252 - $70K/Month in 5 Months: How a 54-Year-Old Biohacker Disrupted Healthcare with Kevin Dahlstrom

0:00How did you get past the typical things that scare off on entrepreneur, the healthcare? I came from the world of banking, which compared to banking, healthcare is super easy and non-regular. I created the testosterone service that I wanted as a patient. I was literally the first patient. There's a lot of men out there who are facing these same issues. Well, dude, we spend$4.5 trillion a year on healthcare. $4.5 trillion a year. That's right. And people are getting sicker, not healthier.

0:31All right, welcome back to Nickonomics. I have Kevin Dahlstrom on today. He's launching a new business and he's going specifically into healthcare. And I thought I have to talk to this guy who's invested in over 50 companies, has had huge eight, nine figure businesses that he's running and talk to him. How is he launching into the healthcare space, which is heavily regulated? What is his differentiator? And why now? Why take this swing when he could probably just be kicking back on a beach, sipping Mai Tais. So you're going to learn all about his new business, how he's launching it, what his marketing strategies are, and lots of really cool advice for you guys.

1:04So Kevin, welcome. Thanks, Nick. This is going to be fun. It's funny because my current business, Bolt, as you mentioned, is in healthcare. Almost exactly a year ago today, I was socializing the idea and I was debating in my own mind, do I have the fire to start another business? And also, do I want to risk screwing up my life? I was in the enviable position of already having a great life, financially secure, all that. And here we are, I've got a real business on my hands and I'm having fun. So tell me really quick, what is Bolt Health and why? What's the why behind you launching a business like this?

1:44Bolt was born out of my own experience. And so I'm a 54-year-old man. I've got a family. I live in Boulder, Colorado. I'm extremely active. I'm a rock climber and I've always been into health and fitness, a biohacker. I was a biohacker before that word even existed. Before it was cool? Way before it was cool, when it was way out there. But as an offshoot of that, I have tracked my blood for 15 plus years every six months. And like a lot of guys, I got into my forties and I noticed one marker in particular started trending down pretty rapidly and that was testosterone. And that's normal among men, but I also noticed it came with some symptoms.

2:24And so I did everything I could to optimize my testosterone, tried all the supplements, all the treatments, did all the lifestyle changes. What were those symptoms, by the way? Sorry, man. Well, the thing about testosterone in particular, it's the molecule of manhood. So the symptoms run the gamut. I mean, the most common ones are you start to notice lower energy, your workouts aren't is good, poor recovery, poor sleep, depression, anxiety, no let go, erectile. It can show up in a lot of different ways. And what the scary thing is a lot of guys just start sort of going after those symptoms, right?

3:00So if you've got erectile dysfunction, you take Viagra or Cialis. And if your immune system goes down, you know, the point here is what I learned along the way is testosterone in particular for men is foundational to health. In fact, our medical director at Bolt says as a great line for this, he says, you don't know what's wrong with you until you correct your testosterone because it can show up in so many ways. What we've seen with our patients is when you correct testosterone to an optimal level, all these seemingly unrelated conditions tend to disappear. So back to my story is I fought it for years.

3:33And then finally my doctor said, Hey, you know, ultimately you've got a choice. You can like feel like this forever, or you can do something about it. And I got on what's, you know, a lot of guys call TRT or testosterone replacement therapy. It made a huge difference. Gave me a second lease on life. I did this about four years ago, right around the time I turned 50. Like I always do. I went deep down the rabbit hole. And what I learned was the way that testosterone therapy is administered is horribly outdated. Like literally hasn't changed since the 1950s. I'm giving you the summarized version, but along with my doctor, we developed a new protocol we call micro dosing where it's tiny doses every day.

4:11It's a game changer. You can run on a much lower dose with better results, less side effects. And so my thinking was, gee, separately, low T is becoming an epidemic. It's always been the case that older men lose testosterone, but now we're seeing it become way more prevalent among young men. And we We can talk for an hour about all the reasons for that. It's environmental, it's plastics, it's diet, it's obesity, it's lack of sunlight, all these things. But the reality is it has become a silent epidemic and men's testosterone levels are down 30 % to 50 % since the 1980s. I want to say I heard some crazy stat that was like a 25-year-old today has the same level of testosterone as a 60-year-old in like 1950 or something ridiculous.

5:01I don't remember. No, in 1980. Yeah, that's roughly correct. Yeah. And so you have millions of men walking around suffering from the effects of low T. And, you know, there's lots of things you can do to optimize your T. It's not all about medical. There are lifestyle changes, diet changes, supplements you can take. But my thinking was, look, there's an epidemic here that doesn't get talked about. There's a lot of myth and stigma and misinformation out there around testosterone. Maybe there's a business opportunity here. I can help myself. so i've gotten some feedback sometimes from people who are like sometimes your your episodes sound like a pitch for the person who's on and i'm just gonna make it clear i'm not getting any money from kevin there's no affiliate agreement this isn't like oh pay me to be on and i don't do that with anybody i like to drill into the why because to your point i think that's so important in entrepreneurship if you don't have the fire and the desire you're not going to make it through the crap like there's a lot of suck that comes along and if you're just motivated by money, you're going to give up a long way.

5:56So, so anyways, that's my disclaimer before I ask some of these questions. Yeah. And so, you know, literally I say this and it sounds like a marketing line, but it's really not. It's the truth is that I created the testosterone service that I wanted as a patient. I was literally the first patient, a dozen of my friends were the first dozen guinea pigs for, for this. And it turns out, you know, it turns out like what we do works really well. and I've built the best testosterone service out there. We're not the cheapest, but we are the best. And I won't say the rest is history because we're very young still, but it turns out that my hypothesis was right, that there's a lot of men out there who are facing these same issues.

6:37Give me just like a high level. What's the size of Bolt? Your team, sales, people on? We officially launched in June. We are at$70 ,000 in monthly recurring revenue. So we're off to a quick start. We have a five person team, depending on how you, how you count people. We have some part-timers and contractors and stuff. So, you know, if you include our marketing agency, for example, we're probably like eight or nine, but small team and I, by design. And, you know, what's interesting about our businesses, we are, as you mentioned, we're a medical business. And so we have, you know, doctors involved.

7:14We have a network of specialized pharmacies that we produce our own specialized medication. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. Do you have to go through compounding pharmacies in order to have distribution? Yes, we have a network of compounding pharmacies. And the reason for that, just so your listeners know, is that almost all testosterone medication is formulated in toxic seed oils as a carrier or a base. And they do that because it's cheap and it's stable, but it's not healthy. It's inflammatory. We formulate our medication in MCT oil, which is derived from coconuts. It's an anti-inflammatory oil.

7:45So we specially formulate that. but essentially what bolt is it's a subscription service that is turnkey so like you sign up we handle your blood testing consultations with expert doctors all your medication all your supplies delivered to your home every month it's turnkey you don't really have to do anything you said mrr because this isn't like oh get a treatment for two weeks and your testosterone levels are back you have to have a sustained that's right protocol okay it's a long-term therapy. Yes, it's a subscription business. The product itself lends itself really well to a subscription business because not only do you need the ongoing medication, but you want ongoing medical care as your life changes, you know, a health event happens, whatever you need ongoing medical care.

8:30I'll drill into the business model in a second, but I am curious about you were, you said you're in your forties, which if anybody who's seen you write online, you're, you're really active online, but you're also just really active in real life. You're an avid rock climber. You are somebody who talks about having an intentional life. So like you're very particular with how you now architect things. Did you just like force your way through your forties? Like, did you realize, oh man, I'm tired and I don't have as much energy. And I just got a man up from like 40 to 50. Or was there a tipping point for you that you thought I got to make a change now?

9:03Great question. I have always been into preventative medicine. Like I said, I've been into health and fitness. I've spent thousands of hours reading about it. I just enjoy it. I've enjoyed the benefits of it as well. The investments I've made playing the long game. So I was super resistant and generally still am to any medical intervention. Especially pharmacological. Yeah. Pharmacological. And so the answer is yes. I just kind of put my head down and suffered needlessly much longer than I should have. And, um, like I said, when I finally gave in and started on TRT, it was like a light being switched on, like immediately made a profound difference in my life.

9:44It's like, it's literally like a second lease on life. I mean, I'm 54 now and I'm not exact. It sounds like it's, it's going to be hard for a lot of people to believe when I say this, but I literally feel better than I did in my twenties. And it's, you know, I like to think it's not just that the fact that I'm on testosterone, I'm on a very low dose just for the health benefits, but it's also because of all the other lifestyle things I do. Yeah. Yeah. Cause in your twenties, you're eating taco bell and you know, fried foods for every meal. At least I was. So yeah, not only, not only are you like focusing on your health, but you're also focusing on what you put in your body and your recovery and all that stuff.

10:19I'm super curious about this. I just turned 40 last week, a week ago. And I've started noticing like, man, I'm tired. My workouts are not as intense as they used to be. I just like lack of desire. Maybe I'm depressed. And a couple of people have mentioned to me now like, oh, well, you should get your testosterone levels checked. And I am, I'm going through the process of getting all that stuff checked out. But I've started seeing this recently where it's the micro dosing almost that you're talking, like these low doses. I used to think of like TRT, like, oh, I'm going to turn into Jeff Bezos. And all of a sudden I'm wearing a freaking, right.

10:52You know, Patagonia vest and I'm jacked. That's not what this is. Like it's, there is a differentiator between like how we used to think about these testosterone replacement therapy treatments. And today, like what exactly is the difference? It's a huge, been a huge sea change in a few ways. So first of all, you know, you are at that age. I mean, if you look at the data and you know, everything we do at Bolt, we're, we're maniacal about the data and the research. I've read it all myself. If you look at the data, 35 is actually where testosterone sort of starts to fall off a cliff. And that age is, you know, getting younger and younger every year.

11:26But yeah, by the time you're 40, you're usually going to be in what we would consider a treatable range. And then it's just a matter of like, are the symptoms annoying enough for you to take action? Because, you know, you don't want to take a medical intervention if you don't need it. If you still feel great, fine. But, you know, there usually comes a point where guys are like, okay, I've tried all the lifestyle stuff. It's, you know, I feel a little bit better, but I'm still not feeling the way I want to. And so you can just do a trial of testosterone. So that's one thing. Then you mentioned like the, the change in the approach.

11:58So this is a, you know, we could again, spend an hour on just this, but there's a ton of myths and misinformation about testosterone that came from the 1940s and the, and the bodybuilding era. So, you know, bodybuilders use testosterone in massive doses, like 25 times the physiologic dose. Plus they stack it with other much more dangerous hormones and it creates problems. And so doctors have taken a lot of that and sort of assumed it's also the case for people taking physiologic doses, like basically just trying to get their T level into the optimal lab range, which is what I'm doing. And it's night and day.

12:37And what's really cool, and this was actually one of the primary factors that caused me to start Bolt, is there's been a bunch of research that just came out in the past three years that has definitively dispelled all of these myths around testosterone. Like, for example, there was a myth from the 1940s that testosterone supplementation increases risk of prostate cancer and other cancers. It's actually the opposite. The research clearly demonstrates that across the board, cardiovascular health, cancer risk all improve. And in fact, all cause mortality improves. There was a study that was released in 2023 called the Traverse Study.

13:17It's the largest clinical study ever done of double blind. It was people being treated for low T versus living with low T. And it was very clear all-cause mortality was significantly better over a 10-year period for people who are being treated. And it makes sense because testosterone is foundational to metabolic health, which is the foundation of everything. Are you just servicing men? because I have a friend of mine whose wife actually is on one of these protocols. Like she has a low dose testosterone that she takes. Are you just servicing men or do you have female clients? It's an epidemic among men and women.

13:55We only treat men today. And the reason we started with men is my wife does the same thing. And I've researched this quite a bit is women are actually much more complicated animals to manage in terms of hormonal. What? Yeah. Who would have known? We never did. it's it's a little bit of an oversimplification to say that like for men you can just raise their t level and it's like the rising tide that lifts all boats but it kind of is true whereas with women that's not quite the case there are a number of things you have to kind of balance but for men like our medical director sean dr sean bender says is when you correct low t it's amazing how things that you were like little things you were experiencing that were impacting your quality of life that you would have never guessed were related to low T just sort of disappeared.

14:41Or somehow related to low T. Tell me about the business model. So if I'm somebody who decides I'm interested in this, right? It seems like there's a lot of friction between I'm interested in this or I see an Instagram ad or something to I get my first box of testosterone treatments or whatever. Walk me through the process of what I would have to do in order to to come on? Well, you, you kind of indirectly hit on one thing, which is our sale is an, it's an educational sale. It's not an impulse purchase. Like guys are skeptical. They want to be educated. They want to learn. So what we see is that it's not the kind of product that you, you, you see in the ad on Instagram, you click and you immediately add it to your card.

15:20I mean, we do have some of that, but what we've seen is that there's a long sales cycle. If you want to think of it that way, where guys really, so what we've done with bolt, which I think we're really the only player that does this is we're kind of playing the long game. We focus on education. For example, like last week, we did a one hour webinar and it was just jam packed with data and research. And we had, you know, our medical staff on there. And because our approach is like, we're not, you know, we're not pitching the product. I mean, obviously we're, we're a business and we're here to drive sales and grow.

15:53But the way we do that is through education because our target market, and we're serving probably on the higher end of the market. We're one of the more expensive services out there, but we also provide a more, testosterone is only one component of what we do. We really approach it from a longevity standpoint, and you have a real relationship with an expert doctor. We're super responsive with our care. We ship everything to your home turnkey. To answer your question, the process is when you're ready to sign up, you go to our website, you pick a plan. You can either pay monthly or twice a year or annual, and there's discounts for the long, for the biannual and longer.

16:31Yep. Right. And so first step is we immediately transmit a lab request to your nearest blood draw location. So we work through the lab corp network, which has locations everywhere. You schedule a appointment, you go in, you get your blood drawn. As soon as we get the results from that, we reach out to you to schedule a consult that's done via zoom. Essentially you have a consult with one of our doctors. They review your results, talk about your health goals. If you qualify, they'll tell you like how you're, you know, what your protocol is going to look like and how to administer it. If you decide to move forward, everything gets shipped to your home.

17:07You know, every quarter is how we do it. So you get your medication directly from one of our licensed compounding pharmacies. You get your supplies directly from Bolt. If you ever have any questions, you just reach out to us. We usually respond within minutes and then we repeat lather, rinse, repeat. So every six months we recheck your blood to make sure you're on track. You have another doctor consult. In fact, you can have a doctor consult anytime you want. You just reach out to us. And so, you know, it's basically like, again, back to this, like it's the service is designed to be exactly the service I want.

17:40And And our team at Bolt will tell you I'm by far the most demanding patient because I want everything to be perfect. And that's what I demand. And that's what we're building toward. Well, when I hear you describe this, a couple of things come to mind. The first thing is just operational complexity. Yeah. One, you have to educate. You have to educate somebody to make a purchasing decision to let's say they make the purchasing decision. Well, now an order has to be written. So it's like, okay, are you coordinating with the PCP who should be managing, you know, Or does Bolt now become the PCP? Next, it's like, okay, you can have LabCorp, but why not have Quest come and do a lab draw at your house?

18:20And then you've got to coordinate with them to schedule a call. Then you've got to coordinate with them six months from now to go get their blood drawn again. And then they're making purchases. So there's a lot in there. And I think that's why a lot of entrepreneurs are scared away from it. How did you get over all of that? So two things. First, I came from the world of banking, which compared to banking, healthcare is super easy and non-regulatory. I mean, in banking, you have regulators who are actively trying to put you out of business. At least that's how it feels. In healthcare, yes, there's regulation, but it doesn't feel like your public enemy number one, right?

19:01I mean, generally, everybody's trying to do the right thing for the patient. I would say non-Medicare and Medicaid healthcare. If you're taking payments for Medicare and Medicaid, it's pretty similar to the financial work. That's right. For what you're doing, totally agree. That actually segues into, I think, the kind of big issue we're talking about today, which is there's an entirely new healthcare system being built outside of the legacy healthcare system. And the reason is because the legacy healthcare system is really a sick care system. I mean, we see the outcomes from it. People are getting sicker, not healthier.

19:35and it's also 20 plus years behind the times, especially when it comes to therapies like hormones. There's just - Totally agree. There is no service you can turn to in the mainstream healthcare system that does what Bolt does. Hey, I don't know if you remember this, but when we started this podcast, we entered into a social contract. I would spend time, energy, and money producing this podcast, interviewing these individuals and giving you insights into how to build, buy, start, grow your business. and you would like, subscribe, and leave me five-star review. Now, out of that, we both get to talk to really cool people and hear really cool insights.

20:11We both get a ton of value, but I just want to help you keep your word. So would you do me a favor? Will you go leave a five-star review for me on Apple or Spotify? It would really help. And if you want, even share this with a friend. And so entrepreneurs like myself, we're building pieces of it outside of the mainstream healthcare system. And so when you sign up for Bolt, We're not even trying to integrate with that system at all. We're a cash pay. We have a staff of doctors. You are assigned a bolt doctor who, yes, is helping you with your hormones, but the discussion goes way beyond that. Do they become your PCP or are they just collaborating, coordinating with whoever your PCP is?

20:47We build ourselves as a PCP, but we act in a very similar role for many of our patients. A lot of our patients have sort of gotten fed up with their primary healthcare practitioner. Like, yes, if you have a sinus infection or you break your arm or whatever, of course, go use the, you know, go to the emergency room, urgent care, whatever. But again, I can't emphasize enough. The mainstream healthcare system simply does not do what we do. So I just had somebody on his name is Dr. Sandeep and he, uh, he started a company called philosophy health. And when we were talking, he dropped this stat on me.

21:20So he was a, he's a Harvard educated Mayo clinic, experienced physician guy knows his stuff. And he was like, you know how long your average visit it is with your primary care physician, by the way, PCP stands for primary care physician. Yep. Do you know how long you face to face interact with a primary care physician? I was like, I don't know. He's like seven minutes. Yeah. That's what the studies show. And that blew my mind. I went and did a little research and I was like, okay, for an average family of four, two parents, two kids, how many times a year do they go to the doctor? Average person goes to the doctor three times a year.

21:52So that means for an average family of four, that's 12 visits, seven minutes per visit. That's 84 minutes. And the average premium plus out of pocket that a family is paying is$32 ,000 a year. I know this is a simplistic way to look at it, but for$32 ,000 a year, you're getting like 84 minutes of primary care physician interaction. And I know that that's not all of healthcare, but the primary care physician theoretically is the one who's quarterbacking all of your care. They're the bottleneck. If you want to see a specialist, if you want to get certain medications, if you want to have therapies, et cetera.

22:21So it's forcing a lot of people to go outside of the traditional insurance-led healthcare system because if you want to have it reimbursed by your insurance, the PCP has got to write that order. Now they're pursuing cash pay solutions like this where it's like, okay, cool. I'm not even going to mess with my PCP anymore. I'll pay out of pocket for it. That's where Bolt comes in and fills the need. It's funny you mentioned that because that's actually personally a top of mind issue for me. I pay$30 ,000 a year for my family's insurance. We generally are healthy and avoid the mainstream system, but you're sort of trapped because there's always like the, what if I'm in a really bad accident?

23:00What if one of my family members gets cancer, but you know,$30 ,000 adds up quickly. And as you probably know, there's new cash pay provider, um, sort of group networks out there that are taking a very different approach. It's non-insurance, but allows for coverage of these disaster scenarios. Yeah, there's a company that's pretty popular. I think most entrepreneurs will have heard of it because when you become an entrepreneur, you're like, I don't have health insurance anymore. What do I do? Christian Health Ministries is one of the companies. I think you pay like$600 a month per person. I can't remember.

23:34No, it's for the family. But effectively what it is is like, you go to the hospital and you just say your cash pay. The hospital sends you the bill, you pay the hospital, And then Christian healthcare ministries reimbursed you significantly, dramatically reducing the expenditures. There's another one now that a friend of mine just told me about that's getting a lot of traction, but I'm seriously evaluating that right now because it doesn't make sense anymore. Like we don't really participate in that mainstream health system and because it's a pathway to just becoming less healthy. Yeah. And it sounds so weird to even say like mainstream healthcare, but it's this like insurance led healthcare has kind of tricked people into this false sense of, well, I've just got to do what the doctor says and almost taken away the responsibility of, no, you got to be proactive with your health.

24:21You got to do certain things because insurance only pays for if it's happened. And so we've kind of like gotten into this reactive way. Yeah. I'm talking to crowd health. Yeah. I don't know if you've heard of them. Oh, okay. Yeah. So that's it. I'm having the CEO go join me in a week or two. And I'm gonna talk to him because I think that what you're doing, what CrowdHealth is doing, like people are creating their own solutions right now. And it's because healthcare costs are exploding. The population is aging. People like us are getting to the point where we realize we want other solutions that aren't what we're currently seeing.