Making Alternative Medicine Primary - Max Coleman

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, where we talk with entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in fitness, wellness, and the health sciences. I'd like to give a big thanks to our sponsors, Level 5 Mentors, helping entrepreneurs achieve the highest levels of freedom in time, money, relationships, health, and purpose. Also, certified course creation, helping entrepreneurs create accredited online certifications that are not only lucrative but highly scalable. Go to level5mentors.com or certifiedcoursecreation.com and learn more. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and once again, welcome to the future of fitness. Boom. We're live. Max, welcome to the show, man. What's up? Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you for coming on. I think we'd be remiss not to bring it up. So the date of this recording is March 12, 2020. You are in San Francisco, I'm in Montana. Today on the news, the whole country of Denmark got shut down. Trump just put on a travel band to Europe. The NBA put games on hold. It's a strange time, right, Max? Like what what's uh tell me about your experience in a major metropolitan area. What's going on in San Francisco right now?

Well, it seems like the world's ending. We'll see. We'll see. Things are getting shut down here. People are being told to stay home. Big companies. Google is telling their tens of thousands of employees to stay home. Uber is telling their employees to stay home. I don't think they told their drivers to stay home, but they told their employees to stay home. Twitter, they're telling their employees to stay home. My uh co-working space, I was there yesterday actually, and it was like 90% empty. Most investors that I haven't talked to, they're not taking in-person meetings anymore. They want to do, you know, Zoom calls. So people are taking this really seriously. There's panic, you know, and there's no, there's no good that comes from panic. But I think being, you know, reacting swiftly to this, I think is smart because, you know, when you look at Wuhan and kind of ground zero of this virus, they didn't have any of this and they were spreading for, you know, a few weeks before people even knew what was going on. And everyone in the city basically was getting this virus. So I think the fact that here we're we're taking it seriously and isolating ourselves, I think it is a good move. The problem I see is, you know, they're they're telling their employees, hey, we're we're closing down for four weeks, but I don't think the virus is going to go any, you know, away anytime soon unless there's literally complete lockdown. And this is what I thought, you know, I started following the virus in early January when it f you know, when stuff was first coming out of Wuhan and I was learning about the virus and how, you know, you get it, you don't have symptoms for a few days. And I just remember thinking, like, there's no way to stop this. You know, you you literally can't stop this without having complete lockdown. And so I actually, you know, I was telling you, I bought a little face mask and kind of got prepared, you know, luckily before people really started becoming aware here, you know, it's got to play its course. I did see something come out of China that apparently 70% of the people who have gotten the virus have already fully recovered. So, you know, maybe it's already peaked in China. And so, you know, we could hopefully have that kind of news here at some point. But I I do think it's gonna get worse before it gets better. But at the end of the day, it's all good. The world goes through many different ebbs and flows, and it's just part of the human journey that we're on.

So yeah, it's it's an interesting thing. I don't love anything about this, but what I do value is that it really starts to put things in perspective for people because it shakes us out of our normal routines, and that's so necessary for everything. I mean, I I've seen some really impactful things on really I mean, I think I don't I believe when we conversed conversed a while ago, you're not on social media, right? No, just LinkedIn. Yeah, which is a great place to be for B2B, but that's another story. I think some of the stuff I've seen is is really impactful in the way that, like, well, you know, we're freaking out about this, and rightfully or unrightfully so, whatever that is, that that's your call. But there's a lot of health things that are more insidious and way more impactful on us, like obesity, diabetes, things are completely preventable. Right, right. And no one's like it just put things in perspective, like, well, why aren't we focusing on the things that are really killing people?

Totally, I totally agree. I mean, I you know, it's like 1700 people die every day from heart disease. Yes. Every day. 1700 people. That's a 9-11 every two days, heart disease. Yeah, it's totally reversible, totally preventable. Yeah. Unfortunately, we don't see people panicking, running outside out of the McDonald's, and um, but it brings it around to, you know, health and wellness.

Like if the one sure thing you can have, right? If you want to be safer from, you know, anything from a pandemic to uh systemic health issues, is is just having better health and wellness and having a better total baseline, better immune system, better habits, better sleep, better everything, right? Things that are totally within our control. And that's and that's the the advantage or the opportunity that fitness, health, and wellness professionals have, is we can help people create a better baseline. And uh, you know, that's one of the beauties of what you're doing. Dow Cloud is you're making that more accessible to more people. So let's put coronavirus aside for now. Tell about your story, Max. Give us a background answer. It's really interesting.

Yeah, sure. So, you know, I so I founded Dow Cloud, which is a wellness practitioner network and marketplace, and it was inspired by my own peeling journey. And my story really started when I was a little kid. I was around seven or eight years old when I was put on ADD drugs, starting with Ritalin and Adderall and Concerta and all these different drugs. And you know, I was kind of this kid full of energy. You know, I was kind of a goofy kid and they put me on these drugs and they did a great job of you know sitting me down in my seat, paying attention in class, but uh, they really wrecked havoc on me physically and emotionally. And I didn't realize that, you know, for a very long time. I started getting having issues with stress and anxiety as a kid. I remember just always having kind of like sweaty palms and just always being kind of clenched, my fists being kind of clenched. I remember being around 11 years old, I think, maybe you know, 10 or 11 years old, learning the word anxiety and really having a hard time comprehending it, like understanding, because that was literally the ether that I lived in. You know, it's like trying to teach a fish what water is, right? You're not if you have nothing to compare it against, it's hard to really understand. And it started having you know, manifesting physically. So I started getting knee pain in my teens and it gradually became hip pain and back pain. By the time I was around 16, 17 years old, I had chronic back, which you know, we hear about back pain a lot, right? But you don't hear about 16, 17-year-olds having chronic back pain. And I went to different doctors. I was basically told I was too young to have back pain by one of them, as if it wasn't real. I was told that there was nothing wrong, that I was totally fine. I actually saw this world-renowned back doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital after a four-month waiting list. And this guy who was completely hunchback came in the room, didn't address me, looked at my x-ray, and said I was fine, I was good to go. And I was literally sitting there in pain. And I actually laughed when he said that because I thought he was joking. I mean, I'm literally sitting here in pain. Here's a doctor who I've been waiting four months to see. He doesn't ask me a single question. He literally just goes up to my x-ray, looks at it, and tells me that I'm fine. And I laughed. I thought he was joking. And I quickly realized that he wasn't joking. And it was like, you know, that moment I just remember so vividly. It was literally like an acid trip. I was like, I was like entering another dimension. I basically had a choice. I was, you know, either I was just gonna live with this and probably end up on painkillers and, you know, for the rest of my life. Luckily, I didn't never did that, or I needed to figure this out. You know, I need to take responsibility for this. That was that was kind of what it came down to. I was depending on this system to fix me, by the way, the same system that, you know, made me sick. And I realized I needed to stop depending on the system. I need to take responsibility and I need to figure this out on my own. And I started going online and I started soaking up everything I could about health. I started learning about nutrition, I started finding all these different holistic therapies and went down this rabbit hole of holistic health and wellness. You know, luckily this was right around the time I was going to college, and so I had hours and hours every day to read about this stuff. By the way, I wasn't going to class too much, you know. But most people, they have they have their health issues, you know, later in life. They've got a full-time job, they've got a mortgage, they've got kids, they don't have time to spend hours a day, you know, learning health information. And I got a lot of insights in this experience. It ended up taking about six years before I could say I had fully reversed my back pain and along the way uncovered other health issues, food sensitivities, and you know, I just got so many insights. I saw that, hey, you know, first of all, I'm not alone, right? More than half the country literally has at least one chronic disease. You know, we talk about coronavirus, people panicking, but literally half the country is already sick.

Yes.

You know, I see that, and then I see these practitioners. I tried everything. I literally, I mean, you name it, I've tried it. Every single therapy you can imagine. I actually waterfasted for 15 days. I did everything. And I saw these practitioners have so much value to offer, but they're kind of in this underground word of mouth market, and people aren't aware that they exist. Or if they do, they aren't aware of the value they have to offer. Or if they do, they don't know who to trust. You know, so there's all these kind of barriers that are preventing people from getting connected with these practitioners who can reverse the disease that that they might have. In, you know, the really big insight that I got through this whole experience, something that I try to explain of really understanding what chronic disease is and what what causes chronic disease. And the way I would sum that up is that the vast majority of chronic diseases are caused by blocks of energy and emotion in the body. And this is something that the Western model really misses or misunderstands, right? So the Western model is really great with the mechanical and the chemical aspects of the body. You know, if I get my leg chopped off, like I'm going to a hospital, I'm gonna be grateful that you know maybe they can sew it back together. I'm not going to my acupuncturist, right? But when it comes to chronic disease, the Western model is not built for this, right? They're kind of suppressing symptoms, they're treating the symptoms, they're not really treating the root cause. Whereas the wellness practitioners, when I say wellness practitioners, there's there's dozens of therapies. You know, the big ones that we all recognize are things like chiropractic, acupuncture, massage therapy, but there's actually 51 different therapies that we recognize on Dow Cloud. And they all do very different things, but the common thread is that they facilitate the movement of energy and emotion through the body. And this is really where healing takes place. And, you know, as a 21-year-old, this is a pretty big insight. You know, I, you know, this is kind of a groundbreaking insight. And I just saw this huge opportunity to bring more credibility, bring more legitimacy to this. You know, I think of it as a different model of healthcare, the wellness model of healthcare. And that was, you know, Dowclad was born. I met my co-founder in college. Kind of a funny story. I met him selling him shrooms, but uh, you know, we became friends. He had this idea, and I this was, you know, pretty soon after I graduated college. I went to, you know, did some sales for a solar energy company and was kind of toying with this idea on the side with him. And uh eventually we decided to go all in. He was still a senior, he actually dropped out of his senior year, and I quit my job, moved into my mom's house, and we started this company. And it's been, you know, it's been a really long journey. It's been more than five years now. And things are really now finally starting to come together. It took us a long time to figure out products, how to really serve both the practitioner and the consumer. And yeah, but that brings us to today. You know, we now have a network of more than 7,000 practitioners across the country, nationally, so in all 50 states, 180 different cities. So basically anywhere in the country, if you know, if you go on Dow Cloud and you search for practitioners, there are going to be people nearby. And you can go on, you can take this quiz, answer a few questions. So if you don't know what you know, practitioner you need, which most people don't, you can take this quiz that we offer and we recommend a few practitioners to you based on your answer. There's also a ton of content and information. So, you know, our practitioners are publishing articles and sharing their wealth of knowledge. You can go on, you can ask a question, and you're gonna get answers from these practitioners answering your question. So it's really kind of this, you know, wellness hub. That's kind of the gist. That's that's where we're at now. And you know, our mission as a company is to make wellness primary care. And this is what, you know, what we believe it really should be. When people call this alternative medicine, it still makes me cringe. I can probably learn to forgive more, but it's this isn't alternative. Like this is primary care. You take care of your health. You know, you don't wait for something to go wrong and then react to it. You know, what's driving this shift, I think, is just access to information. 30 years ago, people didn't have that any access to information. The the best thing you could do for your health was just to listen to what your doctor told you, right? That was probably the smartest thing you could do. But now people have more access to information, and so people learn more about their own health issue than their doctor knows, who might know a little bit about a lot of different health issues, but people are getting more knowledgeable about their own health, and so it's creating this shift in authority from the doctor being the authority to the patient being the authority, making the decisions for their own health. And, you know, where wellness practitioners come in is they see themselves more as facilitators, guides. You know, it's ultimately that the body that's doing the healing, and the wellness practitioner is supporting the body's natural healing abilities. And there's just a lot of opportunity here, I think, to bring more credibility to this model of healthcare to help these practitioners build their businesses. You know, what's so tough for them is they're all word of mouth. And, you know, until Dowclad, there really haven't been any viable tools for them to market themselves. And, you know, most go out of business within two years. So if someone doesn't have a network of friends and family start out their practice, it's really hard to get something off the ground. So I think we can, you know, grow the base of practitioners by making it more viable for people to, you know, start and build a practice and to get more people connected with these practitioners and facilitate the healing. The world needs a lot of healing, and we're just grateful to be a part of it and and to help and facilitate as as much as we can. So yeah.

That's crazy, man. There was there were so many critical nuggets in there too. And I mean, I I think it's interesting and I guess kind of funny too that someone who came with battled stress and anxiety is now the CEO and founder of a company.

There is a paradox here.

Yeah, right. If there's one thing that's that's stressful and anxious and that makes you anxious, is is being the founder of a company and uh having responsibility for all the things you're you're responsible for.

And so that's yeah, do what I say, not what I do. Yeah, right. That's yeah.

Yeah, it's not like you found a nice little beach town to just, you know, chill out. No, you when you went head and head on into it. I really appreciate too the taking responsibility for health and wellness. And I look at people who are close to me who have who have taken no responsibility, they just go to the doctor and accept whatever the doctor, and there's a lot there's a lot of fantastic doctors out there. I I you know that the I want to put the people, I want to differentiate the people from the system because that's critical too. Because I know a lot of wonderful people who are just stuck in a horrible system. And you know, these people go and they, you know, they they just assume what the doctor has said was right, and you know, they just take the pill because you know the pill is the best option that the doctor has. And uh it's it it's gotta change. It's not that it's going to change, it has to change because this doesn't work and it's cost, you know, it's costing everybody time, pain, money, right, at a high level. And it's really cool. I love the you know, in the mission of making the alternative medicine the primary medicine. That's that's pretty interesting too. So 7,000 practitioners, right? 51 different types of therapies. And I've gone through, you know, different types of therapies in the past as well, you know, from doctors of natural medicine to Reiki to whatever. And it's it's always interesting. I always get something out of it. The biggest challenge I've always found is that this stuff's expensive. You know, it's not covered by medical insurance. Do you ever see, or is there windows into insurance money for these therapies, or is that still there, is that still far apart?

Yeah, there is. Uh, in fact, just recently, Medicare and Medicaid started covering acupuncture. Yes, there is a problem in that most of these therapies are not covered by insurance, but the bright side is it's starting to shift. You know, especially we look at acupuncture and chiropractic, these are the kind of two that are making the most headway, getting more coverage from insurance companies. One of the challenges is there aren't studies that show the viability and the efficacy of these treatments. So there's all this anecdotal data, right? There's all these people saying, hey, I got so much better by doing XYZ, but you know, the medical community in a lot of cases likes to call it, you know, unscientific only because there hasn't been a study funded, right? Because there's not a profit incentive to do so. If I have a drug that I want to sell, you know, I've got some money to invest to prove some outcome of this drug. But when it comes to these therapies, you know, my acupuncturist isn't gonna fund uh you know, try and study on acupuncture. So this is actually one of the roles that we see ourselves playing, you know, down the line. We're still pretty early on, but once we have a lot more funding down the line when the time is right, to actually fund studies to demonstrate the efficacy of these treatments. And when we do that, I think insurance companies will get on board. You know, insurance companies um make money from people paying their monthly payments and staying alive longer. And so if we can demonstrate, hey, people who use these therapies are gonna pay you longer and have less health issues, there's there's a profit you know, incentive for them too. So that that's what we need is is you know, alignment of incentives. And yeah, that that's one of the roles that that we see ourselves playing down the road.

Yeah, it's it's gotta happen, right? It's just gotta happen at some point. And you know, so you you've been doing this for five years, right? So we said, yeah. And it's it's fun to interview CEOs and founders because there's similarities in the way that think. I mean, you recognized a problem that was your own, right? And that's how a lot of it starts is you kind of solve your own problem, and then you're like, oh, there's opportunity here to help more people. Over the past five years since you started this, what are some of the personal challenges that you've faced, you know, as as the leader, as the founder?

Well, so one thing, my co-founder Eric, he was actually CEO for the first few years, and then he left. And this was about two years ago when I when I actually became CEO and kind of took you know took the range of the company. There's so much that I've learned and and challenges. One of the big challenges is just the loneliness. You know, it's I'm I'm kind of in this dark tunnel and can't look back, and it's just darkness ahead of me, and I just got to keep going. And that's kind of how I would describe the experience. It's a tough journey. You know, what I like to say is it's a beautiful and a horrible journey. You know, it's definitely not healthy. That's sort of meant by the paradox. You know, there's a lot of stress that comes with what I'm doing and a lot of pressure. The 7,000 practitioners that we have are 7,000 customers I've got to make happy, right? And we've got, you know, 10, 12 investors, I gotta make sure I make the money. I've got 15 people on the team, I gotta make sure that they're happy. You know, so I've got all this, there's a lot of pressure, and that comes with a lot of stress and anxiety. But, you know, one of the things I feel that this is kind of what I was built for. It means my experiences growing up dealing with these health issues set me up to be this person to help lead this company. So, in a lot of ways, I really see this as kind of an obligation or you know, a responsibility. It would kind of be fucked up if I didn't, you know, if I knew this and I didn't act, that would be kind of messed up, right? But there's so much growth. I'm learning every day. Every day is a new journey. There's a lot of highs and lows, and and being able to manage that is it's a learning experience. What I love also is that it doesn't end. The growth doesn't end. We can have a hundred thousand practitioners, we could be a hundred million dollar company, but there's still going to be challenges. And I love things like that. Like that's one of the reasons I love yoga. You know, it's like you never win, right? There's always more growth. There's always more to learn. And that's one of the reasons I, you know, really love this journey.

I mean, you look at your environment. I mean, you're in San Francisco, you're in the heart of Silicon Valley. You're a a young, a relatively young CEO, founder of a company that's got some growth. You know, just the environment there in the Bay Area, and this is where I came from, right? So I have seen the Silicon Valley grow from literally when it was orchards to what it is now. And I imagine that that environment as well is it's competitive, right?

Yeah.

There's a lot of CEOs and founders walking around. Some with, I love this term, pre-revenue, right? Yeah, right models. And then there's people like you who have actually created something. I I'm in, you know, now I'm in Montana, so I'm pretty far removed. But you know, there is that sense of competitiveness. And I I admire what you're doing. And it's it's interesting that most of the successful people that I get to talk to or leading companies, they all have the mission first. Profit is secondary, and then they kind of get into it and then they realize, like, wait, I have to focus on the profit and the revenue.

Sure, 100%. Right. Yeah, but that is that that's how the mission, you know, that's how you win the mission. Right.

Totally. Who do you look up to? Like, is there any people who you were like, hey, they're they're doing a great job. They're making a huge impact.

That's a great question. I don't know that there's like any one person that I idolize or anything like that. I think there are things that I look up to. First person that comes to mind, you know, kind of cliche. It's Elon, right? Elon Musk. You know, you can't help but but look up to that guy. But I I look up to him in some ways and not in others. You know, he's probably not taking good care of his health, but you know, here's someone who's sacrificing so much and and putting his all into making an impact on this planet that for the good of mankind, for the good of people today and and for you know every generation that follows. I look up to people like uh, you know, in terms of like entrepreneurs that that I I think are great entrepreneurs, you know, Reed Hoffman, I think is an I like to think of him as like an underrated. I I think you know Reed Hoffman is one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, and LinkedIn is, I think, one of the greatest companies of all time in the amount of value that they've created for people in the marketplace. Who else? You know, Jason Calicanus, he's one of our investors. I don't know if you know Jason, but he's known for being one of the first investors in Uber. He invested in Calm, Thumbtack, he's invested in a bunch of companies. And, you know, we we went through his accelerator. And as, you know, really as I got to know him, and really as I got to know his founders, I really developed a lot of respect for him. This guy is really he's a great investor. He's really great at finding founders, you know, founder market fit, I think, is that that's what he recognizes. And you know, when he invested in Dow Cloud, you know, I met with him for probably about two to three minutes before he made a decision to invest in Dow Cloud. And I didn't even say like today, I don't think he really gets Dow Cloud yet. Like he we were talking the other day, he was like, oh, acne puncture and chiropractic. Like that was literally what he said. He doesn't know anything about this stuff. But he recognized, I think, you know, founder market fit. He recognized that I am the right founder to solve this problem. And he works hard. And I, you know, I think one of the things about Jason compared to other investors is he really works hard. Like he has a process and he has a team around him. You know, to get to my meeting with Jason, I had to meet with four other people before I even got to him, who kind of gave me their, you know, thumbs up. And he's dishing out checks. He's writing out 100K checks every week or two. And I think that's one of the things that makes him a great investor is you know, a lot of investors, you know, they've got, you know, someone sells their company, they got $50 million, and then they're like, they can't write a hundred thousand dollar check, they gotta hold on to every piece, every penny they got. But it's such an unhealthy relationship with money. And I think that's you know what makes Jason such a great investor is his relationship with money. He's so willing to dish it out. He's not attached to it. And I'm just so grateful for him and founder, you know. Founders need more people like him that are willing to write a check and you know take a risk and dish it out and and support us, you know. I think Jason's gonna be kind of a household name in 10 years because he, you know, I think he's investing in some great companies, but there's a lag in them coming full circle. But yeah, I would say that's who really comes to mind.

Walk me through that continuum. Founder market fit.

Yes, that founder market fit. Basically, who is the right founder to solve a problem? Just using Jason again as an example, he's not really that concerned with the business. He, you know, there are certain things that he needs to know about the business. Like he has what he calls his Goldilocks zone. That there's a product in market, there's revenue, there's some evidence of product market fit. And as long as he has that, it's like, you know, check boxes. As long as he has that, really the focus is is this the right founder to solve this problem? Does this person have the right background? Do they have the right education? Do they have the right personality? Are they gonna give up? That's one of the things I feel, and Jason has said this too, that you know, when founders fail, it's not really because they run out of money or a competitor beats them. A company fails when a founder gives up. And, you know, I think he's really great at finding founders who are so dedicated, so committed that they're not going to give up.

There's a lot of founders, right? But you also have to have a very I think the more unique the problem, the bigger the problem, the more opportunity there is. And, you know, you identified a problem that no one really people may have felt, right? But no one really saw it. And I think that's the kicker is like, okay, that's a really good problem. And you know, I have this conversation quite often about what's the difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur or self-employed and an entrepreneur. And I think the differentiating factor is that one in the entrepreneur is based on innovation and problem solving. It's like the difference between someone who owns a bakery and you know, someone who's creating uh a whole new style of bread because of gluten intolerance or dairy intolerance, right? There's a difference there. It's slight and subtle and nuanced, but but there's a big difference because a lot of people can be founders of companies that really aren't solving anything new. But there's people out there who are looking to solve big problems, like yourself and saw it. And I think that's that's a critical thing too, probably. I've never been an investor. I'm not at the financial standpoint where I would be an investor without my wife absolutely killing me. But I think that's that's a fundamental difference, I would imagine, too. I'm I'm curious in that two-minute conversation you have with with Jason, what what happened there?

Well, basically, he gave me an opportunity to pitch. He has a and they they have a very tight process. Like I literally didn't know who he was, and then nine days later, he wrote me a check. You know, so I applied, they had his application on his website. After I applied, they invited me in for an interview with a couple people on his team. They said, Cool, you're gonna hear back from us. Next day they said, Hey, come in tomorrow. And then with a couple other people on his team. They said, All right, come in tomorrow, you're gonna meet with Jason, and basically did a three-minute pitch of Dow Cloud. And I remember the kind of the look he gave. It was like I was halfway through the pitch, and he gave me a look. And I remember thinking in the back of my head, I was like, wait a minute, I haven't even like acclaimed everything, but I can tell he's gonna write me a check. And yeah, and I that's I think he recognized. He recognized, you know, halfway through that, okay, I'm the guy that's gonna solve this problem. And it was a very, very quick, yeah, it was it was just fast.

It's so amazing how fast fortunes can change. Yeah, just literally, I can't imagine your emotional state that day. It must have been euphoric, right?

Honestly, it's probab who knows. I might have had other fires going on that. There's so many, like here's the thing. At this point, I don't the ups and downs are less extreme. So it's like the shit can hit the fan one day and we can get a hundred thousand dollars check the next day. And I it's not that big of a difference for me, actually. Maybe it's a numbing thing, or it's just being present and having been through the ups and downs that I don't react in that way anymore.

Yeah, you're stoic.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I think that's yeah, I think that's a good way to think about it.

No, that's that's the perfect. It's stoicism. I practice it every day. So I always kind of wrap things up with a question that can go on for a little while anyway, because it helps connect people. And one of the reasons, you know, I I love this podcast is uh it allows me to connect different people. So what do you think right now, Max, is the biggest need in your business? You know, who who would you like to be talking to?

Yeah, biggest need right now is fundraising. So we're we're actually we're in the middle of our seed round. So we've raised a little more than a million dollars to date from different angels, and actually a few of our customers have invested. And now we're actually raising our first institutional seed round. We're raising two and a half million dollars. We have 1.6 circled, and we're looking for investors who are aligned with us, who can offer value, and who are excited to be part of this. So that's really our biggest need now.

Yeah, and I guess we probably should have covered this earlier. What is the business model? What's the revenue model?

Yeah, so it's it's a subscription for practitioners. So it's free for the public. So anyone can go on, you can browse the network, find practitioners, promotion of them. Actually, they you can schedule a free 15-minute consultation with them, you can message them, call them. For practitioners, they pay an annual subscription where they sign up, they get a profile, they get reviews and endorsements. So they get endorsed, kind of like LinkedIn in a way, but you know, except with health issues. So, you know, if you come on Dow Cloud and you might not know what therapy to look for, but you say, Hey, I have back pain, we can say, Hey, here are local practitioners who have all these endorsements for helping other people with back pain. And then also the practitioners can publish content. Not all of them do, some do, and you know, there's a lot of content that's that's written on Dow Cloud. And they also, if you ask a question, chances are you're gonna get a few answers from different practitioners, you know, within a day. And then the next kind of stage of the business is we're actually gonna integrate the booking and payments into that into the platform. So right now it's more of a lead gen platform. You you can contact the practitioner. The next stage is you can actually book directly with the practitioner through Dow Cloud.

Awesome, man. I could see how that would be a ton of value. And you control the flow as well, which is uh you know a powerful thing. Max, any other last comments or thoughts for the fitness, health, and wellness industry? I mean, I I think you're in there, you're up to your elbows and and doing the work, which is very appreciated. But any other messaging that you want to get out there?

Well, sure. I mean, I guess you know, we talked really briefly right before we jumped on. I think it's a good time to talk about ways we can boost our immune system, given the pandemic. And, you know, one one of the things that I think is really powerful for men, not just for immune system, but with so many other benefits, is uh semen retention, essentially not ejaculating. And there's a lot of value here. It's one of these things a lot of people don't like to talk about, but whatever.

Yeah.

Um and specifically from an immune system standpoint, you know, so zinc is something that's actually really important for our immune system, right? If you get a cold or something, right, people a lot of times people take like zinc lozenges, right? Um, there's a lot of zinc in our ejaculate, and a lot of most men today are deficient in zinc because I think there's actually an epidemic of like addiction to masturbation and porn, and I think it's really affecting men across the country. It's lowering our testosterone. It also, you know, you look at it as there's so much energy that is created and depleted through that process. And when we harness that energy, there's a lot of power that we can harness. There's our creative energy, literally, right? What happened, you know, what where does creation, you know, where do babies come from? They come from our creative energy, right? Our productive energy. So this would be my, I'll leave it with that. That you know, the tip, you know, give it a shot. Go, go three days, go a week and see how you feel. I mean, it's uh it's really a high. My mental clarity, my productivity, I don't need nearly as much sleep. You know, there's so many benefits. My workouts, like, you know, are much, you know, my my pump is stronger. You know, I can feel, you know, my testosterone is higher. There's so many benefits to this practice. And I'll plug water fasting. I mentioned briefly uh water fasting. You know, I like to plug these things because there's no one out selling it, right? There's nothing to sell here.

There's nothing to sell. Yeah, that's what I love about fasting too. We had Wade Lighthart on the show from Bio Optimizers, and that was one that we talked about fasting for about 10 minutes. Yeah. So go ahead.

Fasting is so great. So much healing can take place through fasting. That was a big part of my journey. One of the first times I water fasted, actually, my hip erupted in this huge rash that went like halfway down my thigh and halfway up my belly. All this crap that was like stuck in my hip was released. And that was one of the first kind of waves of relief of my back pain. You know, it came in, you know, a number of different waves, I guess you could say. But there is so much benefit in water fasting, giving our digestive system the chance to essentially shut down. And this is a very natural process for the body that you know our ancestors went through, right? If they're, you know, if it snowed or something, like we went a week without food and we just kind of went to this fasting state where our digestive system shuts down and our energy, which is usually you know, 70, 80 percent of our energy is going to digesting our food. Suddenly that energy frees up and our body goes into this self-healing mode. And so in our society where we have access to food all the time, people never get into this healing mode. But this is one of those things I would challenge you to try it. You know, fast for a day, fast for three days, see how you feel. It is uncomfortable, especially if you're not healthy and you haven't fasted. You know, it's gonna be uncomfortable, but it comes in waves. There are periods of discomfort and there are periods of high, of really uh of clarity and feeling light and feeling healthy. And there's just a lot of healing that can come from fasting. I'll also plug plant medicines. There's so much healing that can take place from plant medicines, ayahuasca, San Pedro, psilocybin. There's a lot of these plant medicines, there are a lot of great shamans doing great work, and so much healing can take place through these. Not to discount the wellness practitioners, you know, they're also amazing wellness practitioners across the country doing great work, and they're all essentially underpaid. They're they're providing so much more value than what they're receiving. And there's there's a lot out there for us. So if you're listening and you're not feeling well and you're sick, it's okay. There's a lot out there for you. And it's also just important to remember that this is just part of our journey. There's a reason that we're sick, and that reason is so that we can experience healing and we can experience getting back into our body. And like I said, it's it's a beautiful and horrible, horrible journey.

I love it. Yeah, man. I'm a big fan of fasting. I love the emerging world of plant medicine, and I think all those things are awesome. Uh man. So, Max, thanks for bringing so much value on here. Um, I really appreciate it. Thank you for your vulnerability and your openness to talk about things. And I think that's ultimately how great conversations start, meaningful ones at least. And if people want to get a hold of you, what what's the best way to for them to do that?

Show me an email, max at dashclub.com.

Easy enough, and we'll put that in the show notes too. Um, ladies and gentlemen, Max Coleman. Hey, it's your host, Eric Melzone. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Future of Fitness. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter. The website is featureoffitness.co. Again, that's featureoffitness.co. We've got some big, big announcements coming down the site, and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again. Signing off.