Eric Casaburi - Serotonin Centers & The Anti-aging Industry

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Hey friends, if you follow the show, you may have picked up on my passion for heart rate variability when it comes to recovery, performance, and longevity. I track it religiously and I'm always looking for ways to improve. Over the past few months, I've been taking this new supplement called HRV Plus by mode and method. Over that time, I've experienced significant improvement in sleep quality, faster recovery, and an objective uptick in my average HRV. About two to three points on average. That's a big deal. HRV Plus is the world's first expert-curated, carefully sourced blend of all natural micronutrients to optimize recovery, increase performance, and boost heart rate variability. Formulated by some of the world's leading experts, HRB Plus combines their proprietary hemp extract with omega-3 oil, magnesium, and curcum extract to target inflammation, improve sleep, and supercharge our endocannabinoid systems. I encourage you to give it a shot. Go to modemethod.com and enter discount code Eric15. That's modemodemethod.com and enter code Eric15 for 15% off. Go get it. All right, we are live. Eric Casaburi, welcome to the future of fitness. Oh, it's my pleasure. You know, I I was uh just briefing you before we started this conversation that anti-aging longevity, whatever you want to call it, and then I'm gonna pick your brain on how you classify this, but uh it's been in so many of my conversations, both on this podcast, uh professionally and personally, over the last, let's say, six months and even just in the last like 48 hours, which has been a all the time. It's every conversation. And so I'm really fired up to kind of pull you know information out of your head, hear what you're doing at serotonin centers. Uh, I'm already like if you had one coming to my area, I would already have a membership booked and ready to go. So really exciting, man. I know you have a wealth of knowledge and experience within the industry. So before we dig into all of that, maybe just give us some of your background because I know it's extensive and uh then we'll we'll go from there.

First of all, Eric, it this it's always great to have these conversations. I love them probably as much as you do. So I could talk about this all day. But I spent most of the day today already. The first half of this day, just I just did a presentation to a group of friends, uh high net worth people that are looking to optimize their health, right? Health optimization, health span. Uh and they just had a zillion questions. Uh, because it's it's becoming popular. So the reason we're talking about this is quite frankly, is the iteration of where you know we all came from. Started in the fitness industry in the mid-90s, uh, opened my first health club in 1997 as an owner operator, um, scaled those into three or four stores, I think it was three stores at the time, and then I started my own franchise, uh, which today is uh well known as Retro Fitness. And it we we had a great growth spurt, many, many years, a lot of success in building um that low-cost model up in the Northeast. And then we spread to many states. Uh today we have a great team running and operating in that company. Um, allowed me and afforded me the opportunity to start what is today is the serotonin brand, uh, which I'm really excited about because you know, all those years I was always a health crusader looking for what's the next greatest thing? How do we optimize performance? You know, what are we doing? You know, putting turf in gyms, and we, you know, we were always trying to iterate that business to get people more engaged and exercising more. But we were missing one key point, you know, and it affected retention and attrition in the business, right? So and and it really came down to what was the missing point? It was we unfortunately didn't have the accessibility to the medical component, the medical information, the data, the blood work. Um so as I was growing in the fitness industry, I had this yearn for we're we still got to do more. There's still more to be done here. How do we how do I marry this into who I am as an entrepreneur and a health and fitness crusader? And it led me into the next part of my journey, which is you know, I've I've got the next 20 years ahead of me now in building an industry, which is the anti-aging space. And I'm really excited about HealthSpan. I've been very fortunate to have met some of the greatest educators along the way, uh, working with some of them currently in my current brand, uh, leading us to today, where we're a franchise business model uh for anti-aging centers. But, you know, to be frank, and we we send a lot of people back to the gyms, Eric. We don't we're not just saying, hey, take some prescriptions or follow these protocols. We're saying like that's still one leg of our business. You know, there's multiple legs to help. Exercise is still one strong one, nutrition is still another strong one, but then we've got these other ones that we talk about, sleep optimization, and then of course prescription and supplementation.

Yeah, and I think you know, due to I think I had Don Moxley uh on recently, and you know, we talked about what the finesse industry has done over the last 20 years and how it's evolving, and maybe it's just morphing into something new and different. And you know, like what you just said, maybe it's complimentary, right? This anti-aging and longevity sector. Uh you know, how how do you when you say like and you are essentially forging a path in a in a whole new industry, right? Um how do you define the anti-aging category overall? I I know that's that's a loaded question, but I'm just curious in your mindset, like what what is what is that definition? And the words say it all, anti-aging, of course, Eric, it's well, it's you know, it's against aging, it's you know, aging slower, aging better. But how how do you define it?

So, really, we we talk about optimizing health span. And that's really what it comes down to. So, anti-aging, um, it's it's a catchphrase right now. You know, we we we've been talking about anti-aging since the beginning of time in this, right? But uh biohackers that have been around, and and you you hear lifespan, David Sinclair's book. I mean, literally, you know, it's called there's so many catchphrases that we're hearing and and cliches and almost memes on the internet now. Uh what I would tell you the focus is is on optimization of health span, which is the quality in those years of lifespan, right? So you look at the last 10 years of most humans' lifespan, it's terrible. Uh I look at my father who just recently passed away, and his last decade was, you know, he had a stroke during that period of time, he had a severe decline in his health. Uh it was it was just living out death. It was it's terrible. I mean, that's what you have to look at. So when you start refocusing on how do I optimize, like I tell people I want to be 120, maybe 130, skid into death like screaming and kicking and flying around, like I hit by a bus, maybe. I don't know, whatever it is. But I certainly don't want it to be the way that we see most Americans, you know, go into their last decade of life. Um and it's terribly unfortunate. It's terribly expensive too, as a matter of fact. I mean, it costs the country a lot of money to manage and care for that age group. Um, so what we're doing has a lot of benefits, it's preventative. Um, I think that's why there's some resistance ahead of it now, because it does conflict with some of the businesses that are out there that exist. And I call the medical industry a business uh because it has been. We just didn't view it that way because um how it's paid for through our insurance carriers and Medicare and stuff like that. So there's lots of conversation. We could talk for days on that, but you know, we define this space and what we're doing is we're defining it as an industry for business as well as care. Um, it is optimizing health span and it's in the and and we're all about anti-aging because the word because if you look at how you know what aging is and these processes and metabolic syndrome and things that get categorized into aging, um, it is the cause or root cause for all cause mortality, right? It hits every one of those buckets.

Yeah. Well, let's get let's get into serotonin centers. I mean, what was the impetus for it? Like when did the idea come to you? And then at what point did you decide this is actionable? I'm gonna pursue this.

So there's four different categories really we we play in inside of a serotonin center. So we have four levels of service: hormone replacement therapy, medical weight loss. We do aesthetics, we do a lot of things with microneedling and skin pen and botox, all that fun stuff. And then we do all the recovery stuff hyperbarrous chamber, red light therapy, IV therapy. So each one of those things, at some point in my personal life, I have experienced some interaction with hormone replacement therapy, it was very early on. In fact, my wife has been on hormone replacement therapy for eight years now, nine years almost. And we found it the hard way, like because she had no idea that she was skidding into menopause and early menopause and way before she should have. But we had four children, multiple pregnancies along the way, and her endocrine system was just like, yeah, we're done. And she didn't understand it at all. By the time we got to the third OB uh doctor, finally he was like, Well, we should look at your hormones. And it was like the first two said things I almost didn't want to say on the podcast because it would it would anger a lot of your your your female clientele, even probably some of your men, as it did me. Um, one doctor actually said you this phrase, and I I don't even know how she didn't climb over to the desk and just choke the guy out. Um he said, You have no more utility. You're no longer of child rearing ears. So this is why there's no care for this. You're gonna, this is your lot in life, and you know, deal with it. Wow. I was just like sitting next to her, like I wanted to crawl into my own shoes at that point. So um at that point I realized, okay, we gotta we gotta do some more discovery, being resourceful humans that we are. We we went out there and we said, Okay, there's gotta be some other answer. And we finally got to a doctor that we did a hormone panel, and you know, female hormones maybe should be between the range of testosterone 70 to 100, let's just say. Kim's was, I think, a six, like a single digit, low single digit. He's like, I don't know how you're even getting up in the morning. Um, she had every symptom under the sun, uh, weight gain. And my wife was always athletic in shape. She taught aerobics back in the day. I mean, like, insane. If you see Kim now, she just turned 50, she's gorgeous, spectacular, her skin, her hair, her fitness level, her arms. She's doing pull-ups, like the kids are like, oh my God, like it's crazy. Like, I mean, but she's optimized. Like, so we figured it out. We optimized there, then we went to peptides, and then we look like we just we're keeping our we're managing our aging process really well. I mean, uh Kim looks better than most 25 and 30 year olds, and she can outperform them, especially in a work environment, in any of them. Um, and the reason is because she's she has her optimized lifespan, like her 25-year-old health span self back. Uh, and so that was my first iteration with that one component. So I knew that this was crucial. And then I had found, Eric, that there were so many other people, friends, family, dinner side conversations that were like same symptomatic. Oh, I'm feeling tired, I have brain fog, I'm gaining weight, I'm still working out, nothing's happening. And then you get the data from the gyms, right? Like retention's changing, and oh my gosh, we're having nutrition issues, and why are people canceling gym memberships? And why are they, and you're like, you're looking at the crowd that was once Generation X who I love. That was my target at retrofitness when I first started. They were the 20-somethings, they were us in our 20s. Think about it. In your 20s, you look at a weight, you gain muscle. You look at a treadmill, you get lean. It's just how it was, right? Yeah, you're moving, you're optimized. That same client was in their 40s and they're dropping like flies. They could afford health and fitness, they practiced it for 20 years and they're leaving the gym and looking for any other reason to get in shape but going to the fitness center. And I was like, wow, this is a problem. We're looking in the wrong direction. It's not the locker rooms aren't clean, it's not the treadmills aren't great. The technology was fantastic, it got so much better over the years. Going on a treadmill now is incredible compared to what it was when I first started, right? So it wasn't that. It was their hormone levels, were so depleted and they were fighting uh, you know, a battle. They were at a you know a nuclear war with a rock in their hand. They weren't winning that until they figured it out. So I started paying attention to that. Uh, we started looking at medical weight loss, right? So, how do we optimize people? So we were finding that people that were having weight gain and our clients currently, um, they're had higher A1Cs, their fasted glucose was really bad, horrible insulin sensitivity. Uh, and there's medications that could fix that in an instant. Like we we dropped 30 pounds off of them, but we send them back to the gym. In fact, if you look at the study done for semaglutide, the compound for uh Wagovi Nose Impact, they did a three-group study, right? They did a study on the control group, the medicated group, and the medicated plus exercise, just three days a week. I mean, that's nothing for us, right? They had a 32 or 30 something, 30 plus percent improvement over the medicated group just by exercising three days a week. So they can get a third more results faster if you just did a little bit of exercise. So we always encourage people, that's one of the pillars of our program, is go back to the gym, go back to your exercise routine, get back to because the medication is now going to be amplified if you do this process. And these clients, they fall in love with us because we fix that component, we get them to stop eating in the pantry at 12 o'clock at night, and then we we get them sleeping better, and then we fix their hormones. Now they're adding more muscle mass. So we take this whole scientific approach to using their labs, their blood work, right? We start there, and all of a sudden we've figured out what your challenges are from not just guessing, right? Like in the gyms, our only option was let's put them on some calories. We think they should do by using maybe you get a scan of their body fat, maybe didn't embody you weighed them. And that's all good data, but like you can't really do anything unless you have the blood work, you don't know what's happening. You can, you're only guessing. You're purely guessing. Educated guessing, but you're guessing. We don't guess. We're using science, and that's the difference. And that's the other bucket. So that's kind of how we started. So when I started looking at how what made sense to put together, like when you build a gym, right? Like what makes sense to go together? It it never really made sense to me to put certain things inside of a fitness center and and serotonin, the same thing. Like I thought in the gyms, hey, it was always great to have a juice bar, get a shake after protein, have personal training, have supplement sales, do recovery. Like that made sense. It was synergistic. So then we said, okay, what's synergistic for the clients that we see? What else do they care about? Oh, women's clients, they care about certain things. They certainly care about their aesthetics. They want, they're worried about the lines on their forehead. They're worried about, you know, the fine lines and wrinkles, they're worried about collagen, elastin tied to hormones, by the way, right? Master hormone feeds, all that stuff. So when we were amplifying that, we were able to say, all right, we'll do a little Botox for them, maybe do a little microneedling, PRP, give them some really cool stuff, get them an IV, get them hydrated, get some extra biotin in their body, giving them these, you know, these you know intravenous nutrients. So we were able to do so many more cool things. And then we find out that people are just skyrocketed at cortisol levels on their blood work. How do we fix that? They put them in a red light therapy bed, get that inflammation down, give them a nice herbal supplement. Um, it's it's called serocortisol support, a proprietary supplement that we that we have, that we give them. And all of a sudden we knock down cortisol, we improve testosterone levels, we fix them on the on the medical weight loss side. And then it was like, okay, well, what else can we do that matters to them? And it's recovery. Like these people, like a lot of them were just were older people and they were working out hard. Someone like me, I'm in the red light therapy four days a week. It's because I still train like a maniac, right? I'm 49 years old, but I train like I'm 25. I I work out with my son, I'll work out with his friends and they laugh. But I I love it. I'd say I'm I'm a I'm a listen, I'm a gym rat still, right? I love that stuff. So I need to recover though, right? So I do, I hack at recovery, sleep and optimization. So that's important to a lot of people, just getting up out of bed and not taking, you know, three solid minutes to sit upright, right? We've got to be able to hack that. So we figured there were these things that worked really well together, and that's how we built our membership model around that. Great.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, so if I'm listening to you uh correctly, Eric, it sounds like blood work and hormone balancing and optimization is kind of like the base of the pyramid for what you guys do, right? Yeah. Um, and hormone replacement therapies, optimization, whatever you want to call it, um doesn't matter to me, but you know, it's every time I I cover that topic on this show, and I like the topic a lot. And uh I think it's very promising. I always get a text message, right? From at least a few from like a colleague or a friend, be like, hey man, what should I try this? Right. It's like this back alley stigma around it. Right, right. It's like, you're not, first of all, you can just call me. This isn't anything illegal, like this is all fine now, right? It's not like the gold gyms days back in the 80s when you're just pumping up full of uh, you know, whatever, whatever's in the new walking in the gym bag in the locker room. So I guess you know, when you look at like that stigmatization, like how do you overcome that? And furthermore, like I, you know, some of the objections I see with hormone replacement therapies is that, you know, we still don't have the long-term studies, right? Like, if I start it, can I can I come off it? Like, you know, all those questions, I'm sure you and your staff have heard multiple times. So, you know, what how do we get over that stigma? What are some of the big questions that people ask all the time? And, you know, um, how are how are you doing it differently, if if at all? People age at different speeds, and the date on your license may not represent your inner biological age at all. If you're looking for ways to extend your health span and slow down the aging process, the keys to health and longevity run in your blood. That's why Insight Tracker provides you with a personalized plan to boost your metabolism, reduce stress, improve sleep, and optimize your health for the long haul. Created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics, Insight Tracker analyzes your blood, DNA, and fitness tracking data to identify where you're optimized, and more importantly, where you're not. You'll get a daily action plan with personalized guidance on the right exercise, nutrition, and supplementation for your body. Add interage 2.0 to any plan for a definitive calculation of your true biological age to see how you're aging from the inside out. I was proud to find out I'm a few years younger than I thought I was. For a limited time, you can get 20% off the entire inside tracker store. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future to check it out, learn more, and get your own. It's insight tracker.com forward slash future. On to the show.

So I think if you look at science-based information, and there's a lot of great studies. So uh so we don't use your synthetics, right? That's that we we you stay away from that. You go bioidentical. That's first of all. So they're uh we have clients that come in and their testosterone is whacked out in the, you know, not in the low direction. So we say, listen, we can see what you're doing, like right? Our narrow practitioners are gonna tell them that. Stop all that junk, and then let's redo your blood test, and then we'll we'll put you on a real program that's gonna safely help optimize, you know, what your goals are. Um, so the first thing is it's not taboo anymore because people talk about there's some great books. In fact, we we order this book from Amazon like probably three times a week because we leave them out for our clients. And there's a book it's called uh uh for women called The Master Hormone. And it's a it's a it's got a red cover on it, and we literally say when I give it away, we give it away all the time. And many of our clients will bring it back to us. We say, hey, you don't have to, keep the book. It's a great book, written by a female OB uh medical doctor, and she really uncovers all of the mythology behind what used to be the horse urine studies that were garbage, by the way. A lot of those things would be debunked. A lot of the stuff that was negative um information about hormone replacement therapy has all been debunked. I mean, the studies were so poorly done, and there were control groups were so poorly completed that they they really should be should be tossed completely out of the out of the universe. So it's no longer taboo. Um when done correctly, now listen, we optimize. Now, do we have clients that walk in and say, oh my God, I want my testosterone to be 1500? That's great. This isn't your place because you know the average person, the average male's testosterone is probably a bit lower than that, unless you've got some other substantial issue that you know we don't know about. But you know, we optimize based on what your goals are, your needs are, and what really makes sense because it becomes a point of diminishing return. So if you over-prescribe, it only gets negative, like you know, DHT, dihydro testosterone conversion happens, male pattern balls. You only get negative side effects, acne. And you could tell someone that's doing that in the gym. Like you know those guys all day long, you've seen them. So we just optimize to the to your capacity, and everyone's different. There's no magic number. But we educate people and inform them of all of this. And there's some great books on it, but there's also some great data. And testosterone therapy has been around for a while. And you know, the question does come up: is this for the rest of my life? Well, if you had high cholesterol and you were put on a statin, you wouldn't ask your doctors, is it for the rest of my life? Well, the fuck it is. Yeah, heck it is. It is for the rest of your life. You're out of, you have high cholesterol, you have a gent, you have a disorder, like hypogeneticism, or you don't produce testosterone anymore. Like that's like that's something you would want to optimize. Uh if you had diabetes, you have to take a medication and you have to take it for the rest of your life. Like, so it it's just it's it's becoming more acceptable, Eric. It's just that the um the way it was presented, I think years ago to the world, like through the through the gym, you know, gym bro science, as they called it, yeah, that kind of casted that shadow, but um, it's just so different now. I mean, and are there people out there in in my assessment um that are uh claiming to be like home replacement therapy, you know, T clinics and stuff and all that, and I think that they're selling it the wrong way. Yeah, I I I I I do have a a real major negative opinion about some of the groups out there that are promoting HRT because they're promoting it with guys that are 245 pounds ripped and shredded on their Instagram. And that's just ridiculous. Like that that's not you're not putting out a proper presentation of what we're talking about, what we're trying to do when you're optimizing health space. Yeah, gaining muscle mass is great, and getting lean body mass is part of that benefit. But to the level and degree that they're they're showing, it almost is indicative of synthetic drugs. And we're just like, that's just not that's not the model.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's the liver keen crowd, right? And I've talked about that type of influencer on the show before, and it's infuriating for anybody who actually wants better outcome, health outcomes for for our clients and our communities, right? Um so okay, if that's the base of the pyramid, where where do you walk me through like actually let's do this? This is probably the best way to do it. I I walk into Serotonin Centers today, right? I want to sign up. What what is that whole client experience like?

So we we took a lot of pages out of Out of out of the service industry and the industry of fitness that we came from. And it's really um a QA, right? So we want to learn about you. So it's it's more of us asking. We have a cool consultative process that puts us through uh puts you across all of our services through questionnaire. So we ask you certain questions about what's important to you, what'd you come in today? And some of those conversations get really deep. Because a lot of the people, if their hormones are imbalanced, they're having other symptoms, a lot of them are depression, anxiety. So you you really look at mental wellness in a different way when you realize, okay, listen, you're not crazy. This isn't, you're not you're not alone, right? So let's let's first look at the hormones, which is the base, right? Let's just get a panel on you, see what's happening. Um, and often if we fix that one part, you you really maximize and optimize the mental wellness component because it was it's a chemical thing that's happening. They don't understand it. Um, and then you educate them on other tools that would bring them to the next level. So if you came in for the first time, our goal would be to find out more about you, why you came in, or why you think you came in. So we often say you come to Saratona for one reason, but you might stay for two or three others because you walk in and you don't realize there's these other things happening that we can help you with. Um, some people come in for for medical weight loss or for cool sculpting. Hey, I want to get rid of my love handles. And we say, well, that's great, but that's not gonna really fix the problem you really have, which is you eat too much and you're and your body mass is way out of whack. No one wants to hear that there. Let's get to the right. Let's get to the root of the problem. So we um we spend time qualifying what your needs are, and then we build a program around that. Generally, it starts with a blood panel for clients, even clients for aesthetics, um, uh, men and women, they don't realize that collagen and elastin production really reduces, which causes that crapiness of the skin, starts to sag, you don't have the fullness anymore. We say, well, you know, we should probably look at your hormones as well, because this is this is one exterior picture of it, but inside is a whole other thing starting to happen there. Uh so it really is helpful when we get that piece of information for them. And then a few days later, you know, we have your blood work back in usually in four to eight hours. We then have a consultation again, and then we put together a plan for you. It may include nutrition, it may include supplements, it may include prescription, um, and it may include several services across our our portfolio of services. But our goal isn't to just put you into a hedgehog reason. You might have clicked on one of our marketing pieces, or you may have walked in for a reason. But after you sit and we have that conversation and we I we kind of identify what's what what the root causes are, then we say, okay, let's figure this out together and we put together a plan. So everything is super individualized, it's very concierge.

Yeah. And it's it seems like uh, you know, kind of the first line of healthcare, really. You know, very uh, you know, it it you're not delving too much into the medical side of things, but you are just looking to optimize someone's health. Is that kind of rising the tide?

And yeah, and we and we'll and sometimes we'll find like people because they may have a general practitioner, they may do their typical once-a-year annual physical, and the they may not be getting a good swath of information about their the picture of their health. So some like we have found a client, uh, an executive in the in the area here, and and he had a super high PSA. We're like, oh, okay, well, generally you maybe your GP would have said, well, this is prostatitis, let's put you on some medicine. But he had a high CRP as well at the same time, and that correlation was problematic. Where's okay, he's got a really high PSA and he's got something happening, he's got a C-reactive protein off the chart. He had prostate cancer, had no idea. He just thought, oh, I'm getting older and getting up to urinate two times a night was normal. This guy had a serious problem. You know, he says, hey, you guys helped save my life. I never would have known about this. Who knows how long this would have gone on and who long, how far it would have metastasized. So we identify things and we say, hey, we're not going to manage that, but you need to go see a urologist like now, and you need to do in much more in-depth and take this information with you. Um, same thing with, you know, when we see cholesterols that are just kind of wacky. It's okay, you probably need a cardiologist. Um we don't know how long, if you have any history of this information, great, but um right now you need to do so. We'll give them action steps. I always say that the the most important thing we do is we give you actionable tasks to do after we have that meeting. Um, some of it's with us, some of it's at with with another medical practitioner. Um, but it's important because you need to know that information. It's not just you get this information, but now what do I do with the information?

Yeah, yeah, that's great. And do people pay for like a flattened membership? Is it tiered? Is it by service? How are how are the actual customers paying?

So we have a core membership, and then it really can stack from there. So our core membership might just be your hormone replacement membership, your core membership could just be your weight loss membership, your membership could be both of those combined because you're getting two medications or two or two services. Um, so we we even build the memberships based on what your specific needs are. But there's generally really three categories. There's the hormone replacement therapy membership, then you've got the the weight control program, we call it. Um, and then you've got a concierge medicine membership as well. And then they kind of just we we can combine, we can put some in, we can add in certain services into certain memberships. Um, it's so specific because we want to be able to accommodate your needs. Your baseline might be, hey, you're on hormones, you're gonna be on that for years, right? You're gonna that's that'll be your base membership, but you might wind up doing other services in in between there. You might want to try other things, you might want to be in our hyperbiotic chamber uh packages, or you might want to do other things because you want to work on your neurological function. And hyperbiotic chamber is getting so much great attention right now. I'm so happy about it. Um, but we you know, we educate people on the benefits of these other things based on what they tell us is happening. Like they may have a lot of brain fog, they're having trouble recovering, uh, they're they're they maybe they're super athlete or they they they have a cognition issue, there's or or you're pre-diabetic. We had a uh a young female recently who was diabetic and she did our hypoviotic chamber and she said, I haven't felt the back of my heels and the back of my calves in years. So I actually can feel it. Because that's what happens, right? Because those smaller capoids, you can't get that oxygenated blood to them. That's why diabetics have issues with their, you know, their toes, their feet, stuff like that. Uh it was it's amazing that you get that feedback so quickly. And it's like, wow, that was after one session. Um, so there's really some cool things that we do, and and we always let people try stuff, right? You come in and you have your may have your first IV with us, and people have never done glutathione or NAD plus. Like we do all that stuff, and they're like, whoa, you know, I we had uh a good friend came in and he's like, that was like a euphoric feeling. I guess I've I had the clarity I had after I did that was crazy. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's that's good. You know, it's great, it's great to do that.

But that's that that's you know an interesting thing. I don't I want to move on soon to the to the business side of this because it's uh it's impressive. Uh but you know, when you talk about longevity anti-aging, a lot of it is it's such um for the for the the client and the customer, it's such a you're getting the benefits down the road, right? But when you get that initial upfront, like, okay, I feel better immediately, the buy-in is so much greater, right? And uh I I guess that's kind of a nice combination of things that that you get. And I would imagine too that you know the retention at your centers is really good. Because once you get into this stuff and you're starting to see, like, okay, I'm investing, what's a better investment than your health span, right? Um, you know, that the retention must be off the charts for these centers.

It is, it's impressive. And because we have these tools that like I always say, like, I wish I had this in the gym business 20 years ago. You know, I wish I had something that could have been this engaging and this um fulfilling for the client because the member, the client, has to get those results. And that was always our goals in the gym, right? Keep them long enough so they could see the result. You know, some people were hyper-responders and they got results, and the other ones that didn't, you had to like hope that they lasted past that six-week period that everyone talks about just so they would stay with the membership. Here we get we have an edge on that because we can get them um some response pretty quickly. They feel better right away. We can get that hook. It's like the energy drinks, right? The ones that were, you know, were loaded with caffeine, people would buy them all day long because they felt it instantly when you know they would sell like crazy. And the ones that may have been good because they had L-carnitine or some other stuff, or or you know, some other great product, they didn't sell as well because they didn't feel how good it was. You know, it's um so there is some instant gratification, yes, but because we give long-term solutions, and you know, once you feel better, not even feel like you're wearing a cape, but you just like we tell people you feel like you're wearing a cape and you're super, but this is just how you felt, but you've been feeling bad so long that you thought that was normal, but this is normal. And you think it's oh my God, I feel like a super person. No, you're just you're just optimized, you're back to where you were. And and some some men and women will say, Wow, I I remember feeling this way. Because you do, you you get it, you it becomes like, wow, I remember that energy. I remember that that buzz, that um optimism, that that that feeling. And it and it's yeah, I I love listen, as a as a as a as a entrepreneur, but also as someone who loves this space so much, it's rewarding. Like I get a lot of dopamine hits off of these stories because I'm like, wow, this is this is what we're trying to do. This is what I've been you know working toward my entire professional career.

That that's a nice segue right there, because you your career, I mean, you are uh you're no uh you know the franchise space. Let's put it that way. Your experience, you've done this before. I think you said you know, prior, this is your third rodeo when it comes to franchises. Um and this thing's this thing's been shot out of a cannon. I mean, you're you're busy, like you're selling, like give us some insights. Like, you know, how how was 2022 for you? And now that we're recording early, early 2023, what what's what's going on now and forecast for this year?

It's really exciting. I uh coming from the franchising world and understanding you know what it's like to build a business, let alone a franchise business in a new industry, it's really exciting. We we closed, and again, no marketing. Like we haven't done any franchise marketing. Like what that's that was like my plan was okay, I'll get the first couple of stores open and we'll start franchise marketing, you know, Q2 2023. We sold 33 development like units. So we've got you know multi-unit developers in happening in Virginia, we uh multi-unit development happening on the west side of Florida, west coast of Florida, the Central Florida. We have a uh we're doing a group there. Um uh Nashville, Tennessee, we've got a multi-unit development happening there. New Jersey, a multi-unit happening in central New Jersey. So we came out of the game, we're like, wow, we we closed the year, like we have 33 units in the pipeline, and we haven't even you know seen a fraction of the people that are inquiring on our website. So we've got uh our franchising websites up, and it's just filled up with people that are in inquiring, right? And we're only so we're kind of going to like multi-unit development groups first, okay, we're gonna we can we know we're qualified to take on Big Air because having been in the franchising business, we're we understand that we want to make sure that we can develop territory, get our our market share established and and and get the brand established with the most stability. So we're very blessed and I'm very fortunate and and and we're we're delighted at how we have started the the base of this business because it but people don't realize I've been building this business since 2019, right? So I mean I as soon as I I stepped down as a CEO of retrofitness, I started working on the next iteration of what we I wanted to do in the health space and in the medical space. And that was an industry I was really intrigued by. I was going to all the conferences, so we go to Ursa. I go to A4M now. Um so there or AM spot. There's different conferences that we go to in this industry, which is and they're cool. They're they're similar. It reminds you of the gym industry, like club industry back 20 years ago. You know, it was the show back then, and then Ursa took over, right? So I'm watching this industry kind of find its way, but having the cliff notes from an industry that kind of did it already. So it's navigating its way, but it's really cool. There's some amazing people, some incredible, you know, medical practitioners and and and doctors and scientists that are really working hard, that are as passionate as I may sound, they are different personality types that are working around the clock to solve challenges and make it better and really make it a formidable opportunity, not just for business, but for for the for the other end of the end consumer. But you know, and growing this business, uh, I we've I just saw just from our initial store opening how we iterated marketing and and connectivity and data and what we're used to in the gym business, you know, robust reporting. I spent six months uh during COVID. I worked harder in COVID than my wife was like, Well, you're working harder than you ever worked in your life. Most people took a blow during COVID. I was doing 18-hour days because the company, the software company I was working with was in India. So we were like trading shift work, like I do the overnight sometimes, and they would do sometimes the overnight. It was crazy. But you know, I really wanted to help get good reporting. It was a wonderful HIPAA compliant software, and we needed certain things because we have to do again, we are in, you know, we have some some we do a lot of medical stuff, right? So we have to have a certain type of software. But uh we also wanted re robust reporting so we could really be better in the business side of it. So I had a lot of demands on that company, and I said, okay, I'll work with you. I said, here's what I need. And we I can't tell you how many hundreds of iterations of the reporting that we we now have, we went through. And after we opened the first store, we tested against everything against that store. And then we just kept going back refining, refining, refining. Kind of like when I built my first gym, when I built my first retro fitness, if the you looked at the first one then to what it is today, it just iterated over time. And uh I was very blessed and fortunate that uh we were able to to maximize you know that experience for our members.

Yeah, man. I I can tell just from hearing you talk and the process you've been doing since 2019, you've done this before. Like you, you, you have experience in this. Like, you know, you know what's on the checklist and what to what to look for and how to execute on it. Uh when you if I'm so interested in in being a franchisee, like what are some of the metrics that you guys, what you can share with us, like you know, what's what's the initial offer on investment, how long to ROI, what type of footprint do you need? What are what are some of the details here?

So our average store is around 3,000 square feet, 2,500 to 3,000 square feet. We're tinkering with a model a few square foot smaller. We're building one. So I always say, I'll build it first before I ask my franchisee to try that, right? So I always build like a if there's a beta version, I'm gonna invest in it, my own capital, my own cash, and let's see, hey, does that work? So we're we're we we know what what our sweet spot is in square footage, but we also want to be cognizant of multi-unit development and and you know, will we ever wind up, you know, inside of a hotel or some of the higher-end fitness, you know, uh providers that are out there? Um, where will we go with that alternative storefront, right? As opposed to just being a typical NCAP and a high-end retail uh AAA center. Uh our investment is believe it or not, for 3000 square feet, it's still around a million bucks in change if you look at our FDD, because it's a very high-end finish. Our stores are spectacular, they're gorgeous. Um, and we hired, so if you recall, like the so the Rudy Fabiano of Fitness is who I hired in this industry that designed our store. So I hired what is the equivalent of Rudy, right? When I first started in the gym business, I couldn't afford Rudy. I and Rudy and I are friends out, and we talked about this, and he visited my store here and he was gave me a hug. He's like, I'm so proud of you. This is great. Like he was actually proud of the outcome. He loved, because I took so much of what he would drill me on eventually when I started working with him in the fitness industry. I learned a lot about design and experience and vertical architecture, as he talked about, and what you know, what you see up there and down there, and the floor finishes, everything. Um, and I hired an incredible group out of out of Beverly Hills, and we did a great job, very expensive. I probably for my first franchise, I never would have paid them. But and I joked with the owner or the CEO of the company, and I was like, you know, uh, I know I'm paying you 40% more than I should. I don't want you to think that I don't know that. And she laughed and that she took my money. But we designed an incredible space. Um, so our center design is really outstanding, but it also is it all ties into the experience because I understand the experience of a customer when they're coming through your center, you know, what they see, who they talk to, how they're greeted, where they check out. It's all, I mean, 25 years of of being in a service type business, you learn a lot across across industry. And also the negative experience I've seen in medical offices that when I'm waiting in a waiting room, I'm like, this is disgusting. I like I'm thinking like uh I know what that doctor's making on the other side of the room there. And I'm looking around the room and I'm like, we're in like like metal folding chairs. Like, are you kidding me? It's just like crazy. So um, we're setting a benchmark pretty high. Our our initial investment is inclusive of working capital and some equipment stuff. And uh our we're we're our goal is to do multi-une development, our our franchise fees are right in line with with any other performing franchise. Uh, our goal is to do multi-un development. We usually sell, you know, anything from five units and above. Uh and we really are excited about how we're iterating the business in the short term and then the long term. You know, the one area that we are we have found uh uh uh us uh as we I mentioned a little earlier, but it was a it was a kind of a positive opportunity that fell into our lap, like, hey, this is a great opportunity, is mental wellness. So we'll be adding bolding on a good mental wellness, a strong mental wellness component to this business. Um, my oldest daughter, as a matter of fact, she's uh she's studying uh neuroscience right now at Columbia University, and and she was so inspired by some of the things that were happening in here in our business, but in her own world, um, she changed her whole curriculum and her whole major. And and uh I said to her, I'm like, listen, this is a big part of what we're doing. You know, get as much knowledge as you can because it's we're gonna need you know people like you on our team. Um, and we're gonna build out that part of it as well, uh, because uh it's uh finally becoming um not, as we talked about earlier, the you know, this this you know, keep it a hush-hush kind of thing. And people are starting to want to talk about this, and it's important to identify it. And you know, so we felt like it was important to put it as part of serotonin, right? Our brand is the happy hormone. So, you know, we want to make sure that we're addressing it from if you know if you feel good on the inside, you know, when you exercise, you feel good, you get happy. So our goal is to is to bolt in that that mental wellness component as well at a high level, a very high level.

Yeah, that's great. And you know, when you look at the type of markets uh that that you want to be in, like what would you consider? I guess two sides of this, what would we consider an ideal market? Like, is it you know urban, suburban, um, A B market? And then what what's a market where you don't think this may be a good fit for?

So currently today, it's definitely suburban. Uh, you know, it it does focus on middle to higher incomes. I think at some point we want to be able to get this to be more scalable and available to all. It's just a right now. I mean, the some of the processes we use, think about it, used to just be for the people in Hollywood or elite athletes, like hyperbaric chambers and red light therapy beds, and um some of the stuff has been been done by the professional you know sports organizations for quite a while for recovery. And still it's still happening today, by the way. Um, ice baths and stuff, cold. We're we're all talking about cold plunges. People the ice baths have been in every trainer's room since the beginning of time. Like this is not something that's new. I've sat in an ice bath in high school in 1991. So um it's but I was but again, just for therapeutic, I wish I knew what it was doing for me from an anti-aging standpoint. I probably would have kept doing it. So um I think what as we look at you know how we're growing and and all and and and some of the things that we're seeing, I you know, I I we are encouraged by the science and and accessibility. So, you know, the ideal market today might change in the future to make it more accessible. And I think that's how fitness kind of evolved the same way, talking to your, you know, to most of your listeners, right? I mean, it it evolved uh prior to Planet Fitness, making accessibility to fitness really enormous. What Mike and Mark did there early on was incredible. Um and it made it more accessible to people.

What uh what do you need right now? So it's you know, give people a we're it's January 2023 that we're recording. Like what do you um and I asked this in the spirit of collaboration and you know, people reach out to you if if it's the right uh right time, but what what do you need? What do you are you? I presume you're growing a team, right? I presume sales are of course important. Um what else? What what do you need?

Yeah, I mean, I I'm I always tell people that my goal is to build uh and I've said this to like literally the private equity groups that have been talking to me. I say I don't like to build armies, I like to build what we would call the Navy SEALs, right? I like to bring in really highly skilled people, and I know so many of them in our industry, right? And that I've been friends with for decades and they're and they're out there, and I I love how it's kind of incestuous the people they move around and I and I still keep an eye on all of all my LinkedIn's great, right? Because I can still see where all of my colleagues over the decades have are and they're they've gone and moved on to and do things. Um for me, it's really um high-level operations and service people. I love the fitness industry people, the personnel there, because we've trained them so well. You know, we've we've um we were all grew up in a very hard industry, you know, serving people at a at a at a at a very difficult level. And that service information is incredible. So um, so that's really the team I'm trying to build here, right? I'm bringing in, I brought an incredible chief learning officer. She came from the fitness industry, she's got an incredible pedigree, she's been around forever, some amazing um brands. Um, and do I find uh that I'm I'll see more people probably from from that have crossed over from there and have graduated into other areas and maybe they'll come over to us. Yeah, so I'm having you know some interviews now. Um I'm starting to look to put together that team. And then it's medical practitioners, it's the medical advisory crew that I bring in. It's I've I'm having some fantastic conversations of people we're gonna bring on to the to that board. Um, two incredible uh doctors uh that I can't wait to announce soon. And maybe by the time this thing uh hit airs, I'll have an announcement for you, Eric, and I'll share it with you. Um but it's bringing on that that that service team because that's what we do, right? As a franchise, or you've got to service the franchisee. Your my ultimate client, yes, is the end consumer that the that comes in as a member, but really who we service as a franchise or is our franchisee. So we've got to make sure that we're building a team that can service their. Growth, their goals, you know, you've got to you almost are vicariously living through them because they're building your brand, they're representing your brand, they're doing all these great things. And and you know, and I love franchisees for that reason because they take on your brand and they love it the way you do, you know. And I love when I see a franchisee of a brand and they have the tattoo on and I'm like, wow, you know, I I can't tell you how many anytime fitness tattoos I've seen on their franchisees. And I love that, you know, they embrace the brand. I have a I still have my retro fitness tattoo on the back of my neck, right? I mean, because it's my love's my baby. I love the brand. I think it's the greatest fitness brand in the world. Um, but I get excited about that. And people, the franchisees are amazing because they take on your love, they care for your your use your baby, but then they make it theirs and then they grow it. And that's that's kind of who our franchisee is. If someone that wants to, you know, the the term in franchising is you're you know, you're not you're in business for yourself but not by yourself, and you've got to stand by that. And that takes a lot of effort and that takes good people. Uh so my next level isn't necessarily sales. Sales, I we have no problem with sales. That's God, we're very blessed. We have a tremendous influx. Ours, my goal now is to is service, service, service. How do I support what we're about to do?

And my team, how do they support what we're about to do? That's awesome, Eric. I can't um last question for you. Uh well, second to last. The uh, you know, we're we're about, I'm a little bit younger than you. Um, we're we're kind of in the same generation. You know, if we stick to these protocols and we really focus on anti-aging, longevity, and doing the right things, how long do you think we can live?

Now, hopefully my daughter will listen to this because she yells at me every time I answer this question in in any public forum. Uh I think 140 is a realistic option. I do. I think technology is advancing so fast. I believe that the the the iteration of what we are doing is gonna is gonna really get wild in in the in the future with genetic testing and all these things we we're learning. Uh I I I believe that the human body is capable of that.

Yeah. Uh that's awesome. That's exciting. I better uh I gotta work a few more decades then before I even think about retirement. I got a lot more work to do. Uh Eric, well, this is great. What where do you want people to go online? Do you want people to reach out to you personally? You want them to send them to uh, you know, your LinkedIn to yeah, just where do you want people to go next?

Yeah, I mean our website is serotonincenters.com, and there's a franchising link there. If they want to learn more about the franchising opportunity or see all our services on the main page, and then they can click into the franchising and get some of those granular questions about startup cost, net worth value, all that other stuff that people ask those questions about. And of course, I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram at Eric Cassibiri. And I'm, you know, I so once in a while I've put up some good posts and you know, I'd love to share and I love to dialogue with with everyone that I'm connected to.

Yeah, right on. Well, this is good stuff, Eric. I mean, it's really exciting. I uh like I said, I I can't hold back my enthusiasm for this area because it's it's I mean, who doesn't want to live better and longer? Right. And the uh the science is catching up and the opportunities are there, and I think it's only going to democratize over time. And uh it's it's great that you're getting out there and creating it. So job well done. And uh yeah, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Eric Castleberry. Thanks, Eric. I appreciate it. It's great talking today. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.