Episode Transcript
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Dr Andrew Greenland (00:02):
So hello,
welcome back to Voices in Health
and Wellness, the show where wesit down with pioneering clinic
owners, practitioners andinnovators shaping the future of
patient care.
I'm your host, dr AndrewGreenland, and today I'm joined
by Nico Seedsman, founder ofOdin Stem Cells, a leading edge
regenerative medicine clinicredefining how we approach
healing and recovery.
Nico blends a unique blend ofclinical rigor and
(00:27):
entrepreneurial drive to a fieldthat's often more hype than
substance.
At Odin, he and his team areworking to make stem cell
therapies more accessible,effective and evidence-based,
while navigating one of the mostrapidly evolving landscapes in
healthcare.
So thank you very much forjoining us, nico.
Perhaps we could start First ofall, actually, where are you
calling from?
Just for the benefit of ouraudience.
Nico Seedsman (00:48):
I'm in Paris
today for one more day here,
wonderful.
Dr Andrew Greenland (00:52):
So perhaps
you could just tell us a little
about how you got into thisspace and what your role is at
Odin.
Nico Seedsman (01:00):
Yeah, so I served
in the military 13 years.
I did three years in the Navy,originally in electrical
engineering, and then I switchedover to the Army and joined the
SAS for eight and a half yearsand during you know, for anyone
who's aware of the military, itwas a pretty demanding job, to
(01:22):
say the least.
For anyone who's aware of themilitary, they were a pretty
demanding job, to say the least,and I ran myself completely
into the ground doing my duty.
And that includes physicalinjuries.
So broken right leg foot ankle,both knees had worn through,
left inguinal hernia,significant lower back damage,
significant neck damage, both myshoulders had worn through.
I had tinnitus, say, hearingloss, all the symptoms that come
(01:55):
with having cry fatigue andthen getting fibromyalgia and
then from fibromyalgia I went tomajor anxiety, then major
depression and then full-blownpdsd and then eventually I got
all the way to completelyautoimmune.
I picked up multiple viruses inthe jungle at this time that
were active.
The specialists had named youknow I was still had active in
(02:16):
my body the whole Epstein barRoss, river fever, dengue fever
and a bunch of others.
He said we actually have namesfor them.
I don't know where he he gotthem, but they're all.
They're all active.
Um, I've riddled with parasitesfrom my body.
You can see them around my eyes.
My nervous system had shut downafter season.
My nervous system had shut down, it was twitching.
I couldn't keep my eyes open,naturally, um, and it all came
(02:40):
to a head to with withautoimmune, or I just went full
autoimmune.
I just was no longer healing,it was just permanently sick and
, uh, you could see it wasgetting pretty dark and one of
the doctors let loose that youthat I was on my edge.
Um, I think they weren'tsupposed to say that, that they
would to basically tell me that.
You know, they got basicallyindirectly told me you've got a
(03:00):
couple of months left to live,uh, at sort of best here, um,
and I think they were maybedoing me a favor, but, um, but
you know, it definitely was astruggle.
So I got close to death and I'dserendipitously heard several
podcasts talking about stemcells and then I met, more
serendipitously, a, a owner of aclinic in colombia.
(03:22):
He got me in you know, veryexpensive, this was in 2019 to
do stem cells and immediately,like they said, look, your
health is so compromised that wecan't actually give you the
(03:44):
full dosage in one hit.
We actually have to do it everythree months to capitalize the
success.
But we don't want your body tothink it can do things it can't
do.
So they staged it in liketrenches every three months and
I went in for my first andnothing changed.
Now the technology is better.
(04:05):
You'll start to get someresults due to exosomes we can
talk about that a bit later,start getting results earlier.
But with the stem cells I wasdoing I wasn't expecting to get
any real noticeable differencefor three months at least.
So I took it and then I keptgetting worse.
Things were pretty dire andthen on the three-month mark,
(04:26):
right on the nose, I juststarted feeling better.
It started stabilizing and thenI did stabilize and then I got
to the point where I hadcompletely stabilized and got to
my second treatment and thengot to my third and I was just
hoping not to die.
But by after about six months Iwas at about 40 and say after a
(04:51):
year I was at about 70 of mygeneral health back again, and
I'm talking I was below five,like if it was a telephone
battery.
It was definitely in the red um, red um.
(05:12):
And eventually after thatperiod, over the next, you know,
let's say, from day one it wasprobably about a year and a half
I got close to 100, prettyclose, and the crazy thing that
happened was my kneesregenerated too and I only took
ivs and I did um intrathecal andmy shoulders regenerated and my
back and neck issues and myhearing and all these things
(05:32):
started coming back.
So when I was done and you knowthis, this was the real test
was when I got covered, becausebefore I would have definitely
been the person that was inhospital and probably for sure
dead.
But I got COVID.
This all happened just beforeit and when I got it I'm like
(05:53):
well, you know, good luck, let'ssee how this goes.
And I did it, and still aliveto tell the tale.
So after this I said, right,well, veterans don't have access
to this and this is prettybullshit because it is quite,
it's quite sad when you see howveterans are taken care of.
So I created a foundation.
(06:14):
I spoke in front of rooms ofbillionaires and I could get
everyone to cry, essentially,and just telling the journey,
and they didn't.
I couldn't get donations out ofthem.
It was very hard.
They didn't understand themedicine and that was the
problem education, awareness.
(06:35):
So I kept trying and trying tofind different angles to do
things and to help, and then Ijust settled into just raising
awareness as much as I could,because I'm like, right, we're
going to start with a bit of aneducation.
And eventually one of my bestmates, tech founder, and I had
my advice and went to the clinicI recommended and he got a
(06:56):
successful treatment of hisknees and his wrist and he could
play tennis again.
He'd lost the ability to playtennis and he's like walking up
a hill with me in patagonia.
It was like, oh wow, you know,you're like, so I did this and
this.
And you know what, if I want tostart a stem cell company, what
if I want you with me?
It's the face, the brand andyou run it and I'm like, okay,
(07:17):
let me, let me think on this.
Um, and I did.
I thought on it for a while and, uh, I came back after a couple
of weeks and said, all right,let's do it on the provision
that veterans get help.
Land goal is actually to getthis into veterans affairs and
the serving military across fiveeyes, starting in the united
states, because everyone elsefollows them, and I knew the
(07:38):
best way to do this at thispoint was to treat everyone,
treat civilians, create abusiness, make it make a
successful brand name until thetoothpaste is so far out of the
tube that you can't put it backin.
And that is essentially whereit started, and now it's grown
significantly from there.
Dr Andrew Greenland (07:55):
Wow.
So where are we now with Odinthen?
Nico Seedsman (08:00):
So now, pending a
few changes, I'm a very as you
can imagine, I'm a ratherfocused controlled aggression
would be the military termdriven person with command and
the direction that I am headingwith the company and essentially
what we're doing is we'rebuilding out the entire
(08:22):
ecosystem to fulfill the desiresof every patient, and the
center of that is having a teamthat are all integrity-based,
right and that there has beenkey right now.
What we found with the doctorsand clinics are really good.
They're really good at doingwhat they're doing and what they
learn to do in in theirschooling, and that that's great
(08:44):
.
We don't need to reinvent thewheel there.
But what they were havingproblems with is getting
education out there and findingfinding applicable patients that
are, that are, that are correctfor it, and going through the
process to get them aligned tocome to their clinic.
So we took over that.
Now we're successfully doingthat across the United States
(09:06):
and we should have the frameworkvery soon with a partnership to
be able to do it for the mostpart in home in most of America
if they don't, you know, knowlow-level injections and IVs and
therefore that'll make accessto it much easier, like it's one
thing to try to have someonefind a way to finance this
themselves and we'll get to thatin a second.
(09:26):
It's an it's it's.
It's a struggle there.
However, it's a bigger strugglefor them to then go hey, I've
got a to pay for this.
Now I've got to take a week off, work and travel and pay for
the travel expenses and I'mlosing.
I'm losing money from travelingand I'm losing, and I'm also
losing money from not working,so it increases.
It's like.
It's like insult, injury, um.
(09:46):
So getting them done at theirhome, um, soon enough, will be
the next thing we're buildingout as part of our entire
network.
And then, thirdly, as part ofthe brand awareness, we're also
going to be finding ourselvesbasically providing consumer
finance at an interest ratethat's like fair and integrity
(10:09):
based.
I don't like in America thatthere's a lot of gouging on
interest.
I think it's absurd and I alsothink people who regenerate are
more likely to pay back theirdebts.
You know, it's really hard toget surgery six times and have a
non-functioning shoulder at theend of it and still not be able
to go back to the workshop orwhatever you know as a
(10:31):
boilermaker or whatever it isthe, the workshop or whatever
that you know you're as a boilermaker or whatever it is.
So, um, you know giving try toprovide this one-stop shop
framework for all people to cometo us, um, whether you want,
whether you want, treatment athome.
We're also going to be lookingat providing stem cells to the
clinics as well as an educationmaterial to the doctors so they
know what they're working withand how to use it.
(10:52):
They know how to explain it to,so they know what they're
working with and how to use it.
They know how to explain it toa patient of what they're
actually going to be goingthrough.
So they're going to be having avery imminently, probably
within this month, going to havethe ability to provide that
educational material and providethose cells to the clinics and
the doctors, and we're alsogoing to be having the financing
(11:13):
, as well as this in-hometreatment.
Now, the center of gravity ofwhen I built this company was
what I wanted, because I put myfamily through this, I put
myself through it, I put a lotof veterans through it and
veterans that I know and haveserved with, and really what I
wanted to do was I'm like, right, if this is me going through it
, what that I know and haveserved with, and really what I
wanted to do was I'm like, right, if this is me going through it
(11:36):
, what did I care about?
And it really came down tothree things.
It's having the mostexperienced doctors.
That that was a big thing to mehaving the safest, most
experienced doctors, becausethey did have an in a situation
in Colombia when I did it 2019,where it wasn't catastrophic but
it was definitely negligent andI've left in in a pretty bad
way, in a bad condition, justalone.
(11:57):
Um, so safety, then efficacy wehave no loyalty to any
laboratory, so if we find bettercells, we will switch to those
cells and the patient will benotified.
We're like, hey, this is theexpense here and the reason
you're doing it is because wehave got the best sales.
And it's like you know, if youwant less quality sales and by
(12:19):
all means go abroad wherethey've been replicated or you
know they'll be cheaper, butyou're getting more compromised
sales and then cost.
We're not these guys in LatinAmerica have.
It's all coming to an end nowwith the legalization in the
United States, the complete,basically, what's coming to be a
(12:39):
complete, open legalization ofevery state.
It is, you know, they've beengouging before, for sure, and
that didn't sit well with mewhen I saw the numbers and I
understand running medicine is,you know, I'm the CEO, so I get
it.
I get it, but I believe there'sa margin of integrity and then
(13:01):
there's a pretty obvious levelof gouging.
And so having these things andhaving all our team members
orientated around the same levelof integrity and wanting to
change the world and regenerateand heal people like myself as
as being key to the developmentof our entire brand and
(13:23):
enterprise, Amazing, amazingstory.
Dr Andrew Greenland (13:28):
So what
does a typical day look like for
you?
At the clinic or behind thescenes?
I'm not quite sure where youare, but obviously you've got a
lot of business developmentgoing on.
You're developing ecosystems.
I don't know how much you arein the sort of the business side
of things or actually on theground.
Nico Seedsman (13:40):
No, I generally
don't get on the ground as such.
I do occasionally becausethere's clinics all over the US
that work with us.
So it's like it's just too muchto be.
You can't be everywhere.
I've really got to be juststrapped into a computer
somewhere for some, from wheneveryone wakes up on the east
coast to the united states,until whenever they're done with
questions or I have don't havetasks or whatever for everyone.
(14:02):
So it's pretty.
It's it's pretty intense, butwhat I do like to do is I do
like to jump on the phone at thelowest level, with the
potential patients that are thathave requested to have a chat
with someone who's been throughsimilar conditions.
And since I take a lot ofconditions, it's not a stretch
for them to have a chat with me.
(14:23):
And I really do like to have myfinger on the pulse there, be
able to see the pain in theireyes.
And, like you know, I've alsogot to keep my language very
strategic about what I say, thatthat stem cells can do and etc.
Um, we're under strictguidelines there, um, which
should open up, you know,naturally over time.
But in the meantime, you knowit's like, hey, you're gonna
(14:44):
have to read between the linesbecause we're under strict legal
provisions here.
Um, just give them a little bitof hope.
You know, people just want somehope, like they're.
They're struggling, they'vebeen a failed medical system has
kind of left them for dead fora long period of time.
And and these new, um, thesenew technologies, regenerative
medicine that's coming through,and and other forms of medicine
(15:06):
which you're, you're, you'rehosting a bunch of them on your
on your show, it's, it isdefinitely very it's a promising
time to be alive for hope.
But the other side of this isthe average person doesn't watch
this kind of media right asmuch.
It's not something they're justsort of leaning into.
(15:27):
So it becomes how do we educatepeople?
How do we make it aware of thisis available?
How do we make them comfortable?
How do we make it aware of thisis available?
How do we, how do we make themcomfortable?
How do we make them feelconfident in it?
How do we give them some hopethat life won't just be this
suffering existence until death,which is where I was, you know.
I can see that.
I see the despair in them and Ifeel it.
(15:48):
Um, you know, and the doctors wehave doing the treatments, we
just select guys that just havea great reputation for the way
they interact with people andhandle them and care about them
and take care of them, and thenall the members of the team
between, just you know, reallydo care.
I've got one guy out, our topadvocate.
He prays for every, everysingle member, every single
person that goes through, everypatient praying for recovery
(16:10):
Every single day.
He prays for every singlemember, every single person that
goes through every patientpraying for recovery every
single day.
He prays for them.
You wouldn't know unless youasked him, but he's a very godly
man and he truly cares andthat's been.
The success at this point isfinding people who doctors
inclusive, truly, really care.
Dr Andrew Greenland (16:31):
Amazing.
So you're in a fascinatingniche.
Um, what major shifts are youseeing right now in this space?
You know the regenerativemedicine space because obviously
it's fast-paced.
But what are you noticing?
Nico Seedsman (16:43):
I'm I'm noticing
um more of a legal framework in
the united states.
Before it wasn't.
It wasn't illegal, but it wasin this gray area of medicine in
the US where it was acceptable,provided that the patient was
notified of the parameters ofexperimental medicine.
Now it's becoming legal, stateby state, where it's just full
(17:04):
legality rejected by the fullscope of medicine.
So that's happening, yeah.
So that's become reallyinteresting.
Then the exosomes came out inthe last, probably about three
years ago now, maybe three tofour, and now that's become as
part of the treatment.
You just wouldn't do stem cellsanymore without the exosomes.
(17:26):
Exosomes are like saying theparticle to the atom, the atom
being the stem cells and theexosomes being the particle, and
they're able to pierce theblood-brain barrier.
So you don't need to do, you dothem together and the exosomes
will, you know, come in thebillions and they'll go to work
immediately and aggressively,like from basically day one, and
(17:51):
that, coupled with the stemcells, kind of allows this
gradual incline of healing.
And then, when the stem cellscatch up, at about the
three-month mark, say two tothree, it then facilitates like
this kind of exponential growthon their care, say care plan,
(18:12):
their overall care, and thatthere has become one of the
biggest successes.
And then they've also, you know, america making it illegal to
use replicated cells has meantthat there's been a better
success rate and standard oftreatment in the United States.
And some laboratories the onewe work with they have just they
(18:38):
, they decided to stop, um, stopthis profit, excessive
profiteering, and be like youknow what.
We're actually just going tooffer a non-replicated,
extremely large volumes of cellsso that people can get a full
treatment that they wouldotherwise get in latin america,
but without replication.
Non-replicated, extremely largevolumes of cells so that people
can get a full treatment thatthey would otherwise get in
Latin America, but withoutreplication.
(18:59):
And every time you replicate,they get like bunched together
and they get mutations and allthese things.
And you just know that ifsomething's been replicated
three times, yeah, it's okay,but beyond that, up to 27 times
some of the clinics do you justknow that it's like watering
down the, the, the cell.
So what's actually happened isit's um, it's, it's created a
(19:23):
higher concentration of cell andand exosome and definitely far
more success with those twotogether.
That's what's been the mostexciting, especially for I went
to 2019.
I'd replicated cells and I hadthem in you know what, six years
ago now, and the research anddevelopment you know was just
(19:45):
kind of where it was.
So be it.
And now I, now, if I was to godo that treatment, I, the
success would be, you know, Iwould say I would expect
somewhere, you know, like maybethree to seven x with the same
amount of cells, inclusive ofexosomes.
So it's, you know, it's, that'sexciting for me, right?
(20:07):
Because we quantify our successas a company on people healed.
Um, yeah, we're're just like,well, that's what internally,
that's what excites us.
It's like who met their primarygoal, so we met 100% of their
top three goals.
And that's how we quantify whatwe're doing works and how we
(20:28):
measure success.
Dr Andrew Greenland (20:31):
Brilliant.
So, on that note, what'sworking really well for you in
Odin right now?
I guess your success rate issomething which you're very
proud of.
But as a business, what are thethings that work really well?
Nico Seedsman (20:44):
I would say from
a business perspective, because
we're not this big entity, thiscorporate level entity and and
I'm a very tactical person, liketactical leadership as well as
(21:04):
strategical I've got this finebalance with the team where I'm
able to empower them to makeinitiative-based decisions, to
move at the speed that we needto move to essentially become
the biggest brand, ideally inthe stem cell market in the
United States.
(21:27):
We've had a very good head startat this.
One of the partners is anextremely successful tech
founder who's from marketing andmarkets all the biggest brands
in the world, biggestcorporations.
He's really good at that.
And the other partner is amedical doctor and he's brought
on a whole bunch of theexpertise as it involves medical
(21:52):
operations, but he's alsoextremely business savvy and
somehow the three of us havecreated this immensely
successful model to be able tojust weave in and out of each
other, to go in these directionsand divide and conquer.
It allows us to be in acomplete confidence in them to
do that which really allows usto exponentially grow and
(22:16):
outperform ourselves every month.
So that's been a win for us ona business level.
Dr Andrew Greenland (22:23):
Great and
on the flip side, what's
frustrating or harder than youexpected as you kind of grow
your operation it's.
Nico Seedsman (22:36):
It takes people
longer to decide that they wish
to proceed to get care, whichmeans there's a lot of touch
points, there's a lot of handholding, there's a lot of extra
education and there's a lot ofwork involved for the advocates,
who basically hold their handthrough the entire process and
thereafter as well.
(22:56):
So just check in with them andcollect, you know, just so we
have some internal data onsuccess, like collect their data
and just how they're tracking.
It's definitely requires moremanpower there than you would.
You would ideally really wantto want to manage, but it's the.
(23:19):
It's the.
It's what duty requires, right?
It's truly, you know, as I callit to truly give it an f?
Um like legitimately aboutsomeone's outcome and their
success, then you can't water itdown.
So it's been a bit morechallenging and slower in that
(23:39):
realm than you would otherwisewant to.
Dr Andrew Greenland (23:43):
What do you
think is behind that?
What's causing this longdecision-making process?
What's the driver for that?
Nico Seedsman (23:50):
Education.
It's really education.
It's education in quite a largenumber that they've got to come
up with because it's notcovered in any form.
So they've got to work out howto get together the finances.
So that's a thing, but it alsois like okay, education.
I need to make sure Iunderstand exactly what I'm
(24:11):
doing and where I'm committingthese resources to in order to
pursue this success and whattheir success looks like to them
and how that, the likelihood ofthat, their affordability, how
much they can actually afford.
One thing that we did was Ididn't ever want to deny anyone
the opportunity to get help.
I found a lot of the LatinAmerican clinics would be like
(24:31):
hey, here's your price, goodluck, let us know if you can do
it.
But I wanted to present peoplewith three plans.
We now do up to four, sometimesfive, depending on the person,
so they can choose what they canafford to the degree of
promising results.
And that there, you know, givessomeone the opportunity to
(24:57):
decide.
You know what they can affordand what's in their wheelhouse
and you know how.
Do they want to dip their toes.
Do they want to dive in?
Can they afford to dive in?
And it's usually a bit of adance for these guys so that
there takes a little bit of timefor them to really sit with.
Like it's, you know, weprobably, it probably would be
easier if we just went hey,here's the number of good luck,
(25:20):
but it's, I don't think it'sit's fair, you know, when you're
playing with people who arejust miserable in many ways, so
that there has definitely been afactor to slow people down.
Dr Andrew Greenland (25:37):
Okay, Are
there any specific metrics or
outcomes that you track?
I think you kind of impliedthat sort of client success
stories was one, but are thereany other things that you track
from a clinical, operationalperspective?
We definitely do.
Nico Seedsman (25:53):
One of our big
rounds of clients are diabetes.
I won't share the informationhere because we're under some
pretty strict legal provisionson that.
But and then I talked to thislike we've got some.
We've got a handful of majorlawyers in this field that we go
to and drop whatever we have toto make sure that we're
compliant with everything.
(26:14):
One of them the other day wascompletely blown away.
He goes you're the worst peopleI've ever actually heard of
collecting data to help yourpatients and like to see what
you can tweak to do it betterand perform.
They're like no one else isthere, just selling um.
So that that actually felt good.
(26:34):
So we're collecting a lot ofdata, especially on diabetes,
and we we correlate quite a lotof um.
I would definitely say successum on those um, but we are again
.
We're not allowed.
We're not allowed to releasethat publicly.
We can discuss it verbally withthe patient on the phone.
We're not allowed to write itdown and send it to anyone.
(26:55):
It's just again, we're.
We've got some.
The lawyers are like we'll justkeep you very much safe.
So you know.
So we're like okay, it is whatit is, but it's like I, I do
like to.
The whole team likes to seethat and hear that and feel that
they're.
A lot of the people are veryhave been um let down by a
(27:15):
medical system in in in manyways.
And it's not, it's not all,it's just it's you know, we're
dealing with america as well,which often is, you know, like
there can be a very blurry linebetween business and medicine in
america.
Um, very blurry, and you knowthey've just felt let down in
many ways with the, with thesystem.
(27:36):
So they're more motivated thanever by actually helping people
and less by money, which is, youknow, which is good.
Dr Andrew Greenland (27:46):
So them
being able to see the data as
well, internally the hugemotivator for the team so,
looking ahead, where do you wantto see odin in the next sort of
six to twelve months?
Nico Seedsman (27:57):
I know you're
talking about developing your
ecosystem, but where do we seethis going the ecosystem, um, I
basically want it to be aone-stop shop.
You come to odin, whetheryou're a patient, whether you're
a, whether you need financeregenerative medicine, whether
you're a clinic and you want tostart treating stem cells inside
(28:18):
your clinic, um, and andproviding there's an option to
your patients, and and that's it.
That's that's what I said Iwant.
I want us to be the brand thatyou can come to and know these
guys have done all the filteringand what we say we mean, and
that we're integrity-based andwe'll do everything in our power
(28:39):
to help.
And that's who we are as abrand and what we want to become
.
We want us to become that namethat you can just come to for
stem cells, whatever the problembe.
Dr Andrew Greenland (28:52):
And if you
could wave magic rond and solve
one major challenge that you'redealing with today, what would
that be?
Nico Seedsman (29:03):
Speed.
I'm not a person who likes tosmooth this fast, but I'm not a
person who likes to.
You know it's supposed to movethis fast, but I'm not a person
who likes to sit on things toolong, in the sense that there
has to be a decision made and wehave to move forward, and I do
(29:24):
that, but I can't compel thethird parties to do that as fast
as I like to move.
You know I've got my SAS speedand, don't get me wrong, I taper
it because I'm working withcivilians now, but I wish I
(29:45):
could crack that wand out andjust expedite things, you know,
faster with all parties involvedgot it okay.
Dr Andrew Greenland (29:57):
thank you
so much for your time this this
afternoon morning, afternoon,wherever you are in the world,
and this has been a reallyinteresting conversation.
It's interesting how many umpeople I'm speaking to that's
started with a personal journey,that's created something really
special, and I think you'vedone that with your organization
and what you achieve, what yourethos is Really interesting to
hear about it and where this isgoing.
So again, thank you so much foryour time.
(30:18):
Really appreciate it.
You're so welcome Andrew.
Thanks, matt, thank you.