July 4, 2025 • 41 mins
From a teenage gym employee to a powerhouse entrepreneur, Eric Casaburi has spent decades shaping the fitness and wellness industry. At just 23, he launched his first business, setting the stage for his breakout success as founder and CEO of Retro Fitness—a fitness franchise that redefined the high value, low-cost gym space becoming a major player in the market and expanding to over 150 locations nationwide. Never one to settle, Casaburi set his sights on the next frontier: longevity. As the founder of Serotonin Centers, the fast-growing anti-aging med spa franchise, he’s leading a movement in health optimization, merging leading science-backed services with elite wellness offerings and medical aesthetics all under one roof. His influence spans beyond business, with media appearances, a spotlight on Undercover Boss, and his podcast Aging Backward, Growing Forward, where he unpacks the ways to achieve vitality and peak performance. With a legacy built on innovation and an unrelenting drive to deliver best-in-class brands, Casaburi is not just shaping industries—he’s redefining what it means to live better, longer.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M and T Bank presents CEOs.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You should know Howard by I hardly.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
Let's meet Eric Cassebury.
Speaker 4 (00:07):
He is the founder and CEO for Serotonin Anti Aging Centers,
a network of wellness and anti aging medical centers that
offer a variety of services including hormone replacement, therapy, weight management, aesthetics,
and other treatments focused on promoting longevity and overall well being.
Before we find out more about the amazing things that
Eric and his team are doing for their clients, I
first asked him to talk a little bit about himself,
(00:28):
where he's from and his origin story.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So I was born in Staten Island, New York, around
age ten. Though we moved to New Jersey. We lived
in a small town called Marlborough, which was Mammoth County.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Which is in central New Jersey. By the way, some
people didn't believe Central New Jersey exists. They only know
North Jersey. In South Jersey, there is a Central Jersey.
It's Mammoth County. If you're from there, we know it exists.
And I did most of my formative years there, so
you know, junior high school, high school, some of my
best friend, my greatest relationship to a lot of our family.
(00:58):
That was where we planted our roots and growing up
there it was great I had we lived in a
upper middle class area at the time. There was a
step up my you know, my father was a blue
collar worker, was a police officer, became an entrepreneur himself,
got into the back then it was the coin and
gold business.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
It was a coin shop. Now those are jewelry stores today.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
But back then when he started it was they were
coin shops and he just worked there on the weekends,
and then the owner of that shop had asked him
to work there a little more frequently. You know, my
dad had that charismatic personality about him, and that started
his entrepreneurial journey, which after you was the entrance and
the for me was the kind of the first experience
of seeing it firsthand, was witnessing what he was doing
(01:40):
there as a youngster. But I didn't understand it at
the time. So I went off to college and based
on football in college, wound up getting my shoulder injury
that stopped that that that endeavor.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
It was a great experience.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I was always into working out and exercising, so being
an athlete, I was very young into weightlifting and working
out in gym's. It's My career in the fitness space
actually started.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
When I was a teenager.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I wanted to work out in a fitness center and
my mother was like, well, we're we're not have the
money to pay for a gym membership. I'm not going
to do that. She says, you can go get a
job there and then you can work out there for free.
And that's exactly what wounds up happening. And that was
my first career move into the fitness space. Was cleaning
urinal cakes and cleaning up locker rooms and dusting the machines,
picking up plates off the floor, all the glorious jobs
(02:28):
in a fitness center and in the gym space. But
it was really incredible because I loved being in the
gyms I did. I really was something I actually was
passionate about, and so much so that when I was
I think it was fifteen turning sixteen, I lied about
my age on a personal training certificate just so I
could take the course, not because I wanted to be
a trainer, because I wanted the knowledge for me so
I can continue to get bigger and stronger, because I
(02:49):
wanted to play football at the next level. Of college,
and I wound up being really good at communicating that
knowledge to other people. So the owner of the gym
at the time allowed me to do some of the
intro exercise. I you joined the gym back then, they
give like a free intro session and I was you know,
they loved how I was doing the clients because I
would really get into it, like I would go beyond
an intro session like I would if you know, if
(03:11):
missus Jones came in and she was just going to
learn how to, like you know, get started on the
little circuit, I would really dive in and explain to
her why this muscle group did this and how the
muscles attached point of origin, point of insertion. Like I
got a little science team. But I loved it because
I love biomechanics and I understood it. That being said,
I went off to college and while I was playing sports,
I had a major in exercise science again just to
(03:32):
gain more knowledge about fitness and exercise. I wand up
dropping out of college. So I'm one of those stories
where I'm from the school of hard knocks. In my career,
I had an opportunity to get into the fitness business.
Now all through my college years, I worked as a
trainer in the gyms. That was kind of how I
made my side money while I was going through school.
The career path happened rather serendipitously. A friend of mine
(03:56):
had asked another friend that said, Hey, we know that
works in all these gyms. You know, would he be
interested in getting involved in this? In this project, we're
going to open a fitness center. It was in brick,
New Jersey, Southern New Jersey now, and.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It wound up being an incredible opportunity.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
The stories is a great one. It's probably we should
make a TV movie out of it. It's because we
didn't have two Nichols to rup together. The deal was
we had to get an SBA loan and we needed
a down payment of sixty thousand dollars for this particular
SBA loan, and I had to come up with thirty.
And my partner of that particular, Cilly, had come with thirty.
He went to his father, and then I went to
my father and said, hey, here's this opportunity, and he said.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
My dad said to me, well, i'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I'll give you half of the thirty, but you got
to go to your two uncles to get the other half.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
So I'll give you fifteen, go.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Get seventy five from Uncle Buddy and Uncle Frank. And
the best four of that story is how it really
wound up ending. So I was able to convince Uncle
Buddy and Uncle Frank told me what we were going
to do, how we're going to do it. My father said,
in one other condition for me is you got to
go work in this gym. I drive past it every
day day. The parking lots packed in the morning when
I passed it, the parking lots packed at night when
I passed it. They're definitely doing something. I'd go work
(05:05):
in this place. I don't care tick a and that.
Then I think it was minimum wages, like six bucks
six twenty five an hour job. And I did, and
I learned a tremendous amount. I stayed in the mornings early.
I came in and I would I would walk around
while they were setting up the facility. I would stay
after the gym closed, and I would follow the gentleman
around who cleaned the place. Asked him, you know, why
do you use that solution on the rubber mattin? Why
(05:26):
do you use this on the upholstery. I'd spent my
lunches with the billing woman and asked her about understanding
electronic funds, transfers and credit card machines and how they
why when we write.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Up a membership agreement do we do?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I just was I was a student there, more of
a student than I ever was when I was in
college or when I was.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
In high school.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And I learned so much on the job training and
that was a prerequisite from I followed. I say, okay,
and I had to come by the way. I had
to come back and report to them what I had learned,
you know, and we did. Hear like a weekly meeting
was crazy. But now out of the back that I'm like,
it was the greatest thing that we ever did. And
there was a good process because it actually brought us
really closer. And I think he respected me more through
my journey as an entrepreneur because we did that. We
(06:07):
opened up that gym. It was very geographically successful. I said,
geographic and successful. Were in the right place at the
right time because we made a ton of mistakes, but
we still crushed it as a business. That led to
my first endeavor of expansion and scale.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I had opened up a second gym.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
At that time, I went to my father and said, hey,
we're going to do this second part. So when you
back up and you go to the first one, you
look at, well, how did you guys afford all this?
And you know, we had this SBO. Now think about
the bank in the names I'm going to use, right,
So back then it was First Union Bank, which was
the predecessor to Wacobia, which was the predecessor I think today,
as well as Fargo through acquisition. So it was First
(06:43):
Union was the bank. And we had the joke in
the office that we would write the checks to my father,
my uncle, my partner's father first on the first of
the month before we would write the check to the bank.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And the reason was, and I joked about the several.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Interviews, was because my uncle was my father and my
partner's father would show up at the front door to
baseball back. The bank was never going to do that,
so we made sure of those guys always got paid first.
They got first dollar in and first dollar out, and
it worked incredibly well. Opened up a second gym. My
father and I worked together on that project.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Early on. He came in as a minority investor on
that that.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Particular facility then subsequently opened up a third third facility
in the center, and then I decided I was going
to scale this as a franchise business model, and I
had created the brand Retrofitness, and that was my entrance
into the franchising space, which you know they call it
trial by fire like that was. You know, I learned
a lot during that whole process, especially the early process,
(07:39):
because we really know how to operate gyms really really well,
and we had to build them out and scale them
and run multiple centers. And I loved the health and
wellness space and we had a very good niche at
the time when we launched that brand. And I look
back now and I my career as I built that
brand and we grew that as I was the CEO
(08:00):
of that company for a while, to you one hundred
and fifty three locations, you know, when I was there,
and you know, we did an incredible amount of revenue,
you know, system wide, and I didn't even realize it
really because I was just heads down and building this thing.
You know, you know, had a great team around me, wonderful,
wonderful people. Over the many years we were in that
business building that brand, that brand you know is still
(08:20):
growing today. It's it's I still love the fitness space.
I think it's an incredible opportunity not only for business,
but for the human races just to stay healthy. But
during that time, I had started to realize that there
was the health space was iterating, and it was iterating
in such a manner that it was you know, in
the in the fitness industry and a lot of businesses
(08:42):
talk about attrition and retention, and in our space it
was hyper hyper sensitive because if someone joined the gym,
there was a statistic, I mean may have heard this,
or some of your listeners may have heard this that
in the first six weeks of a gym membership, sixty
percent of people cancel or quit. And if you think
about it, right, they're sweating, they're in a little bit
of pain, they're sore. It's not the most fun thing
(09:04):
to do for some people, especially when you're getting started,
if you've never done this before, and if they don't
get the results, and it takes adaptation, takes a period
of time, right, physical adaptation, whether strength or or appearance
to happen. So unfortunately, it doesn't have a quick enough
for some people they leave. You know, if you take
me to a tennis court and I get sore on
my arm hurts, I can't hit the ball over the net,
I'm crapping.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I don't want to come back to this. I'm not
going to do that.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
So the goal is you're always fighting against that to
get people to stay long enough to see the initial
results and then they're bit by the bug. And then
get people that are just you know, they become they
become disciples of fitness. They love it, they talk about it,
they tell everyone about they.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Love it, and that's that's kind of like when you
get bitten.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
They say, bitten by that bug. You really do, and
it never stops for most people. So in that business,
we were very hyper focused on looking at a trition
of retention. When I started that brand, I targeted a
very specific audience. It was Generation of Acts because it
was my generation. I'm currently today fifty eight years old.
I'm going to be fifty one a few months.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
As we sit here.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
And that group then was in their twenties and early thirties,
and they were a great target because the baby boomer
was who the industry wanted to chase.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
But if you look at someone like my father.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
They grew up thinking the Marlboro man on a horse
with a cigarette was a hero. That's not a good
fitness target in my opinion. So I didn't look that direction.
I looked in a completely different direction for the customer
base I wanted to attract. And they were great because
the generation next grew up with physical education in school,
they understood performance, they were starting to make money in
the workforce, they could afford gym memberships, and that's who
(10:33):
I targeted, and that's who we went after in marketing
and in design, in services.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
It was a very good market for us.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
But that group, twenty years later is now in a
very very large group that we talked about our current
brand at Serotonin, our anti aging centers because we have
a hyper focus on harmone replacement therapy or hormone optimization
therapy HOT or HRT.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
There's two different acronyms there.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So I started to notice this attention and attrition issue.
And people would talk about, you know, change out the
TV's on the treadmill, you know, make clean up the
locker rooms, make them, you know, do some certain things
in there, or make make a different type of waiting
area I was saying they were at a machine gun
fight with a rock in their hand for attention nutrition issues.
That was not the answer if you look at it
(11:20):
from more deeper science, if you look at blood work,
this group is the cohort of people that were losing
one to two percent of their hormone, their testostero master
hormone per year in a decline. It's just a natural
aging process that happens to all of us. But nobody
understood that. But what happens there from a from a
health standpoint is you wind up with lower muscle mass,
(11:41):
lower lebido, higher blood pressure, terrible A one ce's what
they call metabolic syndrome. All of these things create an
environment for metabolic syndrome and become very unhealthy.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
And you also don't look and feel the.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Same way you did when you were doing the same
exact routine maybe a decade before, maybe two or three
years before. And most people think, oh, I just stall
off a cliff, my health just well, no, it was
happening very slowly, a death by a thousand cuts, but
they no one know it. Many were not aware of
how to face this challenge, any having the tools two
days to challenge so.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
I myself also fell into that category.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
But my wife was a true inspiration for the Saratonin
brand because she went into perrymanopause and early menopause, very
very early, because we had she had a series of
miscarriages that along the way. We have four wonderful healthy children,
were very blessed with today. But it wasn't an easy
path to get to where we went and it wound
(12:35):
up being you know, traumatic on her endocrine system. Now,
this happens to a lot of when we see women
in thirty five to forty years old in our centers
that are in perimenopause ready and they don't they like Kim,
they didn't even know what was happening.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
She's like she thought she was having a nervous breakdown.
She's like, my skin's on fire. I don't know what's wrong.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
It was these hot flash symptoms, by the way, and
she's like, I feel like I'm losing my mind. And
she couldn't sleep at night, and all these things were
you know, for a forty year old with a then
our fourth child was one, so she was like, she
didn't she was.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
It scared her.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So we started through research and then we had realized
that after going to three different OBG. Ryan type doctors,
the third one actually said, let's test her hormones because
the first two didn't give the greatest answers and responses
to this challenge for her. There certainly weren't solutions. And
I looked at the doctor like testa harmonally know, because
I'm thinking testosterones are for her, guy, and what do
we test? The hormones were written, but not realizing that
(13:27):
you know, testosterone is a master hormone.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
It's very important for men and women.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Uh, and estrogen especially especially is very important for her
for women, and Kim's levels of both were very very
low factor. Estrogen was almost on Tracy mollestosterone was a
single digit.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Which is really really bad.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
So we then looked into harmone placement therapy for her
and it was like boom, the lights went on and
then we saw how no and physically did she change
and feel better, but emotionally and like and there's it
was just such an incredible and I was very into
that experience because I was part of it, so I
got to really see it hands on it, and then
I realized, oh my gosh, there are so many people
that are suffering from this, so many people. And then
(14:04):
I'm like thinking about men. I started thinking about data
like members that were canceling. Why would they cancel? They
would get frustrated. These are clients that were with us
for years and all of a sudden they would just
stop working out, like you know what what because there
was diminishing returns for them, Right, But why am I
putting the time? And they think not even wasn't the money.
It was just like, why am I wasting my time
doing this? It's not working anymore for me. Let me
go try the South Beach diet, the Accans diet, of this, diet,
of that, Let me go try this new new, you know,
(14:27):
type of workout, searching for you know, the next pot
of goal. But really they had to just look inside.
And I spent a lot of time since and then
paying attention to the medical side. I started to go
into different types of conferences. Where I used to go
to all the fitness conferences, I started to add on
these other conferences on my own time. I was going
where medical doctors were. I was going to the anti
aging conferences. I started learning about biohappy before it was
(14:49):
a cool word, you know when when when it was
Now it's almost like like a meme on the internet,
but it was I was doing some things back then
that today I was. I was like, Wow, I'm so
happy this is generally accept because back.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Then I was like, what are you crazy? Why are
you doing that? What are you doing in asna? You know,
you know, taking ice bats, coldplay?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Why why would anyone do all of that crazy stuff
unless you're injured as an athlete And come to find out,
there's all these incredible modalities that really help assist our
health and also our hormone health. So that was the
reason the budding of the inspiration behind the brand for
Serotonin and which is your happy harmon and your feel
(15:26):
good hormone. Like, that's what we want to do, is
people want people to leave there and they feel happy.
That's why we chose the brand and the name for Serotonin.
And that journey really starts at the pain of what
was going on with my own wife and it kind
of ends with an incredible brand and you know, and
now helping you know, thousands of and hopefully it will
be hundreds of thousands of women as we go forward.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Well, listen, I appreciate you sharing all that, and I
think it's you know, it makes a lot of sense
that you were in the fitness industry for a long
time and the correlation about what you did then and
what you're doing now with serotonin. So let's do this.
I think you were kind of hinting at it. We're
going to talk about all the programs and all the
cool things that you do. By the way, the website's gorgeous.
We'll give that a couple times during our interview to everybody.
(16:09):
But let's talk about mission and vision. What are they
for the company?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So I would say one of the missions I think
we have for the company is because mission has a
has a has an ending point. Like you know, talk
about vision and mission and all these things, and we
talk about all of it, but the mission is very specific.
I think we wanted we would like to change healthcare
into self care because we think that needs to be
that that that significant way it's named and thought about
(16:35):
these ministry is our goal is to give the power
of the information to each of the individual clients. And
we don't even call the patients because patients are sick people.
Our people are are are our members or clients. We
would like to get the population that is looking to
get help to be able to understand how to do that,
how to read their own blood labs, and what tests
(16:56):
are important. What what should my A once CV, What
should my Cardiolympic profile look like? What should my hormone
final profile look like? So one of our missions is
to really educate as many people as we possibly can
on self care, asking good questions. When you're sitting with
your general practitioner. These are very smart people, as doctors
and nurses that are out there, incredibly smart people. You
(17:17):
have to offer them the information you need for your goal.
And I think what we'd like to also do is
be the flag folder and the leader in the space
of anti aging and longevity because we understand what it takes.
It's it's there's it's a it's a very patient type business.
It's you know, you go to a general practitioner's office
(17:38):
or your usual you know, doc in the box place.
Those those services have to happen very quickly. You have
to come in, get diagnosed, and you've got to be
out of there and usually less than seven minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
And that's actually a real number for.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Some of these places because otherwise the business model doesn't work,
you know, for them to run that facility.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Are is it much different?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Like we we know that it's it's intimate, it's concierge
type style because it needs to be. That would because
it's a deeper level and we're talking about deeper things
and there's and it's constantly iterating, it's constantly changing. So
our goal with that and our vision is to make
our services and what we do more accessible to everyone
(18:16):
and anyone, but right now to at least put the
information out there to everyone of what they should be
paying attention to what they need to be because as
you may or may not know, the last decade of
most people's.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Lives in our country is miserable.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
So that's the optimizing portion of help span help right,
you want to talk about the healthy part of the life,
and then you know the longevity point. The life span
is the length of it. But if you look at
the last portion of it's generally pretty miserable for most people,
they get very very ill. There you're managing death at
that point, let's call it what it is. You're taking
tons of medications, you're not living a happy, vibrant life,
(18:54):
you're not doing the things you were doing just a
decade prior to that, let alone twenty years prior to that.
I would love to see people living into their eighties, nineties,
and one hundred living a vibrant life like they were,
even if.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
They were when they were fifty or sixties.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
I was saying, when they're twenty five, I don't have
to go riding thirty miles on a bicycle or dead
lifting two hundred and fifty or three hundred pounds. But
let's let's just make it a vibrant way to live
where they can they can enjoy life, you know, play
and be and be vibrant and happy.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Let's do this, Eric, before we get into all the
different kind of programs and cool things that you offer
your clients out there and already the thousands of people
that you're helping, and I'm with you, hopefully it's hundreds
of thousands of people in the coming months and years.
If you were to give everybody who is new to
serotonin anti aging centers about what you do that thirty
thousand foot view, what would you tell them that you
(19:43):
exactly do.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
It with Serotonin anti Aging Center that SPA operates trillion
four buckets. The primary bucket is you know, the hormone
optimization therapy. We do a lot of medical weight loss
or what I call weight management, and we could talk
a little b about each of these. Of course, we
do a lot of aesthetics, so things from facial aesthetics,
micronedo ank PRP fillers, and neurotoxins. And we also do
(20:05):
a lot of things in the space of recovery, so
hyperbower chambers and ivs and red light therapy photo bio
modulation is the other term for that. So those four buckets,
you know, kind of complete the human right if you
pay attention to each of those, and we service all
of them via advice, sometimes prescription medications, sometimes by them
(20:28):
in nutriceutical supplementation, and other times it's just program programmatic
workouts exercise, eating, nutrition, etc.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
So on the website you talked about four buckets, but
as we go through this and maybe you can delve
in each one just a little bit and kind of
give us a hint of what people would be up
against and what you're looking at. By the way, there's
so much information which is really cool on your website,
but you do have weight control, and of course there's
a lot of sub menus in that there are hormones
which you've addressed a little bit, aesthetics, and then immunity.
Can you talk about all four for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So the primary one we look at right way, and
let me back up. It all starts out with that
first interview that we have with our new client because
we get some blood work. We first want to understand
what are your challenges, why are you here, and what
can we help solve for. And then we want to
widen that funnel as wide as possible to include things
that you may and or may not even be thinking
(21:18):
about that you probably should be. So we start off
with a seventy plus point think at seventy six point labs, and.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Then we also do.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Another another set of readings where we do a scan
of your body where we get your victual fat, your
lean body mass, your boned ncy. So we want to
see what you're comprised of right to make sure if
you've got a high level of visual fat.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
We need to talk to you about that.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
So we start off with data and information and then
we go into each of the categories of help. So
someone might come in and for a challenge of weight
loss of what they would call weight loss, they feel
like they'rell weight, maybe their BMI is very high. They
don't feel good, they don't like how they look in
the bathing shot, they don't like how they look in
the mirror with their partner, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
That client, will we run labs on them?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yes, we have tons of solutions, several of tools to
solve for for weight loss or or body composition management.
I like to call a body composition manager because it's.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Not just about how much you weigh on a scale.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
In fact, scale weight is one of the worst identifiers
of health and or what you should be. It's actually
lean body mass and body composition that we care most about.
So we're going to say, okay, because if somebody's twouge
of pounds but they're you know, they've got their lean
body mask and prizes of you know, eighty percent of
that and they're only you know, nineteen or twenty percent
body fat, that you look pretty good. But if somebody
(22:34):
is you know, sixty percent body fat and you know,
forty percent lean body mass, lying density bone and muscle,
then that's a problem you got. You're a very unhealthy person,
and we've probably got to help fix that. So we
look at those. That's why we do those other tests
and exams. But I will say the blood work does
tell a lot. It's very telling because generally, you know,
certain things go hand in hand, especially inflammation as part
(22:56):
of that. So once we see that picture, if you
come in for you know, what you think is a
weight issue, and we run your labs and yes, you
may have a higher A one C, which is maybe
you're pre diabetic, and that certainly you should probably address
that and we'll talk to you about nutrition and activity, exercise,
et cetera. But we also might notice that you're you know,
you have a very low testostero level. You know, the
medical practitioner might have a conversation that might say, hey,
(23:17):
you know, we can solve this by going after just
the medical weight loss as shame as you know, there's
there's you know, a tremendous amount of tools for that.
You see them on TV as a matter of fact,
now they're everywhere. But we like to do that we
make it very, very personalized. We don't believe in online scripting.
I think that's a very dangerous place to play, by
the way. That's why we do it in person and
we have our people come in because it's we see
(23:38):
our clients weekly when they're on this journey. It's very
very important because we are managing the lean body mask component.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
We don't want you just to lose weight, so we
can address just that challenge.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
But we would say, you know what, you're probably feeling this,
this and this as well, and let's have this conversation
missus Smith or mister Smith. And it could be that
they have a very low testosterone, they might have a
very high cortosol level, or some other things that we'll notice,
and there might be a high level of information. Maybe
there's CRP or their ce reactive protein is very elevated.
(24:09):
So we'll address all of those because if we can
know it, put's like playing whackable. If we can knock
down as many as we can, you'll get your end
result what you want regardless, you'll get it much faster,
it'll be a much safer way of getting it, but
you'll also be able to manage and maintain those results.
So we start maybe in one bucket that you came
in for a chief complaint of X, but it might
be Y and Z also that we wind up addressing just.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Through due diligence of you and your body, and.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Then we put together a really strong program to put
you on a path to get you to that positive
outcome you're looking for safely, efficiently, and with a coach,
because we also assign a health coach to all of
our clients that come into our memberships, because we know
you're going to need some assistance with choosing your macro nutrients,
your protein, your carbohydrates, and your fat.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
How many of each, how much of each? What should
I eat? There's a lot of good.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Questions, and there's a lot of information on the internet
that could be very misleading and confusing, so we take
a lot of the confusion out, and then we also
will teach you what supplements you're going to need. Based
on your blood work, you're probably deficient in maybe vitamin
D or D three.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
We want to make sure we match.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
That with a good nutraceutical that would help you to
get that and absorb that properly. And then making sure
you're having the right methilation nutrients in your body so
you can get the right absorption. There are so many
wonderful things once you have the planet in front of
you that you're like, wow, you don't know what you
don't know, right, So yeah, we try to get you
past that. Well.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
You know, it's a good point. And my early takeaway
from hearing you talk about what you offer. Knowledge is power, right,
and there's so many people that don't know what their
blood work is like you know, for me, I've had
an autoimmune disease, and my listeners know this. I've had
RA since I was twenty one. And you know, this
is pre internet, pre social media. I knew nothing. I
thought it was an island by myself. But as the
(25:47):
Internet came on, the education came on. What medication I'm taking,
what's good for my body, my decisions I want to make.
I kind of correlated to somebody being introduced to you
and your team, Eric and all this knowledge that did
you know about And while it might be a little
depressing about whether they're overweight, or they're home rooms, a
lot of whack or aesthetics, whatever is not working in
the bardy and the body, they have an opportunity with
(26:09):
your team members to start to fix those things in
a very positive way and to not only have a
better quality of life, but elongate their life.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
And I imagine that.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
When you talk to your clients, it must be elated
that they have all this knowledge that they didn't have
before and we're going to work on it and we've
we've got solutions here, right.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
I think that's one of the most amazing secondary outcomes
of this entire business and this entire process and endeavor
is we have clients that come to us and they're
just so grateful and thankful because, like I said, knowledge
is power, and we give is We give a lot
on the houledge. It's like drinking information from a fireholer,
but we break it down into into manageable, digestible bites.
(26:47):
But people come in and they don't realize that red
light therapy or photobohiah auduation now incredible.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Is for inflammation.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
A lot of the top athletes have been been on
these these doing these things for years, you know, and
for all of this this stuff. Hyper our therapy is
incredible for lots of things that the information, getting the
body oxidated properly, you know, passing the brain blood battery,
all of these different things that happen. But they don't
they don't know what they don't know, and that's it's understandable.
(27:13):
But when we sit with them, we say, hey, let's
try this, let's try this. By the way, this you know,
you're you seem to have a high level of stress,
physical and emotional. You know, we're gonna put you on
our serial cortisol support.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
It's good.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
We're gonna It's an herbal supplement that just brings down
that cortisol level and naturally gets you a little bit relaxed,
gets gets that information down in that body.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
And so there's and we put in a combination.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So we might be you wind up on a hyperbaric chamber,
you might wind up at red light therapy taking a
cortisol support. Just amount is that one component which is
then you know, benefits so many other areas of your body.
And we have found very often when someone's cortosol is
really high, we often see an inverted low testosterone because
those things to work in an inverted fashion often uh
(27:54):
and and so we can simultaneously, you know, manage both
of those, bringing up the efficacy of both sides of
the prescription. So we love to hear clients come to
us and say the exact sents. Hey, I didn't even
know that that was happening. We did a full this
a great story. We had an executive here in one
of our centers in Orlando, and he came in and
(28:16):
he did our thing.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
He was coming from Harmer re placement therapy.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
His his wife was a client, and he had a
very high PSA, but he had correlated also a very
high CRP. Now, normally when you see a high PSA, yeah,
you go and they'll give you an antibiotics. Maybe you
have prosatytis, you got something and your GP might just
and rightfully so just give you that script for a
couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
But the nurse practitioner said, well.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
You should probably go right to a urologist with this
one because this high inflammation marker here is very high
and this PSA number is pretty high. Those two together
is I don't like how that looks for you. So
he sure did go to a eurologists referred him out
and he had prostate cancer, no idea, My goodness.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
And he came back and he you.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Know, he he had had the prostcu urgery and not
gov he's healthy. Lay, it is incredible. Everything's thank God
worked out great. He was so grateful and thankful because
he actually said he goes. I probably just would have
kept dealing with it, thinking, oh, I'm going to wake
up and pee a couple of times a night. That's normal.
You know, you're getting older. I hear about this, you know,
as you get older as a guy, that happens. He
(29:20):
was I never would have addressed this and until this
probably became a.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Very big problem for me.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, and you know it was. It was such a
great byproduct of just sitting with someone and spending some
additional time reviewing all of it. And and not to
say that it may not have gotten picked up somewhere else,
but the correlation of those, you know, because we give
you it's a multi page, you know, print out of
your blood work and we're done. Yeah, And it's a
(29:46):
lot to go through and it takes time. So it's
those kinds of things that I'm so I'm more proud
of than than than some of the other outcomes I see.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Yeah, And I can see and hear your passion, Eric
for your company, but also changing lives, which I his
love when it comes to people's health and how they
look and how they perceive themselves. And that's a great story,
by the way, and I'm sure you've got handfuls of that.
I did want to ask you about the industry just
in general, because I know things are going well for
you and your team, but are there any current challenges
in the industry right.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Now for you?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I think the current challenge is adoption, right it's just
people understanding and it's becoming more and more. I would
say if you talked about especially for women, like I
mean just a few years ago, let alone ten years
ago or five years ago, it was very tabbood even
talk about hormo and hormor faces therapy like it's I
think the adoption now and the knowledge. And there's a
(30:34):
couple of great books, like doctor Peter Tier wrote a
great book called Outlaid where he addresses the who when
they did that study that scared women away.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
From from hormone placement therapy, and it.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Was terrible how they did it, and the data was skewed,
and they and they and they didn't do a good job.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
And doctor Tiz does a wonderful job of explaining this
in grave detail in the book.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And it was a shame because about a decade of
women did not get the help they absolutely need, and
now they can't because they're aged out in a group
that probably wouldn't start the therapy today.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
If they're in their seventies.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Let's as say where they could have if they were
in their fifties and sixties. Right, So, I think adoption
is the challenge, and I think we're seeing so much
more of it. I laughed, Like back back in the day,
was no one ever talked about who got you know, botox.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Or a micro dealing.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It was like especially if you're a woman or a man,
like even myself. Now you see people getting these getting
these procedures on Instagram and they showing it. Like even
when I get one done, I put it out there
like I wouldn't a million years have told you I
would do skincare stuff and I and I do micro needling.
I and I wear you know, I have an incredible
product called cerro exocerum. It's a plant, exoso and vitamin
see it all kinds of all the great things. I
(31:40):
put it on daily.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
But my skin today looks better than it did in
pictures that I look at.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
As I look back on like Facebook photos and other photos,
I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm like I look younger
today than I did, you know, ten years ago, which
is it's wild.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Yeah, I tell you what I would submit to you though,
and I'm a little bit I'm ten years older than you,
but I will say this, there was a time to
spa you from I'm on the cusp of a baby
boomer generation X. Okay, so we just threw dirt on
it and moved on.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
That was the way, right, That was the way to
do it.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
But I will tell you since I, you know, maybe
turned fifty, you know, with eyesight starting to go and
worried about my weight. I'm a former athlete like you,
so I played at a high level. But I noticed
in my peer group and even people just a little
bit younger than me, and the late millennials and the
later generation exers too, is that everybody started talking about weight,
(32:30):
their skin, their looks. And now I know you see this,
but there as many men's products or are for skin
and hairs there are for women. And I know, and listen,
I know gals that we still pay cheaper than you
do for stuff. It's a giant crime that's going on
out there. But that's been going on for a long
time that we could get into. But my point is
is that I think when it comes to anybody that
(32:51):
is say forty and over, skincare, hair care, their weight,
how they feel, how they look is now paramount to
just about everybody out there, which is really great for you.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Oh it's interesting. I remember one of my first conversations
with doctor Jacombe, one of our hormone mentors. He said
to me, he goes, people should start Harmer place with
therapy ten years before they think they actually need it, right,
because there's certain things that happened that you now have
to fix, like skin creepiness and other things that now
you've got to like you're working under, like you're fighting backwards.
Where if you started when you should have and you
(33:21):
stood up. My twenty year old kids both have full
hormone panels, so we know their baseline, and I recommend him.
I don't care what age you are, teenage, get find
out where you are today. If you're younger and you think,
well that I'm too young for this, or if you're
in your thirties you think I'm too youngest, well, at
least see where you are because when that declient starts
to happen, you'll have at least a base point of
how did I feel at thirty when I did this test,
(33:44):
and now how I'm thirty five and I'm tired. At
three pm. I'm ticking a nap. I'm falling a sleep
in my desk. I wake up exhausted. I don't see. Okay,
now you're symptomatic. My libidos chained. I'm not getting any
muscle mass anymore. I'm getting a pouch in my belly.
I never had that. What's happened? I never had fat
on my hips? What's happening? Okay, now, let's go get
your labs done. You know, I'd recommend you get your
labs on every year. You know, we do them twice
(34:06):
a year. You know, sometimes we do them four times
a year for some people that really like to get
you know, really pretty new fit. But it's simple, it's quick,
it's easy. But I will tell you that once you
have that baseline, and that's why I'm so happy I
have it for my children because you know, we saw
some of the markets, like we saw my daughter, she
had high home assisting. Okay, well that's an easy fix.
And if that's not fixed, which we figured out with
my wife, which was a very dangerous thing, which was
(34:27):
would cause those problems I spoke about earlier during pregnancy.
She just needed a methilated fully and that will bring
that we have We actually have a product that brings
down high home assisting because at least all kinds of
other you know, ruckus in your body, but the check
things that like you can manage starting younger and now
you talk about it, as you said, as you're getting
older and you start saying, wow, you know, this hurts
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
That hurts a little bit if you start.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Managing these things you like, I train and like this morning,
my workout was that of my twenty year old workoutsuff.
In fact, I work out with my twenty two year
old son and we just id and I get after
with them and lot most of the times I will
finish after he finishes. If you are like, I bury
him like and I do it on purpose. But I
can only do that because I manage my information. I
manage all of my my nutrition very well. I manage
(35:11):
all of this and I do it in multiple buckets.
And one of the most important things you can manage
is sleep. And it's free and it's free, you know.
These are the things that are so important that we
talk about that we talk about sleep hygiene. I learned
that from doctor Mita Singh one of the top sleep
therapists in the world, and my opinish is incredible.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
I've had many conversations with her. We've talked about her
on my own podcast.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
And she she talks about sleep hyges and how important
is and these are just like the things you do.
It's a curriculum, Dennis. It's not like you need a
medication or you got to take a melotone or this
and that.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
There are supplements that will assist, but there are.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
It's a curriculum of what you do when you stop
with your your bright light, when you when you switch
off your phone, when you stop eating, when you should
stop drinking water and everything and everything matters, when you
should cut off caffeine. All of these things are important.
But all these things are habits, so they're free just discipline.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's a really good point. Well, let's do this.
I do want to get some final thoughts from you.
But before we do that, I think it's important to
talk about once again getting involved, and we'll give the
website a couple times here before we finish up, about
how somebody can reach out to you. And then you know,
the different things that you offer out there, which are
many folks by the way, but also too, I do
want to talk about franchising, and I did want to
(36:21):
ask you first how many locations do you have right now?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
We have former locations opening right now, so we'll have
about twelve or fourteen, depending on locations open. We've got
a pipeline of about another seventy in the pipeline units
that are opening on multi nait development, and we're growing.
We've got a great franchise base. But the franchising business
is interesting and unique. I tell people franchising is a
(36:45):
type of business.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
If you were an.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Electrician, you wouldn't start sweating types as a plumber because
you've been trained as electricians. So you might be great
at running a coffee shop, it doesn't mean you're going
to be great as a franchise or.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
In the coffee business.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Because the franchise bi this is an education business, a
service business. You're end customer, of course, is the person
that is using or buying your widget, but your real
customer is your franchise e and their people.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
So what we do in the.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Franchising space really really well, because I've done it for
many many years, is we build out you know, incredible
teaching system.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
They great LMS.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
We have a wonderful learning module system that really helps.
It allows our franchisees to have access to training methods
and ways to onboard staff, to ways to engage clients,
marketing and all these wonderful things that are in the
bucket of what you should expect. But it's really a
business of servicing and understanding you know, what you're doing,
(37:43):
as opposed to not what the business is doing. You know,
so our business is slightly different than the bins of
running one of those centers. Of course you understand how
to run that business, but we really focus in on
teaching and training people.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
I like that you've done that, and as all the
things that you offer to through the big business, it
seems like you've left no stone unturned. You've really well
thought about this with your team, about all the offerings
and even down to the franchising, and I love that
you do that.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
So thank you for all that. Let's do this.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
I could go on for hours talking to you about
It's so fun because you and I are both in
the fitness and looking good and feeling good. With that said,
I just want to give you some final thoughts and
a recap and kind of put everything together for our listeners,
and then we'll give the website one more time at
the end.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
But the floor is your, sir.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
I think if anyone of your listeners is hearing this,
you know there's a couple of important takeaways. You know,
the business side of this, the anti aging, the mets
Bob business. You know, it falls into that health and
wellness category, which is an incredible category. It's very warning.
I wake up every day, Dennis. I'm thankful for what
I get to do because.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
I'm in a space that I've loved since I was
a kid.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I love help, I love wellness, I love taking care
of the human body. I think it's I think we
only get one and you've got to maximize it, and
I'm in a place where.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
We can really make an impact.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
I still believe in you must resistance train, you must exercise,
you have to move. Movement is critical for success and
for the human body. So I love the fitness space.
I love that whole industry. But this is just the
next level of what it's going.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
It's iterating to be and it's.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
A necessity because we can now have so much more
knowledge about what can be and what you in the tools,
and the fact that we're able to put this into
a business model that makes it accessible to more people,
scalable through a franchising business model, allows us to touch
more people at a higher rate.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
What a greater impact?
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Eric, what's the website for everybody?
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Www dot seratonincenters dot Com is our home website. There's
tons of information on there. There's links on there for
more franchising information anyone wants them to learn more about
the business side.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
But there's a great amount.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Of information about the services that we do, and even
knowledge that you might need or questions you can ask it.
It's very intuitive to use that website to learn more
about each bucket we talked about today.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
Eric, if I could lead one thing with you, and
that's a compliment. I talked to so many people in
this series over the last four years. I've done hundreds
and hundreds of people. And one of the things I
appreciate is your passion. It's coming through loud and clear,
but also that you want to help people. And I
really appreciate that because the friggin world's on fire right
now and we could use little acts of kindness in
helping each other out but also feeling better about ourselves.
(40:12):
So I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time.
Your business model is very cool, and I hope people
that are listening at least check it out and see
that there is hope. You don't have to feel the
way that you do, whether it's how you look or
how you're feeling, or your weight or your hormones or anything.
And the education folks, and you know, we said this
a couple times during our conversation. Knowledge is power and
(40:33):
once you know what's going on, you can fix it
out there. So I'm so glad that we get an
opportunity to talk to you about this. Eric continued success,
and thank you so much for joining us on CEOs
you should know.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Thank you, Dennis, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
Our community partner, M and T Bank supports CEOs you
should know. Is part of their ongoing commitment to building
strong communities, and that starts by backing the businesses within them.
As a bank for communities, M and T believes in
dedicating time, talent, and resources to help local businesses thrive,
because when businesses succeed, our communities succeed
M and T Bank presents CEOs.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You should know Howard by I hardly.
Speaker 3 (00:05):
Let's meet Eric Cassebury.
Speaker 4 (00:07):
He is the founder and CEO for Serotonin Anti Aging Centers,
a network of wellness and anti aging medical centers that
offer a variety of services including hormone replacement, therapy, weight management, aesthetics,
and other treatments focused on promoting longevity and overall well being.
Before we find out more about the amazing things that
Eric and his team are doing for their clients, I
first asked him to talk a little bit about himself,
(00:28):
where he's from and his origin story.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So I was born in Staten Island, New York, around
age ten. Though we moved to New Jersey. We lived
in a small town called Marlborough, which was Mammoth County.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Which is in central New Jersey. By the way, some
people didn't believe Central New Jersey exists. They only know
North Jersey. In South Jersey, there is a Central Jersey.
It's Mammoth County. If you're from there, we know it exists.
And I did most of my formative years there, so
you know, junior high school, high school, some of my
best friend, my greatest relationship to a lot of our family.
(00:58):
That was where we planted our roots and growing up
there it was great I had we lived in a
upper middle class area at the time. There was a
step up my you know, my father was a blue
collar worker, was a police officer, became an entrepreneur himself,
got into the back then it was the coin and
gold business.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
It was a coin shop. Now those are jewelry stores today.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
But back then when he started it was they were
coin shops and he just worked there on the weekends,
and then the owner of that shop had asked him
to work there a little more frequently. You know, my
dad had that charismatic personality about him, and that started
his entrepreneurial journey, which after you was the entrance and
the for me was the kind of the first experience
of seeing it firsthand, was witnessing what he was doing
(01:40):
there as a youngster. But I didn't understand it at
the time. So I went off to college and based
on football in college, wound up getting my shoulder injury
that stopped that that that endeavor.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
It was a great experience.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I was always into working out and exercising, so being
an athlete, I was very young into weightlifting and working
out in gym's. It's My career in the fitness space
actually started.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
When I was a teenager.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I wanted to work out in a fitness center and
my mother was like, well, we're we're not have the
money to pay for a gym membership. I'm not going
to do that. She says, you can go get a
job there and then you can work out there for free.
And that's exactly what wounds up happening. And that was
my first career move into the fitness space. Was cleaning
urinal cakes and cleaning up locker rooms and dusting the machines,
picking up plates off the floor, all the glorious jobs
(02:28):
in a fitness center and in the gym space. But
it was really incredible because I loved being in the
gyms I did. I really was something I actually was
passionate about, and so much so that when I was
I think it was fifteen turning sixteen, I lied about
my age on a personal training certificate just so I
could take the course, not because I wanted to be
a trainer, because I wanted the knowledge for me so
I can continue to get bigger and stronger, because I
(02:49):
wanted to play football at the next level. Of college,
and I wound up being really good at communicating that
knowledge to other people. So the owner of the gym
at the time allowed me to do some of the
intro exercise. I you joined the gym back then, they
give like a free intro session and I was you know,
they loved how I was doing the clients because I
would really get into it, like I would go beyond
an intro session like I would if you know, if
(03:11):
missus Jones came in and she was just going to
learn how to, like you know, get started on the
little circuit, I would really dive in and explain to
her why this muscle group did this and how the
muscles attached point of origin, point of insertion. Like I
got a little science team. But I loved it because
I love biomechanics and I understood it. That being said,
I went off to college and while I was playing sports,
I had a major in exercise science again just to
(03:32):
gain more knowledge about fitness and exercise. I wand up
dropping out of college. So I'm one of those stories
where I'm from the school of hard knocks. In my career,
I had an opportunity to get into the fitness business.
Now all through my college years, I worked as a
trainer in the gyms. That was kind of how I
made my side money while I was going through school.
The career path happened rather serendipitously. A friend of mine
(03:56):
had asked another friend that said, Hey, we know that
works in all these gyms. You know, would he be
interested in getting involved in this? In this project, we're
going to open a fitness center. It was in brick,
New Jersey, Southern New Jersey now, and.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It wound up being an incredible opportunity.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
The stories is a great one. It's probably we should
make a TV movie out of it. It's because we
didn't have two Nichols to rup together. The deal was
we had to get an SBA loan and we needed
a down payment of sixty thousand dollars for this particular
SBA loan, and I had to come up with thirty.
And my partner of that particular, Cilly, had come with thirty.
He went to his father, and then I went to
my father and said, hey, here's this opportunity, and he said.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
My dad said to me, well, i'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I'll give you half of the thirty, but you got
to go to your two uncles to get the other half.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
So I'll give you fifteen, go.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Get seventy five from Uncle Buddy and Uncle Frank. And
the best four of that story is how it really
wound up ending. So I was able to convince Uncle
Buddy and Uncle Frank told me what we were going
to do, how we're going to do it. My father said,
in one other condition for me is you got to
go work in this gym. I drive past it every
day day. The parking lots packed in the morning when
I passed it, the parking lots packed at night when
I passed it. They're definitely doing something. I'd go work
(05:05):
in this place. I don't care tick a and that.
Then I think it was minimum wages, like six bucks
six twenty five an hour job. And I did, and
I learned a tremendous amount. I stayed in the mornings early.
I came in and I would I would walk around
while they were setting up the facility. I would stay
after the gym closed, and I would follow the gentleman
around who cleaned the place. Asked him, you know, why
do you use that solution on the rubber mattin? Why
(05:26):
do you use this on the upholstery. I'd spent my
lunches with the billing woman and asked her about understanding
electronic funds, transfers and credit card machines and how they
why when we write.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Up a membership agreement do we do?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I just was I was a student there, more of
a student than I ever was when I was in
college or when I was.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
In high school.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And I learned so much on the job training and
that was a prerequisite from I followed. I say, okay,
and I had to come by the way. I had
to come back and report to them what I had learned,
you know, and we did. Hear like a weekly meeting
was crazy. But now out of the back that I'm like,
it was the greatest thing that we ever did. And
there was a good process because it actually brought us
really closer. And I think he respected me more through
my journey as an entrepreneur because we did that. We
(06:07):
opened up that gym. It was very geographically successful. I said,
geographic and successful. Were in the right place at the
right time because we made a ton of mistakes, but
we still crushed it as a business. That led to
my first endeavor of expansion and scale.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
I had opened up a second gym.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
At that time, I went to my father and said, hey,
we're going to do this second part. So when you
back up and you go to the first one, you
look at, well, how did you guys afford all this?
And you know, we had this SBO. Now think about
the bank in the names I'm going to use, right,
So back then it was First Union Bank, which was
the predecessor to Wacobia, which was the predecessor I think today,
as well as Fargo through acquisition. So it was First
(06:43):
Union was the bank. And we had the joke in
the office that we would write the checks to my father,
my uncle, my partner's father first on the first of
the month before we would write the check to the bank.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
And the reason was, and I joked about the several.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Interviews, was because my uncle was my father and my
partner's father would show up at the front door to
baseball back. The bank was never going to do that,
so we made sure of those guys always got paid first.
They got first dollar in and first dollar out, and
it worked incredibly well. Opened up a second gym. My
father and I worked together on that project.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Early on. He came in as a minority investor on
that that.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Particular facility then subsequently opened up a third third facility
in the center, and then I decided I was going
to scale this as a franchise business model, and I
had created the brand Retrofitness, and that was my entrance
into the franchising space, which you know they call it
trial by fire like that was. You know, I learned
a lot during that whole process, especially the early process,
(07:39):
because we really know how to operate gyms really really well,
and we had to build them out and scale them
and run multiple centers. And I loved the health and
wellness space and we had a very good niche at
the time when we launched that brand. And I look
back now and I my career as I built that
brand and we grew that as I was the CEO
(08:00):
of that company for a while, to you one hundred
and fifty three locations, you know, when I was there,
and you know, we did an incredible amount of revenue,
you know, system wide, and I didn't even realize it
really because I was just heads down and building this thing.
You know, you know, had a great team around me, wonderful,
wonderful people. Over the many years we were in that
business building that brand, that brand you know is still
(08:20):
growing today. It's it's I still love the fitness space.
I think it's an incredible opportunity not only for business,
but for the human races just to stay healthy. But
during that time, I had started to realize that there
was the health space was iterating, and it was iterating
in such a manner that it was you know, in
the in the fitness industry and a lot of businesses
(08:42):
talk about attrition and retention, and in our space it
was hyper hyper sensitive because if someone joined the gym,
there was a statistic, I mean may have heard this,
or some of your listeners may have heard this that
in the first six weeks of a gym membership, sixty
percent of people cancel or quit. And if you think
about it, right, they're sweating, they're in a little bit
of pain, they're sore. It's not the most fun thing
(09:04):
to do for some people, especially when you're getting started,
if you've never done this before, and if they don't
get the results, and it takes adaptation, takes a period
of time, right, physical adaptation, whether strength or or appearance
to happen. So unfortunately, it doesn't have a quick enough
for some people they leave. You know, if you take
me to a tennis court and I get sore on
my arm hurts, I can't hit the ball over the net,
I'm crapping.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I don't want to come back to this. I'm not
going to do that.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
So the goal is you're always fighting against that to
get people to stay long enough to see the initial
results and then they're bit by the bug. And then
get people that are just you know, they become they
become disciples of fitness. They love it, they talk about it,
they tell everyone about they.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Love it, and that's that's kind of like when you
get bitten.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
They say, bitten by that bug. You really do, and
it never stops for most people. So in that business,
we were very hyper focused on looking at a trition
of retention. When I started that brand, I targeted a
very specific audience. It was Generation of Acts because it
was my generation. I'm currently today fifty eight years old.
I'm going to be fifty one a few months.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
As we sit here.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
And that group then was in their twenties and early thirties,
and they were a great target because the baby boomer
was who the industry wanted to chase.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
But if you look at someone like my father.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
They grew up thinking the Marlboro man on a horse
with a cigarette was a hero. That's not a good
fitness target in my opinion. So I didn't look that direction.
I looked in a completely different direction for the customer
base I wanted to attract. And they were great because
the generation next grew up with physical education in school,
they understood performance, they were starting to make money in
the workforce, they could afford gym memberships, and that's who
(10:33):
I targeted, and that's who we went after in marketing
and in design, in services.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
It was a very good market for us.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
But that group, twenty years later is now in a
very very large group that we talked about our current
brand at Serotonin, our anti aging centers because we have
a hyper focus on harmone replacement therapy or hormone optimization
therapy HOT or HRT.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
There's two different acronyms there.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So I started to notice this attention and attrition issue.
And people would talk about, you know, change out the
TV's on the treadmill, you know, make clean up the
locker rooms, make them, you know, do some certain things
in there, or make make a different type of waiting
area I was saying they were at a machine gun
fight with a rock in their hand for attention nutrition issues.
That was not the answer if you look at it
(11:20):
from more deeper science, if you look at blood work,
this group is the cohort of people that were losing
one to two percent of their hormone, their testostero master
hormone per year in a decline. It's just a natural
aging process that happens to all of us. But nobody
understood that. But what happens there from a from a
health standpoint is you wind up with lower muscle mass,
(11:41):
lower lebido, higher blood pressure, terrible A one ce's what
they call metabolic syndrome. All of these things create an
environment for metabolic syndrome and become very unhealthy.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
And you also don't look and feel the.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Same way you did when you were doing the same
exact routine maybe a decade before, maybe two or three
years before. And most people think, oh, I just stall
off a cliff, my health just well, no, it was
happening very slowly, a death by a thousand cuts, but
they no one know it. Many were not aware of
how to face this challenge, any having the tools two
days to challenge so.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
I myself also fell into that category.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
But my wife was a true inspiration for the Saratonin
brand because she went into perrymanopause and early menopause, very
very early, because we had she had a series of
miscarriages that along the way. We have four wonderful healthy children,
were very blessed with today. But it wasn't an easy
path to get to where we went and it wound
(12:35):
up being you know, traumatic on her endocrine system. Now,
this happens to a lot of when we see women
in thirty five to forty years old in our centers
that are in perimenopause ready and they don't they like Kim,
they didn't even know what was happening.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
She's like she thought she was having a nervous breakdown.
She's like, my skin's on fire. I don't know what's wrong.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
It was these hot flash symptoms, by the way, and
she's like, I feel like I'm losing my mind. And
she couldn't sleep at night, and all these things were
you know, for a forty year old with a then
our fourth child was one, so she was like, she
didn't she was.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
It scared her.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So we started through research and then we had realized
that after going to three different OBG. Ryan type doctors,
the third one actually said, let's test her hormones because
the first two didn't give the greatest answers and responses
to this challenge for her. There certainly weren't solutions. And
I looked at the doctor like testa harmonally know, because
I'm thinking testosterones are for her, guy, and what do
we test? The hormones were written, but not realizing that
(13:27):
you know, testosterone is a master hormone.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
It's very important for men and women.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Uh, and estrogen especially especially is very important for her
for women, and Kim's levels of both were very very
low factor. Estrogen was almost on Tracy mollestosterone was a
single digit.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Which is really really bad.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
So we then looked into harmone placement therapy for her
and it was like boom, the lights went on and
then we saw how no and physically did she change
and feel better, but emotionally and like and there's it
was just such an incredible and I was very into
that experience because I was part of it, so I
got to really see it hands on it, and then
I realized, oh my gosh, there are so many people
that are suffering from this, so many people. And then
(14:04):
I'm like thinking about men. I started thinking about data
like members that were canceling. Why would they cancel? They
would get frustrated. These are clients that were with us
for years and all of a sudden they would just
stop working out, like you know what what because there
was diminishing returns for them, Right, But why am I
putting the time? And they think not even wasn't the money.
It was just like, why am I wasting my time
doing this? It's not working anymore for me. Let me
go try the South Beach diet, the Accans diet, of this, diet,
of that, Let me go try this new new, you know,
(14:27):
type of workout, searching for you know, the next pot
of goal. But really they had to just look inside.
And I spent a lot of time since and then
paying attention to the medical side. I started to go
into different types of conferences. Where I used to go
to all the fitness conferences, I started to add on
these other conferences on my own time. I was going
where medical doctors were. I was going to the anti
aging conferences. I started learning about biohappy before it was
(14:49):
a cool word, you know when when when it was
Now it's almost like like a meme on the internet,
but it was I was doing some things back then
that today I was. I was like, Wow, I'm so
happy this is generally accept because back.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Then I was like, what are you crazy? Why are
you doing that? What are you doing in asna? You know,
you know, taking ice bats, coldplay?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Why why would anyone do all of that crazy stuff
unless you're injured as an athlete And come to find out,
there's all these incredible modalities that really help assist our
health and also our hormone health. So that was the
reason the budding of the inspiration behind the brand for
Serotonin and which is your happy harmon and your feel
(15:26):
good hormone. Like, that's what we want to do, is
people want people to leave there and they feel happy.
That's why we chose the brand and the name for Serotonin.
And that journey really starts at the pain of what
was going on with my own wife and it kind
of ends with an incredible brand and you know, and
now helping you know, thousands of and hopefully it will
be hundreds of thousands of women as we go forward.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Well, listen, I appreciate you sharing all that, and I
think it's you know, it makes a lot of sense
that you were in the fitness industry for a long
time and the correlation about what you did then and
what you're doing now with serotonin. So let's do this.
I think you were kind of hinting at it. We're
going to talk about all the programs and all the
cool things that you do. By the way, the website's gorgeous.
We'll give that a couple times during our interview to everybody.
(16:09):
But let's talk about mission and vision. What are they
for the company?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So I would say one of the missions I think
we have for the company is because mission has a
has a has an ending point. Like you know, talk
about vision and mission and all these things, and we
talk about all of it, but the mission is very specific.
I think we wanted we would like to change healthcare
into self care because we think that needs to be
that that that significant way it's named and thought about
(16:35):
these ministry is our goal is to give the power
of the information to each of the individual clients. And
we don't even call the patients because patients are sick people.
Our people are are are our members or clients. We
would like to get the population that is looking to
get help to be able to understand how to do that,
how to read their own blood labs, and what tests
(16:56):
are important. What what should my A once CV, What
should my Cardiolympic profile look like? What should my hormone
final profile look like? So one of our missions is
to really educate as many people as we possibly can
on self care, asking good questions. When you're sitting with
your general practitioner. These are very smart people, as doctors
and nurses that are out there, incredibly smart people. You
(17:17):
have to offer them the information you need for your goal.
And I think what we'd like to also do is
be the flag folder and the leader in the space
of anti aging and longevity because we understand what it takes.
It's it's there's it's a it's a very patient type business.
It's you know, you go to a general practitioner's office
(17:38):
or your usual you know, doc in the box place.
Those those services have to happen very quickly. You have
to come in, get diagnosed, and you've got to be
out of there and usually less than seven minutes.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
And that's actually a real number for.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Some of these places because otherwise the business model doesn't work,
you know, for them to run that facility.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Are is it much different?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Like we we know that it's it's intimate, it's concierge
type style because it needs to be. That would because
it's a deeper level and we're talking about deeper things
and there's and it's constantly iterating, it's constantly changing. So
our goal with that and our vision is to make
our services and what we do more accessible to everyone
(18:16):
and anyone, but right now to at least put the
information out there to everyone of what they should be
paying attention to what they need to be because as
you may or may not know, the last decade of
most people's.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Lives in our country is miserable.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
So that's the optimizing portion of help span help right,
you want to talk about the healthy part of the life,
and then you know the longevity point. The life span
is the length of it. But if you look at
the last portion of it's generally pretty miserable for most people,
they get very very ill. There you're managing death at
that point, let's call it what it is. You're taking
tons of medications, you're not living a happy, vibrant life,
(18:54):
you're not doing the things you were doing just a
decade prior to that, let alone twenty years prior to that.
I would love to see people living into their eighties, nineties,
and one hundred living a vibrant life like they were,
even if.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
They were when they were fifty or sixties.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
I was saying, when they're twenty five, I don't have
to go riding thirty miles on a bicycle or dead
lifting two hundred and fifty or three hundred pounds. But
let's let's just make it a vibrant way to live
where they can they can enjoy life, you know, play
and be and be vibrant and happy.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Let's do this, Eric, before we get into all the
different kind of programs and cool things that you offer
your clients out there and already the thousands of people
that you're helping, and I'm with you, hopefully it's hundreds
of thousands of people in the coming months and years.
If you were to give everybody who is new to
serotonin anti aging centers about what you do that thirty
thousand foot view, what would you tell them that you
(19:43):
exactly do.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
It with Serotonin anti Aging Center that SPA operates trillion
four buckets. The primary bucket is you know, the hormone
optimization therapy. We do a lot of medical weight loss
or what I call weight management, and we could talk
a little b about each of these. Of course, we
do a lot of aesthetics, so things from facial aesthetics,
micronedo ank PRP fillers, and neurotoxins. And we also do
(20:05):
a lot of things in the space of recovery, so
hyperbower chambers and ivs and red light therapy photo bio
modulation is the other term for that. So those four buckets,
you know, kind of complete the human right if you
pay attention to each of those, and we service all
of them via advice, sometimes prescription medications, sometimes by them
(20:28):
in nutriceutical supplementation, and other times it's just program programmatic
workouts exercise, eating, nutrition, etc.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
So on the website you talked about four buckets, but
as we go through this and maybe you can delve
in each one just a little bit and kind of
give us a hint of what people would be up
against and what you're looking at. By the way, there's
so much information which is really cool on your website,
but you do have weight control, and of course there's
a lot of sub menus in that there are hormones
which you've addressed a little bit, aesthetics, and then immunity.
Can you talk about all four for our listeners.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So the primary one we look at right way, and
let me back up. It all starts out with that
first interview that we have with our new client because
we get some blood work. We first want to understand
what are your challenges, why are you here, and what
can we help solve for. And then we want to
widen that funnel as wide as possible to include things
that you may and or may not even be thinking
(21:18):
about that you probably should be. So we start off
with a seventy plus point think at seventy six point labs, and.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Then we also do.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Another another set of readings where we do a scan
of your body where we get your victual fat, your
lean body mass, your boned ncy. So we want to
see what you're comprised of right to make sure if
you've got a high level of visual fat.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
We need to talk to you about that.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
So we start off with data and information and then
we go into each of the categories of help. So
someone might come in and for a challenge of weight
loss of what they would call weight loss, they feel
like they'rell weight, maybe their BMI is very high. They
don't feel good, they don't like how they look in
the bathing shot, they don't like how they look in
the mirror with their partner, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
That client, will we run labs on them?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yes, we have tons of solutions, several of tools to
solve for for weight loss or or body composition management.
I like to call a body composition manager because it's.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Not just about how much you weigh on a scale.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
In fact, scale weight is one of the worst identifiers
of health and or what you should be. It's actually
lean body mass and body composition that we care most about.
So we're going to say, okay, because if somebody's twouge
of pounds but they're you know, they've got their lean
body mask and prizes of you know, eighty percent of
that and they're only you know, nineteen or twenty percent
body fat, that you look pretty good. But if somebody
(22:34):
is you know, sixty percent body fat and you know,
forty percent lean body mass, lying density bone and muscle,
then that's a problem you got. You're a very unhealthy person,
and we've probably got to help fix that. So we
look at those. That's why we do those other tests
and exams. But I will say the blood work does
tell a lot. It's very telling because generally, you know,
certain things go hand in hand, especially inflammation as part
(22:56):
of that. So once we see that picture, if you
come in for you know, what you think is a
weight issue, and we run your labs and yes, you
may have a higher A one C, which is maybe
you're pre diabetic, and that certainly you should probably address
that and we'll talk to you about nutrition and activity, exercise,
et cetera. But we also might notice that you're you know,
you have a very low testostero level. You know, the
medical practitioner might have a conversation that might say, hey,
(23:17):
you know, we can solve this by going after just
the medical weight loss as shame as you know, there's
there's you know, a tremendous amount of tools for that.
You see them on TV as a matter of fact,
now they're everywhere. But we like to do that we
make it very, very personalized. We don't believe in online scripting.
I think that's a very dangerous place to play, by
the way. That's why we do it in person and
we have our people come in because it's we see
(23:38):
our clients weekly when they're on this journey. It's very
very important because we are managing the lean body mask component.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
We don't want you just to lose weight, so we
can address just that challenge.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
But we would say, you know what, you're probably feeling this,
this and this as well, and let's have this conversation
missus Smith or mister Smith. And it could be that
they have a very low testosterone, they might have a
very high cortosol level, or some other things that we'll notice,
and there might be a high level of information. Maybe
there's CRP or their ce reactive protein is very elevated.
(24:09):
So we'll address all of those because if we can
know it, put's like playing whackable. If we can knock
down as many as we can, you'll get your end
result what you want regardless, you'll get it much faster,
it'll be a much safer way of getting it, but
you'll also be able to manage and maintain those results.
So we start maybe in one bucket that you came
in for a chief complaint of X, but it might
be Y and Z also that we wind up addressing just.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Through due diligence of you and your body, and.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Then we put together a really strong program to put
you on a path to get you to that positive
outcome you're looking for safely, efficiently, and with a coach,
because we also assign a health coach to all of
our clients that come into our memberships, because we know
you're going to need some assistance with choosing your macro nutrients,
your protein, your carbohydrates, and your fat.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
How many of each, how much of each? What should
I eat? There's a lot of good.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Questions, and there's a lot of information on the internet
that could be very misleading and confusing, so we take
a lot of the confusion out, and then we also
will teach you what supplements you're going to need. Based
on your blood work, you're probably deficient in maybe vitamin
D or D three.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
We want to make sure we match.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
That with a good nutraceutical that would help you to
get that and absorb that properly. And then making sure
you're having the right methilation nutrients in your body so
you can get the right absorption. There are so many
wonderful things once you have the planet in front of
you that you're like, wow, you don't know what you
don't know, right, So yeah, we try to get you
past that. Well.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
You know, it's a good point. And my early takeaway
from hearing you talk about what you offer. Knowledge is power, right,
and there's so many people that don't know what their
blood work is like you know, for me, I've had
an autoimmune disease, and my listeners know this. I've had
RA since I was twenty one. And you know, this
is pre internet, pre social media. I knew nothing. I
thought it was an island by myself. But as the
(25:47):
Internet came on, the education came on. What medication I'm taking,
what's good for my body, my decisions I want to make.
I kind of correlated to somebody being introduced to you
and your team, Eric and all this knowledge that did
you know about And while it might be a little
depressing about whether they're overweight, or they're home rooms, a
lot of whack or aesthetics, whatever is not working in
the bardy and the body, they have an opportunity with
(26:09):
your team members to start to fix those things in
a very positive way and to not only have a
better quality of life, but elongate their life.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
And I imagine that.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
When you talk to your clients, it must be elated
that they have all this knowledge that they didn't have
before and we're going to work on it and we've
we've got solutions here, right.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
I think that's one of the most amazing secondary outcomes
of this entire business and this entire process and endeavor
is we have clients that come to us and they're
just so grateful and thankful because, like I said, knowledge
is power, and we give is We give a lot
on the houledge. It's like drinking information from a fireholer,
but we break it down into into manageable, digestible bites.
(26:47):
But people come in and they don't realize that red
light therapy or photobohiah auduation now incredible.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Is for inflammation.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
A lot of the top athletes have been been on
these these doing these things for years, you know, and
for all of this this stuff. Hyper our therapy is
incredible for lots of things that the information, getting the
body oxidated properly, you know, passing the brain blood battery,
all of these different things that happen. But they don't
they don't know what they don't know, and that's it's understandable.
(27:13):
But when we sit with them, we say, hey, let's
try this, let's try this. By the way, this you know,
you're you seem to have a high level of stress,
physical and emotional. You know, we're gonna put you on
our serial cortisol support.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
It's good.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
We're gonna It's an herbal supplement that just brings down
that cortisol level and naturally gets you a little bit relaxed,
gets gets that information down in that body.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
And so there's and we put in a combination.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
So we might be you wind up on a hyperbaric chamber,
you might wind up at red light therapy taking a
cortisol support. Just amount is that one component which is
then you know, benefits so many other areas of your body.
And we have found very often when someone's cortosol is
really high, we often see an inverted low testosterone because
those things to work in an inverted fashion often uh
(27:54):
and and so we can simultaneously, you know, manage both
of those, bringing up the efficacy of both sides of
the prescription. So we love to hear clients come to
us and say the exact sents. Hey, I didn't even
know that that was happening. We did a full this
a great story. We had an executive here in one
of our centers in Orlando, and he came in and
(28:16):
he did our thing.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
He was coming from Harmer re placement therapy.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
His his wife was a client, and he had a
very high PSA, but he had correlated also a very
high CRP. Now, normally when you see a high PSA, yeah,
you go and they'll give you an antibiotics. Maybe you
have prosatytis, you got something and your GP might just
and rightfully so just give you that script for a
couple of weeks.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
But the nurse practitioner said, well.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
You should probably go right to a urologist with this
one because this high inflammation marker here is very high
and this PSA number is pretty high. Those two together
is I don't like how that looks for you. So
he sure did go to a eurologists referred him out
and he had prostate cancer, no idea, My goodness.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
And he came back and he you.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Know, he he had had the prostcu urgery and not
gov he's healthy. Lay, it is incredible. Everything's thank God
worked out great. He was so grateful and thankful because
he actually said he goes. I probably just would have
kept dealing with it, thinking, oh, I'm going to wake
up and pee a couple of times a night. That's normal.
You know, you're getting older. I hear about this, you know,
as you get older as a guy, that happens. He
(29:20):
was I never would have addressed this and until this
probably became a.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Very big problem for me.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, and you know it was. It was such a
great byproduct of just sitting with someone and spending some
additional time reviewing all of it. And and not to
say that it may not have gotten picked up somewhere else,
but the correlation of those, you know, because we give
you it's a multi page, you know, print out of
your blood work and we're done. Yeah, And it's a
(29:46):
lot to go through and it takes time. So it's
those kinds of things that I'm so I'm more proud
of than than than some of the other outcomes I see.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Yeah, And I can see and hear your passion, Eric
for your company, but also changing lives, which I his
love when it comes to people's health and how they
look and how they perceive themselves. And that's a great story,
by the way, and I'm sure you've got handfuls of that.
I did want to ask you about the industry just
in general, because I know things are going well for
you and your team, but are there any current challenges
in the industry right.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Now for you?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I think the current challenge is adoption, right it's just
people understanding and it's becoming more and more. I would
say if you talked about especially for women, like I
mean just a few years ago, let alone ten years
ago or five years ago, it was very tabbood even
talk about hormo and hormor faces therapy like it's I
think the adoption now and the knowledge. And there's a
(30:34):
couple of great books, like doctor Peter Tier wrote a
great book called Outlaid where he addresses the who when
they did that study that scared women away.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
From from hormone placement therapy, and it.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Was terrible how they did it, and the data was skewed,
and they and they and they didn't do a good job.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
And doctor Tiz does a wonderful job of explaining this
in grave detail in the book.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
And it was a shame because about a decade of
women did not get the help they absolutely need, and
now they can't because they're aged out in a group
that probably wouldn't start the therapy today.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
If they're in their seventies.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Let's as say where they could have if they were
in their fifties and sixties. Right, So, I think adoption
is the challenge, and I think we're seeing so much
more of it. I laughed, Like back back in the day,
was no one ever talked about who got you know, botox.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Or a micro dealing.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
It was like especially if you're a woman or a man,
like even myself. Now you see people getting these getting
these procedures on Instagram and they showing it. Like even
when I get one done, I put it out there
like I wouldn't a million years have told you I
would do skincare stuff and I and I do micro needling.
I and I wear you know, I have an incredible
product called cerro exocerum. It's a plant, exoso and vitamin
see it all kinds of all the great things. I
(31:40):
put it on daily.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
But my skin today looks better than it did in
pictures that I look at.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
As I look back on like Facebook photos and other photos,
I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm like I look younger
today than I did, you know, ten years ago, which
is it's wild.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Yeah, I tell you what I would submit to you though,
and I'm a little bit I'm ten years older than you,
but I will say this, there was a time to
spa you from I'm on the cusp of a baby
boomer generation X. Okay, so we just threw dirt on
it and moved on.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
That was the way, right, That was the way to
do it.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
But I will tell you since I, you know, maybe
turned fifty, you know, with eyesight starting to go and
worried about my weight. I'm a former athlete like you,
so I played at a high level. But I noticed
in my peer group and even people just a little
bit younger than me, and the late millennials and the
later generation exers too, is that everybody started talking about weight,
(32:30):
their skin, their looks. And now I know you see this,
but there as many men's products or are for skin
and hairs there are for women. And I know, and listen,
I know gals that we still pay cheaper than you
do for stuff. It's a giant crime that's going on
out there. But that's been going on for a long
time that we could get into. But my point is
is that I think when it comes to anybody that
(32:51):
is say forty and over, skincare, hair care, their weight,
how they feel, how they look is now paramount to
just about everybody out there, which is really great for you.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Oh it's interesting. I remember one of my first conversations
with doctor Jacombe, one of our hormone mentors. He said
to me, he goes, people should start Harmer place with
therapy ten years before they think they actually need it, right,
because there's certain things that happened that you now have
to fix, like skin creepiness and other things that now
you've got to like you're working under, like you're fighting backwards.
Where if you started when you should have and you
(33:21):
stood up. My twenty year old kids both have full
hormone panels, so we know their baseline, and I recommend him.
I don't care what age you are, teenage, get find
out where you are today. If you're younger and you think,
well that I'm too young for this, or if you're
in your thirties you think I'm too youngest, well, at
least see where you are because when that declient starts
to happen, you'll have at least a base point of
how did I feel at thirty when I did this test,
(33:44):
and now how I'm thirty five and I'm tired. At
three pm. I'm ticking a nap. I'm falling a sleep
in my desk. I wake up exhausted. I don't see. Okay,
now you're symptomatic. My libidos chained. I'm not getting any
muscle mass anymore. I'm getting a pouch in my belly.
I never had that. What's happened? I never had fat
on my hips? What's happening? Okay, now, let's go get
your labs done. You know, I'd recommend you get your
labs on every year. You know, we do them twice
(34:06):
a year. You know, sometimes we do them four times
a year for some people that really like to get
you know, really pretty new fit. But it's simple, it's quick,
it's easy. But I will tell you that once you
have that baseline, and that's why I'm so happy I
have it for my children because you know, we saw
some of the markets, like we saw my daughter, she
had high home assisting. Okay, well that's an easy fix.
And if that's not fixed, which we figured out with
my wife, which was a very dangerous thing, which was
(34:27):
would cause those problems I spoke about earlier during pregnancy.
She just needed a methilated fully and that will bring
that we have We actually have a product that brings
down high home assisting because at least all kinds of
other you know, ruckus in your body, but the check
things that like you can manage starting younger and now
you talk about it, as you said, as you're getting
older and you start saying, wow, you know, this hurts
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
That hurts a little bit if you start.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Managing these things you like, I train and like this morning,
my workout was that of my twenty year old workoutsuff.
In fact, I work out with my twenty two year
old son and we just id and I get after
with them and lot most of the times I will
finish after he finishes. If you are like, I bury
him like and I do it on purpose. But I
can only do that because I manage my information. I
manage all of my my nutrition very well. I manage
(35:11):
all of this and I do it in multiple buckets.
And one of the most important things you can manage
is sleep. And it's free and it's free, you know.
These are the things that are so important that we
talk about that we talk about sleep hygiene. I learned
that from doctor Mita Singh one of the top sleep
therapists in the world, and my opinish is incredible.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
I've had many conversations with her. We've talked about her
on my own podcast.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
And she she talks about sleep hyges and how important
is and these are just like the things you do.
It's a curriculum, Dennis. It's not like you need a
medication or you got to take a melotone or this
and that.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
There are supplements that will assist, but there are.
Speaker 2 (35:46):
It's a curriculum of what you do when you stop
with your your bright light, when you when you switch
off your phone, when you stop eating, when you should
stop drinking water and everything and everything matters, when you
should cut off caffeine. All of these things are important.
But all these things are habits, so they're free just discipline.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's a really good point. Well, let's do this.
I do want to get some final thoughts from you.
But before we do that, I think it's important to
talk about once again getting involved, and we'll give the
website a couple times here before we finish up, about
how somebody can reach out to you. And then you know,
the different things that you offer out there, which are
many folks by the way, but also too, I do
want to talk about franchising, and I did want to
(36:21):
ask you first how many locations do you have right now?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
We have former locations opening right now, so we'll have
about twelve or fourteen, depending on locations open. We've got
a pipeline of about another seventy in the pipeline units
that are opening on multi nait development, and we're growing.
We've got a great franchise base. But the franchising business
is interesting and unique. I tell people franchising is a
(36:45):
type of business.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
If you were an.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Electrician, you wouldn't start sweating types as a plumber because
you've been trained as electricians. So you might be great
at running a coffee shop, it doesn't mean you're going
to be great as a franchise or.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
In the coffee business.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Because the franchise bi this is an education business, a
service business. You're end customer, of course, is the person
that is using or buying your widget, but your real
customer is your franchise e and their people.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
So what we do in the.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Franchising space really really well, because I've done it for
many many years, is we build out you know, incredible
teaching system.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
They great LMS.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
We have a wonderful learning module system that really helps.
It allows our franchisees to have access to training methods
and ways to onboard staff, to ways to engage clients,
marketing and all these wonderful things that are in the
bucket of what you should expect. But it's really a
business of servicing and understanding you know, what you're doing,
(37:43):
as opposed to not what the business is doing. You know,
so our business is slightly different than the bins of
running one of those centers. Of course you understand how
to run that business, but we really focus in on
teaching and training people.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
I like that you've done that, and as all the
things that you offer to through the big business, it
seems like you've left no stone unturned. You've really well
thought about this with your team, about all the offerings
and even down to the franchising, and I love that
you do that.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
So thank you for all that. Let's do this.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
I could go on for hours talking to you about
It's so fun because you and I are both in
the fitness and looking good and feeling good. With that said,
I just want to give you some final thoughts and
a recap and kind of put everything together for our listeners,
and then we'll give the website one more time at
the end.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
But the floor is your, sir.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
I think if anyone of your listeners is hearing this,
you know there's a couple of important takeaways. You know,
the business side of this, the anti aging, the mets
Bob business. You know, it falls into that health and
wellness category, which is an incredible category. It's very warning.
I wake up every day, Dennis. I'm thankful for what
I get to do because.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
I'm in a space that I've loved since I was
a kid.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I love help, I love wellness, I love taking care
of the human body. I think it's I think we
only get one and you've got to maximize it, and
I'm in a place where.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
We can really make an impact.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
I still believe in you must resistance train, you must exercise,
you have to move. Movement is critical for success and
for the human body. So I love the fitness space.
I love that whole industry. But this is just the
next level of what it's going.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
It's iterating to be and it's.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
A necessity because we can now have so much more
knowledge about what can be and what you in the tools,
and the fact that we're able to put this into
a business model that makes it accessible to more people,
scalable through a franchising business model, allows us to touch
more people at a higher rate.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
What a greater impact?
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Eric, what's the website for everybody?
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Www dot seratonincenters dot Com is our home website. There's
tons of information on there. There's links on there for
more franchising information anyone wants them to learn more about
the business side.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
But there's a great amount.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Of information about the services that we do, and even
knowledge that you might need or questions you can ask it.
It's very intuitive to use that website to learn more
about each bucket we talked about today.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
Eric, if I could lead one thing with you, and
that's a compliment. I talked to so many people in
this series over the last four years. I've done hundreds
and hundreds of people. And one of the things I
appreciate is your passion. It's coming through loud and clear,
but also that you want to help people. And I
really appreciate that because the friggin world's on fire right
now and we could use little acts of kindness in
helping each other out but also feeling better about ourselves.
(40:12):
So I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time.
Your business model is very cool, and I hope people
that are listening at least check it out and see
that there is hope. You don't have to feel the
way that you do, whether it's how you look or
how you're feeling, or your weight or your hormones or anything.
And the education folks, and you know, we said this
a couple times during our conversation. Knowledge is power and
(40:33):
once you know what's going on, you can fix it
out there. So I'm so glad that we get an
opportunity to talk to you about this. Eric continued success,
and thank you so much for joining us on CEOs
you should know.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Thank you, Dennis, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
Our community partner, M and T Bank supports CEOs you
should know. Is part of their ongoing commitment to building
strong communities, and that starts by backing the businesses within them.
As a bank for communities, M and T believes in
dedicating time, talent, and resources to help local businesses thrive,
because when businesses succeed, our communities succeed
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.