From Gaming to Wellness: Caleb Applegate's Journey and the Genesis of Life Network

Welcome to Integrative Medicine with Dr. Leland Stillman, the podcast where we explore the best of East and West, old and new, conventional and unconventional, in search of answers to medicine's toughest cases and most difficult problems. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Diagnostics and therapeutics discussed on this podcast may or may not be right for you, so talk to a qualified practitioner before taking action based on what you learn here. If you'd like to become a patient at about my practice, go to stillmanmd.com to schedule a complimentary discovery call. Thank you for listening and welcome to today's episode. Hello everyone, Dr. Stillman here, and today I am delighted to welcome my good friend Caleb Applegate to the podcast. Caleb, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

It's great to have you. I like to start by asking one— asking everyone who they are and where they're from.

My name is Caleb Applegate. I currently live in northern Idaho with my amazing wife, Shauna, and our 3 children, Liam, Amelia, and Madeline. Not from the health and wellness space originally, but as you know and are very familiar with, my, my journey into health and wellness has been very, very interesting. And I'm sure we'll get into more details later, but suffice it to say, started in the entertainment space moved into gaming and helped establish the Minecraft Marketplace with Microsoft and Mojang, and then moved into the blockchain space where I learned how to build Layer 1 protocols. And from there made the fascinating leap, the remarkable leap into the world of health and wellness.

But where are you from?

So originally from Northern California.

Whereabouts?

So, uh, a little town called Sonora, California, which is about an hour from Yosemite National Park.

Uh-huh, that's right, the foothills, right?

That's right, yep.

And so then, how did you get into health and wellness?

Well, uh, as you know, I had a lot of health issues, uh, when I turned 39 and into my 40th year, started experiencing a lot of sluggishness, brain fog, A lot of it came on during the COVID years, if you will, but started noticing just I wasn't feeling good. I was having a lot of aches and pains and quite honestly started getting some gut issues. It really got set off when I had a bout of this thing I'd never even heard of called diverticulitis. And I thought, what in the heck is this? And it was sharp shooting pain on my left side. And the quick response antidote, if you will, was take this antibiotic, which then completely destroyed my gut.

Did it?

And so, yeah, so it was during this time—

Which antibiotic?

Oh gosh, I don't even remember.

They usually use ciprofloxacin.

That sounds right, actually.

Which is a powerful antibiotic and has fluoride in it.

That's just lovely.

You know, it's got a place.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, that set off a whole host of other issues. And around that time, you came into my life. We were introduced through our mutual very, very good friend Ben Greenfield and just started asking a lot of questions. I remember, I remember you and I jumping in my ATV our UTV and, and going on a long ride out these back roads and talking about just the, the pain points of my own health journey, my wife's health journey, and just how we could kind of reorient as you were looking at bringing on some new models within your own practice.

What was your perspective on health and wellness before all of that, coming out of your early years as an entrepreneur? I think it's safe to say that you're early. You've cut your teeth as an entrepreneur.

Yes, yes. You know, it's interesting. I, I thought as long as I didn't overeat, as long as I got enough sleep, I could power through. And I, you know, I think that is the definition of youth. Yeah, it's the definition of youth. And I think it's also, uh, just something as a man you want to press through. You want to build great things, uh, for About 2 years when I was on the backside of my tenure at this company called Enjin, which was a top 50 blockchain project, we were, we were doing big audacious things and it required enormous amounts of around-the-clock time. Uh, so it was during that period that I just didn't eat much. And when I did eat, I didn't eat very healthy. I didn't sleep much and I just went all in. And—

but wasn't your— you were living at this time with your wife and your kids in, in northern Idaho, so she presumably was— right, I know in your family as I do— cooking for you. Were you intentionally— or, um, maybe intentionally is the wrong word— were you eating the food you weren't supposed to eat despite the fact that food that we were supposed to eat was prepared for you?

Yeah, this is an interesting question. Shauna, my wife, is a former personal trainer, and she's always been into health and wellness. So she's been very clued in into homeopathy, naturopathic medicine. I thought, and I'm just going to be honest here, I thought, that's good for you. I need to focus over here. So, so when, when I would resurface and I'm hungry, I would say, hey honey, let's load up the kids. And let's go down to this great restaurant. I didn't know a thing about seed oils, and I had a propensity because I was lazy. I was, you know, just working all the time, so I didn't want to do dishes. I didn't want to, you know, put all this effort and energy into making this meal.

You weren't lazy. You had— you had other priorities.

I had other priorities. It's true. And it caught up to me. It caught up to me.

Your priorities were forcibly rearranged.

Yes, that's a great way to put it.

Okay, so you, you weren't eating right despite the fact you had the option to. You were powering through it. Diverticulitis came around, you resolved that. What was it like going through that, that wake-up call?

Well, it was painful, and thankfully I had really great friends.

Do you mean— I mean, I know it was physically painful, but you say that and it makes me think that it wasn't so much the physical pain that bothered you as some kind of emotional, psychological—

Yeah.

Frustration.

Yeah, 100%. Well, I would say both. And it was the physical pain. I've never had pain like that before, but also the, the post kind of gut issues which did affect my sleep. It affected— I mean, it affected all sorts of areas of my life. So that aspect made me stop and really pay attention because I don't want to live like this. Surely if I'm going through this, other people are going through this as well. And that really started my inquiry, my curiosity into more of the health and wellness space and, and products and asking questions. And like I, I was starting to say, I had really great friends like you and Ben Greenfield who I, I could approach. And I think what kept going through my head during that period was gosh, if I'm going through this and I know other friends in our friend circles were also experiencing really intense health issues, they didn't have access like I did to Dr. Stillman or Ben Greenfield or others, right? And so that was always top of mind for me because I think, you know, as a, as a someone who builds tech stacks, I think about infrastructure, I think about problem solving, I think about how do I create something remarkable that removes friction for the— what I coined as the every person.

How did you meet Ben?

Oh man, it's been a while. So in the small town that we live in, in northern Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, his parents years ago started a coffee shop downtown called Bootzers, and his mom was one of the first people that we met when we first moved here. And she was unbelievably kind.

I don't think I realized you moved to Moscow.

Yep.

Just sort of, okay, that's so funny. Got it.

Back in 2011.

What was it like when you went to Ben with this problem?

Well, first off, Ben is incredibly busy, so I tried to not pester him with too many questions, but he was always very kind and generous and would send me links to articles where he would write about these things, or a podcast where he spoke to someone who maybe had a product that could be helpful with what I was experiencing. And so I went on this journey of lots of reading, lots of investigation, and really took more of a journalistic approach to things. And through that process realized again, you know, it's, it's probably not sustainable for me to keep asking these questions all the time. As I'm learning and growing and also looking at this open, very open, almost Wild West space. You have doctors, you have industry experts, you have influencers. But what's the thing that's galvanizing all of them together? You have the topic of health and wellness. But with my background, I, I build When I talk about infrastructure, I like to say roads in between cities. So when I look at a space, I see these experts, these doctors, these influencers, these key people of influence as cities. They have many tribes and followers and patients and communities that they've built. Wouldn't it be incredible if we could create interoperability between all of them and put them in one house?

Build roads between them. But it's interesting because what you're speaking to is, I think, if I understand you correctly, the information overload of stepping into the space saying, I have a specific problem, but the specific problem is part of a larger picture. Because, and you know, I speaking as a general internist, diverticulitis in an 80-year-old is not the same as diverticulitis in a 39-year-old. And it's not— it just has different— there's different concerns, considerations, men, women, not only stage of life but other health issues. And so what's interesting to me about the health and wellness space is that very frequently these nuances do not end up being conveyed to people. People hear, you should do this. Well, there's a certain category of people that, that, that need to not do that because of something, right? 'Um, or this may be the best way to manage this.' Well, except for in this group of people who that practitioner, expert, or influencer doesn't see, right? And that's really what internal medicine is all about. It's about what is the best management for this person, not only based on their disease process but the whole picture, at least in my view. And what's interesting about what you said is that you— again, if I understood you correctly— is you came into this world and there was an enormous amount of information I mean, would you say you struggle with information overload?

Mm, 100%. Absolutely. That was one of the first points of pain. You know, where do I even begin? Ben's sharing this with me, and, you know, as I click through the links and check out maybe some of the products that are part of that conversation, that particular, you know, let's just say gut health, right? There are many different things. There's supplementation, there's, you know, mitochondrial support, cellular aging support. There's nuances that, that all kind of factor in. But you just like, where do I go with this? What do I do with this?

Do I just take all of the stuff?

Do I take all of it? Exactly. And right around that time, you entered into the picture. And I think you and I together were able to start reducing things down to a simplified baseline and go, let's look at your bio-individuality and let's use simple testing that I think every person on the planet should, should engage in with a hair tissue mineral analysis.

Yes, and that's what I'm really passionate about, is that approach where— because, you know, having done this now and been in the space for 20 years there's so much information. I'm still researching new things. I'm still learning about new things. And everything turns into a rabbit hole. What most people wind up doing is becoming the expert on PEMF or the expert on sauna or the expert on thyroid, which is fine. But in the end, you need generalists to put the pieces of the puzzle together because Frankly, what I've seen is it's very unwieldy to have your thyroid doctor and your gut health doctor and your neuroscience psychologist, neurofeedback practitioner, all in separate silos because what's interesting in my world is that sometimes there's a unifying problem that none of them actually find. Kind of the— what is the— I think it's a metaphor. Of the different people with different parts of the elephant. You know, they feel the trunk and they say, oh, it's a snake. And they feel the leg and they say, oh, it's a stump. And they feel the tail, they say, oh, it's a tiger. Whatever it is, right? They have one piece of the elephant. They don't understand there's this much bigger animal. Um, and that's— I mean, it's very tough to get your arms around the whole world of integrative and general medicine, which is what I really have tried to do, but I can't help it. I just love learning all this stuff and, and curating all of it and then creating a coherent approach for people. Because I think that the number one thing I hear people coming to me with is, I have complex medical issues. I need a coherent approach that has a framework where we're dealing with the things in the proper order. We're not gonna do anything crazy. We don't want to get results tomorrow that are going to evaporate in 3 to 6 months. So, and what I find— one of the things I find really remarkable about the info space is there's not many people out there who have that perspective. And I think that's part of why when we connected, you know, you said, this makes so much sense to me, and this is what I want to pursue. And the HTMA, of course, is like the most fundamental test in a way. It's the body's terrain, soil, in terms of its minerals, which is why I love it and why we get great results with it for our patients.

Yeah, 100%. And just want to echo what you said in terms of Life Network, which we'll get into in a minute. What is it? Why was it created? I think starting with the why is really important, because as I went on that kind of curious discovery phase campaign of why am I feeling the way that I'm feeling, how do I start addressing these problems? Ben, Dr. Stillman, I've got these questions And, and you all were very, uh, very gracious in giving me pathways to start investigating. And you were obviously, uh, as a doctor, a lot more hands-on. But I think that process led me to, what if we created a canvas? Because it is information overload. And what I was doing is I was zooming in on a thing— gut health, a thing you know, my, my, uh, brain fog, right? But if you pull out and you see the whole canvas, there's a masterpiece here. And that's the, the functional integrative aspect that you're talking about. And that was really the inspiration for saying, what if we could take all of these incredible, extraordinary, remarkable experts and, and key people of influence in the health and wellness space, and what if we put them in one place. And then we brought in their content, their recipes, their nutrition advice, their podcasts, and we made it so easy for people. Because for me, it was incredibly difficult to navigate through all of this. And you're going to this website over there, and you're checking out this affiliate link, and if you use this code, you save 20%. It just became overload for me. So putting that all— that, that entire canvas, that whole thing into one spot and calling it life. This is Life Network. This is your life network. And our contribution for you, our gift to you, is that we're going to curate trusted, safe people, products, services, articles, content, and put them all there for you to easily filter and navigate through.

And so what you're talking about obviously is Life Network. Which if people are hearing about it for the first time, Caleb, what is the—

what is it?

What is it? Tell us about it. I'm actually curious because I don't think I've— I don't actually know if I've asked you this, but yeah, and maybe you're not comfortable answering this, but whose idea was it?

Gosh, where do I even begin? Whose idea was it? Well, it was a hybrid of sorts between Ben and I, but it was me really, uh, investigating If I'm going to make the jump from the blockchain space, which I thoroughly enjoyed philosophically, I love the methodology, the aspects of interoperability, governance, participation, contribution, right? You're not just a— it's not just transactional, it's very dynamic. And I thought, could we take some of the same methodology and some of the core principles that make that makes blockchain unique and different and world-changing? Could we take that over this, this industry, this area that I'm personally intrigued with because of my own health pain points? Could I take some of that and place them over here and build infrastructure that would help my wife, my children, my friends, my family,. And that was the, the kind of the, the initial curiosity, uh, that was the rough napkin sketch for Life Network. And so Ben and I had several jam sessions and I just said, look, if I'm, if I'm going to do this, this is how I see it. I see it as infrastructure. And I want to figure out a way where we can democratize this for every person on the planet. I want to build a world-class platform. I want to take our time and learn how to market it well. And then I want to make sure every person on the planet has access to this, because for me, in a rural community, you have an option, which is here's your prescription, or it's gotten bad enough, you need surgery. There's got to be more in terms of option and education, right before the care. I need the information. I need to know what is at my disposal.

Absolutely, yes. And this is one of the central problems, I would say, in healthcare right now, which is healthcare is still, at least in the conventional sense, mired in a paradigm that's really 40 years old. Doctors and hospitals are still communicating via fax machine. If you want to email someone for clinical information, you know, they'll just say, "Fax us a cover letter and a whatever and we'll fax it back to you." And the reason for all that is obviously the bureaucratic state which does not evolve as technology changes things. So many of us and increasingly doctors are stepping out of that in order to have cash-only practices so that they can just create the terms for their practice with their patients in a way that works for both parties. So you're not being just horribly bogged down by paperwork. And one of the things that, you know, conventional healthcare is not— I mean, there's a philosophical problem here where conventional healthcare is so mired in this drugs and surgery approach, and diet and lifestyle don't matter, which is of course not true. And is why, you know, over the last 5 years confidence and trust in healthcare institutions has cratered from 75% amongst the public in general to 40%, last I checked. But they're— what they're not leveraging is this ability to educate people en masse and create systems that show them and teach them how to be healthy. And that's really the future, because what we run into in the— on the healthcare economic side in the, in the cash-only practice space is basically this: you charge X for your time when you start out, you charge more as you get better and as you accumulate more and more patients and they refer more and more people to you, and then all of a sudden you're pricing everyone out. But even if you don't, you're often having the same conversation with people every single day multiple times. Which isn't efficient. So then you bring in group coaching. Group coaching is something that the conventional world never does, which is unfortunate because it has a huge leverage. You know, you can transform people's lives with group coaching, which we do in the practice. It's why we offer it. But group coaching itself then doesn't provide the information you need or can deliver en masse in an online course with greater convenience. And then that's about curating the content, like you said, and making sure it's high impact, high quality. Because what I see is there's this incredible— it's an overwhelming amount of information out there in online courses. I think online courses are probably one of the most— I don't know if I want to call it saturated, but I mean, it's, it's so, it's so big and it's so easy for anyone to make an online course now with often no vetting. They have no real skills, they made it up, or they're very new and they just kind of threw together a protocol after a couple of years, which is you know, a lot of them do good work, a lot of them get great results, but then on the other side, you have people who feel disillusioned because they feel like they've tried everything. They went to all the gurus, all the experts, all the influencers, and didn't get results. And what you're talking about with Life Network is exactly where things are headed, which is here's a membership model, here's a membership due, here's all the information, all the experts, all the curated content that they're going to deliver to you. That helps you streamline the experience of taking care of yourself. Not in the sense that there will be— but I mean, you're— I mean, people will be able to see the experts or doctors or practitioners who you have in the network. But the educational piece is there. And what we found on our side is the more educated people are by our content before they come into consultation, the better it is for us because we don't have to do the same or give the same lecture spiel over and over and over again because they've already heard it and are on board with our paradigm.

I think you hit on something that's really key here, and, and this is, um, uh, I think a differentiator of definitions that is, is currently in the public square conversation, and I think it's important to point this out and sequence it properly. Here's what I mean. Education and information is different than care. Okay, I'm going to use my car as an example. Preventative maintenance is key to longevity for your engine, right? I need to know how to take care of my car and then address it. Oh, I've got an oil change coming up. I know this information, and so I activate, I do something about it. Well, it's the same thing in terms of the public square conversation. When Bernie Sanders is saying to RFK Jr., "I want you to answer this question: Is healthcare a fundamental human right?" And RFK Jr. responds, and I think brilliantly so, "Do you mean like freedom of speech?" because that's free, right? What about the person, the guy that trashed his body for 60 years? Is it now on the burden or the responsibility on, on everybody to care for this individual? And that got me really thinking about what is it that we're actually talking about here and what's the proper sequence. And where I think Life Network comes into this conversation is we are saying First and foremost, education and information is paramount to how you make decisions about your bio-individuality, meaning that every person on the planet should have access to the right information and be educated so they can make informed decisions about what their care, which is going to be different for every human. Everybody is going to need something different. And so I would, I would just propose that we're, we're kind of missequencing the conversation right now in the public square. We need a centralized repository, a database, a hub of information that you can access so you can make informed decisions about your body. And part of that is an HTMA. Part of it is blood. Part of it is genetics. There's— there are many variables that play into the conversation about your bio custom individuality, but it has to start with education. It has to start with conversation. It has to start with access so that you can tactically start addressing how, how do I address this? How do I fix this?

So, what does Life Network have? I mean, we've talked about it in vague— I don't know if vague is the word I'm tempted to use. We've talked about it vaguely. What's the big picture vision for Life Network? And also beyond what it looks like as a website and community site, you have big visions for really a reimagining of American society. I'm very curious. You're working on a book. About this. I'm very curious what that is.

The book is called Poisoned, and, um, I'll give you kind of the TL;DR, the, the summary, one or two sentence version. It's, it's really an investigative journalistic approach to what is the American dream, what was it, what was the intent of it, what was the hope of it, And the systems that kind of infiltrated, you know, kind of industrialism and post-industrial, like, where are we today? Why are we not experiencing this American dream and this, this life of flourishing and deep wellness and communities that are thriving? We have higher anxiety and depression and mental health is on, you know, just issues across the border on the rise. Why? So, I want to ask those questions. Why? Why are we here? And now, as we look at the facts, the data, what are some ways that we can get back to micro-community living, caring about those that we love in our communities, our families, our friends? But how do we get back to just a simpler way of life where we can really flourish? What are actionable ways in which we can do that? So Life Network is kind of step one. How do we bring all of these incredible experts, products, brands that are in the health and wellness space making incredible things? How do we vet them, curate them, bring content into one home? So we've made it easy for you to now get the information on cold plunge, PEMF, red light therapy, HTMA analysis, coaching. Do you— would you— would you like some accountability? So the kind of where we're going with that is over the next few months we're going to be introducing— and this is very disruptive— a free option. Oh, meaning that we're going to have a light version So when you go to golifenetwork.com right now, you sign up for 7 days free. In the future, in the next 2 months, we're going to be unveiling a free option. Now, it won't have all the bells and whistles, right? You won't have access to challenges or Team Triumph workouts or masterclass content, but you may not need that. And our desire— when we say we want to democratize access to this information? Well, you got to put your money where your mouth is. So how do you do that? So we want to create a social public square community and we want to give it to you for free. And if you would like to jump into a premium option, think of it like Spotify. You can go listen to music there right now, or Spotify Premium, right? You want to remove ads, which, by the way, are a pain. But you want that more premium, uninterrupted, frictionless experience. And that's really the same kind of methodology that we want to lay out here. We want something for everyone at every budget level, and it's going to be very social, uh, it's going to be very community-driven. But then we— this is what's so unique about Life Network and where we're going— it, it really is a social, community experience that is, that is bringing all of these experts, products, services, content all together in one hub. But then from there, it's not just a parasocial relationship, right? It's not transactional. It's not just, I'm watching this key person of influence talk about things. We're bringing features like our Life Score, which helps you create habits. We're bringing Lifeboards, which helps you curate the information and the content and the liked experts that you care about and want to share with your family and friends. Think of like a health and wellness version of Pinterest, right? We have these features that help you with your transformational outcomes. So, it's not just transactional. It's very dynamic. And the hope is that as your life is transformed, you will want to start helping those around you with their outcomes as well. So, it does go back to the blockchain method, which is be a participant, contribute something of value to your friends and family and people that you meet in the network. Right now, we have forums. The amount of people that are commenting, asking questions, it's beautiful. Watching people from all over the world come together, ask questions about training habits and products and just random stuff too that they're very curious about, that they, they need help with. And watching folks come together and help other people live healthier lives, it's incredible.

It's remarkable. I think one of the things that's most intriguing to me about the project is that really there's been something of a, in my view, a vacuum left by the social media giants who've really heavily monetized based on advertising. While you may have community on there, there is also a lot of toxic, just toxic energy, you know, divisive content and material. People, you know, they can only kind of take so much of it. And what I find interesting about this project is it's really about not only creating an online community, but also I think your biggest opportunity is going to be creating offline connections and friendships, just like you and Ben and I have developed over the years purely through chance. And part of that is because I have a, a deep-seated feeling that what people need most is in-person connection. But in our very, very transient world where, you know, people move move every couple of years, sometimes for work or for family or just for the weather. They, they will move to a new place and it will be tough to get plugged in, tough to find their community, tough to find their, their people, their tribe. And I've noticed, and maybe this is just my perception, but there's such an incredible variety of people in the world. And, you know, as, as you know, there's just not as many people— not everyone is interested in health and wellness. It's kind of a unique group. And I don't know what proportion of people are as interested in it as we are, or are interested in it enough to join Life Network, but those people want to be around other people like them. They want to be in relationship. And I think one of the toughest things right now for people is that lack of in-person connection that's been created by, you know, just the progress of modern technology and pulling people away from the in-person experiences of life. And then, you know, on top of that, the amount of censorship— and, you know, it's, it's not even sometimes censorship, but, you know, it used to be you went to Google and you put in, you know, "I just got diagnosed with diverticulitis. What on earth do I do about it?" And you would get something like "Kathy's Diverticulitis Journey," you know, blogspot.com. And some of it was just terrible, but a lot of it was this, you know, I've had diverticulitis for 3 years and here's how I healed, and here's— I already fell down the rabbit hole and got to the bottom and came back out with all the good information, and here's my 10-step plan. And a lot of it was actually quite good, it was quite helpful. And the sad thing is now you go to Google, you go to the big search engines, and you're getting a very, um it's frankly, it's a very partisan view of health and wellness. It's, this is what's accepted in the medical mainstream, which in fact is not something that people unanimously agree on, right? It's funny you brought up RFK Jr. and Bernie. You know, these are very differing viewpoints on how we should get care, what care looks like, what is medicine, what's good medicine, what's bad medicine. And it's fascinating to see how all of this is unfolding in real time. And, you know, while we can't, you know, do too much about everything going on in the political arena right now, uh, we can create these communities for people to connect with like-minded people, uh, to get healthy and stay healthy because we need that. You know, the thing that people like Bernie don't— they just don't seem to get is the amount of money that ends up going into taking care of someone who's been neglecting their health for 40 or 50 or 60 years is not sustainable. And how are you going— what kind of conversation are we going to have about personal responsibility? Because we can't just, you know, keep spending money the way that we have been. It's part of why we're in a, in a bind economically, where people are saying, well, I want for-profit— or not for-profit, but cash-only medical care where I can just pay to see my doctor, but now I can't afford it because Eggs have doubled in price in the last 10 years. Rent's gone up. Wages have stayed stagnant. Taxes increased or whatever it may be. Uh, we see that really playing out. And so the great thing about technology is it allows us to innovate around the bad things that happen sometimes because of frankly corporate and, uh, government malfeasance. Uh, and part of that is what you guys are doing, which is creating this content and this community for it to be shared, to empower people. Which then makes the lives of us practitioners easier because they can go ahead and get the content, get the education, then come in ready for the consult and really get great results faster. For, you know, what's amazing about it is if you actually leverage it correctly and you, you make it efficient, they can get better results for less money, uh, because you set it up correctly.

Yeah, well said. You know, as I, as I think through the architecture of Life Network and what we're bringing to people. You and I will often talk about one of our favorite books, Sun Tzu's Art of War. In that, you, you have objective, strategy, then tactics. And I think what's important here is your strategy. Like, if you want better health, strategy needs to be about how you're educating yourself. How you're creating that 12-month game plan around learning, growing, so that you can then what? Tactically implement, tactically execute. So, I think Life Network becomes, I think, a very key remarkable platform for people to have that conversation, get the information that they need, get connected with experts they didn't even know existed, all in one spot, so that then they can start making decisions about their own health and wellness.

I absolutely agree. I've met colleagues in the last 2 years, and my thought when I met them was, you know, where were you 10 years ago? I wish I'd found you then. And there's so many great people in the health and wellness space, and it's exciting to be a part of what you guys are building to create this community and connect people who otherwise, uh, you know, in a time not so long ago, we're networking on the legacy social media platforms through regular Google search, but now those channels are so changed that that kind of organic networking is not happening, and we need to have communities where people who are philosophically in alignment are really in charge so that you can trust them with your time and your attention, because obviously that's what they're trusting you with, with Life Network. And I hope, and I think we've talked about this, that you guys will build in plenty of in-person interaction, because I think, you know, if I'm excited about anything, it's we're gonna do an event somewhere that you can actually go in person and meet other Life Network members. That would be really fun and exciting.

Yeah, actually we have our first one coming up. So, uh, most of the Life Network team along with Ben Greenfield will be at Health Optimization Summit in Austin, Texas, April— I believe it's April 12th. Uh, the folks at Health Optimization Summit, Tim Gray and his incredible team, have been very supportive of what we're doing. And so We will be hosting workouts, we'll be running some challenges, but we're also going to have for our members who are in the area, uh, a, a free kind of hosted dinner with mocktails and, and amazing seed oil-free food. And we'll have several of our network experts there. I believe Gary Brecka is going to be there talking at, uh, at the Health Optimization Summit. He just joined the network. So we've got some incredible people coming in, and we want to connect with our members. And so we want to do more of this. In fact, we're leaning towards not only a directory of what we're calling these kind of life zones, or seed oil-free restaurants that cook with farm-to-table foods. We, we want to provide, you know, where are you in the world and what's near you that is life-giving, and we want to kind of put our stamp of approval on it. And then we'd like to have kind of these what we're calling local life clusters or chapters where people can get together so we don't just live in the digital ether on this social media platform. We're actually creating real community around it. Absolutely.

I'm excited to be a part of it. Caleb, any parting thoughts or words?

Yeah, well, thanks so much for having me. Uh, thank you to your audience for hanging out with us. And yeah, I would say something that's been incredibly helpful to me: don't boil the ocean. Take one step, one foot in front of the other at a time. Transformation happens with habits, and habits are created one step at a time. Absolutely.

Caleb, thanks for joining me. Thank you.