Habits and Hustle - Episode 102: Jason Feldman – Co-Founder & CEO at Vault Health

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Jason Feldman is the Co-Founder & CEO at Vault Health which is currently one of the largest Covid testing companies in America. Coming from Amazon’s video department with a pursuit in the health fie...ld from a young age, Feldman leads us through how he somehow stumbled into his lifelong passion and how he kept it alive launching a rebrand into a stock market crash and a global pandemic. He generates excitement for what the future of healthcare could be and one that his company could help create. Through the loosening of minds, especially men’s’, when it comes to talking about and receiving care to a focus on mind and body, he continues to rail against the costs and stigma surrounding the field while defining a path to actual solutions. The story of how he pivoted his “men’s health” company into a leader in at-home Covid testing alone is enough to inspire anyone to fight to the end. Don’t miss it. Youtube Link to this Episode Vault Health ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email habitsandhustlepod@gmail.com  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:56 pressure This is Jason Feldman. He is the founder of Vault Health, which is a subscription-based telemedicine. Was that the way you can call it? Telemedicine company? Great. He launched you launch like a year ago, right? That's when you were actually launched. You're right. That's here, yeah, for sure. And I've been fascinated with your business for a plethora of reasons, which I was just saying. First of all, what I found fascinating, first of all, is that you're from Amazon.
Starting point is 00:01:32 You were the president of Amazon Prime, what is it called? It's a real Prime Video Direct, yeah. The part of Amazon's Prime Video business that brought almost all the content, not the stuff from the studios, but everything else that makes Amazon Prime videos such a huge thing that was where all the content came from, my team. So that's a huge job. And what made you pivot from that to now being in the health space? Well, health care is terribly, terribly, terribly broken, right?
Starting point is 00:02:02 It's just like, you can't get worse than what health care is I mean when you consider the number of people who are disaffected and frankly that will die younger than they should because they don't have access to health care It just destroys me and I'm an incredibly mission driven person. I feel like I I have a purpose and my purpose has to be to make something better and You know while it was fun to make Amazon a better place to serve customers and there's no place better on earth if you want to learn how to do things at scale, it wasn't as fulfilling as doing something to fix healthcare. And that was my calling. And so here we are. Well, I mean, even gets at that place in Amazon, like I heard a couple of friends here a
Starting point is 00:02:39 few years back to their interviewing for I think a business affairs job or some type of like marketing job. And even the interviewing process was so ridiculous and insane that I was like, oh my God, it would be easier to do anything else. It would be easier to become the president of Pakistan, being a US citizen, than to do with that. So, how did you become, what was the trajectory? How did you even get to that level at Amazon in the first place?
Starting point is 00:03:09 What were the qualities about you that made you that way? Amazon, it's a little bit probably I didn't go to Harvard, but it's probably a little bit like getting into Harvard. You cross that bar, and if you're good enough to be there, they want to keep you and figure out how to make you deliver as much value as possible, let you be as creative, as innovative as you possibly can be. And so, you know, the whole company's mode of operation
Starting point is 00:03:34 is around this idea of leadership principles. It's, you know, being very customer-forward, working backwards from the customer to invent and have a tremendous bias for action for being able to deliver things. There's just a lot of things. And one of the things that makes Amazon pretty famous in terms of talent, talent really, there's a lot of things that make Amazon famous is that they look for people who are right
Starting point is 00:03:56 a lot. You know, it's not so much that you have to be right all the time about every single thing. It's just that on balance, you think and act and make decisions that are just right, the more often than they're wrong. And when you continue to do that, the company recognizes you and keeps saying, well, you did a lot of good things here. Let's try you over in this other place and give you a chance to grow in another way that will help you not only develop, but help this business grow faster.
Starting point is 00:04:22 Well, then how did so how did vault health become? Vault health so you were now at Amazon you decide one day you know what I want to be in the health business because that's what I want to do. Then what was that what was the steps to get there? You know health care for me started when I was a kid a little kid I wanted to be a doctor and I mean I remember having stuffed animals and operating on them when I was as young as four or five years old I just I used to have some some some family member was a doctor and gave me a whole scrub suit And you know, it was like five times bigger than me at that age and I lived with that thing I never washed it. It was my favorite and I wanted to be a doctor and then I got to 10th grade geometry
Starting point is 00:04:58 And I couldn't I couldn't get through it and that was the end of my medical career So I think somewhere in my mind, I thought, well, I'm going to come back to healthcare. And my career was always very customer focused. I always worked for big billion dollar brands. I ran big brands and built big companies. But I knew that my favorite thing to do was really my superpower is to think big and do big. And that's what I did at Amazon. But then I thought, you know, if I'm going to really dedicate some point of my life, you know, has to be meaningful in some way,
Starting point is 00:05:27 if I'm gonna really dedicate myself to something, it's gonna be healthcare. And so I was gonna go, ready for this, I was gonna go be the CEO of Jenny Craig. I can't, you know what? I was gonna ask you about that, to be honest. I was gonna go be the CEO of Jenny Craig. I like the weight loss business.
Starting point is 00:05:42 That was gonna be my foray into healthcare. So, because, you know, that Jenny Craig, I, I mean, I'm going to get probably slaughtered for saying this, but is, let me just, let me just like preface it differently. Is Jenny Craig a health, a healthcare business? I mean, it's package food that you warm up. I mean, the amount of probably chemicals that they're giving each person there is probably, I don't even want to know. So how did that happen? Did they come recruit you? Yeah, I thought I just didn't think there was a credible way that a guy that had been in retail and consumer brands for 27 or 28 years was going to find his way into healthcare in a way that was credible. Certainly not in a leadership role. What do I know about healthcare except that I'm a customer
Starting point is 00:06:26 and a hypokondriac? So that was my qualification. That was good. You're good, you're good. So I got to the place where I was saying, this is gonna be a bridge. And somehow I will do something. So when private equity came calling and said,
Starting point is 00:06:40 hey, Jenny Craig is a brand that has been around for 35 years. It's an opportunity for you to be able to take this brand and really reinvent it for the next generation of women and bring men in too, by the way. I got excited by the idea that there is a tremendous problem with metabolic health in this country, probably in many places in the world, but certainly we know in this country. Metabolic health takes a lot of different forms in terms of chronic disease, certainly diabetes, you know, are probably one of the worst scourges of our society, it's just this pervasive obesity
Starting point is 00:07:13 that exists not just because of how we eat or how we behave, but our mental health. And then there are things that are just fundamentally wrong with our hormones. And so there were just a lot of reasons why I thought, all right, you know, maybe there's a way to get into Jenny Craig and help reinvent it. And think about the metabolic health, not just selling food, but really changing, fundamentally changing the way our bodies work. That was my theory. Anyway, I happened to be, I was still at Amazon, I was in New York, I was on a visit for some meeting or another, and I was getting off of a training union square and a head hunter
Starting point is 00:07:44 called me and said, hey, this company called Redesign Health, it's a venture capital firm. They actually, they're like a studio, they invent companies, and they want to meet you. And I said, oh, that's nice, I'll meet them at some point. I told them what I was going to about to go and do. And he said, well, you're in New York, right? And I was like, yeah, I just hear, but I'm only here for the afternoon. He's like, well, they'd love to meet you. Could you maybe make that happen today? I said, no, I've got two hours to my next meeting. They said, yeah, I just hear, but I'm only here for the afternoon. He's like, well, they'd love to meet you. Could you like maybe make that happen today?
Starting point is 00:08:05 I said, no, I've got like two hours for the next meeting. They said, well, where are you? I said, you need square. They're in Union Square. And the rest is history. And so I stopped in just to say hi. I wasn't really sold on any ideas in particular,
Starting point is 00:08:16 but they told me about this idea that they had for men's health. And there were three compelling stats that they gave me. And they caught me off guard. One was that 70% of men don't get any kind of consistent healthcare, just men don't get healthcare. Five years younger than women, men are dying. So you take a heart number. So 70% and then five years,
Starting point is 00:08:37 and then the number one reason for death is cardiovascular disease. And it's entirely preventable. There's no reason a guy should die of cardiovascular disease, especially if he knows what's up. And then they told me what their business idea was, and I said, that just didn't track with me. I just didn't get it.
Starting point is 00:08:52 And they said, why not? We've got this big idea, and we've raised a bunch of money, and why not? This could be a really great opportunity. I said, I love the opportunity. I love the idea. It's just not for me. I don't think opening up clinics and helping guys
Starting point is 00:09:03 with their hormone health is going to be the wave of the future. I think it needs to be something I don't think opening up clinics and helping guys with their hormone health is gonna be the wave of the future. I think it needs to be something completely different and they challenge me and they said, well, what would it be? I said, I'd have to put some thought into it. And they're like, great. Build a PowerPoint, tell us a story.
Starting point is 00:09:14 And I said, I work at Amazon, we don't do PowerPoint, we write documents. They're like, great, write a document, tell us what you think, we'd love to hear it. I don't know what happened, but one thing led to another, I wrote a little document, told them what I thought, and the next thing you know, I'm leading a healthcare company. Oh my gosh.
Starting point is 00:09:29 So the initial idea was to do actual brick and mortar clinics? Yeah, so it was to open up, basically, hormone health centers for men. So they weren't retail. It could have been a medical office, and we opened up a couple of them in New York City, but my real idea was, you know, that's great because men, you know, just back up for a second. Women have gynecologists and from a young age, right? I don't remember. How old were you when you had your first gynecology appointment?
Starting point is 00:09:57 Oh my god, I don't know, maybe like 15, 16, probably like around men. Yeah. I've got 18-year-old triplets and one daughter. What? Yep. And she, my daughter, let's say a whole second. Last year I took her to so she was 17 took her to her first gynecology appointment. No idea what really happened, but what I recognize is that she has, you know, year by year, decade by decade, a consistent appointment that she will always have. Yeah. That will guide her sort of decade by decade into the kinds of things that she's going to need to know about.
Starting point is 00:10:27 First, growing up and growing into her hormone health and then eventually obstetrics and then whatever it is. But along the way, she will know, as you probably did at a young age, that somebody in her life, some female figure in her life will end up in hormone therapy. For a reason, because you get to metapause and your body is going to need a recharge Well, guess what men need the same thing But what's very different from women is that men start meeting it after the age of 30 and they don't know Men don't know that we start to go through that young that young I call it manopause
Starting point is 00:10:59 I call it manopause That's a good name. You should you should coin that your turn Yeah, the coin the toward the term that that I coined is what I really wanted to become. I wanted to become the guy in the college, the GU. That would be great. By the way, why did you call Voltaeus Manipause? That would have been awesome. Because I had a bigger vision and that's what's very happy.
Starting point is 00:11:19 But we, that would have been good. That would have been a great name too. Pause. But we talked about, we talked about how are we going to help guys? That would have been good. Now I've been a great name too. Pause. But we talked about how are we going to help guys? And the reality was if we knew that if we didn't take the care to guys directly, take it to home, take it to where guys are, we would never get them to pay attention. And that's exactly the business that we ended up building so that we could help guys understand.
Starting point is 00:11:41 Hey, guess what? After the age of 30, about every year, you're gonna lose about 2% of your hormone balance, your testosterone, you're gonna start to lose it, and that's your mojo. That's not just about building muscle, it's everything to do with your health, and it actually leads to, if your low T, is left untreated, it leads to heart disease,
Starting point is 00:11:59 and diabetes, and all these things, women have somebody caring for them, men don't, so that's why men end up aging, thinking like this sucks. This is what it's supposed to be like, but it's not. And also, I would think that there's like an element of shame, right? So people don't want to go. Men don't want, it's like a provotto.
Starting point is 00:12:15 Like you were saying, like people don't want to go and get that checked and have to deal with somebody face to face and all that other stuff. It's kind of a, there's a shame aspect and embarrassing, even though it shouldn't be shame around it, but, you know, human nature is human nature in a way, right? How many, how many girlfriends have you talked about your period with over your life?
Starting point is 00:12:34 Like a million. A million? A million, right? Yeah. How many girlfriends have you ever talked about, you know, just pick a problem that'll wanna happen? I can know, yes, I can know, there's a bazillion. I mean, it kind of becomes like a joke, and every commercial can talk,
Starting point is 00:12:48 I mean, it's like you go to Ralph's, and you can go get any kind of, you can get a tampon, you can get like a yeast infection medication, or whatever it must be, you know what I mean? But guys, you will never find two guys, not ever find two guys who will say, hey dude, how's your penis? I mean, it's never gonna happen.
Starting point is 00:13:03 Never gonna happen. 100%. And so because of that, because guys just will not talk, it's your penis? I mean, it's never gonna happen. Never gonna happen. 100%. And so because of that, because guys just will not talk, it's your word, the bravado is there, the shyness, the, all the words you can think of. It's comfort. It's so just, yes, it's incredibly bad. And so because guys don't feel free to have this
Starting point is 00:13:19 conversation with each other, they don't have it at all. They don't have it with their significant other, they don't have it with their buds, they're just not having it. And so consequently, what happens? They don't have it at all. They don't have it with their significant other. They don't have it with their buds. They're just not having it. And so consequently, what happens? They don't take care of themselves and bad things happen. Yeah. And also with low testosterone, that's how you get weight gain.
Starting point is 00:13:35 All these other problems happen too, right? That's why they say like even the dad bought, right? Because over time, your test, your prior testosterone gets lower and lower. You're not working out. You're not burning fat. You're metabolic rates lower. So guys end up, so here's the thing that really drives me crazy. You've seen these companies out there that sell, I'm going to be a little bit crass, but they sell the dick pills, you know,
Starting point is 00:13:57 Niagara, whatever, you know, they're selling all the generic stuff out there. See, I Alice, and guys unfortunately come to think of everything as being a problem. If it's a function around sort of sexual performance, they can think of it as that. And that's unfortunate because erectile dysfunction or something going wrong in bed has as much to do with your heart health as it does to do with your mental health. But very often, it is not what you think it is. And for a guy that is actually suffering, and it's almost 50% of men that have an ED issue,
Starting point is 00:14:29 that are having a cardiovascular issue, that don't recognize that. So they think if they take a pill, they'll solve a problem. And then for the other guys that are suffering a real problem with libido. So imagine having a girlfriend or a boyfriend, whatever you have. And you are not performing very well, and you think it's down there, but what it really is is up
Starting point is 00:14:49 here. It's in your head. And it's a libido issue. Unrelated to sexual function, but related to sexual function, you're really not feeling it. You're not getting, you know, your mojo is not cranked. That's a different problem. And taking a pill won't make that problem any better. And so the frustration in a relationship is compounded by the fact that he's not talking about it, he's embarrassed about it, he's trying to solve it, he's not solving it, it's making it worse. And then you know, you can stretch your imagination to guys we've talked to who've done some pretty bad things. They'll go out and they'll have, you know, a little extra fun somewhere to figure out if it's there.
Starting point is 00:15:21 Yeah. Or whatever, right? Like, or porn or that's my porn. What? I'm such a hot, I'm such a right rise right now, right? Because or in my interest now, always, right? But also what happens. The great desensitizer. Yeah. Exactly. And I think what also can happen is that once it gets in your head, that's becomes actually does become a mental issue, right? Because then now you're constantly thinking about it and nervous about it. So, and you know, do you remember it used to be a really huge business. It still is when people spam, when people would be selling those erect, like that would be like a $1,000,000
Starting point is 00:15:53 business just by going online in the gray, in the black market and buying whatever online, or at these online pharmacies. What is really, is that the difference really between telemedicine and like online pharmacy? Is that you have a doctor? There's a lot of things that... Yeah, so for us, look, we practice medicine, and I'm not saying that the other guys out there that sell the pills don't. They do what we call asynchronous health, asynchronous telemedicine. They're basically saying here, answer these six questions, or whatever number of questions
Starting point is 00:16:22 it is, send it to us, a doctor will review it basically to make sure that if we give you these pills to give you a better erection, you're not going to die of a heart attack. That's effectively what they're doing. It's not great medicine because what you're saying to the guy is, hey, your problem is your problem. Self-diagnose, you think this problem, take the penis pill. You're not any smarter because of anything you do in that process. You're just going to get the pill you really want.
Starting point is 00:16:48 At some point, you're going to take the pill and go, you know what, this is not what my problem is. You're going to sit there with a whole stack because you signed up for subscription. And every month, you're getting a pile of these. And eventually, you're going to look at it going, I'm not having nearly as much sex as I thought I was going to have. And what is wrong with me? It's not that.
Starting point is 00:17:03 So, with the way we look at it is that we take guys and we say, look, what is going to get you to come to see a doctor? What's going to get you to take control and own your health? Well, for most guys, it does have something to do with their sexual performance. If you said to a guy, why would you go to a doctor,
Starting point is 00:17:17 they'll say, well, if it makes me look better, feel better, perform better, you know, or think better, cognitive health is a really big one. If any of those things are true, and you can make me perform better, a very guy word perform, well that will get me to the doctor. And if, oh by the way, you help me with those things. And in the process, find out I have hypothyroidism, I have a cholesterol problem, I am pre-diabetic. Well, that's great.
Starting point is 00:17:42 I'll take care of that. That was not what was going to get me to see you I really want to just perform better and better. I want to get some weight gain with some muscle gain I want to lean out whatever it is all those other things get me to you But then if you can help me because you find these things that are really big problems for me I'll totally totally be grateful for that and that's how we practice you do Okay, so I didn't even realize that I actually thought like walk me through it because what I thought was You have verticals right so if it's a hair issue if it's a loop loop like a libido problem a hair issue
Starting point is 00:18:12 You pick your poison weight loss or whatever right and you get a package sent to you and before you you do all of that I thought you you sit like this with a doctor you do you do you do you do with art with us You are sitting with somebody who's an expert in men's health. That guy, necologist, I was talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the moment of truth. Because all the things that you could do online don't matter.
Starting point is 00:18:33 Getting a guy to come in, I say this very carefully. You come in, if you come in through our website or we've got a funny podcast called Get It Up or there's some other stuff you do. Who's coming up with these names? Is this you? You're like a branding expert. These are all three of those names, the you know, Manipaz, the gynecologist. It's a great, I can see why you're at Amazon for so long. We're having fun. We're having fun. Thank you. These are great names.
Starting point is 00:18:58 The process of getting a guy to pay attention is you know, is like getting his attention. You know, we think all right, if we get his attention, sorry, if we bring him in and get his attention and get him focused on himself, then we get him in a situation like this where you and I see each other on a screen and we're talking expert to man. And the man finally gets to unload and, oh my gosh, do they ever unload? The minute you start opening them up saying, well, does this feel like this? Is this how you're, we kind of know. And that guy goes, oh, I finally get to tell you the problem that I'm having. Because the
Starting point is 00:19:29 last time I went to a doctor, which was like four years ago, was a primary care doc. And no disrespect to that doctor. But like, you know, when I sat in that office for 30 minutes, waiting for him to show up, you know, everybody told me I have to tell him the one thing that's important today, because he doesn't have a lot of time. And so, you know, right at the time, I was, I was going to say goodbye to him and see him next year, I had this fear, like I was sweating bullets, like I got to tell him about this thing that's wrong, but I'm embarrassed and he seems to want to leave. And now I get to tell you everything.
Starting point is 00:19:54 And they unload on us. And as they unload, we start to understand what's really leading the charge for them in terms of what's wrong, what's making them anxious. We then send somebody their home. We take blood. We do a quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Do you do that so you do a take blood? Everyone, and my own earth. Yeah, we gotta see what's up.
Starting point is 00:20:12 We gotta get a benchmark of that. That's another big difference from the online pharmacies. We actually know what's happening in your body. So we put that together with what you're self reporting and then we come back to one of these appointments. Again, we're word together and we talk about what we now know to be the facts and then we come up with a treatment plan. And that's how we help guys get there.
Starting point is 00:20:29 And then we see them regularly. We're available seven days a week, and we just keep up with them. And that is where guys end up understanding that when you take control of your health, you can actually make a difference in perform better. I tell you what, real example, I started some treatments last fall, and then I started progressively adding I'm like an experiment in my own biohacking. I just figured you know on the leader of this business
Starting point is 00:20:50 I should try it. I've got a chief clinical officer chief medical officer that are standing around me at all time So I'm kind of like all right if this is the chance to try I'm gonna go for and between March and now October I've lost 46 pounds. I Have gotten mine durns back. I don't exercise like I probably should. I really am not a big exerciseer, but I definitely changed my metabolic health. I've changed a lot of things about my endurance and my physical strength. I've leaned out and I started to understand how this stuff really works. And now I'm actually advocating for myself.
Starting point is 00:21:18 I wouldn't sell this to just anybody, but I'm just saying, for myself, this is working. And it's working because I actually understand what wasn't working, because I have guys telling me now, doctors telling me now, here's why you weren't getting the results you wanted, because you were deficient in these areas, and I can fix that. So wait, so you lost that much weight in that. Okay, so what did you do? What package did you go on?
Starting point is 00:21:40 I mean, did you go on the hair loss back? I mean, you didn't do that. You did you do the... I'm obsessed with my hair too,? You didn't do that. You could do the... I'm obsessed with my hair too. I've tried everything. But you do have a full head of hair, so you don't need that pack. So, was it the libido package or the... What did you do? Tell us. I ended up turned out that I was borderline low T. So, borderline, what does that mean? What means that I was definitely heading in the wrong direction. And part of it was because I was just heavier,
Starting point is 00:22:07 I was carrying more weight than I should have. I didn't look like it, but I mean to lose 46 pounds and I'm wearing my kid, one of my kids, I'm wearing his pants. I'm now at the weight that I was when I was a freshman in high school. It's crazy. Wow.
Starting point is 00:22:19 So I'm doing that. I'm using some peptides. Peptides are an interesting way of treating yourself. It's a little bit like a dimmer switch. You're telling your body, this is all bio-identical kind of stuff that I'm doing. I'm replacing some of my testosterone, replacing DHA. There are some things that are wrong in my hormones. I was producing a little bit too much estrogen.
Starting point is 00:22:41 All guys have estrogen. My body was taking testosterone and converting a little bit too much of it to estrogen, so I had to temper that back down. But then the peptides are interesting because what they do is they basically help your body regulate something. So in my case, I wanted to regulate my growth, my growth hormones. Now this is not taking growth hormones. This is telling my body, it already produces growth hormones when I go to sleep at night, do a little bit more of that, and it helps me to really improve my metabolism in my case, and lean me out. And you see, with that, that 1295 CP? Yeah, C-J-C-1295, yes, and if I'm a rel in, yes.
Starting point is 00:23:16 I mean, not complicated stuff. This isn't rocket science. This is being able to tune the kind of treatments that work for my body, which would not be the same that would work for somebody else, maybe. I'm glad you brought up the peptides because I'm really interested in that because there's been a lot with those, right? Because people have seen amazing results. It's not one of those wellness trends that most people even know about. I feel because that's kind of what I mean, I'm in the world of wellness and the loss of Angeles.
Starting point is 00:23:43 So, a lot of people I know are doing them. But there's been issues with it because I feel that I've heard a lot of people don't have access to them anymore because of the FDA. So a lot of people who were prescribing them aren't able to prescribe them if they don't have access. Do you find that to be an issue? It's one of the reasons why the men's health business
Starting point is 00:24:04 is so good for us because guys just don't know where to go. They don't know who's legit. They don't know if they're gonna get the care that's going to take care of them or they're gonna be expected to actually prescribe themselves. You know, you couldn't, you'd be hard pressed to find a doctor
Starting point is 00:24:19 who can really prescribe peptides or even frankly, if you were to go to a primary care doctor as a man and say, take care of my hormones, they would send you somewhere else likely to a urologist and you go what urologist well because testosterone's made in your testicles that's a terrible reason to go to urologist they're proceduralist it doesn't mean that they can't and that they won't help you with your hormones they totally will that is the discipline that will and around urologists all the time but it just doesn't make sense that you have to wait to go to see a surgeon to get your hormones fixed.
Starting point is 00:24:45 So it's just that medicine has not trained people in a specific discipline to take care of things. Whereas if you're a woman and you go to your gynecologist, she will totally, I'm saying she could be a guy gynecologist. I suppose. But they will take care of you. They will give you what you need as a hormone replacement and they will take care of you. And that's something that guys just don't have the ability to get. And so we, we're making that far more accessible and easier and it's helping us actually help help more people. So the, how are the doctors, so you have, you have doctors in the actual, in these cities
Starting point is 00:25:17 to not just do a conversation on a computer, but they come and physically see the person at their home, like a concierge, medicine situation. So we actually, so everything happens on telehealth. The phlebotomy, the blood draws, and some of the vitals, and some of the other things we're doing, that happens in home. We will come to home if we need to, if we need to, I don't know, sir.
Starting point is 00:25:38 We'll send somebody to you. And then all the rest, yes, all the rest of the care is happening through telehealth. It doesn't, we don't need to physically, you know, see you every single time we treat you. We'll see you, you know, two, three times a year, but on balance when you need to see us, it's probably something that we can do in that way.
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Starting point is 00:26:20 forget to pie, either. Get grilling at Whole Foods Market Terms Apply. Keep coming back, you got plenty of space. Oof, not how you would have done that. You like working with people you can rely on, like USAA, who has helped guide the military community for the past 100 years. USAA, get a quote today. And so I feel like there's been like a big trend with this too, right? Like there's been a lot of companies coming on like, you know, hymns doing something, you're doing like a lot of people are like in this space now.
Starting point is 00:26:52 Like what happened? Is it because there was like why now? Is it because of the fact that was there like a big screaming need somewhere that someone saw it? And now they're jumping on it. What's the difference? Like how on it. What's the difference? Like how do you, like what's the difference? Man, man, man, like everything else, you know, you fill the gaps when you see them.
Starting point is 00:27:13 And if you're clever and you're an entrepreneur and you know, we just did that with COVID testing, I'll tell you about, but the, yeah. But the reality for us was in men's health care, there is such a care desert. It's a term that's used in a different way, usually. A care desert tends to be somewhere in the US or in the world where there isn't great healthcare
Starting point is 00:27:32 and people really suffer as a result of not being able to find practitioners who can take care of them and then they end up suffering things that they shouldn't suffer. But I kind of talk about that for men a little bit more broadly because if a guy doesn't know where to go and the most he's ever going to do is walk into a quicky clinic and something's not working, something's broken and he'll go get it taking care of or he's gotten the flu or something's happened and that's the only occasion that he goes and gets
Starting point is 00:27:56 healthcare. Then he doesn't have a benchmark that he should have to know where he is in his healthcare. So even simply knowing where you are relative to your blood health, you know, where is all your chemistry, what levels are things that? So if something goes wrong, and the last time you saw a doctor was six years ago, no one knows what's normal for you. They just know where to look at you now and say, well, something doesn't look right, but I don't know if that's your normal or that's just a situation that you've created or that has been created because of something that's happening to you right now.
Starting point is 00:28:24 So we like to think about this as a way to say, let's go fill the market by filling the place where guys haven't been able to get the kind of care. And then if we can build that space and others come in and follow, great. But the guys that are out there, the companies that are out there selling the pills, that worries me. It just worries me because the more pills and potions and lotions and other things that they put out there, the more they're giving guys the opportunity to just cheat Yeah, say not go to the doctor not check up and see where they are and and get a good line of health
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Starting point is 00:31:13 to download it free today. So how are you marketing to guys then, right? Because obviously you're a master at direct to consumer, right? So if anyone could do what it would be you, what has been kind of your, like how have you been doing it? How have you been able to, like, did you start with a couple markets and then expand? What was your process? We did. We did. When we started the business, it all happened in New York and, you know, talking to guys in New York is not particularly
Starting point is 00:31:40 hard because it's a small town, you know, it's big town, but small town. And then we expanded out to South Florida and we were talking to guys that look totally different from New Yorkers and then little by little we expanded. But most of the way that we started this business, which was kind of ridiculous, was using the digital channel, the traditional digital channels of Facebook and Google. And I railed against them. It was one of the things that I complained about when I was joining this business. I was like, what the hell are we doing? 48-year, I was joining this business. I was like, what the hell are we doing? 48-year, I was 47 at the time.
Starting point is 00:32:05 But 48-year-old guys are not buying testosterone by scrolling through their Facebook feed. What the hell are we doing here, people? We've got to have ways of reaching them that are going to be where they are. So it's all the vehicles you would think about. But in launching the podcast and being able to put marketing and channels where they're listening
Starting point is 00:32:23 or reading or following along other people, influencers, and then just lots of media that guys are exposed to. That's where we started going, but ultimately it's getting guys to a place where they won't talk or recommend necessarily the kind of treatments that they're getting, but they'll say, hey, you might want to check this out. And so we've started to get guys to have excuses to sort of pass on that they know Vault and they like Vault and Vault's kind of helping them.
Starting point is 00:32:51 Maybe not on what we're helping them with, but they're kind of talking about it and that worked. But the ultimate thing that really worked was that, in March, when it looked like the world was starting to fall apart, which feels like 30 years ago, doesn't it? It does. Tell me about it. Sure does.
Starting point is 00:33:08 We, I was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. We were relaunching the Vault brand. We had just converted our entire brand and website. Before that, we looked like an Eastern European car brand called the Vault. It's horrible. And we rebuilt this whole brand experience. And we were on the floor of the Exchange, our PR team
Starting point is 00:33:26 had organized a TV interview that just was down there. I'd always wanted to go to the floor of the Exchange and the market crashed that day. And it was like, oh shit, like this is bad news, especially when we're about to go tell the story of the brand, to vault the big men's health business. And we had all this stuff lined up, all this media. We were gonna go kill it.
Starting point is 00:33:42 We got to go tell the world billboards, all this stuff, like TV, radio, all this stuff. And that was the day the market crashed. And I was like, this sucks. Cause now, you know, what are we gonna do? So I remember exactly where we were, it was March 12th. Like we go back, you know, our tails between our legs, tail between our legs, go back to the office
Starting point is 00:34:00 and we're like, all right, immediately, we gotta do something. Our offices on 23rd Street in Manhattan, where a bunch of startups are, a bunch of people were starting to think about going home, not coming back to the office anymore, furlowing people. We knew people were going to start losing jobs. It was crazy. It's right before New York killed 13,000 people.
Starting point is 00:34:17 And we said, all right, we got to do something. This is going to be bad. So we immediately stopped all spend, just kept our power dry. I ended up having to build a plan. I knew I needed to build a plan to like, you know, what would I do if I had to kill a company to survive, live off of our cash, and what was that going to look like? That was miserable. And then the third thing was I launched every product we had planned to launch for 2020 all at once. And also launched, we were only in four states at the time, and I told the team, I'm going to do something insane. If this is going to be a sinking ship, bring everything that we have on deck and we're
Starting point is 00:34:49 going to launch 37 states and we're going to become national and we have to do it in two weeks because if we're going to go down, we're not going to go down without swinging. And so we did something insane. Everybody, everybody was working crazy hours to try to do this and we got it all launched. And then what the hell are we gonna do? Because this is still not gonna save us. And we were working on a really cool fertility test for men to tell them their biological age using their sperm, pretty funny thing.
Starting point is 00:35:16 And we were doing it, yeah, it's really cool to tell you about that. But we were doing this program at Rutgers University, their genomics lab. And I saw that the team at Rutgers was building a saliva test using, I'm sorry, a COVID test using saliva. And so I asked them, I was like, can we maybe, we built this whole telehealth thing? You know, could we launch an at home testing business? Because you know, you can't get a COVID test in America anywhere.
Starting point is 00:35:40 Maybe we could help. And they said, oh, that'd be great idea, except two weeks ago, the FDA said no more at-home tests. So I was like, all right, I didn't mean at-home test. I meant, what I meant to say was, can we launch a physician-ordered test that might happen at home? And they're like, well, that's a good idea. And so, so I, you know, I got the team refired up again, and for another two-week solid, we built this crazy thing. By the way, I might have told them that we could handle more than 100 telehealth calls. We had 43 people, could handle about 100 calls. That was in March, April the 10th, at night, on a Friday night, the FDA gave Rutgers
Starting point is 00:36:22 an emergency use authorization, and by Monday, we launched a testing business across the United States in all 50 states. And in October, our businesses now, a few hundred million dollars, about a thousand people. And we're one of the largest testing companies in America with millions of tests to help people get back to work, back to school, back to life as much as you can in COVID. It's crazy. So you totally just pivoted to becoming that, right? Like just how some companies were like manufacturers,
Starting point is 00:36:51 they pivoted to make these masks, right? Everyone was making masks for a while because they couldn't sell anything else. So you actually made that kind of money just in the last few months from pivoting to COVID testing. And I saw also your partnerships with like JetBlue and all the, you know, NHL and MLB. And so are they all just using your, is everybody just using your testing?
Starting point is 00:37:14 Let me ask you this. Would you, would you like to have a nasal swab that like touches your brain? Yeah. Or would you want to spit in a tube and find out? Like that's the answer. And so, you know, the, we made the right decision. We're still, so the saliva test, this is the biggest saliva test in America, but it's the only test in America that you can actually still do at home. Now, we have three accurate. Yeah, accurate test. Yeah, it's the most accurate test out there. And the reason for it is the nasal swab, think about this, when a practitioner who has to, by the way, full PPE, right, mask, hard hold, head, everything, because they're going to get up in your nasal cavity, they're not getting near you without having the full PPE.
Starting point is 00:37:51 They get up in your nose, they're making you squirm, and they have to touch virus on the tip of that swab, and then they have to get it back to the lab. In our case, we're taking a tube that you're spitting about a tablespoon full of saliva into this tube. If you're sick, there is a lot of viral RNA in that tube. So you get a lot of accuracy because you now have all this sample as opposed to that one little swap touch that goes in the back of both of your nostrils. So yeah, so the false negative rate, which is the thing we're most concerned about, like
Starting point is 00:38:21 telling people when they get their results, you're negative when you're actually positive. That's a disaster. The false negative rate of nasal swabs are about 25 to 35%. But for saliva, it's less than 1%. So the accuracy is really great. The sensitivity and specificity, which is the famous terms that are used around a genetic test.
Starting point is 00:38:40 This is a genetic test, are 95 to 98%. So this test is super accurate, super easy, and really fast. Wow, how about the other swabs? The ones I've gotten a few times, because a couple of my friends who are here, they basically, now they're concierge doctors, and they basically are doing a ton of these tests.
Starting point is 00:39:00 They have those, they prick your finger, and they also, the ones that go in your nose, but it doesn't go that far. It goes away. Yeah, the mid-terminal ones. Yeah, so the finger prick I'll tell you about, but there aren't other nasal swabs that you can do. The problem in general with all of this is that,
Starting point is 00:39:17 you're really are concerned about the person administering the test. You wanna make sure if somebody's doing it right, you're good. When one in three tests come back with a wrong answer, you might not be good. So if you're getting tested regularly, it doesn't matter what test you're using. You're just glad that you're using a test to make sure so you can get out in public and do what you got to do. Stay safe. The finger prick is a different thing. That's an antibody test. And that's a whole other story. That is completely
Starting point is 00:39:43 not useful unless you just want to know if that sickness that you had in the early part of the year, that cold or cold, you know, that you couldn't figure out and didn't know why you were so sick before we all knew what COVID was. You want to just find out if that's what you had. You can do an antibody test and find out if you test positive, which for that test is the right answer. That tells you, yeah, you know what? You have antibodies in you, which means you were sick, but that is not a useful test at
Starting point is 00:40:07 all to know if you're sick right now. That could be a problem, not at all, because you could be sick and actually be producing antibodies and you could still be in that phase of being sick and not know that thinking, well, if I'm testing positive, I probably was sick at some other time. You know about 45% of Americans right now probably the world but we know it at least in this country. 45% of people are asymptomatically sick. They have no idea they're walking around. No symptoms and they're sick. And so if you don't get a test I mean I can't tell you the number of people that we test that are saying I'm going to Hawaii and going my family vacation vacation. And then four or five people in the family are fine.
Starting point is 00:40:47 And one of them shows up as positive. And you're like, well, first of all, this might not be good for the rest of your family, but second of all, even though you feel great, you're sick. You can't go. And they're like, no, no, no, I'm fine. I feel fine. I'm good.
Starting point is 00:41:00 I gotta get on this trip. We planned it. I gotta get on this, and you can't, you're sick. How about those ones that go halfway up your nose? It's fine, any of them can be fine. Listen, if you're going to get a test, be glad that you can get a test, that's fine. Just recognize that those halfway up the nose, the ones that go in your throat, the ones that swap your cheek, they all come with some kind of potential false negative rate as all tests will and false positive, by the way, as long as you're taking a PCR test, this is the genetic test, you're good.
Starting point is 00:41:33 The ones you keep hearing about now, they're like the $5 tests, they're called antigen tests. Sometimes I ask you about that. That's not so good. I'll tell you why. It can be good, but those are tests that you have to take basically, you know, every day or a few times a week to make sure that you're okay. And the reason that those tests are good, they're cheap. So you can do them often, but they're only used for screening purposes. They're, it's the kind of thing like if you were a sports team and you couldn't afford to do the PCR test, which can be a little pricey. And you're doing these antigen tests, you're taking them a couple times a week, you're
Starting point is 00:42:09 going to know they just have a lower level of sensitivity. They're not as accurate, but if you take them every day or every other day, at least that lower accuracy will prove out when you're just continuing to take it on and on. So there's just, these are things that people don't broadly know because who's educating anybody? The federal government isn't doing it. Right. Right. Let's tell each other what the real story is.
Starting point is 00:42:28 So if I went on your website, girl guy, whatever, I can just buy one of these tests and I, how was the price point? I'm just a test. So if you were to get one today, jet blue is out there today and they're, they're helping us and it's about $143. If you get it on our website, it's about $150. We're pushing that price down as low as we can go. So I'm looking forward to that.
Starting point is 00:42:49 Something really cool is coming. We just figured out how to do a test for the flu along with the COVID test. So think about this. What happens to you when you, in the next month, God forbid, you wake up one day and you just feel terrible. What are you gonna think you have? forbid, you know you wake up one day and you just feel terrible What are you gonna think you have right? Let's not go. Yeah
Starting point is 00:43:09 But you feel terrible. What do you think it's gonna be? It's gonna be like oh god now I have code I have it Yeah exactly like everybody thinks but the flu is out there It's as big as it will ever be. I mean it's out there And so if you find out that you have the flu, you know nowadays is almost silly to say this you're like oh thank God It's just a flu, right? You can't go home. You can't drink juice for six days and I'll be fine. I don't have to have contact tracing.
Starting point is 00:43:30 I don't have to be in quarantine. I just need to stay in bed, get better, I'll be okay. So we're now gonna go ahead and we're gonna build that in. So it'll be the same price. So you'll get a COVID test and a flu test. And now we'll be able to tell people. So we do a lot of testing on college campuses. We do a lot of testing in corporate America.
Starting point is 00:43:46 We're testing entire states. Now we go into states and we're responsible for all the testing in these states. And the public health departments are so glad to know that we're gonna help them in testing because the COVID testing is taking up all the capacity in these labs. And they aren't gonna be able to diagnose
Starting point is 00:44:01 who has the flu and who has COVID. And it's so much more expensive to take care of people with COVID than it is with the flu. So we're going to try to help them settle that. When will that be ready? And two weeks. We're going to start that in two weeks. So it's going to be going. So is anybody else have access to these saliva tests like you or that's just yeah, there are some other people out there. I mean, listen, we just got we got we got into it early because we thought this was going to well,, I told you it's a story why. Yeah, it's great.
Starting point is 00:44:26 We needed to do it, you know. But because we got ahead start, no one knew back in April. I mean, we were ready to go as I told you on that first Monday back there in April when we were approved. And on day one, there were like some friends and family members that took the test. And like, for a month, we were like, oh no, no one's getting a test.
Starting point is 00:44:45 But everybody was at home, you know, being quarantined. And then the PGA called us and they said, we wanna get golfers back on the golf course. Can you help us? And that was the start. Once the golfers did it, then the NBA, what you do it, and you know, sports came back and then college, sports came back
Starting point is 00:45:01 and then colleges came back and then businesses came back and it's just been building ever since. And that's the momentum, yeah, that's it. You got, you get one, and then everyone else kind of comes and follows. So then like now what? So you're still gonna be doing the test. You mentioned a test about the fertility,
Starting point is 00:45:17 taking a test as your age. Is that like a telomere test? Does that what it was? So it is an epigenetic test. So you know, your DNA is your roadmap. That's what your body is working off of to decide, you know, that you're going to have, you know, long hair and you're going to be a certain height and I'm going to have this hair and I'm going to, you know, whatever.
Starting point is 00:45:34 DNA is your roadmap. Your epigenetics, so that's your genetics. Your epigenetics are the, is the effect that the world and that what you do, the way you eat, the way you behave, the way you sleep, you know, if you smoke, that's what you do to create change to your roadmap. So this is an epigenetic test. And what it does is guys donate a sample. And then we take, we take this, yeah, that's, it's the most fun test you can actually take. But you donate a sample and when it gets to the lab, it's a genetic test. So what it, epigenetic test. So what we're looking for is to understand the impact of all the things you do in your life on, on your DNA. And so what happens is is that it comes
Starting point is 00:46:17 back and it says, all right, Jason, you are 48 years old, but your sperm, your biological age, is 51. And here's why. Your weight is out of balance. I don't happen to smoke or drink, but if you did, that can do it. If you eat poorly, if you don't exercise, there's a whole series of things that you do to your life. And this test comes back and says,
Starting point is 00:46:40 these are the things that are actually making your sperm older than you are, which is to say, your biological clock,, which is to say if you're at the age of having kids, that can be an impact because if you're chronological age is 27, but your biological age is like 38, and you're 27 thinking, well, I just, you know, I'm not going to get married, I'm not going to have kids for another few years. If you keep up that trend, by the time you're ready to have kids in your early 30s, your sperm might be well into its 40s, and that's where you can lead to birth defects and other bad things happening if you get pregnant.
Starting point is 00:47:11 As opposed to, and this is what's so interesting, if you get those things under control because you know about them and you understand the impact, you can actually roll back your biological age. You can actually roll back the clock. It's the only thing you can do. You can change your genetic age, but you can change your biological age by getting your health back in order and you can bring your sperm or your, you know, again, your frontal health back down.
Starting point is 00:47:33 But it really is an interesting indicator and it tells guys, this is your clock. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor called with love. Get the taste of raspberry and dark chocolate for the all warm, all fuzzy, all self-care, zero self-doubt you. Grab a with love today. Vitamin water zero sugar, nourish every you. Vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass O.
Starting point is 00:48:03 So what an act. So now I know you're doing all the code that that test is a great test for for men. Are you going to start expanding now into female to women and females and doing a whole different vertical just for them? Yeah. So what has happened now? I mean, imagine that here is a company that was really young, just trying to come out of the ground, just relaunching our brand. And now we've built basically our entire roadmap, our entire strategy for 2021, a year from now, we built that in 10 days, and then maybe a few months after that. But, you know, in this last several months, we built everything we had planned for 2021. So, you know, that old expression is sort of, if you, you know, once you achieve your dreams, you just got a dream
Starting point is 00:48:47 bigger kind of thing. Yep. That's what we are doing. So we're now in the process of launching a really a full-scale diagnostics business. I mean, we figured out how to give you the kind of care at home. We figured out how to give men that care at home. We did a pretty good job of it. We're doing a good job. We're still very much in that business. And then we said, all right, well, now we can do testing on a national level. So let's just go ahead and expand this. There are lots of people that are sick with lots of different
Starting point is 00:49:13 things, lots of chronic conditions. Lots of stuff is making harder to live in life. Why go to a doctor and have to sit there for a visit that you really don't have to sit there for if you can be at home. And as we all learned during COVID, if you wanted to go see a doctor, guess what? In the last few months, you probably had a telehealth appointment because you couldn't get into the real doctor.
Starting point is 00:49:30 True, right, right. You couldn't get into the office. I mean, so now, so like telehealth is the wave of the future period. I mean, that's just going to happen. But why would you ever, from this point forward, ever want to go into the doctor's office if you don't have something to do there physically? If it should sit there and talk to her or talk to him for a minute and then go down the hall to the lab and give blood, we can just do that at
Starting point is 00:49:50 home. Let's keep it simple. And that's what we're doing. So we're expanding now, you know, as we do business anyway across the whole country, we're expanding now all over the place. And yeah, you can you can look forward to some cool things with men and women. But also for women, I like that. But for women, your website is very male centric. It's great. Are you going to have not to compare you to a hymn or hers, but are you going to have a female centric website and a female centric of taking care of female,
Starting point is 00:50:17 even though they can go to gynecologists and do all those things, taking care of helping them with weight loss, recovery, leviton. Because women can have the same issues maybe too, right? Um, you are, you know, it's like you're reading from a strategy book inside. No, yeah, stay tuned. I'm good like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:50:35 That's a lot of cool stuff coming. I, I, I, every day, I, I, you know, my, my mojo's on full tilt now. Like I'm excited every single day because my, my whole reason for being, I've felt this isn't isn't about making money isn't about trying to, you know, have all the things that happen in business, you know, being successful in business. It's it's about doing good for people. I really genuinely have had the mindset always in my life. And now putting it in practice in business and a business that I'm, you know, founding and helping to lead, that if we can, if we can do something that simplifies and makes healthcare more accessible to more people, everybody wins. Because healthy people are productive. Healthy people innovate. Healthy people live successful, happy lives.
Starting point is 00:51:21 Unhealthy people are the opposite of all of that. And when you have a society with that imbalance of people who just don't have access, who are certain they should be, who will not have the advantages that everybody else has, that can afford health insurance, and can afford good care, then you have all these other things that I believe come from that, which is a society that we don't want to live in. So, you know, maybe you can accuse me of being too much of a do-gooder in some sense, but I think for us, if we can make it available at healthcare, more broadly available to everybody,
Starting point is 00:51:53 men, women, children, you name it, then we will have achieved what, or at least we'll be on the path to achieving what we really meant to set out to do. Okay, now I have a couple of questions here. So, besides the COVID testing, which I know that's how you guys exploded, right, with all these saliva testing, just on the verticals you had before then, what was the most popular?
Starting point is 00:52:14 Was it libido? Was it hair loss? Or weight loss? Which one was the most popular for men? The two most popular, I'd say, it's a definitely sexual function. There's no question. Right. I think the guys that were able to discern that it was their libido and not their penis,
Starting point is 00:52:28 that was the problem. It comes down to that. Or the happiest ones. They're the ones who are like, oh my God, you turn this on and everything changes. She loves me, I love me. This is all great. I didn't know it could be this good.
Starting point is 00:52:43 I feel like I'm like 18 again. Right. At one is pretty amazing because it's a big unlock for guys. No, hair is insignificant. Most guys are like, they get over that pretty quick. I think there are some guys that are obsessed. I'm a little obsessed with my hair, but it's kind of like a little superficial,
Starting point is 00:52:58 but it's my thing. But the other one, really. That's okay. You're allowed. It's my thing. But the other one is, you're allowed. It's my thing. But the other one is their body, endurance. You get to an age as a guy and it usually is your late 30s, but definitely in your early 40s where you just, you start getting that weight in the midsection, you start losing muscle
Starting point is 00:53:19 mass in places that you're working out and trying to put the muscle mass on, but no matter how hard you work out, you just can't do it. And then if you go to the doctor and inevitably the doctor says, well, you should eat better, you should sleep better, you should exercise more. And you're like, doc, like fuck you. Like I know that. I don't need that one right here. Like don't tell me that.
Starting point is 00:53:38 What I need is something that's going to be a pill. I need, you know, and no, you don't need to get your life in control. But in many cases, if your hormones are out of balance, you are not going to perform a pill. And no, you don't need to get your life in control. But in many cases, if your hormones are out of balance, you are not going to perform the way you can. And so that's part of where we've been really magical and giving these guys basically the unlock to their health. They understand if they get that fixed, all of a sudden, all the things they want to do, the working out, the playing heart, all those things start to happen because now their body can accept it. Can you, that's great.
Starting point is 00:54:09 I like that answer. Good once. I wanted to, I wanted to pick your brain here because I think there are a lot of people who probably listen to this podcast and the fact that going back to the Amazon just for a little bit or your background with direct to consumer. Can you give a couple of good, easy, or not easy, I shouldn't say that's not easy. Tips on how to really get to the consumer effectively and efficiently beyond just saying Facebook ads, Google ads, make some strategies, like some tips on strategy. I want to pick your brain since I have you in front of me.
Starting point is 00:54:47 Yeah, I have a really hard time with the fact that Facebook and Google, which are obviously massive marketing engines for everybody, that they take lots of your money, and love both products just in daily life, but they're not great in business because they take lots and lots and lots of your money, and like every other brand out there,
Starting point is 00:55:04 they're deciding algorithmically who they're gonna serve it to and who's gonna see it. And then you have to kind of have the right audience. A lot of things have to work and it's expensive and it's hard and it just doesn't work for everything. So I always believe you have to look for not only who your customer is, and that's a, you think that's kind of common sense,
Starting point is 00:55:24 but just because we serve men, but it's not that we serve all men. We serve men that have particular issues in mind, you know, if you try to serve any guy and he's not interested or it doesn't resonate with him, you're just going to miss. So we try to be in the places where he is. So where are guys? Well, you know, they're in a lot of different publications. There are a lot of different podcasts. They're reading different kinds of news. They're using different kinds of apps. They're engaging in society in different ways. And so you have to really go back and say,
Starting point is 00:55:51 who does your target audience look like? Who does your target audience use for information? And who does your target audience listen to? And when you ask those main questions, you can come back very quickly with a list under each of those categories and start to say, all right, what can I afford? Because we don't have the luxury of being Coca-Cola or the worst healthcare brand ever. But I love the company, but it doesn't matter to me if I find another Coke at.
Starting point is 00:56:17 It's like I know Coke exists. I'm trying to figure out as a healthcare brand, how do I put myself out there to make sure that people can see me. I have to be seen in places where the guy is already in the mindset of, I care. So, you know, any of those health journals, blogs, influencers that talk to guys and that tell guys, like, this is how I'm thinking. You may or may not think like me, but if you're thinking like me, here are some of the things I'm doing.
Starting point is 00:56:41 Guys are really responsive to when they see or hear another guy who's like them. They respond really, really well. So it's not the traditional marketing that you'd like to think it is. It isn't just slapping an ad up and hoping a guy will see it. There's some of that. Can you get on the radio? Sure. Can you get on TV?
Starting point is 00:56:57 Maybe if you can afford it. But if you can be in the place where guys are having those exposures, you have a much better shot of winning. I'd love to say it just doesn't work for our business. Referrals would be awesome. There's just a lot of reason why it doesn't work. I told you with some of them, guys just won't do it. That's a big one for you.
Starting point is 00:57:13 They won't. They'll refer their gym, they'll refer their favorite restaurant, they'll refer a drink that they love, but when it comes to like, hey, I feel a certain way, you may be a little bit of that, but that doesn't really work. For us, we've had to find ways to do that. But we've spoken to them. We've built an enormous amount of content. We're cranking out content like crazy. And we're making sure that our content lives in other parts of the web, especially. Guys are very famous for using Dr. Google, which is like the worst possible way to cure yourself. But you know, guys will go out and look for things because they're privately stressing over what's wrong
Starting point is 00:57:47 and they start searching for things. So we try to go out there into the places where they ultimately land, you know, any form of communication out there, especially things that they're reading, like the blogs and the vlogs and some other stuff. Yeah, so I wish I could say that it's totally formulaic and every other business I've ever been in,
Starting point is 00:58:04 it is totally formulaic. every other business I've ever been in, it is totally formulaic. It is based on healthcare. Well, because you had, well, you had $30 million, I think I read, that you guys were first initially. So, how did you divvy up where that went? We took it into the world. An enormous amount of it went into building a tech stack. I mean, I come from the world's greatest tech company and building something that could scale at the level that it has. You know, we build
Starting point is 00:58:29 our men's healthcare business and all the cool capable of the telehealth and the e-prescribing all that stuff. We built that and because we had that, we were able to go do this massive COVID business. So we've built a lot of really cool software that lets us do things that companies that are years older than us, and much bigger than us, or at least were much bigger than us, now we're probably right up there with them, have spent years building, we built all of that. That was my number one focus.
Starting point is 00:58:53 We spent a lot of money there, but marketing is so expensive. Those other companies that you talk about, some of those competitors in the online pharmacy space, they spent $5, $10 million a month. So if we did that, we'd be broke in five minutes. So we had to get really humble and we got to get really clever
Starting point is 00:59:10 and very grassroots and gorilla in the way we were marketing. So you don't spend that ton of money that they would spend that time. Oh, away, no. And my favorite thing to do was PR. If you can go get other people to advertise for you and tell the story.
Starting point is 00:59:23 And listen, I mean, I'm gonna say this and I'm gonna tell you, I am a really, really, really, really humble person. I probably am too humble in a lot of ways, especially when you're leading a company and trying to get people to pay attention to your company. But because of the good work that the team has been doing around COVID and helping people get back to life,
Starting point is 00:59:40 we've been very fortunate that the PR has been, you know, very generous. So whether it's today's show or CNBC or whatever, all over the place, and the New York times every other week, we're constantly getting exposures. So that PR, somebody showed me the other day that we've had something like 800 billion impressions. And impression can be a lot of things. That's amazing.
Starting point is 01:00:01 But it is amazing for a company that's less than it's sold. It's really cool. And I'm very proud. The team did this. This was not me. That's amazing. It is amazing for a company that's less than it's sold. It's really cool. I'm very proud. The team did this. This was not me. It's not me. Because the team was able to do this, we're benefiting from getting guys now to pay attention to vault.
Starting point is 01:00:15 Now, while I can't spend the money to get 800 billion impressions, I can definitely win people over to say, look, we're helping people. Come check us out and let us help you in a different way. So, with your podcast, get it out, which is a great name. Who do you have on then? Is this basically guys who are sharing their stories or is it like experts in the male area? Like who goes on there? It's our chief medical officer, Miles Spar and our chief clinical officer, Alex Pasishek.
Starting point is 01:00:41 They're both doctors on the healthcare idiot. I never know what's really true in healthcare or not. I play the foil and the guys are experts. It's pretty funny, actually. Then there are guys. We opened up a call line for guys. We put out an APB doll. We said, call us with your issues.
Starting point is 01:01:01 Then we'll take those issues and tons of calls. We took those issues and then we made the whole show around that issue and then and then we started having some guests come join us because that was fun. It's really turned out to be a lot of fun. The best part is I you know we were new to podcasts or at least I was when we started this thing back in the beginning of the year and it's funny we're we're really big and all of the the Middle East countries right now it turns really. Yeah you rock Jordan yeah Afghanistan we funny, we're really big in all of the Middle East countries right now. It turns out really. Yeah, Iraq, Jordan, Afghanistan, we're huge, we're big, Libya, we're big, we're really big and Libyan, Saudi Arabia, yeah. So we must be doing something right, but I don't know in the US.
Starting point is 01:01:35 And are you able to, I'm too bad at being a Kenyra subscription packages go that far? I don't think so. I don't think so. Interesting, isn't it that you think about where some of these countries are? And you've got to think that there are guys out there that would love to be able to ask some of these questions too. I make't think so. It's interesting, isn't it? You think about where some of these countries are, and you gotta think that there are guys out there that would love to be able to ask some of these questions too. I make the joke, but it's true, it's funny. I saw this whole chart.
Starting point is 01:01:52 That's funny. You point. Guys, think about this. You're wearing headphones, you're in the gym. You don't know how to have this conversation. It's uncomfortable. And you get three guys talking about penises or something, whatever the topic is
Starting point is 01:02:03 that we're talking about, ejaculation. I mean, the conversations are really fun. But they're serious, too, in a lot of ways. And guys are getting answers. And so they're laughing, but they're actually learning. And they're doing it in a way that's kind of private and very personal. And then hopefully we're helping some guys think about, all right, I shouldn't feel bad. I can do something about this.
Starting point is 01:02:21 I mean, there's so many regulations regulations though, with medical stuff, right? Like, you have to go through, probably so many hoops for every different region, sit not, there's just for every different state. That alone must be very timely, right? And is it expensive? Is that expensive? I would imagine that's very expensive to kind of.
Starting point is 01:02:39 It practicing medicine, I mean, one of the problems that makes healthcare so damn inaccessible in this country is just exactly that. You are spot on. The law does not support or regulations don't support broad availability and an easy way of practicing healthcare. Licenses everywhere. The way that you prescribe drugs.
Starting point is 01:02:59 Just everything is just hard. In order to order a car, order a dinner, order anything online, it pills for that matter online, it sure seems like healthcare should be able to be that simple. And so that's part of the challenge. We're saying, all right, tell you what, at least guys for now, but for everybody later, we will make this so much easier for you
Starting point is 01:03:19 that you won't have to struggle like everybody has always struggled. We're just going to simplify this and make healthcare available for you. And we'll do all the hard work behind the scenes so you never have to. And do you think that eventually insurance will be able to kick in or that's just not going to happen?
Starting point is 01:03:33 That's a tough one. We take insurance for COVID testing, for a lot of the places where we do a lot of testing. But for men's health, women had to fight for decades to get care for basic things like mammography or pap smears or things that you can't even conceive wouldn't be covered today. It would be horrifying to think that a woman wouldn't be able to check for breast cancer at a young age because insurance wouldn't cover it.
Starting point is 01:03:56 But a few years ago, a little bit more than a few years ago, that was not always the case. Right. And are exactly where women were. And that much of the care that we go and get is not covered by insurance unless something's just broken. So I can go in and claim to be sick and have my insurance cover it. But if I want to do something that's preventative, not covered. So we're working hard to show the payers, the insurance companies, that the kind of care that we're delivering is actually making it easier to keep people
Starting point is 01:04:25 out of the healthcare system and for them to want to pay for it so that guys will just be thinking prevention before they think recovery. Prevention, right? It's always going to be cheaper down the road if you're vent, for sure. I mean, I think that's it, Jason.
Starting point is 01:04:39 I'm done with you. You did great. Thank you. Thank you for being a guest on habits and hust hustle pleasure. This was so fun. I'm hoping that the hustle part will get me to the rest of the day. I really, I love talking to you. Thanks for giving me the time and sharing with me. This was fun. Oh, absolutely. I love talking to you. I just learned a bunch of stuff about the male, just basically the male health care system or whatever.
Starting point is 01:05:05 I can't wait to have a female, the women stuff. When do you think we can get, when do you think that will happen realistically? Stay tuned, 2021's gonna be a very busy year and we're coming upon it fast, so it's gonna come. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. How do people find more information on Voltaelth
Starting point is 01:05:22 or you or whatever? Yeah, you can Google the hell out of it. You can definitely listen to the podcast get it up. But you can also come to VaultHealth.com or if you need a COVID test, that's the big one, VaultHealth.com slash COVID. And we'll be here to help you. Well, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. I appreciate it.
Starting point is 01:05:42 Thank you so much. Excucess we in heaven that the habits and hustle podcasts power by happiness Hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm Heather Monahan host of Creating Confidence, a part of the YAP media network, the number one business and self-improvement podcast network. Okay, so I want to tell you a little bit about my show. We are all about elevating your confidence to its highest level ever and taking your business right there with you. Don't believe me? I'm going to go ahead and share some of the reviews of the show so you can believe my listeners. I have been a longtime fan of Heather's, no matter what phase of life I find myself in, Heather seems to always have the perfect gems of wisdom that not only
Starting point is 01:06:45 inspire, but motivate me into action. Her experience and personality are unmatched and I love her go getter attitude. This show has become a staple in my life. I recommend it to anyone looking to elevate their confidence and reach that next level. Thank you! I recently got to hear Heather at a live podcast taping with her and Tracy Hayes and I immediately subscribed to this podcast. It has not disappointed and I cannot wait to listen to as many as I can as quick as I can. Thank you Heather for helping us build confidence and bring so much value to the space. If you are looking to up your confidence level, click creating confidence now. you

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