e., intuitive reasoning. And, uh, I think most decisions look like a combination of all of them working in concert and understanding what is each of those systems telling us, what is the signal it's giving us. And I think the other thing here is that it's really hard to generalize. Right. I think that this tend— there's this human tendency to look for generalizable rules. Well, we use intuition here and we use logic here and we use emotion here. But I think every single circumstance is unique in its unique way, which makes it hard to create any sort of, uh, non-unique or general rule.

Yeah, that's true. Of course. Now you say about yourself that you are independent to the point of isolating others. Why do you think that is?

I think that I'm very comfortable believing in something that a lot of others don't believe in, and that can result in me being mocked or not fitting in with the group. Um, the nature of, of like in-group culture is that you're meant to do and believe everything that the group doesn't believe. And I think the nature of independent-mindedness is to do and believe what you independently think is the right thing to do and believe. And I think that can result in a little bit of estrangement from the group. And a lot of people won't like that because biologically we're wired to be in-group versus out-group. But I think I'm very comfortable with taking that estrangement risk because I tend to I'm biased towards the things that I believe in rather than defaulting to the things the group believes in.

Now, the way you frame this sounds like— makes it sound very positive, like a sign of a strong character. But do you sometimes worry about having blind spots that you're not even aware of? Because I always see other people as mirrors that help us see things about ourselves that we couldn't see without them. How do you think about that?

I think other people are totally mirrors. My view is that, um, the way we get to truth is trying to listen to lots of people and, um, filtering what they say, right? Weighting what they say, thinking about what they say, Observing the world. So I definitely think that like other people are an input into helping us understand what is true. I think that often in-group beliefs and, um, action systems exist for a reason, right? Often the in-group or default belief is like a biologically superior one, which is why it has emerged as the in-group belief. So I think it's really important to recognize that for what it is and to recognize that often the defaults are the default for a reason. It's because they have existed for many years and been really robust systems of action or beliefs throughout time. All right. So I'm, yeah, I think it's important to recognize that, but also be able to question that and not just assume that just because something has been a certain way for a long time is going to continue being that way, or it's like the right way of doing things. An example here is, is, um, systems of governance. In the middle, let's say a monarchy, a socialist, uh, socialism or democracy spans a 100-year period. Any of those political, uh, governmental regimes, in the, at the 50-year mark, if you're 50 years into a monarchy, or you're 50 years into socialism, or you're 50 years into democracy, the people within that system think that their system is right and every other system is wrong, right? That's, that's like universally true. If you ask anyone in a democracy today, just about everyone's like, socialism's wrong, monarchy is wrong, dictatorship is wrong. But if you ask someone in the middle of any of the other regimes, they think the same of democracy. And I think this is a really interesting learning about how what we believe is true is actually primarily culturally informed rather than primarily informed by first principles. Yeah, that is true for sure.

Now let's switch gear and talk a little bit about your business. You are really interested in building an A+ team and a great company culture. How difficult is it for you as, say, the lone wolf to connect with others and build a great team?

I think that, uh, the independent-mindedness here doesn't really go to impacting, uh, building a great team and great culture. Um, but I think it's incredibly hard for anyone to build a great team and a great culture because, um, in the early days of a company, a lot is uncertain, right? Times are tough, capital is a constraint. you don't necessarily have product-market fit. So a lot of work and intentionality has to go into building a great team and a great culture, right? So going back to the systems of governance idea, before there's, um, democracy or monarchy or dictatorship or socialism, there's anarchy, right? And I think a company starts in anarchy, and it's the role of the founders to add some sort of structure. To add some sort of systems of beliefs or default behaviors, some sort of almost like system of governance, some sort of way for people within a company to know how do people within this company act. And I think a lot of people think that that emerges organically and that it will just happen. I think the more accurate view of the world, though, is that it requires a lot of work and a lot of intentionality and a lot of thought. So we put a lot of thought at Superpower into how do we want to architect a culture that drives a certain set of behaviors that drive a certain set of outcomes.

Can you give an example of what you can do to find the right people for your team and to build this great company culture?

So if I go to building the right company culture, We choose certain principles which people could disagree with, and then we say, these are the ways the company operates, and we emphasize them in onboarding, we emphasize them in all hands, we shout people out for embodying them, and we insert them into process. So an example of that is we have this saying of, of, um, we have short toes within the company, which we stole from GitLab, which is a company which has a well-known remote culture. And the idea is within a company, people are always like, I don't want to step on someone's toes. I'll just stay. And we're like, no, let's do the opposite of that. Let's say we have short toes and say it's okay to step on someone's toes. Well, now when someone is giving their opinion in a domain which is owned by someone else, they will often preface that by saying, I know so-and-so is owning this, but in the spirit of having short toes, here are my thoughts. And now they're no longer stepping on someone's toes or encroaching. Now the person who actually owns the domain doesn't feel like they're being usurped. It's just like they're embodying the culture. Another example is we have this idea of like focus on the 80/20 or only do the A+ task, right? There's this tendency in companies to do the B task or the C task, and we say all of those things don't matter. How can we only do the A+ tasks? And what that means is people will use that to push back on work, right? If I try to get someone to work on something, they will often say to me, Max, I don't think this is the A+ task and here's why. Gives them the ability to push back. And then in all hands on Friday, we will champion people who push back, who obsessively prioritize, who do a really good job of doing nothing but the A+ tasks. When we're writing documents, someone will emphasize, why is this the A+ task? So we've ingrained it into process and culture in a really productive way. In terms of hiring for that, my sense is a large part of that comes down to, I don't know, getting an intuition for someone's level of curiosity, for someone's level of open-mindedness. For someone who's quite low in dogmatism. We're a staunchly apolitical culture. We don't want people who bring really strong systems of beliefs or opinions. I'm feeling they're like things we will screen for in the process of hiring. Sounds great.

Thank you so much for those tips. Now, I also read that you believe that in order to get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. And I found this super interesting because it might sound like a stupid question, but how do you know that you deserve what you want.

This is like, there's one view of the world, which is what I call the thinking view of the world, which is this world where someone is trapped in, in the world of their imagination. And they're like, well, let me just think about all the things I want. Um, I'll manifest them into existence. I'm not gonna take action. I'm just gonna like, like ponder and muse and twiddle my thumbs. And I think the opposite version of things is a more reliable approach, which is to actually get what you want. You can get anything, but you have to deserve it, right? To become LeBron James, you need to put the work in. To become Lionel Messi, you need to put the work in. And people understand that at the level of sport, but I think that applies at the level of everything. It applies at the level of relationships. It applies at the level of company building. It applies at the level of everything. And by having that as part of my belief systems, What it implies is that if I'm not getting what I want, it's because I have not put in the requisite work or taken the requisite action or taken the requisite risks to actually deserve that thing. And I think that, um, in the short-term, world can work on a, on a luck system, right? I think in the long-term though, the world works on a meritocratic deserving. System. I think that the, the luck view of the world is, is one which is, um, very fatalistic and it's one which says there's nothing I can really do or change. I think the deserving view of the world is very, um, meritocratic, is, is one that, that, that's very, um, that recognizes the fact that our inputs, our actions can actually materially change things. And I think that's a far more exciting world to live in.

Sure. But that's super interesting because it sounds like for you deserving something means taking action or equals taking action, if I understand you correctly. But to me, there's really one step before that. And that's really basically a choice. It's like choosing that you actually deserve it because you can, it's like happiness. You can choose to be happy no matter the circumstances. So You can either decide that you are worthy or you can decide that you are unworthy and your experiences and actions will change accordingly. And that's why I think that mindset is so important because it's kind of like this invisible blueprint that really determines what life you build. Right?

I think that's really well said. And there's this little box I call the magic box. And within the magic box, I have things which every year that goes by, I believe are more true and more powerful. So an example is incentives. Every year that goes by, I believe the power of incentives is more than I thought the previous year. Another thing within this magic box is, uh, self-belief, right? Every year that goes by, I believe that self-belief is even more important than I previously thought. And the great irony is that even though I know that every year I'm going to think these things are more important, I still end up thinking that they're more important. And this goes to what you're saying, which is that like self-belief is almost a, um, a, like foundational, uh, requirement into this deserving view of the world. And, um, what that means is that deserving is not just based on action. Deserving is also based on belief. And I, I really do believe that is true.

Yeah, 100%. Now you also believe that the current healthcare system is broken, and I agree. So it's more of a sick care than a healthcare system, if you ask me, and I'm all for more proactive and preventative systems. Now, when you think about the future of healthcare, what are the top 1 or maybe 2 things that you're excited about? And what are the top 1 or 2 things that you worry about?

I'm excited by, uh, 3 things come to mind. One is the ability to identify transitions from wellness to disease really far in advance. All right. The heart disease at 60 starts when you're 20. The Alzheimer's at 70 starts when you're 30. And if we can start to identify these diseases far in advance, we can take action far in advance. Which can actually prevent the disease. The second thing that I'm really excited by is the emergence of like biotech or therapeutic compounds, which can materially extend lifespan. Um, I think that no amount of diet, exercise, sleep, sauna is going to reliably allow us to live past 120 or 130. But I do think that in the next 10 to 20 years, we're going to see therapeutics which help us do that. The third thing which I'm excited by is how health is being used as a tool to enhance human capability or human performance, right? Healthcare classically was about fix me when I'm sick. Now it's about help me be optimal, help me be smarter, help me sleep better, help me be happier, help me stress less, help me be more present. And I think that's exciting. If I look at what scares me It's that the rate of change can be so fast that we get to a dystopia. Hmm. And the implication of there being a lot of biotech therapeutics is that, um, as soon as they give some group of people an edge, everyone is going to have to use them to get that edge. An example is like, let's say your neighbor is genetically modifying their children to be twice as smart. Well, you don't really have a choice. You have to now genetically modify your children to be twice as smart to evolutionarily keep up, right? It's like Darwinism as, as most fundamental. Let's say your friend is using some sort of therapeutic or, or everyone, you know, everyone around you is using some sort of therapeutic to guarantee they're all 6 foot 2. Right. Well, that means everyone is going to have to, and this is just like this, this dystopic, dystopian treadmill that can result in a really pervasive world where, uh, Darwinistic survival of the fittest means that people continue to have to purchase and use, um, therapeutics to drive a certain outcome at an increasingly fast rate. And that is something which humankind has never experienced. No real, really species have experienced a rate of change that fast. And in that view of the world, I don't know what the, the end state looks like, and it is, is hard to predict and surprisingly scary.

Hmm. Yeah. Let's hope it does not come to that. Now, can you explain what Medicine 3.0 is and how Superpower fits into this picture?

Medicine 3.0 is this idea that, um, we detect disease and prevent disease far in advance, right? And we do, and we use the latest of evidence-informed medicine. Um, if I look at how Superpower fits into this, our belief is that we can— we have the tools today to predict disease far in advance. Take heart disease as an example. Um, let's say you're 20 years old or 30 years old. Let's say you're 30 years old and all of your grandparents died of heart disease, right? The traditional medical system could look at you at 30 years old and look at your lipid levels, your ApoB, your LDL cholesterol, etc., and say your lipid levels are fine therefore there's no risk. You're 30, your lipid levels are fine, there's no risk. But hold up, there's no risk over the next 10 years. But what is your 40-year or 50-year risk of dying of heart disease if all of your grandparents died of that? At 30, your 50-year risk of dying of heart disease is really high. You know what? You're almost guaranteed to die of heart disease. Now, the traditional system will be like, yeah, but your lipids are fine. So we don't have to intervene. Your 10-year risk is fine, so we don't have to intervene. The Medicine 3.0 model would be like, no, let's aggressively intervene today because we know that this is the number one thing that's likely to kill you. So let's intervene today. Let's intervene today before your biomarkers are out of whack, before you're showing any high 10-year risk of heart disease. Let's start today. So I think at the core, Medicine 3.0 is this model of preventing disease really, really early. And there's one part of, of, uh, the clinical model we aim to, to popularize at Superpower. Yeah, I love that.

That's such a great strategy, because why wait until things get really, really bad before you do something? Because oftentimes then it's irreversible, so you can't go back. So why not take steps to prevent them in the first place? Now, for people who don't know, is Superpower a subscription-based business model or more of a marketplace, or what do you like, what do you offer?

Members come to us today and they get our annual membership, which is $499, so $42 a month. And in that membership, we'll test someone's whole body, give them 100+ lab tests every year, kind of like a better annual physical versus your normal doctor who might test 15 or 20. We'll pull in all of someone's past medical records, right? All of their data, their personal history, family history. Again, because we need to understand that if we're going to perform high-quality care and we'll integrate all of someone else's, someone else's, someone's data, that's wearables and the rest of it. From there, every year someone will hop on a call with one of our, one of our functionally trained clinicians and they'll build them a report that says, here are all of your issues today, here are all of your potential issues, and here's how your health is scoring across all these different dimensions. And they'll really try to connect the dots, right? If you look at how healthcare normally works, like, well, you've got a symptom, let's just treat the symptom. If you look at the way we're doing it, we, we say, let's take all this data, let's connect the dots to really get to the root of what's going on. And then from there, we try to make it really easy for someone to take action, right? So as part of this membership, we want it to be as frictionless as possible for someone to take action, whether that's sending them healthy clean home or healthy grocery items or supplements, whether it's making it really easy to access pharmaceuticals or further diagnostic testing or understand your gut health or toxin exposure. Let's bring all of this into one place to make it as easy as possible to take action so someone doesn't have to go hunting around in a million different locations. So that's the core membership today. We'll test someone's whole body and then tell them what to do about it. We then, once someone's in the door, do have a marketplace of solutions. And the goal is let's take all of the different fragmented health experiences someone has and let's try to bring as much of that as possible into one place so that people don't have to really go hunting and, and spend like thousands of hours trying to find the best solution, trying to find the lowest cost solution, questioning what to really trust. Instead, let's try to make that as frictionless as possible, all in one place.

That sounds amazing. Now, are all those tests included in that membership, um, price, or is that the membership price and then they have to pay for the tests on top of that membership price?

We do 100+ lab tests, um, twice a year as part of the core membership, and that's the baseline testing that often informs whether someone needs additional testing. Mm-hmm. Someone then can choose to get additional testing, and the additional testing can look like all sorts of things depending on what someone needs. That could look like gut microbiome testing, oral microbiome testing, testing for plastics or mold or heavy metals, or a DEXA scan or MRI, or a CAC scan for a calcium scan for heart health. All of that testing is like follow-on testing depending on what someone actually needs.

Interesting. Now, how do you avoid the generic recommendations that so many health apps provide? I mean, how are you able to look at the interaction of those different biomarkers and create hyper-specific recommendations based on, say, one's health goals or health history, for example?

So the best of medicine isn't on the internet. It's not in medical textbooks. It's in the brains of really talented 10x doctors. So what we do is we have a research team, their medical team, who sits there basically building out our, our database and what we think is the latest in medicine, right? They're staying up to date with the latest research. They're learning what works and doesn't work, and they're building that out as a database. That, that's the first thing which has to happen. We actually have to understand the latest in medicine, otherwise we're just gonna be making the generic recommendations. Sure. Part number 2 is, is using AI. To connect the dots, right? The reality is there's only so much data a human brain can handle. It's really important that we're using the latest of what technology has to offer, which is AI, to take all of someone's data, to take everything we know about the latest of medicine, the frontier of medicine and medical and scientific research, and combine that to work out what specifically works for this person. And again, that's something which our clinicians can help with and support with. But it's really the fact that technology is being used that allows us to process the amount of data we process to get to the bottom of what someone really, really needs.

Speaking of data, I mean, how are you going to make sure that all those sensitive private health data stays private? How are you going to protect the information?

Yeah, totally. So everything that we, that we will do is HIPAA compliant. Everything that we will do is anonymized if it's being fed into a third-party system. Privacy is something that we'll take really seriously. Um, two, we, we, uh, hired two engineers who are building a form, they're for a formal Y Combinator-backed company, literally just working on data privacy. They're like wizard backend, um, engineers who deeply understand this space. And that's important for us because the reality is if we want to be like the trusted place people come to, um, our data privacy standards have to be very high. We commit to not selling data. Um, we commit to a lot of um, things of that sort that result in data being protected. Every person owns their data, can access their data at any time, can request us to, to remove or delete data. Um, and there's just like a lot of small things which all add up to creating this sense for someone that their data is theirs, private, not sold, HIPAA compliant, um, and, and the rest of it. So important.

Good to know. Now I'm curious, what does your personal supplement stack look like, or your personal habits? What do you do on a daily basis to stay happy, healthy, and productive?

Oh gosh, okay, so much. The first thing I say is like, people should use supplements that work for them if they know exactly why they're using them. And a lot of people probably don't need any supplements, maybe one or two, but they don't need any. I take a lot of supplements because, um, the intensity with which I work is kind of like an elite athlete, right? Like, I'm pushing my body. I'm not exercising as much as I should or eating perfectly healthy or sleeping perfectly. I have a lot of stress in my life, which means that supplements are a tool to support that, the same way as an elite athlete will use, uh, intensive recovery procedures. Um, when I wake up every day, I will start with, with like a morning smoothie stack where I'll add wild blueberries, goat's whey protein, collagen, sunflower lecithin for phosphatidylcholine. I'll add green banana flour, which is a resistant starch for healthy gut bacteria to populate. I'll add some also frozen dark cherries alongside the frozen blueberries to increase the antioxidant profile of the smoothie. I'll also add açaí powder. I'll add a little bit of maca powder. I'll add a high, um, a high polyphenol count cacao powder. Um, and then I'll add some, some, um, fibers as well, like, like, um, flaxseed and, and several other fibers. And then I'll add glutamine as well. So that's the— actually, there's probably a couple of other things as well, but that's the morning smoothie. And the The idea of this is you can get so many things in one, and the intensity of the fiber and antioxidant content and protein profile of this smoothie means that I— it's almost like stabbing yourself with a GLP-1 in the morning, but it's natural. Like, I don't feel hungry then for a large part of the rest of the day. My blood sugar is very stable, and the rest of it— I also in the morning will have certain supplements. So I have a multivitamin with the— with which, which is the one use is probably my favorite multivitamin. I'll have taurine, I'll have a B vitamin stack with B2, B6, B9, B12, um, which helps with methylation and reducing homocysteine. Um, I will sometimes add quercetin, I'll sometimes have a little bit of berberine for blood sugar support just because my blood sugar is not quite where I want it. And upon waking, I'll add minerals to my water. So I'll add trace mineral drops, and then I'll also add a little bit of this powder with a bit of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, which is essentially like a morning coffee for me because of how it restores mineral balance and electrolyte balance. So that's the morning stack. Um, uh, during the day I'll stack all sorts of different things. I won't go into it, but I guess I, I've been at the moment experimenting with high, high-ish dose omega-3. And highest dose thiamine for blood sugar support. And really interestingly, my average blood sugar has decreased by around 15 milligrams per deciliter, which is an enormous amount. That's around 15% for me, uh, potentially just by supporting myself with high-dose thiamine, which is one of those things that isn't that well researched but is working well with me. So that's something I'm going to continue experimenting with. Um, at night I'll stack a few things for sleep, so L-theanine, inositol, magnesium, glycine. I'll have colostrum at night as well. And then zinc, 15 small amount of zinc, 15 milligrams of zinc with 1 milligram of copper, which acts as like a cofactor to balance the minerals of the zinc. And sometimes I'll add a couple of other things if I'm particularly stressed and particularly want to support sleep.

Oh, I love it. Thank you so much for sharing. Tell us about your exercise routine. What do you do?

Um, this is nowhere near as optimized as it should be because unfortunately I don't have much time in my day because building a company like I'm building takes a lot of time. So I will exercise, um, 3 times. I'll go to the gym 3 times a week, uh, Saturday, Sunday, and then Wednesday, and I'll do more or less full body on Wednesday and then push on Saturday and pull on Sunday. I will try to get aerobic exercise in once a week, um, uh, which looks like a jog in the morning. Again, I should do far more aerobic exercise. The constraint is really time. And then I try to walk a lot, so I have a walking treadmill desk. I'm at a standing desk right now. When I'm at the desk, I have Resistance bands, which I'll sometimes use for band pull-aparts or like shrugs or doing like shoulder, like kind of dislocates or rotates overhead. So I try to get like small movements in throughout the day as well to compensate for the fact that I'm spending a lot of time behind my laptop and behind my desk, which is not necessarily optimal for health. But I think at this stage it is important for for helping Superpower be what we want it to be.

Yeah, for sure. And I mean, all those little things add up, and it's the same for me. I'm really busy at the moment, so I'm trying to optimize. I'm trying to find the minimum effective dose, like how little I can get away with to still stay fit and healthy. So it's not necessarily a bad thing. What, what does your diet look like?

I try to largely have, um, vegetables and protein, um, as the majority of my diet, um, and then fats. I'll add eggs and olive oil, um, in terms of protein. I use the Force of Nature ground like venison and bison a lot, and they add like small amounts of heart and liver to, to the, uh, to, to the ground, um, uh, meat. Um, that's just because it's very convenient, expedient, reasonably priced, highly nutrient-dense. I also have wild mercury-free salmon, um, or sometimes farmed mercury-free salmon. I'll use SeaTopia for that. That's like a shipping company. They'll ship sashimi-grade, metal-free salmon to your door. Um, I will use pasture-raised, free-range, um, organic eggs, and I have them reasonably often. And then I do the morning smoothie. My carb intake, uh, in what I eat at home is reasonably low, largely because, um, I eat out quite often, and my carb intake is far higher when I eat out. And eating out, I don't think it's like optimally healthy, but I think that I enjoy it a lot and it works well with my current lifestyle. Thank you so much for sharing.

Is there anything else that we didn't get to today, but that you really wanted to share with our listeners?

Nothing was front of mind.

Okay. So where could people find you online if they would like to learn more about you or your company?

Uh, they can reach out to me on LinkedIn and request me there. Uh, that's just my name, or maxmarchione.com is my website. And finally, if they haven't signed up already, superpower.com has a waitlist with 140,000 people on it now. But for listeners of this podcast, if they send me a message, I'm more than happy to, to skip them, uh, through the waitlist or to the front of the waitlist as well. So they can send me a message on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Oh, that's so generous. Thank you so much. Perfect. Max, thank you again so much for sharing your tips and insights with all of us today. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

I enjoyed chatting. Thanks, Claudia.

Take care and talk soon. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Wired for Success podcast. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you did, please take a sec to rate and review my show or share it with a friend. That way you can support the show and help me reach and support other entrepreneurs like yourself as well. If you would like my help to figure out how you can go from overwhelmed and overworked hustler to empowered and confident leader, check out my website at www.wiredforsuccess.solutions and book a free 20-minute strategy session with me. Can't wait to help you get wired for success. Until next time, take care. Bye.

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