He Turns Body Heat Into Energy (Seth Casden)| Ep 295 with Seth Casden Founder of Hologenix

0:04So Seth, always great to connect with you again. And I was super happy that I got to meet you what feels like a lifetime ago, right? I think it was almost a year ago. And when I heard about what you were doing, I was like, oh my gosh, I need that. Like I've been looking for that for a long time. And that was specifically the pillow and what you were creating. But you are combining health and wellness through textiles. And I have to understand, how did you even get into that? Yeah, well, thanks for having me on, Daniel. It's great to reconnect with you also. And yeah, it's those kinds of responses when people hear about our technology that motivate me and get me out of bed every day.

0:45When I first heard about it, the inventor, David Hornick, he's a friend of mine and I was just fascinated by the intersection of physical science, human physiology, and also what natural occurring minerals can do. And then looking at how to improve and optimize the body and being a triathlete and really loving to be outdoors and wanting to live a long time being a dad. You know, you're always looking for how to optimize your body and, you know, have a good healthy life. And when you look at what we do in our technology, we're basically delivering health and wellness to the body through textiles, through everyday apparel and bedding and sleep products.

1:23So it's been a great journey. And I think the science is really there now. And we're seeing people that get introduced to the technology having a similar response as you just had. Can you tell me more about how does the technology work and what have you seen? Yeah, of course. So really, we're all batteries. We're giving off about 100 watts of energy every second, just having this conversation. And that energy goes into the environment and it's basically lost. And so what Cellient does is it's found a way to harness that. We capture that heat and the minerals naturally convert heat to light. and they put that light in the infrared spectrum back into our body, which improves circulation and blood flow.

2:05And so you see, we have 11 published studies now showing the benefits of salient and how it affects the body and interacts the body with the body. And infrared is just beyond the visible. So it's not light that you see what you're normally like looking at a rainbow, but it's real and it goes up to four centimeters, a couple of inches into the body and provides these thermoregulation benefits. I have to say, infrared, red light therapy, all these things the last few years have just been dominating the health and wellness space. How was it when you started to talk to people? Do you think you're at a time where people believe it more, understand it more, or are there a lot of skeptics?

2:48Well, I think when we started, there were certainly a lot of skeptics. People were a little incredulous that you could make these kinds of impacts naturally. You know, this tends to be just healthy skepticism when something's new, particularly if this is something that it's maybe not easy to see with the naked eye. But now I think it's really, there's over 10 ,000 papers on photobiomodulation that have been published. Over 125 ,000 subjects have been studied. If you look at the whole universe of using light and lasers to help people. So I think now it's it's really got a stronghold and particularly with the biohacking and a longevity community has embraced infrared and understands infrared.

3:29So I'd say now we're at, we're at a place of fairly wide acceptance, if not universal. And so when you, when you started using this, I imagine you must have seen a difference or maybe someone that, you know, had also seen a difference, but what type of things did you start to see? And, and I was reading a lot about, you and sleep performance. I think, like you said, the biohacking is maybe those three things are the things that everybody wants to achieve. And especially us as entrepreneurs who work like 24 seven, we many times neglect those things. Yeah. And for me personally, I had a Bristow procedure on my shoulder and had to have a rod put in and a cleat and using stallion as a wrap and as like an insulation around the scar.

4:18I could really actually feel and perceive the increase in circulation blood flow. I was on the short end of the healing spectrum. My doctor, you know, thought I had healed very quickly relative to what the average is. I also had some incredible experiences around animals with horses, dogs, and cats, you know, where there's no placebo effect. They don't really, you know, have anyone to kind of bias them and seeing how they interact around the product was also very compelling. And then, yeah, you know, friends, You know, people have bad knee that take an Aleve every day and wear a salient knee brace and don't need the Aleve or, you know, people that are arthritic, dogs that, you know, have bad hips and then they start walking better.

4:59So, you know, those are all individual cases. But collectively and with the science, it starts to make a pretty compelling, you know, paint a pretty compelling picture. It's something I need. I really need to get the pillow. Like I really, really need to get. I need the brace. I got bad knees. I got my knees are like Rice Krispie treats. Yeah, it's great what you're saying about the pillow, because when we go to sleep, that's really the longest period we have for recovery. And, you know, it turns out that the only time the brain can really recover is when it's turned off, when it's asleep. And so increasing circulation while you're sleeping really provides a wonderful benefit for restorative sleep and waking up feeling, you know, your best.

5:38That is the I think that's the biggest thing I struggle with. I woke up last night at maybe 3.45 a.m. And I don't know if I even went back to sleep after that. It's definitely one of those things. And then I started looking at my phone. I do like all the worst habits that I'm trying to change. When you went into this model, I believe you were looking at licensing. And now you're really doing a lot with direct-to-consumer. What was the reason for that model? Yeah, that's a great question. We've been fortunate enough to work with some incredible brands. Under Armour is really our largest brand or most well-known in the United States right now.

6:16We also work with Decathlon and Eon overseas. And we've been fortunate enough to be in programs with Puma and Adi and New Balance, Reebok. And what we saw was despite really over a billion dollars at retail, very little brand awareness, Very little consumer understanding of infrared and how it works and what the benefits are. So we thought the best way to approach that is to really launch our own brand and tell our own story directly to the consumer to help raise the awareness and the level of education around infrared. So this year we started selling at SleepLine. We started with the dream pillow and we just launched our sheets as well last weekend at the trade show, a longevity fest in Las Vegas.

7:04So we're starting to really have our own assortment of product lines in addition to like socks and wristbands and some of the other things that we give away typically. So, yeah, for us, I think it's really important that we can control the story and take that story directly to the consumer. I need those sheets. I think the sheets sound incredible. When you look at how health and wellness is now being transformed into our daily life, from watches, from rings that monitor, now to your clothing, textiles, that can do things as well. How do you see this whole, I don't know if this is like a new industry, maybe there's a new name for the industry, but how do you see this going forward?

7:46Well, I think the longevity biohacking is exploding. It's billions of dollars now. There's literally dozens of shows internationally that focus on this that are attracting tens of thousands of people. And the science and our ability, to your point, to measure things that 10, even five years ago, we couldn't really look at. Now that we can measure like mitochondrial health and we can understand these micro improvements and what really. As a founder, I'm thinking a lot about my goals for 2026. We want to hit a million subscribers on YouTube. We want to hit revenue milestones that we never have done.

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9:40And now we have something that you can use that'll show an improvement. And so you can use these devices to actually see how you're improving. So I think that's going to really help us. And I think just the more science around this whole space really helps to lift us up and to show the consumer that this is part of your routine. I mean, traditionally, we're told if you want to be healthier, you have to either change your diet, change how you eat, work out more, or change your sleep. And all of those things will help. But this is also something you can incorporate into your daily routine without changing anything else, and you're gonna see an improvement.

10:16When you look back at your experience in business, did something that you did before this carry over? So for example, it could be a job, it could be something that you did in school, but is there something that along the way, maybe lessons in leadership, something that really carried over to now what you use in business? For one, I really like working with great people and small teams, and you don't really get that in the corporate world. I mean, maybe you can be fortunate to have some great colleagues, but having that like passion and that shared focus that you find when you're an entrepreneur and when you're working with small teams of like-minded people, to me, that's really fulfilling.

10:56And what you're making almost becomes secondary because every day, all day, year in and year out, you wanna be enjoying what you're doing and what you're grinding away at. And so for me, like finding the right team and then obviously a product that's bringing value and health to people. And, you know, ultimately, at the end of the day, if you feel better, you're going to be happier and just live a more enjoyable life. And so, you know, that really appeals to me. And, you know, as far as like the path to get here, I think this is my fourth company. So, you know, that perseverance, that understanding that like what some people might see as a failure is just, you know, another opportunity in a different direction and not really losing my spirit or my hope just because something that I started out initially didn't work or that worked the way I wanted it to.

11:43So I think like that tenacity and that perseverance I've carried with me and certainly needed for this business to succeed and thrive. And yeah, I mean, there's a lot of life lessons along the way about just, you know, learning to see things with a broader perspective, maybe not such a harsh judgmental attitude of what failure and success looks like. And, you know, really being able to just move forward with whatever changes we need and course corrections and just keep going. When you think about, I know you just mentioned some traits, but is there a certain trait that you think every entrepreneur or every person really has to be a successful entrepreneur?

12:24And the reason I ask is we had another guest on and they were talking about grit just because the ups and downs that they had to go through, most people would have quit along the way. You have to be like hyper dedicated. But is there is there a certain trait that you think in order to really be successful, not to become an entrepreneur, like anyone can open a business, but in order to really be successful long term, is there a trait that you think everyone needs to have? You know, I I'll answer that kind of maybe a little differently. I think there's a trait that you can't have. And that is just like a negativity disguised as, you know, like a cynicism disguised as a lot of people say, oh, I'm just being realistic.

13:06You know, like realistically, that's not going to work. Or, you know, I'm just I'm just telling you how it is. And, you know, things never worked until they worked. So, you know, just because it hasn't worked to that point isn't any reason to think that it can't be different in the future. And if you have kind of a fixed mindset, you're not open and you tend to see the world is kind of half empty, the glass half empty, you know, that's not going to work. There's a lot of ways to make things work, but I can say that if you have that kind of dismissive attitude, you know, you're never going to be able to see something that other people haven't done yet.

13:45It's hard not to get sucked into that. As you know, there's great ups, but there might be more downs in business than ups in the moments like over time. How do you not fall into that trap? Well, I'd say one, I have over different times, you know, you get down, you get frustrated, I, you know, be disingenuous to say I've never felt defeated at different points. But I think each time, you know, I pause, I gather myself and, and I, I, I keep going. And I think a big part of that is a perspective. Like I don't, I don't have my identity tied to the company, right? Like the company is its own thing.

14:26I care about it. I, you know, it's almost like a child at this point, it's 25 years old. But it's just the company and what I'm trying to do. And I believe in it. But there's a, there's a level of separation there. You know, my identity is who I am and the efforts that I put in. And I don't really measure my success from the output. I measure from the input and what I put into it. And the sincerity and the integrity of my work and my effort is kind of how I value myself. And the results are a little bit to a certain extent out of my control. You know, maybe that is the challenging part of what when people fall into the fact like this is my whole life.

15:06My business is everything. It's my life. Like it's it means everything. I like your separation of that. So then if something ever happens to the company, it's not like your whole world is then imploding with it. We see founders who exit or they raise money and their company is taken over and they're kicked out of their own company, which is always quite sad. But I imagine if you can disassociate yourself, you know that, okay, I can just go do something else at this point versus never letting it go. Yeah, but that's not a perspective I've always had. But it's certainly as I sit here today, the one the one I have.

15:47So where do you how do you see? Where do you see the future of just for yourself when you look at? Okay, I you know, what do you want to do with the company? Like, do you look at things in terms of, I want to hold a company for a legacy for pass it down through generations? I want to exit the company. I want to advise companies, I want to invest, I want to, you know, I want to do a new company. How do you look at things for the future when it comes to, you know, business for you? You know, it's something I've wrestled with and think about from time to time. Certainly when you're when you're out fundraising.

16:20I think for me, you know, I don't have a predisposition. I try not to have an expectation and that tends to keep you open to more possibilities. To the extent somebody else comes along and sees the same value that I see, you know, explore that. If nobody ever comes along and sees it as valuable as I do, then I'll probably just keep doing it myself. And, you know, you end up offering friends and family and friends of friends help as the more experience I have and the more value I can offer. I don't know if that'll ever be formalized in a consulting role or not, but certainly gathered a lot of life experience on this journey and a wide variety of experience, supply chain and business development globally and the width of products that we make that have our technology and all of the science behind it and the regulatory work.

17:18And, you know, there's a lot of different touch points this company has. So, you know, all of that experience just makes for a little bit better sense of purpose, I guess, and provides a little more clarity as I get older. And so far, just reinforce that I'm doing the right thing and feel good about it. So, you know, try and stay open to what the future holds and take what's in front of me and evaluate it as it comes. I like the approach. I think that can make for a healthy approach because you just never know what's going to come. Back in 2018, somebody had offered to buy one of the companies that we had.

17:57And I was quite insulted because at the time, I didn't realize that you should probably sell, if you get the chance to, at a high note. And then within a year, that company no longer existed. So that was a learning moment for me. Have you had any of these learning moments for you? Nobody's come along with this company to offer me a big check that I turned away. But in another life, I was doing residential real estate development and we had built a spec home. And I think we had it listed for$5.2 million. We had an all cash offer for$4.3 million. And then we had another offer for$4.75 million. And that was contingent on them selling their house.

18:40And so we took that offer because it was an extra$400 ,000. That ended up falling through. We went back to the person offering$400 ,000. They had gone on and bought something else. The house then sat on the market for a year and a half, and we sold it for$3.8 ,000. And that was always something that I regretted, not just taking the burden hand and the cash. And in perspective, it was barely 5 % difference, 10 % difference in price. and it would have been a home run to sell it as soon as we listed it. And that was something that I learned from. And a lot of times it's about the better deal, not evaluated from more money, but from more certainty.

19:23That's a valuable lesson. I think most people would run on the money side, not the value side. And maybe that's where many people make that mistake because somebody could say, I will give you the whole world. But if they can't give you the whole world in the end, then you're basically at zero, maybe even negative. But what a valuable lesson. Seth, this has been amazing. If people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more about the company, how can they do so? Reach out to our website and happy to answer any inquiries and check out our gear. And I'd love to connect with your community.

19:58Well, I need to get the pillow and I need to get the knee brace. I need to get the sheets. I think I need to get everything. I really do. I have so many ailments. I feel like I'm 80 years old. It's like every day there's like some new ailment. I'm like, I must be 150 years old in my body. So I need to turn the clock backwards. And I want to live a long, healthy life like most of us do. But Seth, thank you so much for joining us on Founder's Story. Thanks for having me.