Today, I’m joined by Jim Donnelly, CEO of Restore Hyper Wellness, a provider of health and recovery-focused services.
Restore uses a variety of modalities, all built around the notion of preventative wellness and optimal health. Under a traditional healthcare model, a person comes in broken, hoping to be fixed. With services ranging from whole-body cryotherapy to IV trips to assisted stretching, Restore hopes to flip traditional sick care.
In this episode, Jim explains how the company defines “hyper wellness,” as well as his relationship to healthcare. We also learn what their recent $140M funding round will mean for expansion.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How Restore stays ahead of their competition
- Tips for building trusting relationships with your customers
- Why Restore is successful across nearly all age groups and regions
- How Restore is scaling its franchise system with hundreds of new stores
Links & Resources
- Subscribe to the Fitt Insider newsletter
- Visit the Fitt Insider jobs board
- View current Fitt Insider investments and get in touch
Jim Donnelly’s Links
- Restore Hyper Wellness’ website
- Follow Restore Hyper Wellness on Facebook
- Restore Hyper Wellness is on Instagram
- Follow Restore Hyper Wellness on Twitter
- Check out Restore Hyper Wellness on YouTube
- Restore Hyper Wellness’ LinkedIn page
Episode Transcript
This is a machine-generated transcript. Please excuse any errors.
[00:00:00] Jim:
A typical primary care physician sees a patient once a year. That’s not a relationship. That’s not enough time to really get to know them and do anything substantive.
We see our customers on average five times a month. That is a real relationship. That’s what health and wellness should be.
[00:00:27] Joe:
Welcome back to the Fitt Insider podcast. I’m your host, Joe Vennare.
Today I’m joined by Jim Donnelly, CEO of Restore Hyper Wellness.
In this episode we chat about Restore’s health and wellness centers. Jim explains how the company defines hyper wellness and his relationship to health care. We also talk about how their recent $140 million funding round will fuel expansion.
Let’s get into it.
Hi, Jim. Welcome to Fitt Insider. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:48] Jim:
Thanks for having me. It’s really great to be here.
[00:00:50] Joe:
Yeah, I’m excited. I’m looking forward to the conversation today.
To kick things off can you introduce yourself and talk about Restore Hyper Wellness?
[00:00:58] Jim:
Yeah. I’m Jim Donnelly. I’m the CEO and co-founder of Restore Hyper Wellness.
Restore is taking the country by storm. We’re a preventative health and wellness offering. So, think of traditional health care as a sick care model: a person comes in broken and they fix them. Think of us as a preventative model, where we try to keep people from ever getting sick.
We have a variety of modalities: cryotherapy, IV therapy, hyperbaric, oxygen therapy, red light therapy, sauna therapy, blood test, and a bunch of other things like that. All are built around the notion of hyper wellness, which is our way of keeping people healthy.
[00:01:43] Joe:
Yeah, I definitely want to dig into that.
When you think about what wellness is now and your version, hyper wellness, and helping people improve all aspects of their wellbeing.
If we step back a little bit the company, from what I saw, was founded in 2015?
[00:02:04] Jim:
Yeah, late 2015, where we were a real business in 26.
[00:02:09] Joe:
Sure. And then you get going now, obviously you said taking the country by storm and really expanding and what we’ll talk about all the ways that that’s happening. but was it the vision always to, you know, franchise and scale up and make this concept as big as it could be? Or was it like, Hey, let’s see if we can do this one time and then go from there.
How did you go from that initial idea to maybe getting the ball rolling?
[00:02:31] Jim:
It was a little bit of both in the beginning. it was a sort of a fortuitous thing. a buddy of mine and I were training for a triathlon. I was 46 at the time I was pretty broken up. I went to pick my wife up for lunch and someone walked by and said, Hey, I’m heading to cryo. And, it kind of piqued my interest.
So what the heck’s cryo I’m sore. Let me go try it. So I went and tried cryotherapy. I felt better right away. I love the modality, but I hated everything else about the experience. it was a crappy retail environment. It was way over priced. I didn’t like the staff, you know, all these different kinds of.
And so I called my buddy who is now my business partner and the co-founder of Restore and said, Hey man, you gotta go try this. and so long story short, after much prodding and multiple weeks, he finally went and tried it and he said, I got the same exact impression. I love crowd makes me feel better, but I hate everything else about it.
So we’re kind of AB testing kind of guys, we went and found a location. We made it look exactly opposite of the thing we’d experienced. and we said, let’s see if we get some traction. And so we did immediately. And then we said, well, maybe that’s a fluke. Maybe that’s a function of Austin, Texas. So we did some AB testing around different parts of Austin.
Put one in Charlotte, put a couple in Houston and low and behold, we had a concept that seemed to have real traction and that’s where we put it on a whole different trajectory. That’s where, first of all, we wanted to make the business a real business, not just what I call a guy in sweatpant business.
The thing about cryotherapy is anybody can open a crowd therapy studio. so we started to add. Defensive barriers. In our case, it was the medical side of the business, the medical infrastructure and those sorts of things. And so we, we made it more complex, but we also made it better for our consumer proposition.
We put things in it that would really truly. Move the bar for people. And, and the idea around hyper wellness was that wellness had a reputation of being relatively soft, being kind of touchy, feely, not necessarily science-based. And so we wanted to create a category that had an entirely different definition.
So, so for us hyper wellness, it has nine components. And to be a component of hyper wellness, it has to, number one make you feel better right away. It has to be supported by scientific and medical, you know, studies. And then finally it has to be democratized bubble. we did not want to create something that just worked for rich people and pro athletes.
We really, really put all the effort in making sure that what we do is available to essentially most people in society.
[00:05:17] Joe:
Yeah, I think so many aspects of that. Right. Really interesting. And I want to maybe dig into more about the specific offerings and services modalities, how you arrive at them. But one thing I was curious. Because if you think about the, the, even something like jogging, right. You know, there was a time where it was, that was, that was a weird hobby to have.
And then weightlifting it’s like, what are we doing with weightlifting? Did you initially get pushback around whether it was cryotherapy or any of the other services, where people reluctant, whether that’s customers or friends or investors, or was everybody, things were starting to move in the direction where this was becoming more kind of acceptable and even people were starting to do.
[00:06:00] Jim:
Yeah. So I would definitely say the early adopters. Completely sold from day one. And, and those were people that you would traditionally call biohackers. Like those guys were trying things and that was easy for them. But the, the, the more interesting thing was we had this amazing funnel, unfortunately, amazing is the wrong word.
It’s probably, there’s, there’s a negative thing to this funnel and it’s this notion. 70% of the us population has a chronic condition. And so when we first opened this, we thought it was going to be athletes looking for recovery and performance. And that is a part of our business. It’s about 18% of our business, but we thought it would be much bigger.
The much bigger part of our business are these other people, the 80% that have a chronic condition and they’re looking for a better solution. So when I mentioned the funnel earlier, these are people that have tried the traditional. They’ve gone to a traditional, medicine option. They’ve gone to their orthopedic doctor.
They’ve, they’ve been prescribed different things. They’ve tried everything that traditional medicine has to offer, and they’ve just not gotten the results they wanted. And so if you, you know, you go the pharmaceutical route, there are some amazing pharmaceuticals that have done the transformational things for humankind.
But, many of them also have long-term. You know, negative impacts and short-term side effects. So if you can find an option that is preventative, that works with chronic conditions, that doesn’t have any negative side effects that doesn’t have any long-term negative impacts on your body and your liver and your kidneys, things like that.
You’re going to gravitate towards that. So what happened is people started coming in and they tell other people like them, Hey, I’ve got fibromyalgia. I’m going to Restore it is. Transformational for me. I have rheumatoid arthritis. It’s transformational for me. And then on top of that, it was cool. And so if you’re a 45 year old person and you’re going and doing cryo at negative 250 degrees, not only are you feeling better.
But you’re also kind of like, I’m smart, I’m doing something better. I’m doing something different. I’m doing something that’s cool. And you’re really eager to tell everybody about it. I say all the time, nobody goes and brags about their gynecologist, but everybody brags about injuring 250 degrees below zero.
Because you’re smart. You’re strong. You’re you know, you’re willing to endure something that makes you feel.
[00:08:34] Joe:
Yeah, all those things. It’s personally something that I’m very much drawn towards and been an athlete all my life, and really obviously invested in my overall wellbeing, health, fitness. And there, there are times where. I look at the trend of folks who have chronic issues or overweight, or just generally aren’t taking care of themselves and think about the small steps, right?
And simple things in terms of eating well and body weight, exercise, and physical activity that they could and should be doing. And then the other end of the spectrum, obviously things like Restore, right, or even different wellness modalities and practices. You know, paying 30 or $40 to go to a boutique fitness class or buy a Peloton.
How do you think about, you know, helping people navigate that journey? Right. If they come in and is it something that they should be seeking out, You know, Restore to, you know, change their habits and transform their health or, or is this part of an overall, Hey, if this is the first step that they’re taking, that’s fantastic.
Let’s get them to do that and then see how we can help them improve their overall wellbeing.
[00:09:41] Jim:
Yeah. You know, I would say, first of all there’s no magic bullet. There’s no one thing you do. And then your health and wellness are transformed. I would approach this question in a couple of ways. Number one, we think of nine different attributes of hyper wellness, by the way, we don’t sell all of them.
So sleep for instance is a part of being hyper well community and doing something that you love as a part of being hyper well, but there are other things that we do sell contrast therapy, heat, and cold therapy, you know, other things like that. So when you put it all together, Yeah, and you do them together in a consistent way.
You get really, really great results. Now having said that it is a lot about small steps. So the little things that you do today over time are what create the big results later. And so the neat thing about what we do is we get you on this virtuous cycle. So the virtuous cycle. The better you feel, the more you do, the more you do the better you feel.
That’s the exact opposite of the typical cycle paper people are on right now. Most people are in a negative feedback loop. They get a little older, they get a little more pain, so they stopped doing something. And because they stopped doing something, they get a little older, they get a little more pain.
And so we want to take that negative feedback loop and we want to put them in a virtuous, positive feedback loop. And once again, it’s little steps. And so maybe it’s someone that hasn’t worked out in a while. Well, if you go work out and then you come and do crowd therapy, guess what? You’re going to be a little less.
Maybe it’s someone that’s trying to do more. and they just don’t have enough energy. So if you have the right micronutrients in your body, guess what you’re going to have more energy. So it’s these little things, and it’s immediate, when you come into a Restore, once again, our number one principle around hyper wellness is that you feel better.
And if you’re interacting with a business where you feel better. you’ll, you’ll give that business some, grace and latitude to continue to offer you more and more. So we don’t offer people like this massive transformation on day one, we say, come in and try it, feel a little better, and then keep trying it and feel better, better, better, better.
And then you wake up and say, wow, I’ve been doing this for a little while. the results are transformational. Now let me go to the next level. And that’s what we’re trying to.
[00:12:05] Joe:
Yeah. When it comes to, you mentioned the different dimensions of hyper wellness and some of the services like cryotherapy, when you look at the different locations, is it consistent across the board? Like what’s most popular? How do you decide what goes into each one of those ever evolving?
And what, you know, how do you kind of stay up to date in terms of like, oh, these are the new proven or trending people are asking for services.
[00:12:31] Jim:
So number one, everybody’s different. And so we do really try to figure out what’s happening with an individual and put them on a different protocol. So some people are going to respond better to other things, or there’s certain things.
Some people are gonna respond to other things. So we really do try to individualize it. And we’re in a unique situation in that we have probably the deepest. Wellness and medical relationship in the country. So a typical primary care physician sees a patient once a year. On average, that’s not a relationship.
That’s not enough time to really get to know them and do anything real. We see our customers on average five times a month. That is a real relationship. So we, we see the nuances and the individualities, so we can really get to the appropriate protocol. That’s going to help them. And we can adjust on the way that’s what health and wellness should be.
That deeper relationship, having the time to do the right things, make adjustments and that sort of thing. Now having said that we have a lot to offer when people come in, the two most common questions are always, what should I do and how often should I do it? And so we have to be able to answer that.
So, number one, we do have what we think are the right modalities for those questions, but we didn’t just have hazardly, Pull those into, in, into a Restore. So we have what we call Restore labs. Restore labs is approached by literally everything in the world. If there’s a modality out there, if there’s an ingredient, if there’s a process, we have probably talked to that company or someone in that category.
We have a very detailed process of around what gets into the. How we test it, how we commercialize it. And then ultimately we have to figure out if it’s going to work in all of our stores around the country, we have a philosophy that if it doesn’t work in all, then it doesn’t work in any. and then the final thing I’ll add to that, that’s unique about Restore is Restore works everywhere.
And so we get the same type of activity in our stores in Lubbock, Texas, as we do in New York. As we do in Santa Monica, as we do in Miami, as we do in Wichita, as we do in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. So I think we’ve been, uniquely capable of making this work for every human being. It doesn’t matter if you’re in an urban environment, suburban environment, big city, smaller city, cold state, warm state.
It doesn’t mean. the same chronic conditions exist everywhere. It doesn’t discriminate. And there are a ton of people that are looking for a better path forward. And, we, we don’t have this sort of over the top. well, we’re in Austin, which is a cool city there. All the cities are cool. And, it kind of goes back to that comment I made earlier.
We don’t want to just do this for pro athletes and rich people. I get a ton of fulfillment out of those customers. We have the highest level athletes in the world. If I listed the names, you’d like, holy crap. That’s really super cool. And that is kind of sexy. I get more gratification out of a school teacher or a firefighter being able to come in and, and deal with the fact that they’re on their feet all the time, they’re doing this really hard manual thing.
And when they get hurt, they actually can’t perform their job. So, so that, that is what I think it makes us super proud of our mission.
[00:15:53] Joe:
Yeah. And it also kind of prove, so you were saying it, it transcends locations, demographics, I’m sure the different kind of customer base and you know, who’s willing to spend on this. I think there’s, again, back to the, the jogging and kind of weightlifting comment, it was, oh, you know, people aren’t going to pay for this.
They’re not interested in this. They don’t understand. Maybe sometimes even there’s some comments down that path, but this, kind of proving that wrong. And appealing to people beyond pro athletes, right. Also changes the dynamics of the business. It makes that addressable market much, much larger.
[00:16:24] Jim:
Well, a hundred percent, but I will say this, most of the things you do in Restore, you can replicate in nature. So for instance, hydration, you can drink. more more water, but the reality of it is 80% of Americans walk around in a, pretty significant the hydrated state, and there are reasons for that.
You can eat better and put more nutrients in your body, but there are reasons that people don’t, I mean, our food supply and the types of things you can buy at restaurants and stores now. And the denigration of the quality of food and it’s less whole food now, and it’s more packaged food. There were reasons for all of this, there are reasons that, you know, getting micronutrients in an Ivy are better.
And I think people are discovering that and it is, you know, a reaction to all the things happening in the world that, you know, once again, denigrate our food supply that make it harder to stay hydrated, make it harder to get out and exercise, put us in front of computers, sitting down. More than we used to and not getting good sunlight and all that sort of thing.
So, so there are reasons for all of it. And, you know, we don’t do anything that once again, isn’t medically and scientifically proven. Now, what level of that. is it’s a little different for certain things, but we always say we do Seminole things. And so IVs are pervasive in hospitals. There’s a reason the first thing they do for you.
When you go to get checked into hospitals to give you an IV heat therapy has been around for hundreds of years. Cold therapy has been around since Hippocrates You know, and I could go right on down the line. Nothing we do is this new fangled. Oh my gosh. We’ve discovered a new thing that humans didn’t need 20 years ago, but they suddenly need today.
I mean, I do think people today need some things that they used to get more of. but nothing we do is so new fangled that, you’re like, I don’t get where this comes from.
[00:18:20] Joe:
For sure. And when it comes to the kind of business aspects of it, if, you know, in doing some research, looking at some of the milestones, like over a hundred locations now, and you can maybe update me with the, the most, recent numbers. so at least over a hundred locations, something like 150% growth year over year, a headline, right.
That kind of came out and kind of big milestone, took on 140 million in funding when people are coming in and obviously the business is growing rapidly. What is, what are they encountering from? Is it Alec Hart? Are they buying a subscription, a membership? you mentioned sometimes you’re seeing them up to five times.
I don’t, was it a week or a
[00:19:00] Jim:
Yeah, on average, we see a customer. Up to five times. we see some customers every day. We’ve got some customers we’ve literally seen 360 days a year for five years. So when you have certain chronic conditions, you know, the best you can do is manage it. but once again, if you have to manage it at that level of frequency, you’re hopefully doing something that’s natural and not going to create long-term negative impact.
So I think that’s what attracts people. But, you know, once again, we do see people more than anyone else in the health and wellness quote-unquote system. And so we can do more for them. and so in terms of, you know, we’re at 121 stores, we open a store every three to four days now. we hope to you know, actually accelerate that pace next year.
I want to get to a point where one day we’re opening a store every day. every human being will need us. At some point, every human beings going to get sick. At some point, every human beings going to injure themselves.
At some point, every human beings going to experience pain and every human beings going to. And so I would say that as long as you fit one of those characteristics, there’s probably a time and place for you to come in to Restore. So we, we have this really diverse customer base. The average age is 40 it’s, 50% men and women.
There’s a 25 year distribution above and below. So we have this many 15 year olds to 65 year old. the only sort of place where that curve isn’t steady is like 21 to 20 five-year-old guys. Cause they’re really stupid for those four years, but, but they wake up and they, they kind of have to pay the Piper for those those years.
So they, they get right back on the curve as well. and so, you know, big addressable market, our mission is to. once again, be more affordable and accessible for everyone so they can do more of what they love. And in order to fulfill that mission, we want to be within, you know, 15 minutes of 85, 90% of the us population within the next three to four years.
So that means you’ve got to open a lot of stores. That means you got to be in every state you gotta be in big cities, small cities, you, you know, once again, Bozeman, Montana performs like Austin, Texas, and you know, other than food concepts, that is not, something that happens very often.
[00:21:21] Joe:
When you think about now plotting that course forward, obviously the funding certainly helps as you ramp up, but opening a store as frequently as you want to. And. Kind of in as many cities as you aspire to, what does that look like in terms of continuing to build the company? thinking about how you’re deploying that capital and ultimately, you know, continuing to attract customers, right?
As you get into those, you get those, new stories.opened.
[00:21:45] Jim:
I’m very proud of what we’ve done to scale this business. I mean, we have created the ability to have this flywheel now. It was not easy. you know, I think if you looked at many franchise systems and you looked at the number of people they have in their corporate support team, Relative to the number of stores.
We look different. We have more support, we have more people, and, and it’s not even close, but it’s because we have always tried to stay ahead of that curve. And we’ve always been building for the next phase, not the last phase. And I would also say that Steve and I are in this for the long run. We want to build a transformational generational business.
We . Are not. of subject to the vagaries of, we need to make X amount of dollars and have a liquidity event for our own personal interests. We’re great. a hundred million dollars. Doesn’t change my life. I am married to the same woman. I drive the same truck. I live in the same house. I treat my kids, maybe even a little harder just because I don’t want her to be spoiled, but, but you know, we’re in a really good place.
And we’re trying to build this business for the long term and fundamentally transform health and wellness in this country. And so when you do that, you do have to have a plan. You do have to bring in really great systems, really great technology, really great people. this is not a Jim and Steve, show anymore.
We have a fully baked executive team with a bunch of bad-ass faces that are very pedigreed. Bennett, some of the great companies that you can imagine, a lot of west pointers, Ivy league, you know, all that sort of thing. You know, we are a super cool company with a really great mission that is a rocket ship and funded by a general Atlantic guest who wants to come work at a place like.
Everybody and really talented, awesome people. So say my superpower is pretty simple. I’m self-aware and so I know when I’m not good at something I know when there is. A deficiency in, in sort of the system that we’re creating. I know when we need more capital, I know when we need these things and Steve is the exact same way.
So being self-aware really helps, but you know, there, there’s a couple of hundred people in our corporate team now. And so we have probably the most sophisticated, you know, marketing. if you look at our sort of direct competitors, we have a, you know, a wonderful training team and education team. We’ve got a construction team, we’ve got a real estate team.
We’ve got basically a, high performing group of people for every single aspect of this business. So then when we go out and find franchisees, You know, it increases the likelihood of, of a really wonderful result. And, you know, we, we accelerate how quickly they, they become successful and make money and all those sort of things.
And that once again, that creates a flywheel. If you have people in your system that are franchisees that are doing really well. I guess what they want to do. They want to open more. And we were super picky by the way, when we first started this, we used to say, and this was probably a little too narrow. We said, well, we want west point and Naval academy grads to be our franchisees.
And there was a reason for that. My wife’s west point grad, we’ve got a lot of that in our system. and by the way, when you do that, you have an amazing foundation. Anytime you’re building a community, a business, whatever it is. If you can build a strong foundation, everything else is easier. So when you start with the highest quality sort of people in the country, I emailed Terry academy grads, I E the blue chip companies, sales executives, like striker and J and J and Abbott.
You have a really strong foundation to build on top of now, in addition to those two channels, we also go to the top franchise systems like orange theory, and we have the best of the orange theory franchisees that have now come into our system. And then you get some one-off like they don’t fit in any of those three buckets, but guess what?
You know what good looks like now, you know how to vet people and you’re not going to make mistakes when it comes to your franchisees. You know, if, if you didn’t have that strong foundation,
[00:25:53] Joe:
Yeah, it makes total sense. It’s it’s oftentimes through when we think about hiring for what we’re doing now and in the past, looking for athletes, obviously Anthony, my co-founder and brother was in the military. So a lot of those same attributes around high performance, definitely resonate. with that you mentioned there, and this is something I’ve been thinking about as we get towards the end of the conversation.
Maybe thinking about how the broader landscape continues to evolve. if we think about like fitness, wellness, health care, all these different aspects, now you start to see things right. like stretching studios and boutiques, that are starting to spin out. Do you see it maybe evolving in the direction of these things becoming bundled?
We’ve seen, you know, some of the boutique studios who are now entering into agreements to put their studios inside, maybe a planet fitness. Do you see partnerships and integrations or maybe that kind of bundling. The health and wellness, right from what is now kind of like siloed, infrastructure.
[00:26:49] Jim:
Yeah. You know, you could use that term bundle for a few things. So, do I think that. It offers multiple services is better than a place that offers one service when it comes to health and wellness and fitness. Absolutely. Do I think that a technology that addresses more than one specific thing is better than something that addresses one thing when it comes to health and wellness?
Well, maybe it doesn’t address that one thing as well. You can’t look at people through the lens of sort of one or two metrics when you’re talking about a health and wellness and longevity, it’s just too complex. So, so for instance, I’m wearing an Aura ring. I love Aura. It’s great for tracking sleep and a few other things, but it’s pretty myopic about that thing.
And so if you can take an Aura ring and the data from an Aura ring, and you can plug it into an ecosystem that has data coming in from lots of other places, and then you can. Take technology and create a really usable, digestible consumer interface that, that puts a little more context into these specific things.
And then of course puts it in an environment where you can actually perform services. That affects the data that’s coming in in a positive way. And then over time you can show people, wow, look at the short-term results and how they’re turning into long-term results when you’re consistent about it. To me, that’s what is better. And by the way, I just described Restore, you know, we are putting tens of millions of dollars into, technology. We are putting tens of million dollars into distribution. We are putting millions of dollars once again, into our systems and to everything about what we do. And, you know, people ask me all the time, you know, did you expect this to happen?
And I say, absolutely. We had a plan. you know, so once again, my partner, Steve Welch’s is pretty amazing. I’m the marketing and sort of emotional part of this partnership. And Steve is the engineering rational part of the, the partnership and because of the two of us work so well together, we can get twice as much done.
You know, so that’s really gratifying, but, but you know, we, we don’t think of this as a franchise business. We don’t think of this as something as small as that we think of this as a technology play that has great distribution, deep relationships. and once again, it’s, it’s getting better and better by the day.
But it wasn’t easy. Like, like I said, we’ve got, you know, a couple hundred folks on our corporate team. We’ve got a great franchise network. You know, if we put our head in the sand, we’ll open 700 locations in the next three years, three, four years. So, you know, those are already committed. And, and moving forward.
So, you know, we look at who we’re competing with today and we know that who we’re going to be competing with. Tomorrow’s going to be different. we’re going after too big, a market, too big, an opportunity for there not to be competitors, by the way. I love competitors right now. We are developing this really big category by.
No, that’s great. And we have a massive headstart and we’re . Gonna have even bigger headstart because once again, we’re opening stores and, and adding nuance to it. But, but at some point we’re going to have really good competitors, really well-funded competitors, and they’re going to bring, a sort of a view on it that maybe we didn’t see.
And, and I think that if you look at us today and then look at us three years from now, Partly because of what we already know we’re going to do. And partly because we do think there will be some positive influences from others in this space where we’re going to be talking about stuff that is so frigging cool.
You know, my dad has stage four cancer. and you know, I can tear up talking about it cause I’m really close to my dad. I do look at it. Like if I could have gotten hold of him 20 years earlier.
I don’t know that he gets cancer now, please, big disclaimer. I am not saying Restore keeps people from getting cancer. I’m not saying that Restore keeps people from aging or anything like that, but, but if we follow our path and we do the things that we hope to do over the next few years, we will be having a meaningful impact on people’s health span on their longevity, on their ability to fight off, you know, big major.
Health issues. And, you know, I’m going to say one final thing about the that’s just the world we’re living in right now. Everyone’s focused on coronavirus. And so coronavirus is furious. It’s particularly serious if you have a comorbidity or if you’re overweight and all these sort of things, but, but the reality of it is take the word coronavirus out of the sentence, plugin, heart disease, plugin cancer, plugin, diabetes, plugin, the flu, plugging, anything, the prescriptions.
And so the sooner people start proactively taking care of their health and wellness, the better they are prepared to deal with the things that they’re absolutely going to run into. And if that happens to be coronavirus great, you might still get it. You probably will still get it. If you, if you look at the world today, everyone’s getting it.
So, you know, shouldn’t, you be as prepared as possible. Yes. And what’s the way to be prepared as possible, be as healthy as possible. And so you can’t make it about being perfectly healthy because perfection is not attainable unless you’re a Tim Tebow or someone that is so focused and so incredibly disciplined.
I’m not, I’m 20 pounds overweight. I there’s a lot of things I could do better, but I will say this, I am healthier than the typical 52. I put things in my body that are good for me. I exercise every day I get a good night’s sleep. I love my wife. I love what I do every day for work. I got great people that I’m working with, that I consider my tribe.
And, you know, you put all that together and man, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty easy to have a good life and it’s pretty easy to be pretty.
[00:32:50] Joe:
Yeah, Fired Up about it too, as your. About it that definitely coming across. I guess maybe one more question before we get you out of here. And as you’re talking about all this, right? All of these things from just a general sense of wellbeing and feeling better to whatever definition of wellness, right?
You want to ascribe to it. And that’s kind of changing all the time to now we start talking about, health span and lifespan and longevity and immune health. Does this go the route of, because you see now a lot of. Subscription or membership-based primary care. And it’s like this version of insurance.
Do you see Restore and just this general trend being outside of healthcare, or do you see it being more ingrained in terms of like actual doctor insurance, medical treatments? Do you think about those evolving that direction or you want to keep it separate?
[00:33:43] Jim:
You know, Restores very different Restores a cash based system. And because we’ve made everything affordable, it’s actually cheaper to come to Restore and pay cash than it is to use insurance and the traditional. Medical system and many cases.
But having said that there are some things that the traditional medical system does that we don’t do, can’t do so.
So I would love to see a melding of the two at some point. we are not as so arrogant to think that. That the traditional medical system doesn’t have some positive things. By the way, I do think the traditional medical system is broken. I think there are some massive problems with it. I think it is not applied in a sort of equitable way across society.
If you get better medical care on the traditional side, if you have money versus if you don’t. So, so there’s lots of problems. But the, the, the ultimate manifestation of what we do does need to involve some notion of some traditional stuff and what we’re doing. I do think what we’re doing is better.
Preventative is always better. and I also think that, we are going to be tackling things. In the future that we don’t tackle today. So there are people that believe aging is a disease. They believe it’s a disease that has, you know, nine to 12 different components. By the way, if you can address each of those components, you can theoretically cure the disease.
So people are saying you could theoretically cure. Do I think that’s going to happen. I don’t know, but I do think that you can absolutely live longer, better, more fulfilling lives, doing the things that you love to do longer. If you follow a particular set of things and Restore, I think has that set of things articulated pretty well.
But even today, if you go down one path, your health span is longer. So when you start, when I hear people talking all the time about, well, we’re, we’re going to see, you know, medical stuff and wellness stuff, increased health span show. We already see that if you eat healthier, if you move better. If you’re attached to, you know, something you care about.
If you put the right things in your body, you will live a longer, healthier life. I don’t think anyone debates that now, given the new scientific advancements around the human genome and what we know about aging and all the new technologies that are coming out, man, think my kids will theoretically run marathons after their.
So the key is starting earlier, rather than later I started when I was, well, I’ve always been into fitness and wellness, but, but in a hardcore way, as the CEO of Restore at 46, I completely changed a lot of the things that I do. I wish I had started at 36. No. And so, cause it, cause it matters. And that kind of goes back to my comment about my dad, but my kids, my kids will be on a different trajectory because from a very early age, they’re going to do the things that long-term will improve their health span.
And, you know, I’m, I can’t talk about it, but we’re working on some stuff and the sort of the health span arena and in the longevity space. Man. It is so cool to be working on it. Like I I’m bouncing off the walls someday thinking about the things that we’re putting in place. We’re not ready to do certain things, but once again, if you look at us a year from now, we’re going to be very different than we are today.
And I will say. and I don’t want this to come across as arrogant or cocky, but I say this all the time, we are the one group of people in the wellness space that always does what we say. I hear so many times we’re going to open a hundred locations. We’re going to do this and that. And people don’t do it.
Number one, cause it’s frigging hard as hell. It is hard medicine in this country. It’s 50 different states, all kinds of different regulations doing anything nationals. But we have done what we say we’re going to do. We can go back one year, two years, five years, six years. And you can look at what did we say we were going to do at the beginning of the year.
And where did we end up? We have shown an amazing ability to predict what we’re going to do, put things in place and then actually deliver it. So when I say a year from now, let’s get back together and let’s talk about, you know, where we are. I can assure you that we will be in an entirely different place with lots of cool things that, that you don’t see at a Restore location today.
[00:38:04] Joe:
Certainly. There’s a lot to look forward to, and big plans ahead.
We’ll put that on the calendar. We’ll have to circle back a year from now and see where things have landed.
Maybe that’s a good place to wrap up.
Obviously, you talking about it today, and the folks who are interested and want to follow along, maybe they’ll want to give it a try, or just want to learn more. You talked about continuing to open locations and expand the team. Where would you point anyone who wants to know more? Where’s the best place to learn more about Restore?
[00:38:31] Jim:
Restore.com is the best place to see where we’re opening next. There is a Restore coming to every place in America.
Joe, you’re in Pittsburgh. We have multiple locations in Pittsburgh. Really, really lovely locations.
[00:38:44] Joe:
Jim, I appreciate you taking a few minutes to chat with us today. I’m very excited to share the conversation, and we’ll be following along as you continue to ramp this thing up.
[00:38:52] Jim:
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here.
I get excited talking about this, and love having the opportunity to have a forum like this.
Congrats on all your success, and thank you very much.