LIFTS Episode 131 – Inside Athletech New York: The Biggest Ideas Shaping Fitness LIFTS LIVE in New York

22:00So I think you see that across technology and supplementation and other things.

22:04Matthew Januszek:We're talking about certain crossovers. You mentioned next year you've got Diplo potentially coming with this one. He's unfortunately not coming but we do have a yeah we're doing a 5k run with an unannounced uh dj that is a very cool prominent band so it'll be very cool right so so there's crossovers now with musicians djs and fitness is there any other areas where you're seeing some interesting overlaps and or other industries that probably weren't connected to fitness and wellness sort of getting involved in the space now whether that's consumer brands that are that are looking at that as an opportunity or even other sort of segments and industries?

22:44Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting. I mean, you know, our partners, you know, obviously in the first two years, almost all of our partners are brands like, you know, Function Health or whatever, Momentus, or, you know, there's brands that you would expect, endemic brands, for lack of a better word. Then we started working with Rivian, and now we have Ramp, and we have a bunch of other brands that, you know, you would think, oh, that's not a direct, well, why are you there? And the reason is the demographic. And I think that, you know, you're talking about highly educated, healthy, generally affluent, self-directed people who tend to inhabit this, you know, elite wellness sphere.

23:25And, you know, I think every brand wants to talk to that. And the other thing about it is, and we noticed this also back in Wanderlust days, is that wellness is a halo effect for a brand. So even if your brand has nothing to do with wellness, that you still want to associate it with it because you want to be associated with the positivity of the message. And I think that you're going to see more and more as it grows and broadens. I think you'll start to see more and more mainstream brands coming in for the ride, for sure. Do you see that wellness consumer tam expanding? Because we certainly do in the fitness and gym sector.

24:02And that's why you have brands like Ribbon, because there are two things. They want to signal that they care about those high intent consumers. And they're building products that would align with the thinking and lifestyle of people that are wellness focused. Ramp is interesting because they're more of a bank or an expense platform. Well, again, but they want to reach people who run companies. They want to reach, they know and they look at the stats on the incredible growth of the consumer health and wellness set. They want to sign up all those growing brands that are showing up at our site. We also run, we have a thing called Health Innovation Lab we do with Fit Insider, which is bringing together investors and CEOs or startup founders of earlier stage consumer health companies.

24:50And so that is another thing they want to be involved in because they're right there at the beginning. I mean, they need to sign companies up to continue their flywheel and sort of bring them into the ramp ecosystem. And the earlier they can do that, the better. So, you know, I think everyone's looking around and just seeing the growth, really, is what it comes down to. Well, let's dig into Health Innovation Lab here for a minute. Because I've matched you closest to our industry in some ways. What type of companies, if you're an early health innovator, you've got a product, how can they participate in the Health Innovation Lab?

25:21And if you're a larger company, how can they participate in it? Yeah, so it's targeted, I would say, at people that are seed or series A, sort of in that world where they have a product, it's not just an idea in their head. It's an application only event, so you do have to apply and we review to kind of make sure you're there because we want to make sure it's not so much a filter of who you are or how good your idea is, but rather that you're at a stage where you can take advantage of the kind of relationships you're making there. And so we're bringing in people who invest in, you know, seed, series A, series B companies.

25:55And so obviously there's that direct connection where you might meet the guy who writes the check to fund your next stage of growth. The people with more established, you know, so having, you know, Cat Cole from AG1 or Jonathan Swerdland from Function Health Comp, that's more of an inspirational. They're founders who have either exited or they're close to exit. There are people who can provide advice and almost mentorship to younger founders who, you know, haven't gone down that road yet. And so that would be another piece. And that's more there's a smaller smattering of people. But we really try to make sure we have people who come who can kind of show the path of how it looks to get from seed to, you know, Series D or exit.

26:35Matthew Januszek:What are you seeing is some of the emerging ideas which your group is thinking about investing in? And I'll probably put that a couple of ways. So clearly your speaker lineup is definitely going to be led by consumer interest. So there's certain topics that people are going to be talking about. And then you've got the investment side where they're looking for some of these very early stage entrepreneurs to put money into. So from your perspective, what are you seeing or hearing that could give a signal about where things are going to go in the next sort of three to five years and beyond? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a that's that's a tough one to answer.

27:21Clearly, I mean, I think it's one of the things I can say is that are we have a venture fund of our own that we're just starting in our thesis is to double down on evidence back. So we're really trying to make sure that I believe there's a lot of companies that have had a very successful launch based on celebrity profile or really good marketing. But I think, you know, as mentioned with my AI comments earlier, more and more consumers are going to be able to see through that. So you really need to make sure you have something that the science stands up. You have studies. So that's that's one thing.

27:55We're also looking for companies that have a bit of a moat. I think there is so much competition out there. And you look at the franchising model for like, that's what my panel is about later. And it's crazy how much activity there is. And so the question is, why is company A going to beat company B? And usually for us, at least, one of our theses is looking for companies that have some bit of protectable IP. It doesn't have to be a patent, but it could be like a trademark or an exclusive supply agreement. And it could be a network effect because they've already built a very large community. So just something that allows us to say, OK, you can stand out from the pack because, you know, the more money that's pouring in and we see what's going on, the more that's going to be, you know, the more that there's going to be more upstarts coming in to chase it.

28:42So, yeah, that would be that would be my off the top of my head. One final question. This event at Athlete Tech is very much of a fitness based event. and you're seeing that and bringing in speakers like yourself and others, brands from PanX Health, and to focus a bit more on the wellness side. Your event, I would say, is a lot more consumer, more B2B, and then a lot more wellness focus. There is a lot of fitness, too. I haven't talked about it much. That's my question, right? We're both in the fitness industry. Eudaimonia has been on the periphery for us. But I think that's the wellness industry as a whole, the Global Wellness Summit, as an example, massive event.

29:20They never have actually reached out to us to say, does the fitness industry want to be part of the Global Wellness Institute? But from a consumer perspective, that 10 ,000 consumers are coming. 10 ,000 of them are participating in fitness. Yes. Right. So why do you think that there's been a lack of this better interaction and collaboration between these two worlds? Yeah, that's such a good question. And actually, it's really funny because one of the things that I, one of my high level goals at starting Eudaimonia was to break down the barriers I saw that existed even within wellness, let alone fitness.

30:00So first of all, there's, you know, what I think of as OG wellness, which might be, you know, yoga and meditation and, you know, natural foods. There's the biohacking community, which is much more performance-operated, you know, site. There's a longevity space, tends to skew older, also sort of different remedies and protocols. And then there's, you know, even you look at functional medicine or let's call it the progressive wing of the conventional medicine world. And then there's all these things that feed into that. I mean, you cannot actually, without some form of fitness, you can't be well.

30:31You're right. 100 % of the people, there would have some sort of. So what is it? I think it's partially in all of these things. Why were those groups all disparate? Well, they culturally were like different groups. that came at it from different ways. And I think fitness culturally does have a slightly different vibe. And I notice even when I get like a fitness guy on a panel, and it's like, there's a different way of speaking. There's a different focus and emphasis. But I think what's really interesting is that crossover. And I've been working to break down those walls. I think you're seeing it happen naturally.

31:03That crossover, those walls are just absolutely dissolving. It's like the amount of gyms that are popping up, wellness centers or longevity centers inside them. It's happening all the time. You know, I think there's, you know, we have High Rocks and we have Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and we have running and we have Orange Theory coming. And, you know, there's so many major fitness brands. We have boxing coming like that are, you know, very much part of it because that's what our wellness consumer also wants. And so I think it's really just that we've all been talking past each other and maybe the capital flow and the just community sort of aspects were bifurcated, but that's really starting to break down now.

31:45Maybe wearables is another factor too, because it's like you now have this dashboard, which you're looking at every day, which is saying, yeah, you need to be out there and move more. But guess what? You also need to sleep better. You need to, you know, you go down the list. So yeah, it's a great question.

32:00Matthew Januszek:Well, thank you very much for your time. And hopefully we're going to be at Eudaimonia. Yeah. Yeah, well, now that we've broken down the walls, we expect to see you there. So that's great. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, John. Pleasure. Appreciate it. So we have Eric Casaburi. And Eric, you are, well, I view you as an industry OG and a legend. And Matthew, I'll tell you the story why. So you know this, but I moved to New Jersey in 91. And there weren't that many. I mean, we had, I think, New York Sports Club at the time. I worked at YMCA. There was a club up in Wyckoff. That's right.

32:32Oakland Athletic. Was that it? or? Well, there's one in Oakland. Yes. So I worked out there because my dad played squash. And I remember they had the rackets, right? So I graduated college in 98, but I stayed local. So off of Route 4, the gym opens up, retro fitness. And Eric, of course, like I know Eric now, but he was the founder of retro fitness. He had an incredible run. You're still involved, still on the board. Yes. But what we want to talk about today is we're at Athletec in New York and Eric founded Serotonin. So to me, Eric, you're in the industry. You kind of love the industry. So I think we did something to you and you're now coming out.

33:10Look, we're trying to pull you back. We literally are. I said, Eric, are you going to be at this event in Europe? She's like, what are you talking about? How do you not know about Athletic happening? This was maybe two weeks ago. Yeah. You weren't supposed to be here. No, no. But are you glad you're here? I'm absolutely delighted. And thank you. It was a text message from Mo that is like, hey, literally, that's a true story. Like, yeah, it was out of the blue. I'm sitting on my couch and I'm like, look at my wife. I'm like, how do I not know about this? You know, like I, and then I looked into it.

33:36I connected with Ed and next thing you know, Mo makes an email connection. I talked to Pete more about it. And then all of a sudden he's like, you got to go to this thing. You got to be here. And I'm so glad I'm here because this is an incredible event. And it's just great to be around all the people. And you said, you're never really out of this business in fitness, right? It's like the mafia, right? You kind of can't get out of it. And all the connections, right? Like all you people, all the friends that I've made. And now with Serotonin, obviously, we're trying to make that intersection, that merge happen with the business I currently run and the business I currently ran.

34:08I used to run, right? So the current intersection, I think, is the future of the business anyway. So it's exciting to be here and get to have these conversations.

34:16Matthew Januszek:Well, Eric, you're a successful entrepreneur, know a lot about business. Take me back to your mindset when you started retro. some of the things that you noticed some of the things that got you excited um in order to go on and build that business and then what what would you connect to when you started serotonin and you know talk talk about that journey as and and some of the things i guess that you'd learned during that journey at retro that have put put you in the position where you are now to to go on with a slightly different venture i mean i've always been a healthy fitness crusader as kind kind of like I refer to myself because I've loved since my early, early teens, I was always exercising, working out.

35:01I was into the gyms because of sports and athletics. I got a job in my first gym because we couldn't afford a gym membership. So my mother said, well, go get a job there and they'll give you the membership for free. And that's what I did. So I learned the business really from the, I say from the urinal cakes up, because that was my first job. I cleaned the bathrooms, changed the urinal cakes out. No way. I was the locker room guy. Yeah. I did it all. I did not go that far. Yeah. I was, I was pretty deep. The first I went as it relates to that was I worked at GNC to get a discount on my supplements.

35:28There you go. There you go. That's a good discount, like 40 % or something. Listen, employee discounts are awesome. So that's where it really started. It always resonated. So as I was getting older, got personal training certificates, there are all kinds of things to stay integrated. And when I finally got to open up my first gym, it was 1996, 30 years ago. I mean, I can't believe I'm saying that out loud. 30 years ago, I opened my first gym. I was a kid, made a lot of mistakes, learned a ton, geographically successful, right place, right time, with a good gym, great equipment. And I just loved the people.

35:56I loved what we were doing. I loved helping people. I loved seeing people get fit. I loved being fit. It's been really the foundation of most of my life. It was really fixed. And as I started to iterate, I wanted to grow. I wanted to expand. I started going to conferences. I started going to Tony Robbins things. I did Alicia Power with Ann. I mean, you name it. I did. I did business masters. I went to saw Zig Ziglar speak. So I started following all of these great people to educate myself on how to grow, on self-growth. And then self-growth. and then I had to expand my business horizons as well.

36:24And then I thought of Retro Fitness and it was really, it was 2004, I trademarked Retro Fitness, launched the first franchise, you know, year and a half later, turned my gyms into the Retro Fitness brand and we hit it at the right time. I had gotten a phone call from someone you guys probably know. It was actually Brian Mitchell. He's a dear friend. And Brian says, he goes, hey, you got to check out these guys in New Hampshire. And they were doing the first HVLP. It was big problems, right? It was Planet Fitness. And I said, well, how can they make any money doing that? I let's charge at$49,$59 a month in my gyms, and we were doing really well.

36:56And then I hired my accountant to research the math, right? Because I'm an operator. I'm not an accountant. And when we looked at it, we saw personal change, what we could do here, our juice bars. We were going to just put a different spin on it, which is how I built the retro brand. I built it with all of not just purely no frills at a low price, but we started to be additive, which is what you're seeing today with, I mean, look at Crunch 3.0, all these bigger brands. They're iterating and being additive to the brand. They just put in Pilates. I mean, they're doing amazing things. But that's how I built Retro.

37:24I built it off. So the foundation was entry, take the barriers down. Rudy Fabiano and I had these conversations many times when we were designing the gym. He's like, you've got to create, you've got to get all the detours out of the way. You've got to create something that makes me want to stay. Touch points. And I was thinking, well, price is a thing that makes you want to stay. But then you have to have these other touch points. So we added the juice bar in. We kept them. We really pushed heavy on that. We added group training when it started to get popular. Of course, aerobics was over there.

37:49We had spin. we've done every iteration of all of it and we made it work for the client so to answer your question a very short question with a long answer you know as we're iterating the retro fitness brand i kept falling more and more in love with what i was doing it was i mean it it was never work it's just never worked for me like even what i do today i love it so much i love it too much probably but i got into franchising because there's a way to expand and it really really did well we really started franchising heavily in 2008 when everybody was running out of markets rents were really low some of the best leases my franchisee signed was that year.

38:21I mean, and then a decade or two later, really paid dividends for the people that really took that entrepreneurial chance. And we really fed into the entrepreneurial community. And that's how that brand was built. It was built on the backs of our hard work with the entrepreneurs' hard work and risk. And fast forward, 2019 is when I stepped down at Retro Fitness, started the serotonin brand research, researched everything. Took me a solid two years and COVID happened. So most people took a breather. I was just like, wow, more time to work, less people and distractions. I crushed it during that period because I was able to get all my research done.

38:54I hired all the consultants. I didn't know the consultants in this industry. I'm in longevity. I'm in med schools. I didn't know who the Tom Plummer was, who the Scott Scurver was. I didn't know them in this industry. I know them all in our industry. So I learned and I met and I did all that diligence. It gave me the time to really just stay heads down, really focused and build what I thought was the original pro forma. and you know a pro form is only as good as it is after you put it to work and then you really see what it can do and then we built the first store in 2021 we opened it so we've been we've been at it since 2019 really working with clients and learning and we've been learning the whole time we're still learning and we built an incredible machine but we took a lot of punches in the face you know we learned a lot about this complex business and then i saw where the intersection should be and i'm like oh my god our best clients wound up being our fitness clients the ones that could get to work out whenever we put them on any protocol whether it's hormones or or or a glp the ones that were in the gyms in the studios in the blocks they were filling it data wise like their in-body scans were amazing so then we had a sit down and we said well maybe we should be looking leaning more toward where our real best clients are that are looking to really get in better shape feel better look better be healthier and they're inside the gyms so we've been talking about this now for a few months and you have gone back and forth and I've been talking to people in the industry and you believe, I think I would agree with you that, in fact, we had this conversation right before this in the break room area that are the gyms going to be offering clinic-like services inside the four walls?

40:32And we've talked about this. When I go to the gym industry and people that you and I both know, they'll say, well, why How would I give my member to them and they're controlling the journey? What you just explained was this is a great retention tool and it's going to help keep the member. It's going to be more outcome focused. So speaking, you know, you come from the gym industry. How would you speak back to your peers on why they should be thinking about serotonin or other types of wellness services within their four walls? So, Mo, to that exact point, most of the research we did is one, I started learning about the clients that were really, really effective.

41:09In our Orlando market, we are very popular with a local, there's a local Pilates studio. They're great, Fit407, they're awesome. And we're very friendly with the owners because we just know each other really well. We all live in the same area. And it was the success of a lot of their clients at our centers that made us think that it's a retention tool for them. They crush it, I mean, crush it. But I would say a good portion, a very large majority of their clients are our clients. so there's attribution of that retention to the success because we have them on whether it's on hrt peptides or glp monitoring it helping them with their macro so when they go and do that workout they're getting the results for it so we explain to the gym we're not giving us a client we're helping you retain your clients we're partners in yeah we're the we're the part of the box that you're you can't it's well i think you can't very difficult to do it yourself but it's a necessity if you really believe in retention and the attrition issue, this is a solution.

42:05It's like saying, why am I giving my client to the treadmill or to the spinning structure? I just want to go a little bit deeper on that one. You mentioned doing it yourself. So there's so many degrees of implementation. You could offer and kind of outsource some of the services. You could just say, I'm going to offer maybe IV drip therapy, but not get any peptides. You could just say, if you're on a peptide or GLP-1, I'll educate my trainers to come and understand what that means. What is the right balance? because we have these conversations and Jim's unclear about what should they offer their members?

42:36Should it be physical? And then what is the scope of services that they should offer? There's a very defined line in the sand. If you're going to offer anything medical, even an IV, you're putting a needle in someone. You need now a medical practitioner, medical director. You've got to follow an incredible amount of rules and laws and follow CPON, corporate practice of medicine. So if you step over that line, you're in that game, you're in that box. You better know all the legality, the potential harms, the harnesses, consent, everything. HIPAA, PHI, there's a whole new world you have stepped into.

43:04You are now becoming a plumber and you're going to become an electrician. You need to go to trade school because if you don't, you're going to get hurt and you're going to hurt people. That's really bad. Now, the other side of that line is I just put in a trial bed or I put in a red light therapy bed or something that's not medical. It could be part of recovery, but it's not really part of the full suite. And I've said this before, What really needs to happen is you need to start with blood work. So if you're really going to be in the recovery game, you really need to understand your client because it's all part of it.

43:34It's blood work. It's looking at inflammation, cortisol, hormones, of course, A1C, fasted glucose. This is all stuff that's important to an exerciser. Insulin sensitivity. These are meaningful terms that an exerciser should know, but you need a provider that's qualified to sit with them and read this information. So now you're in a medical business essentially. I mean, if you really want to be in the recovery business, what we feel is the right way, because we do it every day, hyperbaric chambers, red light beds, IV therapy, Peptop, that is the whole suite of recovery. You can portion it off, but you're really not in full recovery.

44:09You're just not. It's like going to surgery, and they do the sutures, and they don't put a bandage on top. It's only part of the job. That's how I look at it. That's how we feel about it. We've seen the best results, and we've done a full suite with clients. and I don't think the industry is solved doing it what I would say half-assed. So from Eric's perspective, what caused you, well, what drove you personally to say,

44:31Matthew Januszek:I'm going to set up this totally new business called serotonin compared to, hey, look, we've got this footprint, we've got all these potential clients that could buy a lot of these services. What stopped you figuring out a model where you could actually plug that straight into your existing business or come up with a new model compared to setting it up yourself? And for you personally, that is. I would say if it was 10 years ago and I was in the peak of running retro fitness at that time, I likely would have probably brought this in in a very full, sweet environment like I just described. The inspiration for the business really came from my wife.

45:12My wife is now 53, 41. She went through early menopause. She had no idea what it was. the OBs were just telling her, freeze your uterus, do a really bad advice, things to do that didn't solve what her problem was, was she had no estrogen in her blood. She had a very small traceable amount of testosterone. She was like a walking ghost. It was crazy. She was getting, so the inspiration for that was seeing her go through this and then finally learning the third doctor we spoke to trying to continually find solutions that said, check her hormones. And when we checked her hormones, we learned all that information I just said.

45:43The very next day, because we learned that if you don't have estrogen, obviously, if you don't know this, and our listeners don't know this, estrogen protects our heart. So women at an exponential rate die because of cardiovascular issues, heart issues, not because of breast cancer, which is all very important, and it gets a lot of attention. But if they realize that protecting your heart with estrogen and having your hormones optimized is really, really much more important to longevity and health optimization for a female, especially for a female. Bone density, osteoporosis, osteopenia, all that gets offset and trajectory changes when you optimize hormones.

46:12So watching my wife go through that and seeing that happen so she won a bioidentical pellet the very next day and our lives changed our marriage changed our parenting changed it's there is correlated data that's happening now between the divorce rate and hormone decline in a certain age group right now that you can read wow it's crazy but i went which we understand it so kim and i talk very empathetically and passionately about it kim she's she's in sold out crowds now talking all around orlando to women's groups and and and doesn't make a penny for it but does it all you know free in she'll pay for women's blood work.

46:43She'll sign them up and say, I'm going to pay for your blood work. And she'll put them in the book because she's that past. Cause she saw how it fixed her life. It really did. So that's what put us on a path of passion for it. And moving forward, I look back now and say, gosh, if the timing was probably different, I probably would have done this a lot earlier. And we really would have been ahead of the curve. And it would have been almost like, it's a little taboo women's, you know, hormones up until very recently, which it shouldn't have been. Cause my wife's gone for 12 years and she's, incredibly healthy thank god and she is as happy she's ever been you got it i mean i won't even stand next to her in a pilates class because like she's like she's i look like an idiot like she's incredibly strong at every level so i think today is different in my view than it was then and you know it's always you always have hindsight is always 20 20.

47:29but had i known what i had an experience that we went through i probably would have been like i wouldn't have even thought it would have been a mandate i would have been we're definitely doing this like and there's no you wouldn't be able to change my mind to be honest man and you think about the ripple effect that has defendant centers too. She might be great at the gym, but not seeing the progress and always questioning what's going on. So there's an awareness element of this that you're telling me about that I think the industry is lacking. You don't learn this stuff by taking a NASM certification.

47:57You don't hear this stuff by even at an Equinox QRS certification. So the awareness has to be built. I mean, how can the industry learn more about the awareness side? and this is where the important part comes we call it edutainment right you got to entertain people so we do a lot of content conversations like this that will iterate out there and they'll get out into the world we do a ton of it so our goal is is in our content if we're in for serotonin right now we have shifted from all the silly stuff that you would see in in on instagram for for people doing stuff in gyms and the fitness and wellness and even the med spa space we've really leaned into talking education points and teaching and giving examples and then doing before and after testimonials.

48:38So it's about educating, educating the trainers, not just the owners, the people that are communicating directly with the clients, with the members. They have to understand there's a whole nother level to your success. That's beyond what I'm doing inside the four walls of my gym today. And I tell the story often about my first experience. I remember at my gym in the late nineties, when a guy came in waving a prescription pad, I just talked about this and he had a prescription and we're like, what are we going to do with this guy? His doctor said he's got to join the gym. And I'm like, we don't have anybody qualified to look at that prescription and do anything with you.

49:06And it was true. You put him on a treadmill, you hope for the best, you give him a workout, maybe you work on his macros. It's nuts. And when you think about it today, you're like, wow, there's so much more help. How do you do it? It's teaching, Mo. It's educating the staff, the team, the players of the whole picture, because you really want that client to be successful. The reality and the truth is, is the gym and the fitness is only one component, right? We know that. Sleep is another component. We know nutrition. We've been talking about it for years in the gyms. Yeah, Dot Fit, Apex, Neal Spruce.

49:34He built a whole company around that. Another component here that was really good. And then you've got this whole recovery. And then you've got this medical component. So when I talk to friends and I do these talks for high-net-worth individuals in my community that I talk to, and I really have, it's like a four-page PowerPoint. And it talks about the four pillars. And fitness is, of course, is one I could talk probably the whole thing about. I love it. But it's only one pillar. We talk about the recovery pillar, the nutrition pillar, and we talk about the medical pillar. We need your blood. Because if those two aren't connected, Your doctor isn't familiar with your routine and your gym trainer doesn't understand what your doctor wants to do.

50:05And your doctor has to be educated in law, so you have to have the right type of medical practitioner, right? So some of your general practitioners, they may not be fond of any of this because they didn't learn it or they didn't study it. It's just not their lane. And I respect that. They're very intelligent. They're great at what they do. But they may not be great at advising someone whose goals aren't to not die, but to live incredibly well.

50:28Matthew Januszek:Eric, thank you very much for your time today. It's my pleasure, Matt. It's great to be with you guys. Hussein, with Ultra Human, we're so excited to have you on. I'm going to have my Ultra Human ring on now for six months at least, I think. Maybe a little longer. Not the latest one. Well, this one's new. This one I've had on for like about two weeks, maybe three weeks. This is the Ring Pro, which is now selling in the U.S., right? There's a history behind this, which we can get to in a minute. Yeah, I've got my charger with me. um this thing holds so like the ring itself is 14 hours which is pretty impressive and then that charger i don't know i've only charged it like once i think and it's nice i don't know how many hours this thing has a charge for um 45 days 35 days well we're excited to have you on thanks for being on lifts well thanks for having me so you've been we've been starting to you've been telling me a little bit about uh glucose monitors um blood glucose or continuous glucose.

51:23Matthew Januszek:So tell us a little bit about the history of that, like how it started, where it is today and what you guys' involvement is with it. So most people know UltraHuman as a smart ring company because we offer the leading no subscription smart ring in the world, leading smart ring in Asia. But the origin of the company actually started in metabolic health. So UltraHuman had built a digital fitness and content app during COVID that grew a community and essentially launched an integration with an app at CGM as the first hardware that connected to the app ecosystem and the UltraHuman platform which was called M1 essentially for metabolism.

52:09And the goal was to give you know non-diabetics and everyday users, biohackers, performers, everyday people, an understanding of how different foods affected their body by showing you continuous glucose. And interestingly, the very first clinical studies that UltraHuman worked on were not with smart rings because the company didn't have a smart ring at the time, but were with Fitbits and CGMs. So 2021 was when some of that work started. And in 2024, it ended up getting published in Nature. the concept of metabolic health tracking in non-diabetics and pre-diabetics. This notion of metabolic scoring.

52:49So we give you a metabolic score out of 100. Similarly to how now in the sleep experience, in the ring experience, you get a sleep score and a recovery score and an activity score as well. So those are sort of the four scores we give you. Of course, if you use the CGM in conjunction with the ring, with the platform, you see not only how different foods affect your body, but how different foods can affect your sleep as well.

53:17Matthew Januszek:One of the things that I always notice that we talk about a lot with the rings and alcohol is you can see how that affects your sleep quite significantly. But I've never thought about food and sleep. So what sort of things are you seeing by having the, what is it called? What's the patch called? CGM glucose monitor so what sort of things do you typically noticing with food and sleep yeah it's pretty interesting we discovered that a bunch of different users discovered that actually they can't intermittent fast without it affecting their sleep which is which is really interesting actually so they were just seeing a lot of periods of light sleep based on intermittent fasting I think more women than men as well interestingly so that was one another good example was in the morning most women it turns out you know should eat something before they work out if they do morning workouts so essentially they they their body does not do fasted workouts as well so I mean you can see from from basically glucose you're you know glucose basically brings down cortisol as well so you know there's a certain patterns we've seen in morning glucose that kind of correlate that we've correlated to you know morning cortisol and then based on activity or based on you know morning data and same with ring data as well the ring data based on circadian is very correlated with cortisol patterns the biggest thing is that we have a lot of wearables and they're actually your data is related so your glucose impact so the sleep thing i know is interesting because you you intermittent fast yeah and and i i actually eat late neither one of which i think are great on for sleep right so i need to stop eating late but i learned a lot like little things so after after dinner yesterday i said let's walk back to the hotel instead of taking an uber to bring your glucose because it stabilized your glucose so i learned a lot of that behavior from actually wearing a cgm now the part that i didn't know is because so i i think also use levels as well um was how it tied into other things like your hrv your sleep quality um even your performance because they never really integrated that together so and the other thing is a lot of companies today that i've seen are wearable companies that are adding a cgm with this story here they started with studying glucose and cgm then came the wearable so it's almost like they started in health care in a lot of ways and coming in which i thought the cgm is a medical device right so technically the first hardware product of our ecosystem.

56:01Right now we have multiple products that we make ourselves, some that we've launched with partners, but we have two versions of the ring, obviously. We have a home device as well that measures your environment and tells you about why you might be sleeping poorly, which you know from your ring, but you don't necessarily always know why. And then now we also have a really cool red light therapy portable device called the UltraHuman Photon, which we can talk about a little bit. But yes, the company started with an integration with a medical hardware device and brought it to the wellness space. We were essentially, you know, there was no levels in Asia, essentially, right?

56:39So the sort of ultra human was that brand. And quickly they were like, okay, we would like to show users how it's affecting their sleep and their daily life and try to find patterns. You know, some people can metabolize, you know, sugar much better, say, before going to bed. just like some people can metabolize alcohol much better. Most people will tell you that their heart will take longer to drop to its resting heart rate baseline during sleep, but a few people, I think, will say that they can drink a little bit of alcohol in the evening and sleep like a baby. but similar thing like oh with ice cream before bed we've heard a lot of those stories we've actually heard stories of one of members of my team told me that she used to always snack or have something sweet before she went to bed and realized that it's just not something her body can handle and notice a huge difference in her in her sleep change and similarly in the morning as well there's something called the dawn phenomenon which we've

57:51Matthew Januszek:observed um well you got a spike of glucose in the morning yeah so different yeah that's what i used to have when i wore it like for some reason it would just even if i was fast like is i guess is that a natural thing that your body does like gives you a dump of uh glucose in the morning to kind of give you your energy from your that's the thing it really depends and you really can't know unless you measure right uh and that's what was so so so fascinating is when i came across UltraHuman and met the founders early 2023, they shipped me a ring and a CGM sort of in the same package and it was the first version of the ring which was actually pre-ring error, there was actually a version before that, I don't know if you guys knew that, but it was called R1 which was actually the first notchless smart ring so the first you know glucose platform version of the app was called M1 for metabolism one and R1 was the ring for a ring one right so R1 and M1 were sort of the first two products of UltraHuman.

58:49And, you know, I was interested because I had previously worked at, you know, in the smart ring space, and so I knew a bit about it, and I was curious to see how it would work, and I saw that my periods of, like, my recovery was poor one day due to periods of light sleep, but those periods of light sleep were actually caused by nocturnal hypoglycemic episodes. So in the timeline on the home screen of the app is the earliest early version of the app early 2023. I was seeing, you know, glucose crashes triggering periods of light sleep, which is why my sleep score was was bad and why ultimately my my recovery was poor the next day.

59:29Do you give the insights then? And then do you then say with these two things combined, so the app could read glucose data and ring data and then it gives you corrective feedback. Does it do that now or not yet? Yeah, so we have a few different, I would say, I would call it like series of nudges and series of insights that are cross-correlated between the two. There isn't a specific journey yet for, say, weight loss. There is a companion power plug now. You guys are familiar with the power plugs, which are additional plugins. Most of them are free, some of them are paid. It basically stands for powerful plugins.

1:00:16There is one now for GLP-1 companion. For a lot of our users that were tagging that they were on GLP-1s, Interestingly, we built this journey for them to be able to log their symptoms, to be able to log their dosage. And we are monitoring them through that platform using data from not just actually CGM and Ring, but also now blood. So we have a blood testing service on the platform that was launched initially in 2024 and then expanded last year with a partnership with LabCorp notably. and you can, through the app, order a blood test. Either we send somebody to a user's home, or they can choose to go into their local lab, or they can also choose to upload an existing blood report, and that data gets digested as well.

1:01:06So that GLP-1 companion power plug will pull data from your blood test, from your CGM, and from your ring, and it will give you things like there's a safety radar baked in, So, you know, if you're taking the medication in a safe way, and I think that's something pretty important that, you know, people that are taking GLP-1s, which is still fairly recent, you know, can really benefit from.

1:01:30Matthew Januszek:With glucose, one of the things I was reading recently was because of the introduction of these glucose wearables for regular people, that they were getting obsessed almost like why I was about when my glucose score was going high. And it was people were like worrying unnecessarily about that because this guy in particular was saying, well, that's just a normal thing. So, you know, just because it goes up when you've had food, it's not something you should be worried about. keeping your score down or obsessing over and I know the levels the way that and I'm going back a while since I used it but the way the way the app was presenting the information it always looked like whatever you've eaten and you get this spike it was bad even if you had pretty good food so from your perspective coming from the glucose monitoring background for more people that I guess diabetics that need it what what are some of the rules or what what are some of the things that you should be thinking about for regular people about that glucose spike because surely it's something that just goes up or down and are you meant to just sort of be mindful of it or are there any particular cues that you should be taking away that you guys are presenting that's a really good question and i think there's two ways of answering it one way is to you know So compared to say the one score that would change continuously throughout the day, which is our movement index, right?

1:02:58So I think other wearables might call that activity score. Similarly to, we have sleep, recovery, movement, and stress rhythm as well. And actually recovery was rebranded to dynamic recovery, so after we launched added circadian insights. And we can get into that as well. But your sleep and recovery score are determined mostly from nocturnal data. So those won't change throughout the day versus the movement index and the stress rhythm will change throughout the day. And of course, the movement is the one that will change continuously. So one way of answering it is to say that the same people that would obsess or might worry about their movement and their steps, I think everybody often talked about, is it a good thing that some people obsessed about making sure they do 10 ,000 steps a day, or is it something that drove people crazy?

1:03:57I think most people, or certainly you guys would probably argue that it is a good thing. Similarly, one could argue that, oh, it's actually a good thing if people obsessed about their glucose variability and keeping their glucose score high and within that threshold. and it's similarly, let's say, a bad thing, because all obsessions are a bad thing, right? Everything is moderation, as those people that obsess too much about their steps and their movement score. So that's, I guess, one way one could answer that question. The other way would be that, you know, I think people that are non-diabetic, pre-diabetic, that use CGM, you know, there's two real, two different types of people.

1:04:42There are the super optimizers and performers. They're just like everyday people that really should learn about how specific foods, like what, they could make small changes in their diet. Like I discovered I just can't handle potatoes. I can't handle bananas well before workouts. Like it's really interesting how different bodies react. And really what you want to do is you want to log, there's a very easy way to log your food in the metabolism tab on the graph. And so you can do that. And, you know, we will learn about how different foods are affecting your body. And eventually, you know, you don't have like, you don't change your diet constantly.

1:05:21So you're only going to log a finite amount of things really in there. And out of that finite amount of things, you'll be able to learn, okay, where can you make small changes? We did publish some data around Ramadan. So I don't know if you guys knew this, but the company started in India, then expanded to the Middle East, right, to the UAE was the second market in which our products were launched, and then the U.S. and the U.S. became one of our largest markets. But there was a Ramadan mode in the app that we introduced actually two years ago. It's been two years in a row where we introduced a mode for people that were fasting during that period.

1:06:02And we published a few studies around glucose and sleep variations for people during Ramadan. You can also see how people who were fasting that were on their menstrual cycles had different deviations. So some of this research was published.

1:06:16Matthew Januszek:Go back to Ramadan just quickly. Were there any standout things that happened to regular people that were fasting? What did that do to their sleep? Yeah, so what's interesting about Ramadan is relative to a regular fast is there's also no water most of the time. Right. And so it's interesting because sometimes, you know, we thought that various things were being affected by, you know, like fasting all day. But there's also certain things we saw in, you know, I would say sleep, like the like the light sleep periods. There were some light sleepers, I think, that probably didn't hydrate as well before going to bed.

1:07:02And those were certain habits that I think we had to factor out in the data.

1:07:07Matthew Januszek:Do you think people were sleeping better because they were fasting? Or I know some people that fast have real problems sleeping. It seems to give them all this energy. Do you know which way it ended up or not? In general, people were sleeping less well and had more periods of light sleep. Yeah, and more nocturnal hypoglycemic episodes, from what I know. But I think the people who hydrated well were able to deal with that better. And I think in general, with intermittent fasting, again, it does depend. It does vary quite significantly between men and women. but it's very interesting to compare Ramadan compared to regular intermittent fasting from just the hydration by just removing the hydration component.

1:07:57Of course, we don't have a way of measuring continuous hydration, or at least not yet. So ultra-human is building, to me, an ecosystem. We always talk about how important ecosystems are. You've got to build this personal health awareness. So you've got CGMs. You've got blood vision, which tests your blood data. You've got nutrition. You even have an ultra-human home. I've got this ultra-human little home thing next to my bed. One, what's next? You talked about Red Light and others, but what is next? The next big one is part of the ecosystem. And do you think that this is what all of the companies have to do to really be more outcome-focused, that they have to look at multiple inputs to have the right output?

1:08:41Yeah. It's always a really interesting debate. and we have this internally as well, of breadth versus depth of data, essentially. Or let's say breadth of data streams versus depth of biomarker and biomarker intelligence, essentially. I think we have a really good foundation of data streams around metabolism, around sleep, movement, recovery, and stress that essentially come from our best seller of environmental data from the home and of blood data to start to build some really cool, deep customer journeys. But right now, it's sort of like you're giving consumers all this data, but what should they do with it?

1:09:27And so that's kind of what's really next for us is really building out beyond the ecosystem these vertical integrations, these power plugs, these journeys to help consumers do something about their day. So we now have a pocket doctor that allows users to order their insomnia medication or GLP-1s or consult a physician. Because I think ultimately, you have one set of users that are fine with data and using AI to, you guys are probably part of the people that like to use Claude to put in your own data. And we have our own bio-intelligence assistant in the app called Jade. So Jade AI, you can talk to it, ask it to, you know, about, oh, is my, you know, wearable data affecting my blood work?

1:10:17Like, when should I get my next blood test? And some people are happy with that experience, but many people still are gonna need that human touch. I don't think, I'm not somebody who personally believe in the AI doctor as a one solution fits all. I think it really is gonna depend. Some people are gonna be more comfortable, getting more and more comfortable getting advice from AI that can look at their data objectively. But many people are still going to want to speak to a physician, have them look at their data, or have them look at a report that might have been generated by an AI. So I don't think I'm a big promoter of like, oh, AI is going to solve all the problems, just give it data, and expect consumers to change their lifestyle and their behavior.

1:11:03So that's really exciting. We'll be sure to include that. But we're at time right now, but thank you so much for coming on. We're going to have to get you back on. I think maybe dig into specifics.

1:11:16Matthew Januszek:Yeah, it would be nice to do a deep dive in a lot of this, because there's so many things you've covered, like a whole raft of different things that we could be very keen to go into. So maybe we break down those key subjects, and we'll get you on with some sort of, I don't know what we call it, like biohacking, tracking. Yeah. I'm going to have to get some more briefs to read, some more briefs of the science team. They're always coming out with new things, so make sure I have to be up to date and well prepared as well. Sounds good. Congratulations. You've done a great job. I'm very excited about what you guys are up to.

1:11:53Matthew Januszek:It's pretty unique. Thanks, Brian. Thanks again. Thanks. You got it. Well, we've got Brian on again for the second time. So, Brian, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah. You've been in the industry with, I think, many different journeys. You were at Othership. You had a life before that. Now I look at you as a mastermind networker, and you just run this phenomenal group, which whenever I'm able to join, I get so much out of. I have not made it out to one of your group events. We need to make that a focus. It invites there, man. We've got to make that a focus to do it. Why don't you tell us about what you're working on now?

1:12:30because another group continues to evolve continues to get better yeah um and yeah what you're seeing trending yeah so i mean as you said i'm somebody i've had a number of lives in the industry i was early at tough mudder i was early at other ship uh i was at berries for a while i've actually been a founder myself in the space so i don't know through all that i've just noticed that um a couple things are true first of all it's hard to grow a health and wellness brand i think that It's a lot easier to sell cigarettes and booze. But to me, it's also true that it's an all boats rise industry. And we say this a lot, but it actually is true.

1:13:02The more healthy consumers out there, the more all of us benefit. And the last thing that I noticed is that a lot of the fitness people hang out together and a lot of the mental health people hang out together and a lot of the wearable people hang out together. But actually, the consumer starts to see everybody as a little more linked than they are maybe in the business's mind. And so I just on the side a couple of years ago, started to get founders and growth leaders together in the health and wellness space. I'm somebody with a background in building community, but also I'm somebody who really cares about this world needs to get healthier.

1:13:35And the more that we like zoom out and remember that, and that we're all brothers and sisters in arms fighting that same fight, it creates an environment where you can actually have a giving mindset. And we can also all benefit commercially too. And so all this kind of led me to a place where I got these people together. It clicked because like you said, when you come to these events, it's so nice to be around people who share the same values as you. And you're like, these are my people. These are who I want to spend time with. And so I started to do it, little events on the side. And then I started to do bigger events.

1:14:03When I became a dad, I was like, I want to do my own thing again. I'm going to go for this. And we're now a community of over 225 members. We've got big name brands like Aura, 8sleep, Peloton, Headspace represented, but a lot of up and coming brands too. And it's simple. It's just a give first community. We meet virtually monthly, quarterly in person, and we have a Slack community for the day-to-day. And it's like different people get different things out of it. Some of the early stage are looking for fundraising advice or they're trying to find partnerships. Some of the later stage people are looking for creative growth strategies.

1:14:33But I think about this a lot. When I was at Tough Mudder, the things that people liked the most, we electrically shocked people. We got them in the dumpsters of ice. They loved reaching over a wall and helping someone else. And it sounds cheesy, but actually we as humans want to help other people. And if you create the right environment, people really get a lot. And then it all comes back tenfold. As you know, you guys know this better than you put people on your podcast, you know, things happen. And then a couple of years later, it comes back around. And so creating environments where that can happen, especially in an intentional curated way.

1:15:05I don't know. People seem to like it.

1:15:07Matthew Januszek:So I joined one of your remote ones and I got into a couple of groups. And there was one of the things that stood out to me was, as you say, I think there's lots of these different pockets within the health and wellness space and they don't necessarily always merge or share ideas. And what I liked about the group I was in was there was a real mix of everything from trainers to business owners. But it was it was really engaging because we all shared a lot of the lot of similar problems, but from different perspectives. It was a young lad who was super, like, huge following on social media, just really seemed to dial that whole thing in, but was learning about his business.

1:15:47Matthew Januszek:And we had a really cool conversation. And then there was another guy who had a very high end. I think it was your guy from Monarch Health Clubs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Dr. Ryan Green. Yeah, we had this doctor on there that was talking about his gym. And we had a really, really great conversation. And so my question to you, Brian, is, one, how do you get that eclectic mix of people? because I think that's extremely valuable to be able to pull those ideas together. Not easy to do. And then secondly, what would you see in terms of some of the themes now that you're hearing your group talk about? What are some of the things that stand out in terms of conversational themes or ideas that are on people's minds?

1:16:27Yeah. I mean, first of all, I know everyone personally in the group. I don't do any outbound, so it's all word of mouth. It's all referral-based. and it's very much like it's hard and takes a lot of work to make sure that the people in the room, but like one of the best descriptions I've ever had of the group is it's good people pipeline. Yeah. Like you know that you're going to come, it's going to be people worth meeting, even if it's not exactly the vertical that you're in. So it's hard. I can't claim to say like we, everybody who applies, I would say, you know, 25, 30 % of them, actually I let them in the group because it's like, you really have to be selective to make sure that it's going to be the type of people that you want to interact with.

1:17:03And it doesn't mean they have to be like rock stars. You know, it just means that are you the right mindset? Are you the right type of person who like is going to get the vibe for lack of a better term? And it's so funny. They sound so simple, but there's actually complexity to it. But the things that people are talking about right now, I mean, fundraising is a very interesting topic, right? I think that there's a lot of people who are fundraising right now. And I think there's it's a little more action than I've seen in the past. Are you finding more? Well, one question is around curation, which in a minute, but as well as fundraising, is it more the early stage companies?

1:17:34Is it more companies that are looking to scale? What type of requests are you seeing come in? It's both. I mean, so yeah, I mean, we're, so one of the things I do is I send an email every two months to people in the, to investors I know of people in the group who are fundraising. So I don't get anything out of it, but it's a value add, I think for everybody. And I love it. And yeah, you get it. There's a couple that I got that I'm actually in active conversations with from that group. I found some really interesting companies. I'm like, I'd love to be a part of that. Yeah. And it's, it's like, it's really nice to be able to like be that connective tissue.

1:18:03But as you've probably seen, it's like we've got some people who are the Pre-Seed, the Series A, Beyond, who are like, we've got six locations. We want to blow it up to 50. And then we've got some earlier stages, like I've got a prototype of a cool new, you know, sauna concept that like is now we're pre-seed raising. And so I think I've seen action on both. And to see whether, you know, I don't have as much eyes. It's funny, like I kind of set and forget. And then I don't see really too much of what happens afterwards. I obviously keep in touch with the founders. But I think that both are finding more traction than I've seen in the past year or two, I'd say.

1:18:39Matthew Januszek:So fundraising is one. What's another? Yeah, I mean, I obviously think that there's, with AI and all the slop and all the ways in which people are empowered to put more content in there and be bigger players on these platforms, I think that now people are trying to think about what are the creative growth strategies beyond just throwing a bunch into the channels, the traditional channels, Facebook, Google, everything like that. But I think that what I'm seeing is that people are very interested in, okay, what are the long-term partnerships that I can either establish with creators or what are the events that I can start to put on to create a more...

1:19:18Community is the word that's actually coming up a lot. I'm sure you're seeing it too, where it's like, what, you know, not just my own community, but like how do I build authentic community within our ecosystem so that people come back and you have actual retention that you don't have to keep buying? Community is number one. We're seeing it in everything. So both in digital products, in physical spaces, if you're opening up a new location, one of the first, because I do think that, you know, look, we're in New York City now and I spent over a decade living in New York City. And people always say, because I've been married in New York City, I've been single in New York City, but it's still one of the loneliest places in the world.

1:19:52And even though you think house is possible, you're in the center of the world, it's because we are both, we're all so solid and focused. And digital kind of made us even more focused. You've got your AirPods on in the subway, so you're not making the connection anymore. And I think looking at even drinking culture, right, that's changed. And that's why when you're at Oudership, you saw that. I mean, I actually made friends at Oudership by having that community. But when you're creating, bringing like-minded people together who are either there for a purpose or there for themselves, but I think like that community around fitness, around wellness, around a healthy habit, that's really sticky because people are no longer making those connections at bars or the workplace, by the way.

1:20:30I think workplace relationships are kind of on the decline. And look at this, run clubs in New York, and I didn't know this until a couple months ago, but I went in, like there's a code for if you're single or not single, do you know about this? No. I wore like all black. Oh yes, lunch, yeah, they're in my group. If you wear black, you're single. If you wear white, you're in a couple. I do not know. But I wear a lot of black when I look out, because it's easy. Yeah. So I showed up in black not knowing it. Nice. I'm sure your wife loved that. Well, I had a wedding ring on. And someone came up to me and said, hey, I'm not sure if I'm a podcast.

1:21:10I'm like, yo, I'm married too. Maybe this girl. And I said, what? What are you telling me? I'm like, well, I didn't wear my ring. I said, what? I'm married. They're like, oh, but you're married, but look it. And I'm like, whoa. I said, okay, I'm not. But there's, so I think that people look for, even if it's just friendships, connections, it could even be guys hanging, but it doesn't matter. But fitness is driving that. On the professional sense, you are driving that. And I think you are doing something. There's another group that we know, a good person who tried to do something very similar out of Germany.

1:21:47and it didn't really scale because I think a lot of it are number one, curation. I think number two, quality of the breakout rooms and how you structure the content. So I think you've, just because of your experience and you've been an operator, you've been an entrepreneur, you've created that really good. So I'm just real thankful. I appreciate that. And it's like, yeah, it's something that I'm only going to build this brick by brick. It'd be very easy for me to tomorrow go out and start putting Facebook ads and getting things. But I know that communities can break very quickly. I've seen it with communities like OnDeck.

1:22:20There's different founders communities out there that once you start chasing the dollars and trying to make it really big, people feel that. And communities and it's the same thing with businesses. I think, you know, the businesses, if you if you inject a little too much commercialism into it or if you throw too many logos in, it can start to, you know, people are not as attracted to it. And I think to your point earlier that I that I see is there's religion has been on the decline for a long time. People don't have spaces at work as much anymore. But we as humans have this need for belonging.

1:22:50Where do we find it? Gyms are doing it as well. Professional communities are starting to do it. But brands can be that place for you if it's done the right way. It's consistent, right? And one thing that was enlightening, we're in New York. I view myself as a New Yorker and I live in D.C. now. The next one. And that brought the city together. Didn't matter. I'm talking about different boroughs, different ethnicities. You saw women covering their head. next to someone from the Bronx at a watch party together celebrating the Knicks together. I don't remember a lot of times and it's rare. Those moments are rare.

1:23:249-11 came to mind. I went for a run on the West Side Highway by the Freedom Tower today. The city came together but that's around tragedy. Sandy brought us together but the Knicks brought us together. That frequency though, you can't predict that. The stuff in fitness is predictable because it's really where you engage in yourself. you engage the investment of yourself so that's why the community keeps on coming up and it's so important yeah i i appreciate it and like yeah the goal is is like i said to just kind of i'm very proud of where we've gotten to and uh there's a lot of opportunity and if i can just make sure that um i'm adding more value than i'm taking that's that's the number one goal and getting creative about it like we have a list of all the creators that we're connected to so that brands.

1:24:10We have a list of sponsors for events. There's beautiful things can happen when you brain share, where there's a bunch of people and they all put in little things. What can come from it can be really, really cool. And so we're also going to be doing surveys around AI usage, because there's so much AI FOMO out there, right? It's like, am I using it enough? It's like, if you actually knew how much people were using it, maybe it could give you some peace of mind, or maybe you could hear of some tools that might be interesting to implement. And so, yeah, there's lots of ways to slice this. And the key is just to not get overwhelmed, keep your eye on the ball.

1:24:44Matthew Januszek:So where can people, if they want to check it out and look into it, where do we go? Yeah, I mean, Brian Von Anken, hard spelling, but on LinkedIn, that's where I'm at. But also join WGM.com called the Wellness Growth Mastermind. So WGM.com. But yeah, I'm always happy to chat. And odds are, if you reach out to them, they can connect you to me. So I mean, I'm always happy to have a conversation. Brilliant. Brian, thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate you guys having me on. Perfect.