CEO's You Should Know x NativePath

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So I'm originally from Houston, Texas. That's where I grew up,
and I grew up an athlete, played baseball, basketball, love sports.
Went to Trinity University in San Antonio and I played
baseball there, and I was also a business major. And
I had this idea that when I went to school,
I was going to work for a big finance company

(00:20):
and you know, go to New York or something like that.
Ended up after college, I worked for a finance company,
and then nine to eleven happened, right, and then I
got laid off. I was one of the first people
to get hired. I got laid off, and to be
honest with you, I hated that finance job. I remember
being in that job behind a cupicle and asking myself, like,
if I do really good at this job, I'm going
to get my manager's job. And I don't like that

(00:41):
job either, Like it doesn't look like a good path.
So when nine to eleven happened, I had a nice,
nice severance package, and that allowed me space and time
to think about what I really wanted to do. I
love movement, I love exercise, I love studying the human
body nutrition, and a friend suggested to me physical therapy.
So I applied to one school in Texas that had

(01:01):
a doctor program and that was Hardened Simmons, and I
luckily got in to Harden Simmons. I did my physical
therapy program for three years there and met my wife,
and really what got me started on what would become
native path was my first internship as a physical therapist.
It was back in Houston, Texas, at a hospital and

(01:24):
this hospital was world renowned force treatment and heart disease right.
And I walked into this hospital and on the first
floor that first day, I saw a McDonald's right, and
I was like what. I didn't know much about nutrition
at the time, but it really got me asking like,
what if this is a place for health, why is
the McDonald's there. I didn't know much about nutrition, again,

(01:44):
but I knew McDonald's wasn't healthy, and it was to
the point where I would I would work with heart patients.
They would get out of surgery and it would ask
me to wheel them down to McDonald's and we would
go down there, they would order a big mac, and
I would see other doctors and nurses also eating McDonald's
and it got me question. It got me questioning a
whole lot of things like why is this happening? And
I started to see a pattern in my experience as

(02:07):
a physical therapist, you know. After working in the internships,
I moved to Austin, Texas with my wife, who's also
a physical therapist, and I started working with chiroprackers, and
I got to see a whole other side of health
outside of sort of the conventional realm. They're a little
more alternative, right, and getting other solutions. And I started
to see a trend here in the conventional medical world

(02:30):
where we're going after symptoms but not really getting to
the root of the problem, right. And we have in
the past, We've had this food industry that knows very
little about health, and a health industry that there was
very little about food. And in the middle of all that,
we have consumers who are just getting some bad advice
or eating core foods. They are getting sick, and then
they're being there taking a pill to deal with the issue.
But that the issue they're dealing with wouldn't have been

(02:51):
an issue if they would just stuck to like a
natural diet, right. So I was when I was doing
physical therapy as a chiropract I started learning a whole
lot about ancestral health. I got really into CrossFit, you know,
the palaeo diet research by guys like Western Price, who
studied indigenous people and compared their health and what it

(03:13):
was like when they were eating their native diets to
people with the same genetics who had adopted a modern diet,
and really clearly seeing that over the past one hundred
years there have been drastic changes so the ways we eat,
the ways we move, the ways we lived, and over
that time, all the things that we're dealing with, especially
metabolic health, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, these things have all

(03:33):
gone up despite our advances in medicine. And it's because
we've moved away from the things we were designed for.
Right our food has been industrialized and commercialized at sugar,
industrial seed oils. Anyway, I became obsessed with this and
started doing research and going to conferences and learning as
much as I could, and really practicing this on myself too.

(03:54):
I was dealing with my own health issues, you know,
I had skin issues for a long time. I took
steroids and topical creams. I tried eating a different way,
and within thirty days everything cleared up. I got off medications.
This was an AHA for me because I was looking
at my patients who were taking all kinds of medications.
You know, a big part of what I did that
really changed my view was doing home health physical therapy.

(04:16):
And that's when we go into people's homes, you know,
to see exactly what they're eating. And you know, these
are people who aren't well enough or strong enough to
leave their home to go to an outpatient clinic. So
I got to see the situations that people are in
just being fed pills, never addressed with nutrition, and if
I tried to talk to them about nutrition, I would
get in trouble from a nurse or a doctor who said,
just just do physical therapy. So I got frustrated, and

(04:39):
in the CrossFit world, I started giving nutrition lectures around Austin, Texas,
to local gyms, to local businesses, and that was my
avenue to share what I was learning. Right and you know,
the Crossfed Gym, I was working at it and started
doing really well. Everybody started getting really fit, and I
got to see the power of nutrition from a fitness standpoint,
like a perform a standpoint, but also a health standpoint.

(05:03):
So I began yapping about this all the time right,
and the origins of the partnership of Native Path really
beginning two thousand and nine when I met my now
partner Chris Clark. He's a co founder with me, and
when I met him, I met him through a mutual friend.
We went to a CrossFit workout and we went to
a post workout lunch, and he got his butt handed

(05:23):
to him in this workout, and we always joke. At
that time Chris was overweight. He had, you know, that
midsection tire around his belly, he had a double chin,
and he was asking me about what I was what
I was doing, and I was basically telling him what
is now we call the principles of being on the
path right, things about movement and nutrition and sunshine and
sleep and hydration right. And I said, hey, just try

(05:44):
this for thirty days and just see what happens to
your health, you know, just just give yourself a good
honest shot and see what happens. And I didn't talk
to him for another two years. And two years later
he came to Austin, Texas and he was living at
Denver and he had lunch with myself and my wife,
and when he showed up, he looked like a completely
different person, right. You know this, he was very lean,

(06:05):
very vibrant, his skin had cleared up. He was telling
me he was super bought into what I told him
that day at lunch, and now he was telling all
his friends. And he knows a whole lot. He knew
a whole lot about creating online businesses, and I knew
a lot about content educating people. And he invited me
to start something with him, to do online blogging and

(06:26):
just put out articles telling people the same thing that
I told him, and that's what we did. We agreed
to do that because I knew I can only impact
so many people as a physical therapist or as a coach,
and I had a big desire to reach a lot
of people to really that was my calling, and that's
what we did. Within three years, we created an audience

(06:47):
of over three million people, built up a lot of
trust with people, kept growing and eventually these people were
asking us what supplements we recommend, And in twenty eighteen
we came out with rebranded as Native Path. Our very
first product was collagen and the whole idea behind Native
Path products is to really fill in the gaps. You know,

(07:09):
what are the things that are missing in our modern
diet and how can we supplement that and at the
same time educate people to as we say, our mission
to guide people on the paths of eating, moving, and
living in harmony with our biology and in alignment with nature,
you know, So that there's a way we there's an
intension behind what we do, and it's it's amazing to

(07:29):
see where we came from as a co founder, from
nothing to where it is now. We have over one
hundred and twenty people that work for us. It's one
hundred million dollar business. It is incredible where we've gotten
to today, and it's through a lot of key things.
So anyway, that's the origin of how we got It's
a long, long winded thing, but you know, it something
I enjoy sharing, so no chat.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
I appreciate you, Sharon all And and I can appreciate also
your passion for it because when it comes to health,
I think you and I can agree. And I'm sure
our listeners that are tuning into this interview you have
to buy in. I caught that phrase, you really have
to buy And I'm a former athlete too, and I've
done my peaks and values of gaining weight and losing weight.
And there are so many different things that you talked
about that I do want to address, but I want

(08:11):
to back up and give context everybody, because that conversation
happened about sixteen years ago with your partner, and now
the company has been around for fourteen and I imagine
sure there have been a lot of ebbs and flows,
and also the industry and people have changed too over
that decade and a half. With that said, when it
comes to Native Path, what's your mission statement?

Speaker 1 (08:29):
So is what I said earlier. Our mission statement is
to guide people on the path to eating, moving, and
living in harmony with nature and in alignment with our biology. Right.
There is a way that we feel that we believe
humans are designed for, right, and it's whole food nutrition.
It is consistent movement throughout the day. It is good
quality sunshine, is good hydration, it is good sleep, and

(08:51):
we live in a modern world where all that's been
pushed away. We call that, we call out being off
the path. Right, So we're trying to get people on
the path to really, like you said, buy into what
we're saying. And Native Path is really helping supplement that
lifestyle with supplements. But the key is the lifestyle, what
the root of what we're going for.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
So, Chad, if you could do me a fever for
our listeners, if you could just give kind of a
thirty thousand foot view of what your team and the
company does, what would you say that you actually do.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Well in that sence? We're guys, we're getting people on
the path. You know. Our mission is to guide people
on the path to eating, moving, and living in harmony
with nature and in alignment with their biology. Right, the
body wants to be in homeostasis. It wants to be
given good nutrition and good health principles. The problem is
that in our modern world we're very much off the path.

(09:38):
We're eating foods that are actually harmful and toxic to
our bodies. We've developed stagnant lifestyles where we're living under
artificial lights and staying up late. Right, So what we're
doing is first educating our customers on what's going on
with their health and then guiding them and supplementing them,
supporting them with the most pure, high quality something that
we can find to really with their body back in

(10:01):
the state of homeostasis where it's healthy.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
All right, Well, let's talk about products because there's a lot,
and I think that if you're new to this and
everybody's heard about supplements and all sorts of different things,
but you do offer a lot. And for me, being
a former athlete and really digging into this and trying
to take care of myself, I'm familiar with some of
these things that you offer and some I'm not. So
I want to talk about the education process but also
what you offer. So if you can maybe highlight some

(10:26):
of the different products that you offer, why you offer them,
and then we can start to get in also to
the education if you could first.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
Chat Yeah, absolutely, Well, when it comes to our products,
you know, we have a philosophy of what we're trying
to do with our products, which is to support these
principles of health that we really believe in, right, So
whole food, nutrition, movement, hydration, sleep, those are the basic
things that we're trying to do, and we recognize within
each of those areas there's gaps. Right, there's an ideal

(10:54):
thing the body wants to have, but there's also reality
in the modern world of what it's getting right, So
with our as, we're trying to fill in those gaps.
So let's take for example, collagen. Collagen is our number
one cellar here at Native path It was our first
product that we came out with. Collagen is something our
native ancestors would get plenty of in their natural diet
because they would need nose to tail right. They would

(11:15):
take an animal, they would take the bones of that animal.
They would put in a pot and make soup and
they would go all the gelatin, all the collagen from
the tendons and ligaments and the hides and break it
down and they would consume that on a consistent basis
and give their body collagen. Now, collagen is extremely important
because it makes up like all your body, Like as
we're looking at each other, we're literally looking at collage,

(11:37):
and it makes up your hair, your scan, your nails,
but also things like your brain, your nervous system, your
gut lining, and even even your bones, which most people
don't know. So people are lacking in collagen and they're
experiencing all these health issues, joint pain, digestive distress, you know,
energy trouble, losing weight. Collagen, in my opinion, is one
of the least things we can do that makes the

(11:59):
most different to our overall health because we're supplying the
body with these very important amino acids that it needs
to make up the structure. Right, it's the most important thing.
So that's an example of the philosophy behind our products
with collagen. But you'll find the same thing across the board. Right. So,
for example, I mentioned hydration. You know, hydration is extremely important,

(12:19):
but most people in our modern world are extremely dehydrated.
Not only are they not drinking enough water. We tend
to drink liquids that are diuretics where we give off
a lot of water, you know, like coffee and energy drinks.
And then also our food. A lot of the food
we're eating is refined in processed, and it's made for
a long shelf life where it doesn't have water in
it like natural food would say, like a broccoli or

(12:39):
tomato or even even grass at beef. Right, there's water
in those real whole food nutrition. So in the modern world,
as we've moved away, we're getting more and more dehydrated.
And our second best product, our second most selling product,
is something called hydrate. Right. It has these important minerals
that you need, potassium, magnesium, and salt, as well as
these very helpful assets that further help you absorb the electrolytes,

(13:04):
but it helps solve one of the major problems that
most people are having, which is hydration. Right, So you
can see with our products we're trying to fill in
the gaps with these areas of health that if humans
can can get these things down, if we can fulfill
the needs of what a human body really wants, we
can drastically feel better. Right. And when we feel better,

(13:24):
we move better, we engage with the world around us better,
and hopefully there's a world where there's less need for pharmaceuticals,
there's a world where you have more of appreciation for national.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, agreed, and for somebody who has our race. Since
I've been twenty one, I'm with you on that because
while I've had to take care of my body with
some medication over the years, because I do some of
the things that you offer up and I put into
my body and also take care of good myself when
it comes to my eating habits and exercise and all
the things. And I didn't want you to address that
because you've kind of talked about it's not just supplements folks, right,

(13:57):
and the collagen the supplements or even health focus, Uh,
you you also address recipes on here about eating and
then you also have a blog in community, so you're
also educating people on all the facets of taking care
of yourself. It's not just kind of a one I
guess it is a one stop shop, but there are
also different factors that you're talking about to get on

(14:18):
the path of being healthy. So if you could address that,
because your beautiful website really addresses and offers everything, I
love you.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
To say that that really makes me happy. Yeah, it's
important to us that we don't just sell you a
supplement and you walk away thinking that if you just
do this one thing right, everything is going to be better.
Like that, that is that is the mindset that people
are given. We want to we want to first educate you,
Like we always say, we lead with education. You know,
when I was telling you the origins of our business,
we were founded on education. The supplements came second, you know. So,

(14:48):
for instance, one of the big problems that we solve
with a lot of our customers is bone health, you know.
And and what makes us different is is we want
to educate a customer on one of the foods that
are actually harmful to our bones. Right, And here's how
collagen can help you, right, because we have to if
we're going to take step forwards, we have to stop
doing the things that are harmful and do the things

(15:10):
that are good for us. We don't want to just
try to supplement our way out of it, right. So
it's a big part of kind of how we would
view more of a holistic view of the human body
and what it needs from lots of different areas with
these lifestyle principles of eating, moving, and also living right. Right.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you. So I want
to talk about where you started and where you're at.
I think because of the Internet and social media, a
lot of information but also a lot of disinformation. I
think you and I can agree about that, whether it's
the health industry or politics or news or anything. So
with that said, I love it that you do the education.
But when you started this business with native path to

(15:49):
where you are today and when it comes to educating
people and just the industry as a whole, can you
talk about some challenges but also things that you're combating,
whether if there's a were closing in one area, it's
opening another, Especially when you're working with your clients and
all the people that are checking things out.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
When it comes to Nata path, that's great. There's so
many areas when I think about challenges and going from
where we've been to where we are now, you know,
you know, a main thing comes to mind first is
making sure that we communicate the value of our products
right and using the words and the problems that our
customers are actually wanting to solve in the words that

(16:27):
they use right. So one of the things that makes
us different is we have an outstanding customer experience team
who's always getting that information for us and we're relaying
that back. But there was a time when we didn't
know who our customer was, and we we didn't speak
to them with their problems, and we didn't add enough value,
and we charged too little for our products, and our
margins were too thin, and the quality wasn't there because

(16:49):
we weren't getting enough scale. So like we were way
off on our values right, which leads to another thing.
I think some areas where we had challenges is early
on in the culture, we did not have a clear
set of values. We did not have a group or
a team clearly all bought in on what we were
believing and about needing, moving and thinking and that those

(17:12):
are those are big things. I think that pulled a
lever to to get us where we are now. We
started understanding the customer better. We started speaking to them
with their problems and their words and creating products that
helped solve their problems. And then we started buying into
a culture that was more rooted in values. We created
a Monday culture call where we just educate our internal team.

(17:34):
And what that did is it empowered the team to
be to be like more of me right to where
they can talk to the customers on the phone or
through their content that they write or the emails that
they put out did they help me put out? Right?
It's more in line with the true roots of what
we're doing, and those those things move the needle for
our business. We started speaking to our customers a different way.

(17:55):
We started empowering our team, and it was like a flywheel, right,
It was a flywheel that like, this made that better,
This made that better, this made that better, and now
now we know what the process looks like. And that
led to a lot of growth for us.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Outstanding Chat. I know you've got probably hundreds, if not
thousands of great stories with customers that have either reached
out to you if you heard and of course you
shared one with your co founder and now he was
able to change his body and his lifestyle and everything.
But if you had to maybe share just a story
or too, something that's been very impactful over the last
decade and a half as you've been with Native Path

(18:28):
and co founding this company. Are maybe a special story
that stands out to you that was just really impressive.
And this is why we get up every day.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean when I think about stories,
I love the stories from our customers for sure. And
every day we get testimonials and pictures from our customers
giving us things about medications that got off or now
I can feel better and do things again. I love
even more the testimonials that we get from our internal team. Right,
So we have these conversations that we're having. I have

(18:58):
them every Monday, and we educate, and we have these
internal Slack channels where the team members are sharing their stories.
You know, we just had someone today who who stated
at the beginning of the year she was one hundred
and ninety pounds, so she's already down ten pounds and
we're six weeks in and she was asking me what
do I do next? Right, we have a customer experience
director who came in not completely understanding what we were doing.

(19:20):
He has since lost forty pounds, he's avoided knee surgery.
You know. Those things are great. Honestly. One of the
best ones though, is my mom. My mom. My mom
had falls, she had hip fractures, you know, she took
she had lots of surgeries. And one of the things
I got my mom doing was was Collegen. I said, hey, Mom,
just take take I wanted her to take a lot.

(19:42):
I said, take forty grams a day and start doing
these exercises, drink water, do these things, you know. And
it was a great thing for me, like a mother
and a son, like working together to feel better, to
help my mom stay more mobile, you know, and in
her late eighties, in her goldens, you know. So it's
a beautiful story, and we've we've filmed my mom and

(20:02):
got her story and it's really helped connect to a
lot of older women and inspire them to take collegen.
So as far as like what touches me and the most,
that's probably the one that I appreciate the most.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Well, that's good, and you know, once again you and
I can relate because even though I'm older than you
chat you being a former athlete. As I said, I've
been at being and floying my whole life about being
in shape, not in shape, taking care of my body,
dealing with my ra But I've learned as I've gotten older,
and I'm a generation exer. I'm one of the first excerpts,
so i can tell you how old I am, which
means I didn't get that education early on as a

(20:33):
seventies kid. But now as I'm getting older and wanting
to really take care of my body and having a
twenty two year old in my family who takes wonderful
care and is also a former athlete too, you know
this speaks to people that are from my age bracket
of really paying attention to what I eat, what I drink,
the collagen, working out, because you know, one of the

(20:54):
things you know as a physical therapist is that ligaments
in your bones start to get brittle after you term sixty,
and yeah, it starts to put you in harm's way.
That's where I think. You know, while your project is
for absolutely everybody, for the older generation, it's just imperative
that you do stuff like this to take care of yourself.
Would you agree?

Speaker 1 (21:13):
So important? And I'm glad you brought that up. And
going back to our main customer. Our main customer is
over sixty five, not surprised they are. They are They're
looking to solve the exact issues that you're talking about.
And I really appreciate that because you know, when I
mentioned I was a home health physical therapist. This is
the population that I was working with. And I got
to see what you were saying. The body as it ages,

(21:35):
how the ligaments get a little looser, we get a
little more immobile, We maybe have some trouble with getting
up and down, you know, things things that are happening,
And it's a it's a thing I noticed with with
functional mobility. Right, So as we get older, there's a
potential to lose our balance and have a fall, right,
And and what happens a lot, And I would see this.
People would have a fall and they would fracture a

(21:57):
hip or a femur and they would be stacked. They
would have surgery to fix that and then they would
be stagnant for a while. But the health outcomes, what
life look like after that fall and after that surgery
starts to really the quality of life starts to go down.
And there's a stat I think it's like the early
early mortality after fall, like goes up like one hundred

(22:19):
percent or something once once you have that fall, and
on paper it'll look like, oh, this person passed away
from diabetes or a heart issue or something like that.
What really happened is that fall set off another host
of events with someone's health. They weren't eating as much,
they weren't going out as much, they weren't getting as
much sun. The body is stagnant, they start eating different fruits,
and then disease sets in. Right, it's an environment where

(22:42):
the disease sets in. So mobility, feeling good in your
joints and your ligaments, being able to do these things
is so important, right, And that's why I like collagen
so much, because it is the number one thing that
helps us with the structure of our body that impacts
our mobility. It is what makes up the tendons and
the ligaments and the otator cuff and the sheath and
your and your bones. You know, the stronger your bones are,

(23:04):
which is bones are made up of collegen, the less
likely you're going to have a fracture. So it's part
of our why we do what we do. I think.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
I think Chad has also mentioned every body part that's
ever hurting.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Of us over the age of fifty.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
By the way, I know you'll appreciate this as watching
and TikTok, and this will show you the algorithm I'm
in right now where a guy said, hey, when you're
over fifty, you have to actually think about standing up.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Now.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Back when you were younger, you could just pop up.
But while there's a little truth in every joke, you
actually you can get over fifty. You actually had to
physically think about standing up before you do when you
get older.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah. Yeah, you know. That reminds me of one of
my coaches who coached me. One of the things he
would always say is fitness evolves. Yeah, you know, the
things that you're doing when you're twenty and why you're
doing it is going to be different than your thirties. Absolutely,
but it's all fitness and we got to keep moving.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, yeah, we sure do.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Well.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Listen, chat, I really appreciate this conversation. You and I
could tell for hours on what you do with Native
Path and all the great products that you offer up.
And I do want to do this before we give
the website and how people can just check out your
beautiful website. I don't know what the products, but the
recipes are on there, the community is on there that
you can join, the blog is on there. It's really
a gorgeous website. But Chad, if you could maybe just

(24:17):
recap what we've talked about in some final thoughts from you,
the floor is your, sir.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Well, thank you so much for saying I mean, as
far as some final things, Yeah, I just want to
reiterate there's always an opportunity, as we say, to get
on the path right. No matter what's going on with
your health and your life, there's always one step you
can take to improve a little bit right. And for
some people that can be a glass of water, that
can be protein, that can be taking a scoop of collagen.

(24:41):
But what we're here to do, what Native Path is
here to do, what I'm personally encouraging you to do,
is keep taking those steps right, keep doing those things,
because that is the thing that makes life truly worth living.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Chad, once again, let's give the website to everybody, so
they can check everything out just one more time and
then make sure that everybody checks it out. But if
there's any other kind of social media or how to
contact you and your team, let's make sure that they
get that one more time.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah. Absolutely so. I believe that the website we want
everybody to check out here today is native path ceo
dot com. Native Path ceo dot com. You can learn
more about us there and see also learn more about Collegen.
We also have a great Instagram page. We put out
lots of great content. It's all education, you know, all education,
littallisticals and things you think about. You can find us

(25:27):
on Facebook. As you mentioned, we have a wonderful community
of I think over seventy thousand people now wow, who
are all doing what we're doing. And it's a great
place for inspiration, engagement and supporting people. So those are
really the main areas of that I would encourage people
to look for.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Standing Chad, I get to talk to so many cool
people that have started their own companies and are having
so many success stories, but that you're also changing lives.
I imagine you know. I asked you about getting up
every day and why you do that and having great stories.
It just must be so cool for you and your
team that you are changing lives out there for not
only wellness when it comes to the physical part, but

(26:04):
your mind as well too, because folks, if you feel
good in your body, your mind's going to feel a
lot better too. And we're all going through everything in
twenty twenty five, so I imagine that's just such a big
thing about why you get up every day.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Chat.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
I just can't thank you enough for this. I want
to wish you continued success and thank you so much
for joining us on CEOs.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
You should know wonderful Dennis, Thank you so much. I
really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for having me