Ep217 - Dr Steven Lu (Co-founder & CMO - Everlab) on building the future of preventative health

Speaker A: My goal is not just to keep you alive. My goal is to give you the health so you can go away and actualize whatever it is that your goal is. It's not how many years you have in your life m it's how much life you can pack in your years at Everlive. What we want to do, I want to deliver as much health and health span and longevity at the lowest lifetime cost so that you can go and do whatever it is that you want. You can actualize your life. You don't want your health to hold you back.

Speaker B: Hi, everyone, I'm your host, Rohit Bhagava, and you are listening to the Startup Playbook Podcast, a weekly series where I sit down with successful tech founders, investors and operators to unpack their journey lessons and insights to help current and future entrepreneurs. Our guest for this episode is the co founder and chief medical officer, uh, of Everlab, Dr. Steven Liu. Steven's approach to personalized health and his experience as a clinician led him to launching everlab, one of Australia's leading preventative health and longevity programs. Everlab recently closed a $10 million US seed funding round that my syndicate, Playbook Ventures, was delighted to participate in. In this episode, we covered a wide range of topics, including why Stephen decided to shut down his successful clinic to launch Everlab, Everlab's approach to preventative health and longevity, the key pillars of health that every startup founder should focus on, how Stephen balances his own health and family commitments while scaling a high growth startup, and much more. But before we get into this interview, not only am I an investor in Everlab through Playbook Ventures, but Everlab is also a partner of the Como Club, where our members get to benefit from their program, including a DEXA scan, full blood test, and a one on one consultation with a specialist doctor. I'm also delighted to announce that Stephen will be a returning speaker for Cohort 2 of the Como Club. All right, without further ado, here is my interview with Dr. Steven Liu. Hi, Stephen. Welcome to the Startup Playbook podcast. And thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show today. Thank you. No worries, man.

Speaker A: It's my pleasure.

Speaker B: We were just saying that, uh, before we turned on the mic, this is the first time we're meeting, which is crazy weird, right?

Speaker A: Super, because like, we saw each other and I, I was very, very familiar. And then it was only as we were walking, I was like, this is the first time we've actually met in person.

Speaker B: Yeah. Wow. Good to meet you in person. And obviously likewise, we go A little way back obviously through Everlab. But for those people who may not be as familiar with you and your background, you want to share a little bit about your story and what got you here today?

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So for folks who don't know me, I'm, I'm a medical doctor. So I've been a doctor for. Gosh, this is my 16th year I think, so Melbourne, uh, drained and I uh, started my career in intensive care. So I did cardiothoracic surgery, did neurosurgery and then I did advanced training in intensive care. So. Which is a stark contrast to what the context that you know me in, which is I'm um, one of the co founders of Everlab. So Everlab is very much focused on proactive personalized preventative medicine. We don't ever want you to see the inside of a hospital or the inside of intensive care or cardiac theater. Right. So, but that's actually where I started my career. So I also didn't jump straight into entrepreneurship like the marketplace. So I was, I mean I'm still a clinician. I think once a clinician, always a clinician. But it's throughout that journey of actually working in, in, in acute medicine, we'll call it in hospital based medicine, looking after the sickest people where that's where I had the epiphany to say like I think we need to do a bit better. Yeah. Most of the things that I saw in hospital was preventable, more than happy to talk about like cases that I saw. And uh, and then I actually quit intensive care, retrained. So I got my specialist qualification as a GP and along that journey did all sorts of work, did all sorts of jobs, clinical, non clinical and then it's only in the past couple of years that I've been focusing on solving problems in health care in the, I guess the entrepreneurial space in the marketplace. So it's been, it's been an interesting journey. I don't know if you, I uh, think most people who come on the podcast are seasoned operators and folks in experience in business, serial entrepreneurs. I think for me my journey has been much more clinical, uh, which I

Speaker B: think is super interesting and obviously stuff that I want to dive into but maybe even just going a little bit further back. For me I feel like it's always fascinating kind of hearing a lot of the genesis for people and a lot of where some of this stuff comes

Speaker A: from like ah, a, like a deeper origin story.

Speaker B: Deeper. And I, it was so interesting to learn that you obviously moved around a little bit Growing up, I had a very similar background as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, you did too, right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: But I also heard that your parents sent you back to China for. To do all of your primary school and then when you came back to Australia to go into esl. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker A: So. So I was born overseas. I'm a. I'm a migrant. I was born in mainland China, in Shanghai. I moved around in China a little bit and then it was 89, 1990. A lot of folks after the political situation there moved over. So my parents thought this is not where we want our kid to grow up. So they gave up a lot, much like a lot of micro families, I think, to come here, start all over. I came here when I was three. So our first stop was Canberra. I think that's your hometown, right? So, yeah, our first stop was Canberra. I still have some vague memories of camera back then and it's. I think it's the migrant story of like being a child, uh, and a passenger to the journey of migrant parents who are trying to find a new life.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, so moved around a lot. Canberra, lived in, I think lived in San Francisco for about a year, Sydney. And then as I was growing up and like, as a parent now I've got two kids and I'm starting to relate to what my parents were thinking about, which is I had reached a point, I think I was just like grade one in primary school. And they're like, well, you live in Sydney now, you speak English every day. We want you to actually understand our language, understand our culture. And, and then you go to the Chinese school. I'm sure a lot of your listeners have had this like, experience, right? Go to language school. Oh, it's a pain. Lots of tears. I don't want to do this homework. This sucks. And then my parents actually double down, said, well, actually this is not okay. It's very important for us that you understand your culture, understand not just the language, but understand the culture. So they sent me back to China. So like, no, that's it. Like off you go. So I grew up with my grandparents in Beijing, so I did all my primary schooling there. So really interesting those transitions. I like you and I just off air, we were talking about it as well. Right. The, the experience of being moved around a lot, having to sort of restart. So I got, got used to life here and then had to restart there. And like I came back here and had to do.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: So when I went back to China, I couldn't speak Chinese very well. So the other kids Were like, oh, uh, it's the, it's the, it's the Australian kid. Uh, I could only understand about half of what they're saying. But thankfully like kids are very malleable. Right. So did all my primary schooling there. So now I can. And I'm so glad that my parents did that. I can not just read and write Chinese, but understand the culture, understand the nuance, which actually helps with your career, I think in a lot of ways. I mean like in the, in the modern world, even before we had AI, but now it's just been supercharged. Right. Like I don't think the language barrier is as big. You can basically do instant like translation. But understanding the nuances of a culture is, it's really enjoyable. So like uh, I was now able, I'm now able to appreciate things like Chinese like literature. Right. And really understand the nuances of, of culture, including in healthcare.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, which is very relevant for us. So that was very interesting. Came back to Australia. So I did high school in Brisbane and had to, yeah, had to go to ESL class initially. I definitely needed it, so didn't do know what was going on. But once I picked up like that was a really good program. I know probably like a loophole that should close up. Uh, but I had ESL classes all the way through to year 12. So when I was doing my final exams I actually got some extra time because I was an ESL student. Probably helped me, help me with getting into medical school.

Speaker B: So yeah, I'm just really curious. I actually didn't connect the two dots until you started talking about it, but I spoke to a couple of your team members. So Sam, who's your co founder and Chai and one of the things that they mentioned, both of them mentioned was your superbab. Being around, listening and just like really hearing people. And I'm, I'm wondering how much of that sort of experience of when you said going to, to China and only understanding half of the language and really having to try and focus on understanding and even when you, like you said when you initially came back and having to grasp the language and things like that as well, how much of that was built around that experience of having to learn a language on the fly.

Speaker A: Wow, that's. That's so interesting.

Speaker B: That was the feedback that was, that was. I've got tons of feedback.

Speaker A: But yeah, that's from my wife though, right?

Speaker B: No, that's not from your wife. No, actually she, she did, she did, she did mention that you're a good listener as well. But yeah, it's something that like, it's, it's funny when I do a lot of these research calls, you see a lot of trends of uh, people. And I was like, I don't know if this is something that they've like synced on, but they both mentioned that one of your big superpowers is your real ability to sort of like step back and listen and take things in.

Speaker A: Oh, that's, that's nice. I think, I think as a kid you're put in a position where maybe that, maybe that experience puts you in a position where you're. There's a bit of forcing function where the ability to perceive is more necessary than it is for another child. I don't think uh, kids are fully uh, understand like deep listening and empathy and thinking deeply. But I think it did lay some groundwork in terms of the skill set to perceive, I think. And that's not just like even just hearing, even just paying attention. Right. So I think, I think it's uh, a, it's like a uh, it's like a perceptive attention to detail because you needed it because like I'll say things that people don't understand. And I was like, oh, other people say things I don't understand. So, so I think about what the nuances there is. Like what, what is it? And I think that probably stayed with me. So I'm, I'm actually also quite good at picking up like accents. So I can tell, I don't know if it's like that in, in South Asia as well, but like in, in, in Central Asia and China, I can tell where you're from based on the accent that you have with the way you speak Mandarin. So, so it's uh, it's a very perceptive thing. And, and I think like I also have a quite interest in, in language but I think they're the foundational skills as you grow up that then later in life if you talk about listening. For me, I think there are some, some qualities of mine. I don't know if I call them a superpower. I feel like superpowers implies there's some natural aptitude. I'm a big believer in like powers being trained. I think for me, I don't necessarily think there's anything special about me in that department, but I've really invested in it and professionally is incredibly important. If you think about, you're a consultative based provider of care, often talking to people where they're at their most vulnerable. Health is deeply, deeply personal. And that often makes people communicate in a more challenging way. So I'm sure you've come across this as well, like folks who are eloquent and smart and, and um, thoughtful and strategic. But when it comes to health, it's just much more emotional. It can be anxiety driven. So you really do have to listen and try to understand and empathize. And that's something we train professionally. But I think personally I'm just a very curious person and having those like, perceptive skills is good. I, I train, so I basically train though I use those tools all the time. So having those tools as a kid and given an opportunity to use those tools in my career probably, probably refined that. But that's nice. Um, thanks.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's actually, yeah, one of my favorite parts of the interview. I think I've mentioned this in a lot of different episodes. You just hear really incredible things about each of the guests and part of me wishes that I would record it and play it back, but I feel like I hear the things I hear, uh, because it's not recorded and those sort of things as well. But you referenced her a little bit earlier. I also got to speak to your wife Kelly, who's really lovely and one of the things that she, she mentioned was that even before Everlab, this was, I guess like she said, practicing medicine is your kind of like it's what you're born to do essentially. But there were always ambitions of how do you scale this or have some sort of different, different way to go about doing this, specifically from the startup or entrepreneurial lens. What did, where did that initially come from for you? Even before Everlab?

Speaker A: Yeah, she's right. Like she probably is the person who knows me best in this world. I love being a doctor. I think being a clinician is my calling. I'm also very curious. I think there's a few, few probably qualities there. Right. So I'm very curious and I'm very. And that curiosity goes to like, why things are the way they are, but also how can we make things better. And that's an evolution from like my mid-20s to now. Like I said earlier, I never thought I would. If you asked me like 10 years, 10 years ago, like, what would you be doing? Like, without hesitation, I'll be practicing medicine. I know what type of medicine I'll be practicing medicine. I'm still practicing medicine, except I want my Korean and the way I exert myself in this life to, to mean more to more people and get bigger, have a bigger yield, have a bigger impact. So I think one of the Big turning points for me was like I was halfway through a specialist training program in intensive care. And by the way, I love that job. I was very good at it. It's deeply gratifying. So we, um, look after the sickest people in hospital. I think some people, I look after the sickest people who we want to save. Some folks, we actually say, look, it might not be worthwhile going through this anymore, but like the people who do come to us, we don't deal with any bs, right? Without intensive care, these are folks who basically would face certain demise. So you can, exactly, you can imagine for like a reasonably young doctor, like, it's, it's very, very gratifying. It's exciting work. It's crisis management. You work in a team, you need to think on your feet. It's also very academic. There's a lot of physiology, a lot of pharmacology. The crisis management part is you, very exciting. You look. I think people might have watched like medical shows or been in hospital and you hear the codes go overhead. I rock up with my team. Sometimes people are dead and we bring them back. Sometimes we were on the brink of death and you can try to diagnose and solve the problem immediately, bring them to intensive care. It's very procedural as well. Putting tubes in people's chests and into people's, like cathedrals into people's hearts. It's hands on. It's just the best job. Like I think about now and I think I can actually quite miss that. But after a while, as my training went on, I think once the initial examine wears off, a job becomes a job. A neurosurgeon job is the same like you and I might think like, oh, like drilling open some skull is super exciting. Actually. This is just a job, right? We just want you to be good at your job. But the turning point for me was like, I think about the third year to my specialist training. Like I've been a doctor for like five or six years. There was one night I, I think there was something niggling in the back of my mind at that point. But there was this one night I was on night shift, I'd done my rounds and I was doing my, my college training program. So as part of your specialist training, you have to do a research program. And this was like Excel days, I think we're on Google, Google sheets now. But like Excel days, I was punching in my research data. So it was, it was basically ones and zero. So if you, if you died in our care, you're a Zero. If you live, you're a one. Okay, so this person lived under our care and discharged from ice. That's one. And then do they survive their stay on the ward? You survive, then go home. Do they survive to 30 days? Did they survive to 90 days? Those were the types of lake data we were looking at. And it really just hit me because I thought like, is this how we measure success? So I'm very curious about this. It's like, what are we here to do? How do we define success here? Well, in intensive care, the way we define success is did you live, did you not die actually? Right. Did you not die? That's success for us. But as I was going through, I recognized some of the, some of the names, right? So we did identify to go into, go into a spreadsheet. I remember these names, I remember these people. I looked after them. I remember seeing them in clinic. And you think that's an opportunity for me to like, let's high five on us. Me, hey, like, I, uh, I help save your life. And isn't that great? I see them in clinic. So they come back to General medicine clinic and they're often, their lives are just awful. They're alive, they're on, they have chronic pain, they have ptsd, maybe amputation sometimes they're on a bunch of psychotropic medications, relationships broken down, can't hold down a job, short term memory loss. These are people in their 40s and 50s. And that really, that really hit me. I was like, we've got to do better than this, right? Because, and like, I think once you get caught by that bug, if you're a curious person, once you get caught by, bitten by the bug of like, hey, something can be much better here, right? We need to zoom out and have a look. It's, I mean, it's not like all of a sudden I was looking at code in the matrix, but like I would start examining every patient who came through intensive care. And I thought like, we, we could have prevented you landing in here. Could have been a week ago, if we did something would have been better. Some cases, like, if we did better three days ago, like, you wouldn't be here. If we did better a week ago, we wouldn't be here. But for others, it's actually, it's always compounds. If we did better a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, things would be much more different.

Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Uh, I think so. I don't know if you and I have ever spoken about this, but I first heard about you when Sam and I caught up and this is when I was doing my last startup and I uh, think you could tell, like we'll talk about the, the startup journey, but I think for most people when they're in the throes of running a startup, it's very full on intense experience. I was very different and I was definitely not taking care of myself. And Sam in a very kind way was just like, dude, you look terrible. Um, what's going on? And yeah, he was just like, I, I've just done the session with, with Stephen, this doctor that I've just been introduced to. He's incredible. You need to, you need to go see him. I was like, yeah, I, I'll get, I'll get to it eventually. Knowing that like deep down was like, I'm not going to go until something's, something's desperately wrong. Which I think is uh, is really unfortunate and uncommon especially for kind of people in their sort of 30s and 40s where you know, a lot of the time you just assume that if nothing's really wrong then everything must be okay for now and it's not, not really a priority. But one thing that he did mention around that time and was how just forward thinking you were, uh, and his, a lot of his experience with you the first time as well. And he said, it's the first time that I went to a doctor and felt very seen and heard. So I think he said within five minutes of the schedule he was like looking at his Fitbit or something and kept uh, checking the time. You're like, no, we've got five minutes. Yeah, yeah. And you said you were asking him about like things that doctors would normally ask about. So what were his goals and ambitions? What's his family like? What is he trying to achieve out of his health? And was just like a very different approach to that through a private clinic. What, what was the, the catalyst of the genesis for you to have like a slightly different approach to medicine than what most people are accustomed to?

Speaker A: I mean, I didn't invent this approach. Right. I think the bigger question here is why, why doesn't every single doctor do this? Right? So if you go out and ask doctors, hey, not even doctors, just ask anybody like, hey, do you believe in prevention? I don't think anyone else is like, nah, nah, we're cool. Like a stitch and time saves night. Don't um, worry about it. I think everyone agrees that prevention is better. So then the question becomes like, what's, what gets in the way of us actioning? Ask any intensive care Doctor, like, they'll also say, like, prevention is more. I would rather people not have to come to our department. Same. It's more like you've. You've even just in the short two sentences you said, like, touched on some of those barriers. Right? So you're like, I'm not gonna go, right? Why? Because you don't feel sick yet. Right. That's an assumption which is like, it's not too late to go see a doctor when I feel sick. I can tell you now, like, by the time you feel sick, that's a real gamble to say, sure, maybe you should have a cough or a cold. Like, that's fine.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, you got belly pain or maybe you've got appendicitis. We'll go get, get it checked out. But the most dangerous things that will affect us in life, that will shorten our lifespans are things that you don't feel until it's too late. Uh, right. So, like, the, the disease processes of, like, chronic ailments, the disease risks are all there, brewing slowly, silently. I think most doctors do understand that. So there's one aspect which is, like, culturally, we just don't proactively see the doctor. We proactively service our cars, though, Right? Right. So, like, the, the dealership will keep pinging you about it. I don't know if people get pinged by their doctors and say, hey, like, everything all good, doesn't matter. Come in and let's give you a 20k tune up.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Like, there's not. There's not that culture. There's not that expectation. A lot of people make a lot of assumptions. You just made an assumption. Right. A lot of the assumptions I am. I'm young, so I'm healthy. You can roll the dice on it. But, like, I can tell you now, like, you can't bank on that. Like, cancer rates are shooting up for young, young people. Very, very alarming. Right. People just living in suboptimal health. A lot of young people living in this modern age, in the modern day. Right. They're really not. Like, when Sam and I first met, he was like, without giving away too much detail, right. He was not a healthy guy. He's very young. Right. And I think that's. That's also what eventually made us co founders of a business. Right. So, like, he recognized that, hey, this is something quite important and special and valuable and meaningful to devote our time and effort to. And then there's a. And then there's other barriers to say why we don't. Action. This is Structural health has always been designed to treat reactive problems, right. Uh, but that pretty much actually started slowing. The effectiveness, the effectiveness of that started slowing down in like, I don't know, like the turn of the century, like at the end of the, like 20th century, right. So it's a big, the beginning of the 20th century, like so chronic diseases started to become more of a problem. But all our systems were designed for reactive care, right? Uh, so when something happens, we do something. And that's deeply ingrained in our culture, but it's also deeply ingrained in just like you, like, hey, I don't want to go see someone, I don't think I need it until I, if I have a problem. Right? But it's also ingrained in our system. We have a reactive care system. Something goes wrong, you go and see Dr. Maybe if something goes really wrong, you go to emergency, something goes mildly wrong, you make a choice between you, uh, go see someone. But that's entirely reactive and the system designed for that too. And one of the reasons why most doctors probably don't practice the way that with, with the service that Sam got when he and I first met is the way that the payer system also is structured. Like if you think about the way Medicare and like, I love the fact that we have public health, Australia is one of the best places for public health. Australia's one of the best places of everything. Like if you think about it, but nonetheless, like it is a system that incentivizes, like it's designed for reactive care. It's designed, it incentivizes health activity but not as much health outcomes, like long term outcomes. So short term outcomes for sure. Like if you're, if you're a neurosurgeon, you got to do orders all the time. We need to see like you're not drilling into people's uh, skulls and killing them. Right. So, but when it comes to like primary care, long term care and out of hospital care, it's actually very difficult to measure success. But it's like we often measure by health activity. So doctors get paid by how many consults they do, not by how many people they get they keep healthy. So there's, there's all these things that sort of get in the way. So I don't necessarily think there's something super special about the way that I practice, but it's more the commitment to uh, a different way of practicing and then iterating and refining on how to make that better and better. So I think back to that first consult that Sam had, and he thought it was great. I think we do, like 20x better now with Everlasting. The level of, like, interest that we take in people. It's really data acquisition. Right. We want to know as much as we can about you. Uh, whether it's objective things like your diagnostics, blood test, body composition scans, continuous glucose monitor. Huh. Whether. If it's subjective metrics. Are you happy? How do you feel? How do you feel compared to three months ago? And also behavioral. What do you do? What's working, what's not? The richness and the depth and the breadth of the data helps us make much better decisions so that we can achieve our goal. So, like, for Sam, I remember asking him that, actually. I remember him kept looking at his Fitbit. Yeah. And I, uh, think we're talking about his work and I just wanted to know this person. Right. And I'm also curious about, like, what are his aspirations? Because ultimately, like, my goal is not just to keep you alive. My goal is to give you the health so you can go away and actualize whatever it is that your goal is. I heard something really, really well put. I think just like last week, it's not how many years you have in your life, it's how much life you can pack in your years. We're not in the business of making people obsessed about their health and wear three wearables and look at them all day at, uh, Everlab. What we want to do, and this is what we want to deliver for everyone, for you, for Sam, for any one of our members. I want to deliver as much health and health span and longevity at the lowest lifetime cost so that you can go and do whatever it is that you want. You can actualize your life, whatever it is that you find, meaning you don't want your health to hold you back. We're not here to make you, like, make you check your app, like 20 times a day. Jump on the Everlab app. Like, we're here to support. Right? We're here to deliver outcomes. So that's, that's what I'm. I think that's. That's the way we should be practicing. There are a lot of barriers, but this is also what makes this a really interesting mission. And it started from that chat with Sam.

Speaker B: We're going to take a very quick break from this podcast to talk about one of our partners, Vanta. Uh, so if you're building a SaaS business and want to quickly unlock growth and build customer trust, one way to do this is by achieving compliance with SOC2 ISO 2701c, CPS 234 essential 8 or other in demand compliance frameworks. However, this process is often time intensive and very costly. VANTA automates up to 90% of compliance, making you audit ready quickly and saving you up to 85% of associated costs. And not only that, VANTA scales with your business with a market leading trust management platform to help you continuously monitor compliance, unify risk management and streamline security reviews. You can join over 8,000 global companies like Atlassian, Dovetail and Indebted that use VANTA to build trust and prove security in real time. As a listener of the show, you can get up to $1,000 US off Vanta uh, when you head over to vanta.comdemo. all right, let's get back to the episode. I think even just talking to Sam about the genesis of how Everlab started is super interesting as well. So obviously had that session with you and then I think he went and put his parents through the program or the session with you and then he referred a few friends and he's just like, this is really unique. Like you said this should be more common, but in his experience it was very unique. And he put me through the test I think. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Looking after his dad. I think that was a big one. Right. Uh, he's done, he's doing better now. But I think without going into too much detail, I think Sam was quite impressed. I was able to solve particular problems that other doctors were not able to. And it wasn't a knowledge problem.

Speaker B: The, the genesis of you guys working together. Shazam. Said that he was essentially your like medical receptionist for a little while because he wanted to understand how that whole sort of process.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Worked and pulling that together. What did the conversations or like the, the sequence look like from him having the session with you, going through this whole thing, you guys starting to dabble, working together to you deciding to start everlab. Because I also, from what I understand, you also shut down your, your at that time, which is a big decision to.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, I mean it was a con, it was a continuum.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So, so this is, this is going from personal origin story to ever lab origin story.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So how we all came, came about together. So I uh, I retrained as a specialist gp, so I got my board certification. I was doing all sorts of stuff at the time when Sam and I met. So at one point In I think 2025, I was doing six jobs across five days. So I did like psychotherapy for Ramsey Health, helped another startup, focused on chronic pain. I was a medical educator for the college. I ran another like diagnostic business, general practice and my private practice. So my private practice is where Sam and I met. And then very serendipitous, right. So uh, like I think back, I could not have done any of this without Sam. And it's not like I sought him out either. Right. Because I was just iterating myself and my, I really enjoyed my private practice. It was very successful. It's also very lucrative and I really like that. So I was chipping away at that when Sam and I met. And then when he came in, first as a patient, then as we were growing our relationship as potential partners in business and friends, he took a deeper interest in like what my thoughts were and what I was doing. And I found his perspective so interesting because he comes from like scaling teams, scaling business operations and he's a serial entrepreneur. He's, he's done it all right. And the way that he lended his perspective allowed me to expand beyond my clinical scope. So at that time, if you ask my doctor friends, they all thought Stephen, oh, uh, yeah, he's great doctor, also really entrepreneurial and greater business. But then Sam and I talk and I'm like there, I'm like I'm in a cave compared to where he is. So it was just so fascinating trying to bring together my clinical knowledge how to build a effectively. At that time it was like just a. Is a boutique business. It was a fairly high end boutique, high quality service but nonetheless it was a very traditional service. And then talking to him allowed us to really like just jam on. Well Wick, how can we evolve this? So we actually evolved my private practice into a concierge type practice. Like so there's so much experimentation going on there. And that was like step one for me to say this is a really exciting way to iterate because I normally iterate within the clinical service and product. How can we do better delivering the medicine? Right. But the beginning of this business was to evolve beyond that type of thinking and to go how can you iterate and build on a, a service structure and a service product and, and giving ourselves the room to experiment. And they'll so interesting testing different products, testing different offerings, testing different price points. Right. And that was quite foreign to me. My practice was just like, you know what, I've got a fantastic project. I'm just gonna make it super expensive. I remember that was one of sans feeder. It was like. I think one of his friends introduced him to come and see me and I think he's first going to why is it so expensive? Right. Uh, so for me it was like more simple. But that was, that gave me a really great opportunity to I think start thinking like, thinking more deeply like an entrepreneur. What, um, what the way that I would define what an entrepreneur is now, right. To really think about not just the clinical aspects, but think about the product, think about your customers much more deeply because I think doctors all think they know their patients really well and I bet they do. You said I'm good at listening. I think I am. But do we really obsess about what the customer experience is? Like what, what are the, what's the customer thinking outside of the consultation? That comes down to like how easy it is for them to book, what are their preconceptions about pricing, how they think about value, how that value is communicated. Right. And I think that was, that's, that, that's how, that's how everlab was conceived. Right. So uh, and, and we could have gone in any, any direction, but it was that iterative process that took us like step by step. But that was, that was, that was a, I think critical point for me because like you said, eventually I decided to actually close my private practice to focus dress on Everlast. And that was a big move. Right. I don't know if Kelly told you about it, but like took an enormous cash flow pay cut to jump in and do this. But I had a lot of confidence doing it because of those initial steps.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that there's so many different directions I can go to, but I think that that's a really important point and thing to discuss is I think a lot of people often get stuck in that in between phase of maybe they've got this like little side hustle or thing that they're working on, but they've got their full time job that helps pay the bills and it's tough to know. I've probably got an extreme perspective on this which is like I just jump probably ahead of when I probably should. Some people wait for a very, very long time and never end up doing it or do it so long that the, not that the opportunities pass, but it's, it's just difficult. What. When you said that you had a lot of confidence and because of the steps that kind of happened before, was there a strategic sort of like plan for you in terms of. That's like the right point and I guess like how do you also overcome that emotional hurdle of letting go of the private practice and like the safety that that Sort of comes with cash flow and other things as well.

Speaker A: Yeah. And there's a. I mean there's so many ingredients there. Right. So we can start with the opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is different for everyone. I couldn't comfortably make that jump if it weren't for my parents, if it weren't for my marriage and the stability of my life at that point in time. And also like the, the, we'll call it the, the capital that I had built up at that stage of my life because we've got mortgages and like, I think at the time we were just in the middle of building a house as well, which was like also very expensive. And that's a, that's a. There was a lot of support from Kelly and I, I think if she said, I m. Don't know,

Speaker B: I, uh,

Speaker A: uh, I think that would have probably delayed and I could have missed that opportunity. But she was really, really supportive. You also have to like, just be real and just like calculate how much money you need. And can, can we afford, can we afford to do this? Right. So, so there is a lot of privilege there, I think, to be able to even do this. Then there's the, I think the mission. I could see how my private practice was doing, but I could also see that it was just a non scalable thing. Like, and, and this is, this is the way I describe it all. Like medicine as a whole is very service heavy. And any service, there are three qualities. It's good or it's fast or it's cheap. You're lucky if you get two out of three. Often people get zero out of three. Like your doctor refers you to some specialist, there's like a three month wait. You go there, they charge you a bunch of money and like your problem's not fully solved.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So like that's zero out of three. So my private practice was a two out of three service. Was it good? I think so. Was it fast? Yes, it was. Especially when we made it a concierge service. And you basically have like continuous support. Was it cheap? Absolutely not. But. And for me, like, and to be honest, with Sam's help, we could have built it into a multi clinic. Uh, we could have gone in that direction. He's very experienced in scaling like service businesses as well. But if you really want to help, not just dozens or hundreds of people, but if you really want to go into the beyond the thousands, like how do you help like tens of thousands of people? You have to productize it. You have to make it scalable. So I Think the opportunity and the desire for that to happen was strong enough for me to say, all right, like, is also right, right time, right place, right wife, right like, you know, right, right, right financial position to be able to do it. But ultimately it was the, it was the mission. Because I'm very passionate about clinical medicine. I could full time go into trying to solve like things like mental health or chronic pain or like aged care and I think might be quite good at those too. But the, the magnitude of the mission and the, the possibility was just so great that it wasn't a difficult decision, it was a calculated decision. Had to think about it. But it was more. Are there any like deal breakers here? So like if, if my wife was like, hey, I don't think we can do this. Like I've got two kids. Right. I don't know. I think, I think people need to factor that in. Right. So like it's uh, different people also have different risk appetites. As a clinician and as a person, I'm inherently a very risk averse person. I always think about the worst case scenario, professionally and personally. So if you think about it like for me it's actually a no brainer. I probably thought about it more than I needed to just because it's such a, such a meaningful mission. And I really did have a lot of confidence. And that confidence comes from the people. Right. So it's not like Sam and then we got into business together like the week after. Right. So we'd been chatting for a lot and we work together for a lot and we got to know each other a lot more and then my other co founders as well. So it's like this. We really have to build up the confidence in each other. You can't just assume those things, but as you do it, the more confidence you have. So of course now when I think about it, I think it's the greatest career decision I could have made at the time. They're not easy decisions, but that was my experience anyways.

Speaker B: Yeah, maybe fast forwarding a little bit to give people some perspective and talking a little bit about what we were discussing earlier about particularly people in their 30s, 40s who are very uh, intensely focused on their career or otherwise. So I'll use me as an example. I definitely have not prioritized my health in, in that way in terms of being proactive with, with a lot of that stuff previously. Mainly because it just didn't. I felt like there was a bunch of other things that were more, more critical in terms of like requiring my Time. And there wasn't that had that sense of urgency. But I know you've had some incredible bits of insight that you've sort of, um, gained and results you've been able to get for a bunch of you, your users. Can you maybe share some of those sort of things to highlight even when certain people might go, well, there's nothing wrong, but I'll go and get things checked out anyways. What are some of the things that you've been able to identify or prevent for people?

Speaker A: Yeah. So if we come back to the mission of Everlab, we want to deliver the most health and longevity for someone at the lowest lifetime cost, right? We actually have to redefine what health is. Health is not just being disease free, right? Not sick does not equal healthy. The way that we define health at Everlab is three overlapping circles, right? Like a Venn diagram with three circles. One of those circles is minimize disease risk and be disease free. Uh, some folks have disease and we want to optimally manage them, but there's a lot more there, right? There's another circle which is optimal function. We need to minimize disease. We also need to optimize function. Sleep, breathing. Not just organ function, not just kidneys and liver, uh, like your immune system, your airway, your hormones, your metabolic function. Some people think, oh, I, I don't have diabetes, so I'm cool, right? Diabetes is like the last stop on the train line towards severe metabolic dysfunction. By the time your sugars go up, even if you're pre diabetic, I think that's too late. A lot of damage is, is being done, you just don't know it. So optimizing function and then the last circle is like maximizing performance. Those three things all work hand in hand. So like, the optimizing performance part is like, it's not just like, I can run really fast, right? It's if you run a business cognitively, you need to be your peak, right? If you're gonna burn the candle at both ends, right? Uh, you need to be able to think straight, you need to be able to function. You want your body to function well, you perform well. And of course, performance is also fertility. That's a performance, right? So being able to fall pregnant, that's a, uh, that's, that's a, that's a function. But the outcome of that, the, the functional performance there is actually like, can I do the things that I want to in the stage of my life? Some people say I'd like to fall pregnant. Other people say I need to think super clearly, because I'm working really hard. Like I need to, I need a hundred percent of my brain power. Other people say, hey, you know what, Like, I wanna, I wanna run a Marathon under 3 hours or I wanna swim 5Ks in the open ocean. That's all health, right? So we need to actually redefine that health. And to achieve it at the lowest lifetime cost is to do it in a proactive way. So I say there is never too early a time for you to actually get checked out. We have folks who are in their late, late twenties. We find problems. Right? You're not diabetic, right? You don't have blockages in your arteries? Not yet. We found, we found someone with blocked arteries in their late 30s. And I found another one just the other day, in their early 40s. It's so common. I don't want to make this epidemiology webinar, but these diseases are incredibly common, incredibly common in young people. But it's never too early to do it. We see a lot of these cases for younger folks and there's often, also, almost always something that we can optimize. Often they're just blind spots, but you can't find them if you don't do it. And to get people to do it, you really have to engage people. And we want to engage people to say, like, the investment is not nearly as big as you think because the returns are much greater. So if, guess what, if we can fix your sleep, something that you might not even realize you had a problem with, if we can identify that your metabolic function is not great, something that you didn't know or you had, like you had airway dysfunction from allergies that you just never tested and you've just been sleeping with dust mites all night. No one does a Freaky Friday and switches bodies, right? So. So if you're functioning at 80% anything, I'm all good. I don't have any symptoms. I'm cool. If there's an extra 20% of performance out there, do you want that? Right. It's going to help you with everything in your life. So it is a, uh, it is an investment, right? Uh, it's always a trade off too. So, like you were telling me your story about not prioritizing your health as an, as an entrepreneur and in business. I've had that exact experience for me, right? So like when I was running my prior practice, I'll be honest, I wasn't. It just wasn't that hard. Like initially building, setting it up was like, not took A little bit of work. I did a lot of it myself. Took me like maybe two or three months today with AI, I could probably do it in two weekends, right? But I was going to the gym like five times a week. I was doing like three yoga classes, chill, take a nice slow lunch, pick up my kids from childcare, drop them off. I was in great, great health. Now I've had to make a lot of trade offs. Like I'm actually not in the best shape of my life, right? I was compare me to when Sam and I first met. And me now it's like a reverse before and after photo for like weight loss. Like I'm not proud of it. But see, for me, because I have a lot of clarity on my health, I, if I'm making a trade off, I'm making a calculated trade off. And that's the thing we see so many very, very smart people come through, right? Just like you, right? So like if you're approaching your business, I bet you're methodical and data driven and strategic, right? And you prioritize your, you, you, you make priority trade offs, right? You don't make assumptions. You say, let's get some more data before we make a critical decision. But for some reason, like again, it's cultural, some, like when it comes to health, people love shooting from the hip. They're just like, hey, someone else is doing intermittent fast, um, like let me give that a crack. And then uh, like Brian Johnson's eating a bunch of walnuts and dried blueberries. Let me try that. It's really interesting how health is quite different, right? So I see that with just really, really smart, accomplished people, whether if it's in business or in any, any industry. So what we want to do is almost like a management consultant approach to your health. Be more proactive, show you the data so that invariably when you do make trade offs, they're calculated because everyone is dealt a different hand, right? Uh, this is why Everlab really focuses on personalized medicine. Everyone's different. There's nobody out there like you. Genetically, you're different. Some people are just born into a trust fund in Norway and some people born in Afghanistan, right? So like you're it, it's like that you're dealt a different hand. So an example here is like Kelly, like my wife, she's much healthier than me

Speaker B: from the outside.

Speaker A: And if you look at her health behaviors, she works out, she's lean, she looks good, right? But if you look under the hood, if you look at the data, she's much Less healthy than me and you will not be able to tell. Neither of us have any symptoms. We're both feeling good. And a lot of that's genetic. Her gene, her genetic disease risk is much higher. When she had, when she had a pregnancy, she had gestational diabetes. If you just look at her objective biomarkers, they're worse than mine. It's like, what the hell? Like, like she's, she's out there exercising every day and I'm just working to 11 o' clock every day.

Speaker B: Right? Like so.

Speaker A: But even then my biomarkers are better than hers. So it's, it's not like, not like a flex, it's more like everyone just needs to understand themselves and take a much more data driven approach. And that's how you make the best decisions. That's how we can help you make the best decisions. Whether it's like what you should do, right, uh, should you take any medication or should you, should you do intermittent fasting, should you have more protein or should you go on a Mediterranean diet, or should you, if you exercise, should you be doing strength training or should you be doing cardio, should you be swimming? Because you're drawing problems like the more data you have, the better your analysis. And the better analysis, the better decisions, the better your decision quality, the higher your roi. And that's how you achieve the maximum amount of health at the lowest lifetime cost. But you have to just understand nobody's the same. Like identical twins maybe, but like nobody's really the same. So that's, that's the way we think about health. And we've done that for so many people. Like you said, people in their 30s, 40s, people in their 30s, 50s, 60s as well. But even if you're in your 20s, I think you should just think of your, think of your health as a project. Right? Think of your health health as a, as a, as a, as a project to, to manage. Just be a project manager. Yeah. And say like, let's get some more data and think about it.

Speaker B: Yeah. I was just laughing earlier because all the things you mentioned and what we talk about at the Coma Club as well. So like, very, very similar approach on understanding what you just highlighted, which is if you ask anyone about their business, they're very clear on their key metrics, what they need to track. Knowing that like if you're.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's got like okrs and KPI's and.

Speaker B: Yeah, correct. But like we don't really have that for health or other parts of our life at all. And we're not very intentional. And the big thing that we keep saying talking about is like those intentional trade offs. And I thought you referenced this a little bit earlier. I think one of the things that we found really interesting. So you were, one of the speakers for our program, was you talking about the trade offs that you've had to make as well from a, um, health perspective. Because it's, it's hard. Ideally you do want to work out five times a week, go to yoga three times a week, all of those sort of things. But it can be really difficult as a balancing act when you've got competing priorities and you're trying to juggle all of that. And so I think, especially for a lot of the listener, uh, base of this podcast, who'll be very busy founders with limited time around those sort of things. What are some of the key pillars that they should focus on? So I think you've mentioned things like sleep, I assume nutrition. Like what, what are the other things that are, uh, the, the basic foundations of people that are time poor that we should be focusing on?

Speaker A: Yeah, great question. If you think about it as a business, you always want to invest in business intelligence, right? And data. Everyone's talking about bi, right? What about your health intelligence? So like, I think Everlab is a health intelligence company, right? Like we want to give you the right level of intelligence. And it's always a good roi, having good data, have some data on yourself so that you can make calculated trade offs. I'm making a big calculated trade off. Right. I can also just ignore my kids and go exercise too. But I've calculated based on my health and risk. And I say, all right, like, what is the trade off? How long am I going to take it? And you know what? Super meaningful for me to walk my kids to school, put them to sleep and still be able and then just go back and go back to work and just. But yes, there are, uh, like key pillars of health. So if you think about the three key pillars of health, like nutrition, movement and rest, if we broad stroke. And this is what I spoke about at the Current Club as well, I think if anyone wants to focus on anything, I would start with sleep. Because of the three key pillars, only one of them you're unconscious for. So often people will take. Often people will sleep, they go, oh, like I got seven hours. And that's pretty good. But you shouldn't just, you shouldn't just calculate sleep or measure success right, based on hours. It should also be quality. It should be both objective and subjective. And I'M not saying everyone's got to rush out there and by themselves, like some wearable that gives you a score. I think there's a lot. There are limitations to those as well. But look into the nuances of like, what makes for good quality sleep and what are the things you can do before you go to sleep and optimizing your sleep environment and things like that. And I think that's where a lot of ROI is as well.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: So, like, having more data, I think is always a good, like getting more data is always a good roi. Not, not an infinite amount of data. But getting key data is really important. Finding where the best ROIs are. And one thing that I think entrepreneurs will have in, like founders have in common is we all love to win. Right? You want to make winning decisions. What's a winning decision? Adding more capacity to yourself and your health and from a performance and a function point of view. So if you can do a two birds, one stone situation where it's like, I'm going to invest some time and effort into optimizing my health a little bit, but guess what? Hey, like, I think I'm thinking 20% more clearly and that's good for my business and that can buy me some. I can then exert better decisions elsewhere, buy me some more time and then use that time and reinvest that time again. Reinvest that time and effort.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, so like, I mean, some early stage prisoners, you also just have to grind sometimes. And, and if you are grinding, you want to make a calculated, you want to be cautious, you want to make a calculated approach because like I said, everyone's different. Some people are just like high risk and they can't afford. I think Kelly, my wife, I don't think she can afford to not exercise because her, she's just got a much higher genetic risk. I've. I, uh, like, I'm pretty lucky. I mean, I'm still measuring like things like my VO2 max and stuff. Like it just, I'll be honest, it's just surprising that it hasn't gone down as much as I thought it would. And part of that's just being quite lucky with genetics. I think about my genetic tests, I think about my grandparents and my parents and to me and the objective numbers that I can say, I say, great. That helps me make decisions. Hey, you know what? I can push a little bit harder at this stage of the business and I can make these choices and say, you know what? I can afford to be unhealthy for the next three to six months. And I'm gonna make a trade. I wanna be able to put my kids to sleep. I wanna be able to like play with them. I'm gonna dedicate that time, um, use it here instead of exercising maybe. Right. They're calculated trade offs and I think that's what good decisions are. Everyone lives in a limited resource world. So yeah, like Mark Zuckerberg, he's basically got unlimited resources. So if he wants to become a judicious champion, like he can, because he's probably got nutrition as a trainer. There's a bunch of people and like he can. Right. So there's just more resources and more success there. But winning is about using the resources you have to get the biggest roi, right? So I think that's also an exciting. That's the way I think about it for all my patients. That's the way, um, we think about it for ev lab members. How do we support you get the most out of what you can put in. Some folks genuinely say, I've got 15 minutes a day for myself. I barely have, I, I barely have time to just go to the toilet with uninterrupted. Like when you've got young kids as well, you're running a business, right? I've only got 15 minutes. I'm gonna go 30 minutes. It's my job to try to work out like what is the big, biggest ri for you find where the blockers of success are. So a lot of folks also, and this is why I think diet is important. It's not just about where you're at now. It's about like where the blind spots are. And that comes back to the, hey, like 20 year olds with like high cardiovascular disease risk, 30 year olds with like high cancer risk. We just had someone come through. Really sad story actually. I think he's in his early 40s. He signed up to our program. I think there was a couple weeks wait before he could get an appointment. And by the time he got to our appointment, he had uh, been diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer. And this is someone who's in their, like early 40s, very health conscious, very busy. These things happen. I'm not saying that if we had an appointment like three weeks earlier, things would have been different. I think this is something that's been going on for years and this is someone that is actually reasonably health conscious. But that's the, that's the danger of blind spots. Right? Uh, so I can be unfit. That's okay. I've made a calculated trade off. But I've covered my bases in terms of, in terms of like the big dangers, right? Uh, like I'm not having my kids lose their dad because of quote, unquote bad luck. Like, Ever Lab is in the business of taking luck. We can never take luck completely out of the equation. We want to take as much luck out of how your health outcomes are determined. And this is it, right? It's, it's data, it's blind spots, it's working out what the right decisions are. Showing it to you. I tell, you know, when I'm on a consultant, I tell our members at the end of this console, I want you to understand your health as deeply as I can understand your health. So I can empower you to then make decisions. Like, I'm not going to help you make a decision. Say, do you go and work more in your business or do you go spend time with the kids or do you take your wife on a date night? Or like, you know that that's. But I want to arm you with the right health intelligence so that you can make good decisions and hopefully, like, we guide you towards the best decision that give you the biggest roi. That's it. Uh, I don't think it's actually that difficult, but it is. You have to, you have to do it.

Speaker B: Sennder is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business life. If you're busy running a business, you don't always have the time to do your own books and forecasts and instead you can fully outsource your finance function so that you have the time and resources back to do what you do best, which is growing your business. They have a dedicated focus on founders, funds and startups and have an experienced team that can help you with everything from managing your tax to balancing your books to even helping with your exit strategy. I trust and use them with all of my businesses and can't recommend them highly enough. To find out more or to speak to Gareth and the team, head over to sennder.com. all right, let's get back to this episode. As someone who is a, is a chronic under sleeper, so I would probably, I'd say like, I probably average four to six hours of sleep a night. I had Alex Zatarain, who is one of the Co founders of 8 Sleep on the show and we were talking about that. I was like, oh, just someone who like, maybe doesn't get enough sleep. And she's like, oh, I've been doing it for a season, that's okay. This has probably been going on for A very long time for me. And even just speaking to other founders, I know that that is often one of the areas they find additional time to work more, do other things, whatever, catch up on stuff. What, hey, what are, like, the health implications of not getting enough sleep? And you mentioned earlier as well, in terms of, like, not necessarily measuring it from a time perspective, but subjectively, uh, subjectively and quantitatively on the quality of sleep. What are some ways that we can understand whether we're getting the right or enough quality of sleep for us?

Speaker A: Yeah, okay, so. So I think, like I said, sleep is probably one of the big. The health pillar for which we have the most blind spots. Because, like, look at me. I'm not exercising. I, uh, know I'm not exercising, right? So I'm doing a little bit. How much has my exercise deteriorated? How much has my aerobic performance deteriorated? Well, I can do a VO2 max and find out. And like I said, hey, like, I'm just one of those folks who just maintains a reasonable VO2 max with, with less effort. And that's just, uh, that's luck, right? Like, I've just got quite favorable genes on that way. Sleep is. There's a lot of metrics you can look at so objective once you can say, all right, this is how long I slept for in terms of sheer hours and minutes. And then you can also calculate, well, how many sleep cycles did I have? So sleep cycles range from probably around like, roughly about one and a half hours. How many sleep cycles did I get in? How much deep sleep did I have? And some of your wearables tell you that I like to medicalize it a little bit more to say it's not so much how, how well did I perform with my sleep today. It's more what has detracted from. From quality sleep. And is there a way for us to measure that? Yes. So some of the wearables can tell you a bit more. So I'll give an example. You have a whoop ora ring and you have like two beers before you go to bed. Every single device will show you, like, your sleep scores just plummeted by like 30, 40, 50%. Entirely predictable because. Because the alcohol, right? So like, alcohol is probably in terms of burden of sleep detriment, number one in, in the world, I imagine, right. So certainly in our community. And then. And then there are like. And we can talk about other blockers of success here, right? So if we think about objective, subjective, and behavioral in those three buckets, if you look at the behavioral, it's like booze will manifest in objective numbers going down. And also you'll feel crap, right? You, you'll know you don't need a wearable to tell you, oh man, I slept very poorly last night. Cause I had some probably alcohol beforehand. You're more likely to snore, which then compounds and makes your airway worse, which makes your sleep even worse. So like it's. There's a direct neurotoxic effect and then there's second order consequences. And then there's also like subjective. If you say I wake up and there are some subtle signs that if you don't look, you, you don't notice because you don't Freaky Friday with other people. And you just say like, oh, uh, like, oh. So that's what an amazing night sleep feels like. I've never felt that before. I want to pursue that, right? So I see people who have just had poor sleep their entire lives until they're 45. And then I say, actually, you know what? I think this is area we need to focus on. We improve their sleep. I see them again in three months, they're like, I've never felt so good. Uh, I think someone. This happened to me, I think just two or three weeks ago, verbatim. I think his words were, I felt like I could just do a whole bunch of flips. Just like just jump up and do a bunch of flips. That's how he felt. So the impact is huge. So even if you don't have to rush out and go buy a wearable, just I think just be more reflective and find some subtle signs. So subtle signs will be like dry lips, dry mouth when you wake up, bad breath sometimes as well, that they are all subtle, like draw marks on your pillow. They're all signs that something was not functioning particularly well when you were asleep because you're unconscious. Uh, so often one of the other big blockers of success there is airway function. So mouth breathing abnormal. Your mouth is for eating and tasting and speaking. Your nose is for breathing. So young people have read like why we sleep and like that sort of stuff, right? So some people do mouth taping. And for those folks, I say, great, you're already focusing on your sleep. Let's understand why you even need to do that. Could it be airway inflammation? Could it be allergies? Could it be an anatomical problem? We actually need to get your teeth and jaw structure looked at and pull your jaw forwards a little bit or clear up your nasal airway so that you can sleep soundly. Quietly have good functioning air passage. So that snoring abnormal. One of the things we ask every single member. Has anyone ever complained about your snoring? Oh, actually my wife sometimes like elbows me. Flip over, flip over like abnormal. And that is gonna like you can you go years like that. But basically it's like you're plugging your phone in at night, you wake up, you assume it's 100% you% can't see the percentage though on your body, but you've only been charged to 60%. That's it. And you assume 60% is 100%. And the day that we charge you to 100%, you say stuff like, I feel amazing. I reckon I can do a bunch of flips, right? And you asked about the consequences of that huge poor sleep, poor rest drives not just, I think people heard of cortisol, but it's not just cortisol, it's these neurotransmitters. It basically puts you in a stress state, physiological stress state. And here are the, here are the second and third order consequences. Poor sleep is one of the biggest drivers of visceral fat buildup, which is like fat inside your abdominal cavity next to all your organs, next to your pancreas, next to your kidneys and next to your spleen in your gut as well. We see it in theater, we see it on our DEXA scans, we see it on mris. Worst place to put fat. Big driver inflammation, further downstream orders of consequence, like high triglyceride levels, bad for your heart, increases your risk of cancer. Nothing, uh, good about it. And you could be really quite lean because people who are in a stress state, they might not even be eating well, they're not necessarily well nourished, but they can still build up a lot of visceral fat drives the inflammation, increases risk of chronic disease. So the other, one of the other big things and this everything pieces together, right? The other, the other big thing here is when you don't sleep well, your mind starts to play tricks on you. The body, the mind often confuses a sleep deprived state with a state of hunger. So it messes with your satiety. So have you ever noticed if you have a bad night's sleep the next day you're just more drawn to snacking and salty snacks and carb rich, I just want some chips and bread.

Speaker B: Junk food, right?

Speaker A: Like junk food. And you think, oh, uh, it's because I like it. Actually, a lot of that is your brain playing tricks on you. If you don't sleep well, your mind Confuses the lack of restful sleep with the need for calories. Immediate release calories, because your body's in a state of stress. And from an evolutionary point of view, what do you need when you're stressed? Immediate energy. So we see folks who need to lose a lot of fat. We try to steer away from using weight, right? Because weight's a combo measure. We. We always think about, like, people. Like, we see a lot of folks, they need to lose fat. Sure, you can just starve yourself and lose fat and muscle. M. But, like, we need to unblock blockers. Sleep is one of those big blockers. If you're overweight or obese, you're more likely to have poor sleep. And then the poor sleep you can see drives this cycle of desires and, like, behaviors and makes it really, really hard. So you actually need to get the right data, find how you can most efficiently. And when I say efficiently, I mean low cost. Right? Most efficiently break that circuit. I don't. I. I don't fix anyone's obesity before I fix their sleeping airways. Sometimes, like, sometimes you have to do two things at once. But you have to understand, piece together this puzzle, look at the whole picture, and go, all right, this is where the problem is. But that's why sleeping. So I experience it myself. If my kids wake me up three times a night, the next day I see a bag of chips, I'm like, oh, like, yummy, right? And I know. I know what's going on. Sometimes I still do it, but it's that type of insight that I think people can really even just be more mindful of, just have a deeper sense of health, intelligence, and understanding. So, like, all right, my body's doing this. Oh, there's some. I haven't drool on my pillow. This is weird, right? That could also be, like, reflux problems.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: So it's all often these subtle signs. And that's basically data acquisition, right? You have the right data, you make the right. You come up with the right insights. So sleep, really big thing. If you're getting four to six, six hours, that's not a lot. Look, some people do. There are people who just don't need as much. Just, like, for some reason, I don't need as much exercise to drive up my VO2 max. Other people need a lot of sleep, but you don't want any additional factors there that block you from success.

Speaker B: Totally. One of the parts of the Como club is everyone goes through the Everlab program and obviously had a lot of, like, just anecdotally Speaking to a lot of the, the members had such a great experience and found so many different things. Someone said part of that was finding a new GP and that's completely changed their health outlook and health plan moving forward. Something you just touched on the visceral fat bit. Like I did have a couple of members that have mentioned that that was a little bit of the feedback that they got was the visceral fat is quite high.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Which is probably a combination of as you said, lack of sleep, stress, all those sort of things which are probably fairly common for a lot of the listener base.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. The, the stress and pressure. Uh, there's actually clinical trial that actually demonstrate this really well, which is these are people in extremists, right, Folks who have severe mental uh, health problems like bipolar, schizophrenia, psychosis. And when that happens they usually, these patients stop looking after themselves so they actually waste away. They're not, they're not well nourished at all. So you can see their total body fat and musculature go down on DEXA scans, but their visceral factors up even in a state of like caloric deficit. So you can see how like your mental experience, psychological experience, which can often be compounded by sleep. Right. Can really drive that up. So, so really important metric.

Speaker B: So anyone in that position, that is through epilogab or otherwise realizing that that's something that they need to address, what would be the steps that they would, that they should think about address for uh, addressing visceral fat?

Speaker A: I think there's a few, there's a few things and we want to work out what the most important what, what the biggest ROI focus is for you usually is a combo platter of causes. For some folks it's the combination of stress. Right. So like stress is one thing, suboptimal sleep is another inflammation as well and just general gut health. And you can think all those things compound onto each other. So different people will have different like entry points or say, hey, this is the first step for you to solve your puzzle in the most efficient, low cost way. But invariably I think there are small tactics that you can use to optimize those things individually. For some folks it might be exercise, for some it might be some like relaxation exercises and spending time outdoors, right. Having some no device time. These are all like very small tactical things. Of course you want to approach it with a right uh, health intelligence, come up with the right strategy and then pack that with high RI tactics. But like sometimes the tactics aren't, it's not like a Huge thing. Sometimes you just need to work out, oh, uh, like I've been doing in my life context, I've been doing this, and that's probably the worst thing that I'm doing. I'm just gonna make some tactical changes there. So we also look after a lot of, like, people who travel a lot. Like management consultants, right? So they God knows how many, like, dozens of flies every. Every quarter. Eating a lot at the airport, right? I say, oh, I'm at the airport, so, like, I have to eat somewhere. There are tactical things there, too, to say, like, what sort of food choices. Focusing on things like hydration when you're traveling, focusing on the types of food. Here's the tactical thing. You, uh, can go to Subway and you can just say, uh, give me some of your ingredients, put in a bowl, and I'll just pay for that, right? I don't want your big, like, bread bun. You can do that. You can even go to Maccas and say, just fry me up like five patties and that's it. Like, I probably don't do that. But, like, you can go to salad bar and say, make me a salad. Put some of this in. I don't want any of your dressing. So we want to come down to that level of specificity or tactics that works for you. And that needs to start with, like, all right, like, I'm, um, currently having too much carbohydrates, and turns out that's probably not necessarily good for me. I actually need to have more protein because I want to try and build on muscle that will help me with my metabolic health and that in turn will reduce my visceral fat. Right? So, like, the way there is a little bit different, but step one is always, like, come up, take an interest, get the right health intelligence and data, and then have a. Have a strategy. So, like, what am I working on? This is project. Project management, right? And then. And then you pack a few tactics. And once you start getting some benefits from those taxes, like, actually, I've been doing this for, like, three days, and I feel really good, right? Then, uh, you're more likely to actually continue it if you focus, if you measure the benefits. Measuring doesn't mean you have to have a blood test every three days. Like, it's. It's just reflecting on, oh, actually, you know what? That's. Wake up in the morning and just give yourself rough rating. I just feel like, hey, did I sleep well? I don't need to look at my. Look at my wearable to tell me. Just, like, tell Me how you feel. Ask yourself how you're feeling in the first hour after you wake up. So, like, I think I'm thinking sharply and I think that meeting went well and I think I'm producing, having good output. Measure those things and then work back and say what worked well. So, so one of the, one of the, I think really good tactics, I think I covered this in Chroma Club, right, Which is the, the three, two, one. Before sleep, don't eat. Three hours before bed. Before sleeping, don't have any fluids. Two hours before and one hour before, no more screen time. Read a book, have a chat. Uh, don't do any rigorous exercise in that time either. And then see how your sleep is. Do that for four nights in a row and just measure what it's like even if you're sleeping four to six hours. Uh, but for folks who sleep four to six hours, there's probably a reason you're probably pretty stressed and very busy and doing all sorts of things. Recording podcasts late at night, I don't know. Right. And, and that's gonna have, that's gonna have a cascading effect because, like, it's. All right, well, I'm gonna have dinner and it's already 10pm what should we do? Well, you can skip a meal. That's okay. Is that good? It's not great. But if you have a big heavy meal at 10 o' clock and you go to sleep at like 11, 11:30, that is going to affect your quality. So it's very specific, it's very tactical, and it's different for every single person. But there is a right approach and that's what we're here to help you with. Hopefully we help out, help the common club members with that as well. But everyone can benefit from this.

Speaker B: We're going to take a very quick break from this podcast to talk about something really important and meaningful and probably something that a lot of you listening can relate to. For the last few years, I've had a front row seat into how challenging and difficult it can be to build something meaningful. The late nights, the constant pressure, the feeling that no matter how well you're doing, there's always more to do and that whatever you're doing is never enough. For a long time I thought that was just a trade off. To be successful in business, everything else, your health, your fitness, your relationships, had to take a backseat. But what if that wasn't true? As an investor, I know that the most successful and impactful businesses are built over decades, not over months. What's Often we approach life at our businesses as if we're running a 100 meter sprint rather than the marathon that we're truly running. These are the questions and insights that led me to launching the Como Club, the world's first human accelerator. Earlier this year. We brought together 26 incredible people from founders, investors, professional athletes, to senior executives, uh, at some of the largest companies. It's an eight week program designed for high performers to implement systems for long term success in their business and all areas of their life from fitness to mental health, health, relationships and leadership all within a, ah, trusted and high caliber community that just gets it. So if you've been doing well but know there's another level, or if you've been running hard and want to recalibrate, I'd love for you to check it out. Cohort 2 kicks off in August and applications are now open. You can find out more details or apply at the Komoclub. That's T H E K-O-M M-O-C-L-U B.com all right, let's get back to this episode. One of the things that I, I love the most about everlab, and you've touched on this several times, is just a very personalized approach that you have. And obviously, as you mentioned, it's very different for everyone based on their own genetics and biomarkers and those sort of things. But I guess from a, uh, listener's perspective, at least from my perspective as well, I just think that you can also take away so much from what are other people doing and how they're approaching things. So maybe for the benefit of our listeners, you want to talk a little bit about how you think about that for yourself, given the juggle of family, business, health, all of these kind of components. What does that look like in terms of weekly, your exercise routine, how you think about nutrition, how you think about supplements you might potentially use?

Speaker A: Yep. Okay, so I might just walk through what I do, right? But first I think it's about have the right spirit. Have the right spirit with which you approach this, which is if you don't, if you don't get it right, that's okay. Some days you take an L and that's okay, right? You just try again the next day. This is, this is not a, this is another champion championship game, right? Like, like every day you give it another go. So just have an iterative spirit. Try more, perceive more. Appreciate when things go well. Don't just notice when things don't go well. Appreciate when like, hey, like, that was a nice chat, that was a nice walk, that was a nice sleep, right? Uh, that was a nice workout. Appreciate the positive things. Just give that, give more of that to you in your day. I think we often, especially if you don't sleep well, especially if you're not in a great state of health, I think we do gravitate our minds actually gravitate towards being more pessimistic as well. Right. So, like, don't just count the losses. Make sure you appreciate some wins. For me, I really try to protect my sleep quality as much as possible, but some nights I have to work late, right? Uh, so. And that's challenging. Sometimes my kids wake me up and that means sometimes I'm at night snacking and I'm like, man, like, this sucks. But give yourself a bit of room and just be like, yeah, yeah, okay, we'll try again tomorrow. One of the key things that I do regularly is making sure that I'm very well hydrated. I think that's such an easy win. Everyone can benefit from this.

Speaker B: And so what does well hydrated mean?

Speaker A: Well, hydrated means it's not just about how much fluid you have. So I normally have about, like, at least 2.5 liters of water a day. But it's also tactical, right? So I'll give an example. Like, I just caught up with one of our. One of. One of my patients in ever lab yesterday, and she's doing great, but she wasn't doing one of the things that I asked her to do, which is use a nasal spray, right? And she knows that that's useful because when she uses it, it delivers outcomes. And then, and then the suggestion was I was like, if it's in the cupboard, it's not going to get used. And she's like, yes, in the cupboard. I said, you know what, take it out, put it next to your toothbrush, create your own tactical forcing functions. So for me, and I think this is a great, great one for everyone. When you wake up, start hydrating. That's a good time for you as well. And this is where one of my supplements comes in, which is like, I do this for a living. I look at all sorts of supplements. Some of our members, they, they send me. They send me their list of 40 supplements a day that you take. And often I have to, like, say, let's be strategic, let's cut, let's call those down, because they're probably like more of a bug than a feature in many cases. Like some people getting, like, vitamin B6 poisoning and stuff I do this for a living, but I only take like two supplements. I take psyllium husk and I take vitamin D. Vitamin D because I can't be bothered calculating how much I'm getting from my food. You can do it. You can even cut up your mushrooms, put in the sun and synthesize more vitamin D in them. You can put it in the sun for half an hour and actually gives you 800 international units of boost. Right. But uh, I can't be bothered doing that. Supplements are supposed to give you a convenience. Supplements. It's, it's not the primary thing. It's supposed to supplement something. I take vitamin D at 1,000 units a day. You can take 10,000 units a week if you like. Again, you can just drop it down to once a day, uh, once a week if you like. There are 10,000 unit preparations and salium house. So the Salem house I take, I stir it in with water. So that way it's an efficient forcing function for me to both get my. I normally have like 500, 750 mils of water with breakfast because the sealant has forces me to do it. So creating these forcing functions and then once it's a habit, you just keep doing it. And then if I'm traveling and I skip a dose, I feel it. I just don't feel as like my mouth might be a dry now I've got to go and like hydrate and my gut doesn't feel as good. Like, like I think whole society wise we now have. I think most people. Uh-huh. Don't have enough dietary fiber. So that's why I take sealant husk helps with like my cholesterol. So cable it helps with cholesterol as well if you take enough of it. Nourishes. Got gut microbiome, helps with just digestion. Really useful. But you also want to be very tactical. So like I've noticed I've asked quite a few of our uh, ever lab members to take some similar husk. And when I catch up on them, I say, how's it going? And they're taking like capsule preparations. Right. And I said maybe we change the capsules to the powder. Not because they're different ingredients, the capsule. The capsules are also more expensive per unit. If you think about per gram, it's like six times as expensive. So we want you to have low cost benefits.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But I want people to capture the same forcing function that I do which is like if you do this, you can get all your fluids in as well. Some People do like smoothies in the morning, right? I think that's, that's great. So you can think about like, that gives you an option of like adding some things and like various. I like to think of it as like whole food, micronutrients, and then if you can't get it, then go on to supplements. But different people take different supplements. And it should be, it should be a goal focused activity. All your activities should be goal focused and not activity focused. This is what I mean by, like, when people like to shoot from the hip, you see some activities.

Speaker B: Ah. Oh.

Speaker A: Like, let me give that a crack. That might not apply to you. I just saw someone this week and this classic case of she heard people doing intermittent fasting. She, she gave it a crack and was like, terrible for her. I was like, of course it's terrible for you. Like, you're, you're actually, your digestion is not good. You're not absorbing well. You're actually undernourished. More than overnourished. Your metabolic performance is fantastic of like, like definitely not the right thing for you, whereas it can be for someone on the opposite end of the spectrum. So, like, don't be health activity focused. Start with a goal and work backwards and then work out what the lowest way, lowest cost way to do it is. And when I say cost, I also, I don't just mean monetary cost, right? It's cost. Uh, I think of cost as like having four ingredients. It's, it's money, but it's also time, effort and suffering and risk. So sometimes taking supplements has risks. Some of the scans we do for people has risks. We want to make good decisions. And like, are we willing to take the trade off so that we're getting the right data or getting the right nutrients? Right? So I only take those two supplements. I try to do the three, two, one with sleep. That's probably just. Those two things are probably the biggest levers that help me stay afloat, right? So help me maintain my current current position. And the rest is all like, I try to combo things. So if I can walk, I will. And I try to make that time useful. So if I walk, I try to do outdoor walk. But guess what? I can combine that with walking my kids to school. So that's just a blockbuster event for me. I love it because it's meaningful for me to spend time with my kids. I can spend some time outdoors, look further than my screen and just be in nature, breathe in the crisp, cold Melbourne air, hear the birds chirping, fresh air, hear my Kids yammering on about stuff, right? And I can get some steps in. So. So like, that becomes such a high yield event. But you have to, you have to think about it and you'll be like, what are high ROI events for you? Because I love to say, hey, like, I'm making a really nice salad for myself. I, I don't have time at this juncture of the business, I don't have time for it. I, uh, said, am I eating like super healthy every day? Like, no, I'm not. I try to make tactical improvements. I'm also like, I've been, I've been like, zero alcohol. I have like one drink a year or something just because I used to really, really enjoy it and it's just not worth roi anymore. I'm not here to tell people, like, oh, you absolutely shouldn't drink for your, like, let's not pretend like for your health. There is zero health benefits. Well, I'm talking about the actual ethanol content. If you took ethanol out of red wine and you just drank grape juice, like fermented grape juice, that probably actually does have some health benefits. There's, there's good studies about the substances and like polyphenols and things in there. But like, alcohol is 0, 0, 0 benefits. But it's got social benefits. So the, to form connections and to be a social lubricant to enjoy, enjoy yourself and then meet new people. Um, I don't know, like, meet your, meet your spouse or something like that.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: They make new friends. I think it can be useful. You've got to make. That's a trade off. So for me, zero alcohol, hydration, psyllium husk, vitamin D, don't eat before sleep. That's probably the big thing. Try to minimize. I mean, I still do it like if I think like three hours before bed, don't eat, two hours before bed, don't, don't have any fluids, one hour before bed, don't look at devices. Like, I, I'm pretty much mostly failing the last one because I'm still checking slack, right?

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: But when, when we do it, when I feel the reward, I'm more inclined to do it because most of those like messages can't wait for the next morning. So. So, like, it's the, it's the behavior. Your, your body and your mind gets you to do things sometimes, but you're also in charge. So fine tuning some of those things can be really rewarding. You can see none of those things are like super special. Uh, but it's just if you have the right health intelligence and data and insights. You have so much more confidence with the tactics that you drive. I think that's what we do for people.

Speaker B: Yeah. Steve and I can talk to you for hours, but maybe just to wrap up with two final things. So one is obviously we've spoken about how both Coma Club and Everlab are partnering together for a lot of our cohort. Obviously we get to work together that way. But another thing is that personally love the business that you guys have, that you guys have built. I was very fortunate to invest in your pre seed round through Playbook Ventures. And obviously we're recording this a little bit ahead of time of the announcements coming out, but you guys have just raised a, uh, seed round which is super exciting. Do you want to talk a little bit about both the fundraiser and also, I guess, what next steps are and who you're looking to as you take on this funding, what the next stage of the business looks like for you guys?

Speaker A: Yeah. So fundraising is always a challenging time, but my experience through it, if I summarize in one word, is validation. So it's, we need the capital to grow the business, but the fact that we can have a lot of willing investors and they were very keen to, to invest is from my point of view, like I'm the doctor, I'm the chief medical officer, I'm really the product person here. Right. And uh, it's uh, a really, it's really validating and it gives me, so, gives me a lot of confidence to say we are on the right track. Because through the fundraising process we also did a lot of internal audits, obviously to show data to investors, but I also did a lot of orders with the clinical outcomes that we have. We're now getting a lot of year two folks come through and not only are we finding risks, much like what we spoke about today, I think this was, this was like a few months ago now. So we've got even more data now. But like we have, of the 40,000 plus biomarkers that we tested for people, more than around a quarter of them were suboptimal.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, so these are, these are usually folks who have no symptoms whatsoever. So that really reflects the burden of disease risk and suboptimal health out there. But on a more exciting note, the, the early data that we have of folks who are now returning for their mid year reviews, six months or your second year with us at Everlab, 12 months, where we measure their progress and we're seeing so much clinical improvement across those metrics. Objective Metrics, subjective metrics, behavioral metrics. VO2 max up. Visceral fat down. Apopertin B down. Uh, LDLs down. Mercury levels down. Insulin levels down. These are ah. And we're just getting started. So like, it's not just that people like our doctors and they're having a good experience, but like we have to deliver value. Our mission is to deliver as much health and longevity at the lowest lifetime cost by making these great decisions and we can measure them. People come through and they're telling us that they're subjectively feeling better.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, I'm more energetic, I sleep better, I'm less irritable. My wife says I'm happier. My husband says I'm happier. I'm enjoying time with my kids more. And then behaviors are sticking as well. Hey, like these small things that I've been doing. I've been picturing my teeth and my gums feel better. My dentist said like, like my gums are much healthier. And you know what I'm like and I'm. And I'm sticking to these often very like nimble tactics and behaviors and I'm sticking to them because we're solving for that behavioral science, because we can deliver wins, uh, on those other two metrics and people are realizing that. So going through the fundraising process, I think that's for me as the clinician and the product person, effectively, that's been really validating. It has been a challenging time, but it's also very, very exciting time because we're, we're growing very rapidly and uh, we'll. I'm interviewing a lot of clinicians and potential folks joining our team. We have an incredible team, clinicians and operations in every, every aspect of the business, clinician or not, we have a stellar team. We have a players and everyone is really driven by that mission. And we uh, I think with the fundraise, with the capital that we're about to, that are going to be, that's going to be injected into the business. I'm really excited to be able to hire right. Have more people join our team, the best and brightest to help us with this mission. Because I think it's just such a meaningful mission. People often ask me, well what do you have an exit plan? Or like, stuff like that? I'm sure my co founders do right for me. I actually, I'll be completely honest, I actually don't think about it that much. I just want to be able to deliver more health outcomes for more people. And that's it.

Speaker B: Love it. And final thing, so we Started this interview with both Chai and Sam sharing a superpower about listening. Something else that they both, both were very clear on about your strength or just something that they really noticed and respected about you is like how important a value place on your family as well and juggling time with obviously everything that you want to achieve from a business perspective. But you know how you prioritize uh, dropping your kids off to school every day. And like you said that's being such a big sort of component of that and I know that that's obviously a big thing that we focus on from the Como Club perspective as well is you were uh, exactly right in terms of making those trade offs and those sort of things. And it's, it's hard when you've got so many different conflicting priorities and a priority list that is 100 different things on there from your perspective. Like how do you think about that for yourself in terms of juggling those, those two really important parts of your life.

Speaker A: It's challenging. I'm in a very privileged position to have a mission with Everlab that I care so uh, deeply about that I'm willing to give it my all because I think there's no more meaningful thing that I can do with my career. This is the way we can help as many people as we possibly can and deliver as much as we can for people across, across health and across populations. At the same time, I'm also living in my own life. My kids are only my, my kids are uh, four and seven. They're only going to be this age once. This is the number one biggest opportunity cost for me to embark on this mission and this journey which is like, I don't know how my daughter feels about me dropping her to school. I think she likes it. I think in Grandma did it she'll be just as happy. I'd like to think she'll be a little bit happier if I dropped her off. That's for me. That's not really for her, that's for me. I see them grow up sometimes at night when I'm breaking my rule of like not looking at my phone and now we've all gone to sleep. I'm flipping through photos of them. I'm looking at videos of when she was younger. And it really makes me think very hard about what I'm doing and how I'm distributing my time and effort in my life. But at the same time it's also important for me based on my values to show my kids that you uh, want to be investing and doing meaningful Things and delivering good for the world. And I would like them to be proud of the choices that I'm making. Maybe they don't really get it right now. Sometimes they say stuff like, oh, dad, are you working this weekend? That breaks my heart sometimes. Right? Hopefully, uh, again with the raise again, getting like talent. I want to get smart people who are smarter than me, people who are just better than me at various things to join our mission to help me. And then hopefully, um, I can probably balance things out a little bit. I think, uh, we're always going to be working very, very hard on the business. But finding the right balance and sometimes it also allows me to. It's the scarcity, right? If I don't, if I'm, if I, if I can't spend as much time as I want with my kids, the time that I do spend, I savor it a lot more. I am much more present when I'm in it. The little hand that comes into your hand, when we cross the road, that hand gets bigger. Right? Year on year I've got a seven year old little hand that I hold and I've got a four year old little hand that I hold and one day, those one day that won't probably want to hold my hand. So I really, I really want to savor it as much as I can and being present and like I talked to Kelly about this a lot as well. So it is something that I, these are two, uh, things that I care most deeply about. Delivering health outcomes and living out my family life and being a dad and being a, enjoying being a dad, enjoying being a husband. And you can see why I haven't been going to the gym and, and I think, I think it's always a balance and trying to make good decisions there. But uh, we all have to make those calculations and being proactive about making those calculations and being smart about it as well. So like I think entrepreneurs all work really hard. Everyone on our team works really hard. On top of working really hard, you have to work really smart so that you can get more out of the time that you have, get smarter, ship more efficiently. All of this is also roi. The way I spend my time is also return on investment. So time with your family is just harder to. You can't really calculate it as much but just when you do it, just be really present. That's my, that's my big tip. I would always love to spend more time with them.

Speaker B: Yeah. On that note, Stephen, really appreciate you making time on a Saturday for us to record this. Both Chai and Sam, um, obviously mentioned how inspiring you are in terms of both the business components, how you go about just life and how you juggle those sort of things as well. And also from, uh, an investment perspective and getting to know you over the last little while, both from the Como Club and Playbook Venture side, it's incredible to be able to support you and the team and what you guys are doing and ah, yeah, it's been, it's been amazing. For anyone that wants to find out more, say hello, get in touch. I know you guys are going to be looking for talent as well. What's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker A: Come to our website, join us on LinkedIn, ping us directly. Lots of, lots of channels are open.

Speaker B: Yeah. Awesome. I will make sure I add all those links in the show notes.

Speaker A: That'd be great.

Speaker B: Yeah. Once again, Steven, so good to have you on the show. Thanks for listening to Startup Playbook podcast. As always, full shown instruments from this episode will be available at startupplaybook.co. i'll be back next week with another episode but in the meantime, if you enjoyed this interview, please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. As always, thank you for tuning in and I'll see you next week.