Jim Donnelly - Restore Hyper Wellness

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. One of the most important and undeniable trends in our industry is the ever-growing consumer demand for personalization. That personalization is driven by health data. If you are a consumer-focused health and wellness company, you know that acquiring and making use of that health data is traditionally expensive, complicated, and full of friction for the consumer, but not anymore. Thanks to the good people at Sprint, a camera-enabled digital biomarker platform that connects any app to the human body. Formerly known as Elite HRV, the patented technology behind the Sprint platform leverages a decade of research into physiology, behavior, and health insights, including collaboration with 117 universities and analysis of more than 4 billion biomarkers across 20 million user sessions. Using the smartphone as a sensor, Sprend's evidence-based machine learning algorithms deliver actionable biomarker insights such as body composition, HRV, stress, recovery, progress tracking, and more, all through an easy-to-integrate STK and API. Health and wellness companies are integrating Sprint to better understand their users' holistic health, make their apps more personalized and adaptive, demonstrate measurable progress, and empower their members to understand their bodies and make well-informed decisions for their well-being. Go to Spren.com and learn more. That is Spren.com. 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, HRV Plus combines their proprietary hemp extract with omega-3 oil, magnesium, and curcumin 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 our code ERIC15 for 15% off. Go get it. All right, we are live. Jim Donnelly, welcome to the future of fitness.

Thanks for having me. I'm super excited. I know your podcasts are always fun, so I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, I try to make it fun. And uh I've been looking forward to this since uh gosh, I probably sent you like three uh LinkedIn messages trying to get you on the show. So I've I finally got you in here. And I I've I've been hearing so many great things, Jim, about your brand, you personally, um, the growth that you're seeing at Restore Hyper Wellness. And it's a fascinating category. I mean, you really are trailblazing something new. And you personally just have a ton of experience, you know, um, on the entrepreneurial and business side. So I think there's a lot of uh value that I can extract out of you today, um, as well as me learning uh more about what you do. So as always, I'd love to start, Jim, with just a little bit of your background and how did you get to be one of the founders of Restore Hyperwellness?

Um, sure. So, you know, I I do like to start from the beginning. I I was a military kid. Um, and my dad, although he was an army officer, he was also sort of a raving lunatic about being an entrepreneur. Um, and so I saw my dad trying all kinds of crazy things, everything from trying to be a commercial fisherman to trying to commercialize propane-powered cars to you know, on and on and on. And and what I also saw is I saw my dad fail. I saw him go into things with an unbridled enthusiasm, and again and again, it didn't work out for whatever reason. Um and I, you know, guys talk about advice they get from their dads and all this. The the single thing that I remember more than anything, my dad told me when I was pretty young, they don't have a debtor's prison in the US. So keep trying. And um, I of all the things my dad told me, that's one of the things I always remember is he's like, you know, as long as you're honest, as long as you work hard, as long as you don't say you can be an entrepreneur again and again, even if you fail, because all it takes is one. And so, you know, I started a company in grad school. It was my first entrepreneurial venture. By the way, I had that um situation of not being successful. I I had to go to ranger school, I hired somebody to run it. They literally stole every penny from every bank account, and I never saw them again. And I get that call while I'm in the third phase of ranger school. So you can imagine how that hits. But but that didn't deter me either. I but I did then say, I'm gonna go learn how to be a better business person, entrepreneur, leader. And so over the series of the next 10, 12 years, I, you know, went to grad school. I, you know, obviously I was an army officer. I worked at some really blue chip pedigreed companies like Coca-Cola and Kraft Foods. And then one day I woke up and it was time. And before we got on, I was telling you the story of being put in a golf cart at a wedding with a quote unquote entrepreneur because my buddy thought that we were like-minded um spirits. And and the guy asked me, Well, where do you work? And I said, Citibank. And well, where before Coca-Cola? Where before? And he looked at me and he's like, Dude, you're not an entrepreneur. Why the hell are you in my cart? And I quit a week later and and started, you know, a company called I GoYugo with with my buddy. And you know, and I go you go was one of those things, once again, like entrepreneurship is always full of surprises. So we started I GoYugo right before 9-11. I Go Yugo was an online travel community. Horrific time to start it. We couldn't raise money, um, travel was crushed. But the the thing that it forced us to do was figure out a way to grow organically, do it in a way that we couldn't where we weren't raising money and all that sort of thing. And uh long story short, because of all that, we built a stronger business and we built a business that we owned 100% of. And so we could make choices that were very different than the companies that go out and raise a bunch of money, or you get diluted again and again and again. So long story short, start IGO you go, five years later, we win a Webby Award. It's the top travel site in the US. We sell it to Travelosity and Saber Holdings. And since then, I had this sort of personal mandate to start something new every five years that I was interested in. So I did that. I started a series of businesses on I own some health clubs, and that was fun, some spas, real estate. Um, and then that kind of forwards me to you know, seven years ago. I was 46, training for a triathlon. I was pretty beat up. I was going to pick up my wife from her work for lunch, and one of her friends walks by and says, Hey, Stace, I'm going to cryo, see you later. And my ears perked up, and I was like, Cryo, what's cryo? So I said, Let's forget lunch, let's go try cryotherapy. So we went and tried it. I fell in love with it from the first second. And but I hated everything else about the experience. I hated the retail environment, it was overpriced. Um, I thought the owner was not the kind of person that should be helping people. Um, you know, I think he was more interested in making money than anything else. You know, it is what it is. And so within a week, I had put together a plan to open my own cryotherapy studio. I called a buddy, um, Steve, who's the co-founder of Restore, and said, hey, I think this has potential. He at the time was the founder and chairman of Dream It Ventures. They're the second or third most active investor in medical technology in the country. And he's like, dude, man, this is snake oil. I see a thousand ideas a month, no way. So I said, I'm gonna pay for you to go, I'm gonna drag your ass down to a cryo studio, you're gonna try it. He had the exact same feeling and said, There is something here, but you know, if we're gonna do this, we got to make it really big. And so that's why we, you know, we tested a few studios, we started layering in new services, we started adding medical services, a telemedicine platform, um, other defensible barriers, and and you wake up seven years later and you're what I would call the leading you know player in the in the wellness category at this point.

That's that's impressive. And there's a lot more that we can unpack throughout this. And I and I admire the that you started something every five years. That that's just a really interesting thing to have in your mind. And when I first tried cryo, uh, which was probably like eight years ago, I have to say I felt the same thing. I was like, you know, this is I wouldn't I I didn't have to pay for it, luckily, right? I was a gym owner, I knew some people, and I was able to go in and try it. And I thought to myself, I would never pay for this because it was astronomically expensive. It would, you know, to have a membership out there. I think we were talking about almost a hundred bucks per use for like, you know, what is it, 30 seconds, two minutes that you're in there? Not much. And be able to use it, you had to be consistent with it, you know, to really see the results. And I I feel like that was I saw it back then too. I'm like, this is for the very, very high-end athlete. And that was in Santa Barbara, California. But now you guys are essentially democratizing it for more people, which is hugely valuable. And I'm curious as you describe it to people, what is the experience? If I walk into a restore hyper wellness now as a consumer, what are what can I expect? How do I how do I get onboarded with you and what happens after that?

Yeah, I mean it's it's all about getting you to what your quote unquote budget is married with what you're trying to accomplish. And when I say budget, I'm not just talking dollars, I'm talking time. And so what we're trying to do is figure out what you want, what you need, and then find the right entry point for you. And and you can't start by saying, we've got 10 things here, you should do them all. You know, you you you've got to find what is the best way for you to start. And by the way, if that doesn't work, we do have other levers we can pull and other things we can try. And what we're trying to do is get you on a virtuous cycle. And this virtuous cycle is the more you do, the better you feel, the better you feel, the more you do. And so that kind of goes back to our mission. Our mission is to make hyper wellness more affordable and accessible. If it's not affordable, and if it's not accessible, you can't do it on a regular basis, and therefore you can't do it in an optimal way. Because when you do this the right way, it absolutely has wonderful positive impacts in in all kinds of ways. We also have the ethos of we don't sell you what we can, we sell you what you should we should. Meaning, just because you'll pay for more than than than we're trying to sell you, we are very, very, very good custodians of trying to find the right thing for you so that you will come back and trust us and and and do this over the long haul. Because once again, uh a one-off casual habit is not what we're trying to create. We're trying to create someone that incorporates this into their life, makes it a lifestyle. Um, and and we also talk a lot about the number one principle of hyperwellness for us is that you feel better right away. When you feel better right away, number one, you'll keep coming back and doing it on a regular basis. But more importantly, that feel better now dynamic gives us latitude to make longer-term promises. So if I say to you, trust me, in five years, you're gonna be a much healthier person, and that's all I can promise, you're not gonna trust it and you're not gonna stick with it. But if along the way, every single time you come in, you feel better, whether or not my five-year promise comes to fruition or not, you still feel better every day. And so that's how we think about it. And by the way, I don't want a business for rich people and pro athletes. We have a ton of rich people, we have a ton of pro athletes that come into our studios, but that's that's the cool sexy part in some ways, but that is not what our business is built on. 60% of the um US population has a chronic condition. And I would say that that is more the center of our customer base. People that have everyday problems, they want a different way to attack them, something less pharmaceutical, something that's that's that's not gonna create unintended consequences, and something that they can afford to do on a regular basis.

Yeah, that that's that's perfect because that was gonna be my next question is you know, who's going, right? And and you mentioned 60% have chronic conditions. What what do you how do you classify a chronic condition for this particular uh context?

Yeah. So so I will say one of the, you know, this is a this is a pro a good problem to have, is that every human being has a need state that's appropriate for restore. We're all aging, we're all, we all get sick, we all get hurt, we all want to have more energy, we all want to perform better. And so we literally have something for everybody. And if you look at our customer base, it's 50-50, male and female, average age around 40, there's an even distribution of 25 years below and above. So we have as many um as many 15-year-old boys as 65-year-old grandmothers, and we're pretty proud of that. We think that's a pretty cool um thing.

And generally, if if I'm a consumer, uh and I'm sure each market is different, or maybe it's not, you can tell me. But what can I expect to be investing in in every month at our store?

Um, I mean, uh the it's all over the board, but if you are willing to invest, you know, $100 a month, you're gonna have a pretty regular interaction and a good dynamic. Um, if you want to go deeper, we certainly have the ability for you to go deeper. Um, we have some people who come every single day of their life. Um I've I've I've had customers at our first store that have come in 350 plus days a year for going on six years now.

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 inner age 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.com forward slash future. Onto the show. Although COVID may no longer be a significant threat to business, the Connected Fitness Industry is still facing challenges. As the industry enters an exciting era of transformation, companies are now compelled to innovate not just their product offerings, but their entire business model to keep up with the ever-changing consumer attitude towards health and fitness. After three very successful years, the Connected Health and Fitness Summit is returning to Los Angeles this February 8th and 9th to explore the industry's most pressing challenges and hottest trends. A value-packed, intimate event where real relationships are built and lucrative professional networks are expanded. It's time to reevaluate your value propositions and clearly identify your role into your customers' fitness and wellness routines. We're bringing together the strongest brands in fitness and beyond to find out how. Download the agenda to find out more. Go to connected health and fitness.com and use discount code FOF10 to get an exclusive 10% off your event ticket. That's connectedhealth and fitness.com with discount code FOF10. And when you were starting this thing, Jim, how did you know that you you had something special that, you know, like, okay, this is we've kind of proved a concept. Like, was there a point, like a tipping point where like, okay, now let's let's let's seek some funding or whatever it takes. Let's let's hit the gas and and really go on this thing. What what gave you that confidence?

Yeah, I mean, once again, Steve and I are both experienced entrepreneurs. So we, I think, know the breadcrumbs to look for. From the day we opened our store, we saw people that were passionate about what we were doing, they were getting great results. So we knew we were solving a problem. And so once you know you're solving a problem, you've got a good foundation for a business. More importantly, the way that other people were operating in this space had all kinds of friction points and just simply could be better. And, you know, I always say I'm not the most creative person. I'm generally not the guy that has the original idea, but when I see things that can be better, I'm pretty good at making them significantly better. And so we we we saw the problem, we saw that we could solve a problem, we saw that people liked our approach, we saw lots of friction points, pain points that we could solve. Um, and and it's a huge opportunity. Once again, you're talking about things like pain. The pain market is massive. You're talking about things like addressing chronic conditions, massive opportunity. And so you could slice it 10 different ways, but no matter how you slice it, what we're working on was a massive opportunity.

Yeah, that's great. And the technology, I mean, it seems to be something that you are constantly evolving. And I, you know, my when I refer to technology, I guess the the service menu that you have for for your consumer clients. How does that work? I mean, it must be a constant state of research, right? You're always looking because the technology in the wellness space, especially anti-aging and and chronic conditions, it's it's extremely fast moving. So how do you stay on top of it and how do you choose which technologies integrate into your locations?

Yeah, and so I mean, I I will say in the beginning it was much less sophisticated. It was what does Jim like, you know, kind of made it to the studios, and you know, and and obviously we had to see good results, but we have a very sophisticated um um system around innovation at this point. So, number one, we have a medical team, um, we have a team around the core wellness services. Um, you know, I'll give you just an example of the pedigree of our chief medical officer. He got his medical degree from Stanford, he got his MBA from Stanford, and he's on the faculty at Harvard. And so that's the caliber of people that we have on every level of our leadership team and leading the important things like medical inner, you know, medical innovation and wellness innovation. So we have a whole team set up around medical innovation, we have a whole product team set up around um improving the wellness modalities and how we deliver them. We have what we call Restore Labs, which is our sort of incubator/slash commercialization engine for bringing new things into the system. Nothing comes into our system without going through a rigorous process. And and I always say Restore Labs is not a bunch of guys in white trench coats with test tubes. It's a commercialization lab. So, you know, we up until this point, we've very much been in the business of what's out there, let's go see if it works in Restore and bring it into Restore. We are now about to head to a new place, which is we will be the king maker for things. We we will find things that we think we can do uniquely, that we can do better. You know, one example of that in one way is that you talked about early cryo days and it was super expensive. I would also say the the equipment was not the best. It wasn't the best experience. There were some safety issues around it. Um the world has changed completely. We we literally have a fact a factory in Europe where we manufacture our own equipment. We took our sort of knowledge of everything in the cryospace, we went and found a bunch of engineers, we put someone in charge of it, and we now have what I would consider by far the best cryotherapy chambers in the world. The user experience is better, aesthetically, it's better, and more importantly, the efficacy is better. You know, simple things. Things like the old school cryotherapy chambers, they only came up to your neck. They were using liquid nitrogen and it would come out of the bottom of the tube and your feet and legs would get really cold, but your upper body didn't get as cold. But they would measure the temperature at the bottom where your feet are so that they could say the temperature is super cold. Well, you know, all of that stuff I understand, but there was just a better experience and a better way to do it. And so things like manufacturing our own chambers are just examples of how we're taking the experience to an entirely new level.

Yeah. And, you know, traditionally, wellness, that term has been around for a while, and the industry overall is obviously very big. I mean, you look at any valuation of a company that's in the wellness industry, it's it's significantly larger than, you know, income in comparison to the fitness industry, right? Uh what made you select and and let me back up a little bit more too, because when I when I think of wellness, up until recent years, I always thought of kind of like uh, you know, the words like holistic, and I thought about maybe a little bit of patchouli, right? And things like that. Like it was a very soft, very soft industry as far as the science behind it. Now, when you decided to take this venture on and you defined hyper wellness as a category, what's the significance of that word hyper to you? And how is this, you know, kind of taking the next step in wellness?

Yeah, you know, listen, wellness is a big category. We actually think we're in the preventative health category, the preventative health business, and wellness is a part of that. When we looked at wellness, I had many of the same feelings. It was too soft. Um, it was based on a lot of gurus in many cases. It wasn't as scientific and medically validated as you know what I thought it should be. And so we've kind of taken the best of wellness, we've taken the best of sort of medical, and we've pulled it in this new category called hyperwellness. It has several characteristics to it, all united by the idea that it's preventative health and wellness. Um, the idea is that we're gonna work on you before you get sick, as opposed to waiting on after you get sick. Um, and you know, that that's kind of traditional medicine sick care today. Um, but but we we did see the softness. We did, it was just too it it wasn't solid enough for us. And and by the way, lovely human beings in the wellness space. I some of my favorite people in the world run wellness businesses, but I would say to them, um, the same way I'm saying to you on this podcast, yeah, but prove it to me. Like, like I get that anecdotally you have lots of um situations where that makes someone feel better, but but give me a little more rigor around it. And I think that's a lot of what drove us to create this category of hyperwellness. And everything that we call hyperwellness has, you know, three or four characteristics to it. Number one, it makes you feel better right away. Number two, it has to be proven by medical or scientific studies. Number three, it has to be democratizable. And then number four, it has to be um scalable and efficient. And so if if if those four things don't exist, then then we don't consider it a hyper wellness um option.

And since you've defined this category, Jim, do you do you have competition coming about now that they're seeing the success you guys have? Like anything that's that's directly coming after you?

Yeah, there's lots of competition. There's the sort of mom and pop fragmented competition of the hundreds of wellness offerings in every big city. And and, you know, cumulatively, that's competition. Um there's there's competition from the traditional medical space, i.e., it's it's one way to approach it, we approach it another way. Um we're starting to see some more sophisticated competitors come into the space. And by the way, I think we're the trailblazer for that. I've had many, many people come up to me, and it actually makes me emotional on some level, and say to me, thank you very much. You have created something that I didn't think was possible. You've shown me that there's so much more that we can do. You've shown me that that, you know, um, this is something that is massively important. And um, you know, that's inspiring. I think, I think we have put a lot of people on the path to being our competitors. And um, to be quite honest, that's great. Like we're building a category almost by ourselves right now. And we want other credible players that are also building um this category, whether you call it hyper wellness or some permutation of that, it's it it would be great if there were other folks out there. We actually think that our long-term competitors will be the Amazons and the Apples of the world. Um, they obviously do lots of things around data and health data and that sort of stuff, but they haven't really created an offering that puts it all together. But um we we kind of keep our eye on them more than we keep our eye on anybody else.

Yeah, interesting. So I I want to get into the business a little bit because it's impressive, Jim, what you guys have done. I mean, right before we we started recording, you said you guys are roughly 170 locations. Uh you're growing very fast. Um, you've taken on earlier this year a significant round of funding. Um, give us some insights into how big you are, how fast you're growing, and and some of the assets that you have now to deploy.

Yeah, so you know, a typical studio, we have you know around 10 services. Um we've opened 170 studios around the country. We're in over 40 states. We'll be in roughly 45 states by the end of the year. We open a store now, you know, I I generally say every three to four days. That's that's that's usually correct. Some months we'll open a little faster than that, a little slower, but it averages out to that. Um we'll open, you know, order of magnitude, eight to nine stores this month. For instance, we opened nine last month, we'll open ten next month. So, so you know, that's that's um part of the plan. You know, you you gotta be where people are to be accessible, and you gotta create scale to become more and more affordable. And and that is the the the plan. Scale matters, um, accessibility matters, making this affordable matters. Um and we have an incredible team now. This isn't this isn't the Jim and Steve show. This is this is a real organization. We, you know, we we have a private equity partner. Um, General Atlantic made a minority investment in Restore, and and they don't typically make minority investments. I think that was a testament to how they valued Restore and how they valued our team and what we were doing. They made a substantial investment. You know, we we took in $140 million in investment from what I would consider the top growth equity group in the country. That is validation that is unassailable and obvious. Like they do not do that unless you are, you know, blue chip and pedigreed in in all the ways that matter in terms of achieving your ultimate goals. Um and we have a lovely team. We're in Austin, Texas, where you can attract really great people. Most people want to move to Austin. Um, most people want to live in Austin. And so we have this really great balance of very experienced, pedigreed leadership um team members with you know, over top, just an incredibly enthusiastic um group of talented people that'll run through walls to accomplish our mission. You know, and and so we and we don't look like anything else in our space. We don't look like anything in the franchise space. We have you know way more support for our locations than than a typical franchise or. There are a bunch of reasons for that. Um but but you know, we look different. We we we we we think of ourselves as a technology company and we run the we run the business that way.

Yeah. And if I'm someone who's looking to start a franchise, right? Uh what makes your franchise so attractive at this point? Um, you know, from efficiencies to revenue models to you know, getting started, all of that.

Yeah, so number one, we support our franchisees, I would say, in ways that no other franchise system does. So they they appreciate the support. Number two, we have a mission that everyone can wrap their head around and realize it's a noble mission and a big mission and provides a really big opportunity. Um, number three, the unit economics of running a restore studio are fantastic. You know, when when when run by a good operator, this is a fabulously successful business. Um, and then there are lots of just very specific metrics I can point to. Obviously, the system is growing incredibly quickly. Um, we've never closed the store. We were an essential business during COVID. We were a rocket ship before COVID, during COVID, now after COVID. Um, we continue to iterate and get better every every day. We're spending tens of millions of dollars on technology, and I tell people all the time what you see in a restore studio is the tip of the iceberg above the surface. The real power is the 95% of the iceberg that's under the water that is the dangerous part. And so I think people appreciate that and they and they see those things. And I also say we, you know, we we have a no-asshole policy. We're we're good human beings. We look for good human beings in our system. Um, we we we look for people that have the empathy gene and all of that. And and as a consequence of that, we've created a wonderful culture, both corporately and in our franchise system. And and you see it, you know, you see it after things like the Florida um hurricane and and how the system comes together and supports folks. You see it in the, you know, we have a foundation now. We have a foundation that when someone in the system needs help, the foundation comes to their rescue and helps them. Um you know, those kind of things are just little breadcrumbs as to, you know, why our story is what it is. And, you know, I'll also say we we we were very thoughtful in the way we built our organization. So when we first started, in order to be a franchisee, you had to be a military academy grad or know us personally. And so, well, why military academy grads? Well, number one, those are the hardest schools to get into. These are typically engineers. If you get through West Point, four years at West Point, you you know, you're tough. You're you've been tested, and you've also shown that you're not gonna quit when times are hard. Um, and then you go do great things in the world and you wake up one day and say, All right, I want to give back, I want to do something that I really care about. And and and you're also doing something that's personally relevant to you because you are aging and personally relevant to all the people in the world you care about. So I think all of those ingredients are part of the success of Restore.

Yeah, that's that's a powerful, uh that's a powerful value statement you got right there. What when you look forward, Jim, like what let's give it a timeline, five years from now, right? What does success look like to you for hyperwellness? Like where where is this going?

Yeah. So I I think, you know, I could I could throw out like literal metrics, like we think we'll be within 15 minutes of, you know, 85% of the U.S. population or something of that order of magnitude. We think we'll be a household name. Um we think that we will be one of the best predictors of health span and increases in health span of, you know, sort of anyone in the world. Um we'll be touching millions of people. Um we'll be um uh, you know, we'll be international at that point. So the goal is not just to bring this to the US, the goal is to bring this to the world. Um, you know, though those are many of the things. The technology that we deploy will be a big part of of increasing human performance and and and help making people healthier. And we will have made a dent in making society healthier. Um that is ultimately our goal. We want to change the health of society, and and to do that, you've got to provide a vision, you've got to you've got to kind of create trust, you've got to once again be affordable, you've got to be accessible. And and so all of those things will happen as we become, once again, a household name that is changing the health of society.

Yeah, right on. I love it. So health span, I want to get into that because that's actually gonna segue nicely into uh something that I want to talk to you about. So health span is it's now it's becoming popular as a term. Um, but maybe if you can, for people in our audience who don't know what exactly that means, give us a definition you know, in your mind of what health span is compared to maybe, you know, lifespan or other you know, common terms that are used for one's health.

Yeah. So lifespan's easy. Lifespan is how many years the average person lives. And so you reborn, you live a certain number of years and you die. And so that's great, but that's not the whole equation. The more important part of the equation is what we call health span. And that's the number of years you live, a good life where you can generally do most or all of the things that you want to do, things that make you happy. And so if you look at America, for instance, the average health span in this country is 63, the average lifespan is 79. So we've gotten good at keeping people alive, but we've created a situation where the average American has 16 really shitty years of living. That's a long time to live when you're unhealthy and you can't do the things that you want. And by the way, once you start doing, stop doing the things that you love, you become a different person. You're not happy, um, you're less capable. It's a downward vicious cycle. It feeds on itself until you die. And so our our mantra is we're working on health span. We do believe that if we improve health span by extension, we will also push lifespan out. But in a perfect world, you'd want health span and lifespan to be the exact same point. You know, you want to live a full life, and then the day you die is the day you can't live a full life anymore. And so health span is relatively easy to address on some level. We all intuitively know that if you exercise and move and you eat better and put better things in your body and you avoid bad, you know, sort of toxins and all kinds of other things, that generally speaking, you will improve both your health span or lifespan. But it's incredibly complicated. Navigating everything that goes into improving your health span, when you when you think about it, it it's it's just really complicated. Even at a restore, we think of of basically nine foundational elements of improving health span. By the way, we sell about five or six of those elements. So obviously, we have hot and cold contrast therapy, we have you know, IVs, we have hyperbaric therapy, all these things are a part of it, but we are very cognizant of the fact that if you don't take care of what you eat a little better, if you don't move more, exercise more, if you're not doing something meaningful in life, if you're not connected to a group of people that that brings sort of all of these sort of benefits of being connected to something and connected to a group, like if you don't do those things and more, you will not optimize your health. So our my ultimate vision is that we will curate every aspect of hyperwellness so that you can improve your health span. We won't just curate the things that we offer in our store, we will curate every aspect of it. Some of the things we'll sell, some of the things we'll provide content around, some of the things we'll partner with other folks. But you will wake up at some point and we will be able to address everything that is important for you to optimize your health. And you will no longer be in this world of I just don't know where to start, I don't know how to navigate all this, I hear five different opinions. Um, and by the way, what I'm not saying is that there's one program that's going to work for everybody. Part of that curation is to put you as an individual on your path. Um, because the traditional medical system is basically treating us as average people. And so, whatever the intervention is, it is for the average person. The problem is none of us are the average person. We're unique individuals that have unique ways that our body responds to things. So part of that curation will be taking your situation and my situation and putting us on our own customer journey and helping to really navigate that. But start tomorrow, by the way. You don't have to be near a restore. Like you said, you're several hours from a restore. The vast majority of things we do, you can do naturally. You should start eating better. You should start moving more. That's independent of restore. Um, you can replicate cold therapy, even if it's as simple as a cold shower. Um, you know, it's harder to replicate some of the stuff. It's harder to replicate pressure from a hyperbaric um chamber. Heat, depending on what you have access to, might be a little harder as well. But but many of the things we do, you can replicate in in the real world without coming to a restore. And we are absolutely um fine with that. If if we motivate people to go do things on their own, whether they come into a restore or not, it's beside the point. We just want healthier people. Um, and and and so we're we're, I think we're pretty good custodians of once again, the money doesn't drive us. It's it's more the impact on society and the efficacy that we worry about.

You're absolutely right, too. I mean, you don't have to have a hype, you know, restore hyperwellness near you. I mean, you look at blue zones, for instance, and and the studies around these particular populations across the world where these people live forever and they live very full lives, you know, fully a long health span. And, you know, I resonate with this because I think anybody who has seen someone they love age, right? I lost my dad three years ago. In the last few, I would say five years were not that great. I mean, he would joke about it. He's like, Eric, you know, whoever said, whoever called it the the golden years was full of shit, right? And you know, I thought it's funny, but sad in the same way because, you know, it it it was true. And I saw him, you know, suffer and and eventually just become very unhappy uh in his life. And I think, you know, when we when we talk about health span, um what you said before we started recording today is like how do we get people on the right path at the right time? You know, that that's something I know it's been swimming around your head between, you know, the teenager, um someone in their 20s, someone, you know, aging in their 80s, right? That it's it's tough to to get people on board at the right time because sometimes if you if you don't get on the right time, then you know you've done yourself a major disservice. So when you think about that, you know, at all these different points in age, and everyone's gonna be different, right? How how do we start educating people that um you know this this is available to them and getting them on, as you quoted, the the right path.

Yeah, well, I'll I'll answer that, but I'll I will make two other points as well. That notion of blue zones. Like I literally have a chart that I keep that the idea is that where every location, restore location is located, we will eventually create a blue zone. Nice. So then at some point we want all of those locations, their blue zones to interlock with the adjacent restore blue zone. So so I love the notion of blue zone, and not just for the sake of people living to be a hundred, but people living to be a hundred and still running marathons and still fishing every day and still um, you know, doing the things that they love. Um, the other thing I'll say really quickly is that that notion of golden years, anyone that's seen an old person age in this country is is mortified. And so what's happening, um, which I think is really wonderful and healthy, is that younger age cohorts, like millennials, for instance, they spend incredibly more time and money on anti-aging at their young age than previous generations. And one of the main reasons is because they'd seen their parents and grandparents' age and they're like, no, thank you. I don't want that. The other reason is they're paying for their health care now. Average family deductibles are $8,000. So when you start coming out of pocket and paying for things, you start to pay attention to, well, what can I do differently? So I say use that example because it does take something to kind of wake you up. Sometimes it's the family you grew up in and it's just naturally a part of everything. Sometimes it's you go get married, have a couple kids, and your family deductible is $8,000, and you're like, oh, wait a minute, I got to do something differently. Sometimes that you have a parent that gets cancer and dies miserably. Um, I hope that it doesn't take those dramatic things for people to wake up. To be quite frank, I thought um COVID would be a bigger wake-up call for people. I think generally speaking, people are more cognizant of taking care of themselves, improving their immunity, and all that sort of thing. But I also think too many people are still looking for a magic pill. Um, and so it it's it's not gonna happen overnight. We're gonna have to keep grinding away at it. We're gonna have to keep educating people, we're gonna have to show them that it's a really good return on investment, that the money you put into health and wellness today actually pays back. And there's all kinds of ways that manifests. So For instance, if you become more healthy, maybe you eat out less. Well, some of the healthy things you're doing cost a little bit of money, but overall you actually spend less money. Maybe you drink a little less. Maybe you, you know, it's not this static thing that if you add health and wellness on, your budget automatically goes up and you don't have time to do something. You're you just kind of change the way you do other things. And if you put that all into a formula, the vast majority of people that get on the hyper wellness train, they end up figuring out the way to manage it. They end up figuring out the way to budget for it, and and they find that they end up way better off than if they hadn't done that. And and that's just a long education cycle, just one person at a time, we're gonna we're gonna convert them and get them going down the right path. I mean, my kids, my kids could talk to you about all this stuff. Now, they probably take it for granted. Great, that's perfect. I've done my job. If they take it for granted and think of it just as a natural part of what they do, even at 14, 15 year old years old, I've got them on the right path. I just need to do that for more people. But it's also never too late to start. If you're 50, it's not too late to start. If you're 60, it's not too late to start. You can now, you'll you won't be able to um fix certain things, but no matter when you start, you can make a difference pretty quickly.

Yeah, that's great, Jim. So one final question for you. Uh, because you know, it is the future of fitness, is the name of this show. So when you look at technology now, is there any, you know, we're getting into like next gen wearables, we're getting into all kinds of regenerative science, um, all kinds of very, very promising um, you know, advents of technology. Is there anything in particular off the top of your head that gets you really excited about wellness? Any any technological advancement that you think is is going to be critical?

Yeah, um, you know, so I'll I'll say a couple things. Number one, I am a guinea pig. Like I'll try anything and everything that I think has merit. Um, and I get to try it on a high level and have access to incredibly gifted, talented people that are in this sort of anti-aging space, wellness space, medical space. And so I am lucky in that regard. I do, I do get to see things that are coming, you know, years before you know a normal person does. And that's one of the reasons I absolutely love what I do day to day. Um, I also have to reinvent fun on a regular basis. So, you know, running a company that's opening their first studio and then running a company that's 25 and you know everybody versus running a company that's 170 and opening. So I kind of um make this discovery process part of the reinvention of fun for myself. So I am gonna do some podcast episodes around like super cool topics, like maybe going down to South America and doing stem cells and what that all entails and why. Um, but I think you know, stem cells, I think there's there's massive opportunity there. Peptides, I think there's massive opportunity there. Um hormones, like I think done well and done right, there's massive opportunity there. Um I could go on and on from a from a sort of wearable device perspective and things like that. Like, I'm not a particularly big fan of things that only address one aspect of health and fitness. Um, if it doesn't integrate well with other things and it doesn't help you see the whole picture, I think it has limited value. But there are lots of things that are really good at helping you improve sleep or helping you improve one aspect of your health, just not a lot of things that bring it all together. So I don't think there's any one particular thing that's like, holy crap, I'm I'm super amazed at that. What I'm gonna be more amazed by are the offerings that bring it all together in a manageable way for people. And um, like I said, I'll I'm I'm gonna try everything. Um, the the key is how do you do these things and do them safely and and make sure that you deliver them safely? How do you do them in a way that doesn't run afoul of things like the FDA and all of that? The FDA has a purpose, and you know, the cynical side of me would say it's driven by, you know, embedded powers and money. The less cynical side of me it says, hey, you know, they are truly trying to protect society and that sort of thing. So let's make sure we don't sort of step on the landmines that are obvious and navigate that. Um, you know, we we we want to be able to do our own studies. We want to be able to prove our own hypotheses about different combinations of services and modalities and technology. Um the cool thing is now we are getting to the point where we have the scale to do those sorts of things. So I think we are uniquely positioned to navigate all the minefields, to pull everything together, to be curious and try things that are bubbling up now that are gonna be more important later. But um, I I will tell you, you can you can get lost in this. And and you also can chase windmills. Like there are a lot of claims out there, people promise a lot of things. Um, you got to be a little careful, you got to be a little skeptical. Don't listen to one source, don't listen to Jim Donnelly, you know, go out and investigate, talk to other people, look at a lot of information sources. Um, and if you do go in deep, you know, I I know guys that call themselves biohackers and and they do all kinds of crazy shit. And I'm like, that's awesome, but I don't, you know, like there is a I think there is a a smart way to do it and a and a not smart way to do it, but having said that, there isn't much out there that's got some promise that I'm not gonna try. So um, you know, but and here's the final construct I'll say to you. I will never put anything in restore that I wouldn't give my kids or my parents. Simple as that. There you go.

There you go. It's great. And it must be a very fun position you're in, too, to try all these uh you know, new advancements. It just sounds like a really interesting place you found yourself in. So uh Jim, I I I really appreciate what you guys are doing.

A lot of times I would have done this podcast from a hyperbaric chamber. I've got one in my office, for instance, and I do many of my calls literally from the hyperbaric chamber. And people are always like, where the hell are you? What are you doing? And they kind of chuckle at things like that. But that's cool. That's that's what makes it, that's what makes it fun. If you don't take advantage, you're you're missing the point.

Yeah, that's great, Jim. Well, once again, I I really appreciate what you guys are doing. Um, you know, you've you've built a great business that has uh you know unlimited potential and your vision's fantastic for it. So I really appreciate spending some time and explaining what you're doing uh over at at Restore. If people want to get a hold of you or if you want them to go somewhere online, is there any place specific that you'd like them to go?

Uh probably restore.com. I you know, I I don't that's the simplest way. You can get to all our content, you can get to all our services, you can you can interact with us, you can send us a message. Um, I will say we try very hard to respond to every message that we get on a personal level. I try to respond to all the as you see, it might take me a little bit of time, but I really do make an effort to get back to everybody.

Yeah. Well, Jim, thank you again. This has been an absolute pleasure. Keep up the great work. And ladies and gentlemen, Jim Donnelly. 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 futurofitness.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.