Episode Details

As we navigate multiples cities and juxtapositions of industries and attendees this week and last, we toke 30 min. today to compare notes and had a few aha’s real-time. This was a very efficient way to keep sharing timely insights amidst our time shortage. Crazy as it may seem, we are going to find ourselves in the SAME PLACE along with our friend Erin Martin at our mutual friend Ryland Engelhart Sovereignty Ranch down in Texas for his Food Is Medicine event starting tomorrow - (Tickets) for a “weekend of homestead-skill-building, legislation-changing, self-healing discussions and workshops. We’ll spend 4 days challenging the systems that keep us sick and dependent, and emerge a healthier, more food sovereign community, and we’ll do it together.” JOIN US!

I must admit when you pair this with a dinner Monday night in DC full of CMS officiaLs, a day in NYC that included foreign royalty, followed Thursday night by a dinner meeting with a middle Eastern leader about Lifestyle Medicine… ending it on a world renowned regenerative ranch with my peeps will be a relief AND go down as the craziest week yet. Notice how I say yet.

Attached is our recording and below is a rough summary of what we covered.

The DIY Health Crisis

Here’s what hit me during Carter’s debrief from the Canaccord Genuity wellness conference in New York: 320 million Americans are essentially DIYing their health span and lifespan. They’re pulling from three separate, poorly coordinated buckets - food, supplements, and pharmaceuticals, to achieve something that should be integrated.

Think about it. You eat food. You take supplements. You consume pharmaceuticals. Each has its own “experts,” its own delivery system, its own economic model. But inside your body? It’s all one chemistry experiment, and you’re the unlicensed lab technician trying to figure out the recipe.

The Apple Analogy That Changes Everything

Carter made a comparison that stopped me cold: “Can you imagine Apple saying, ‘oh, you know what, we’ll give you the hardware, but you got to go to these other people to get the software’?”

We accept this fragmentation in health because... well, because we always have. But somebody at Apple sat down and said, “we can make more money if we integrate these things.” The result? They became one of the most valuable companies in the world by eliminating customer friction and taking responsibility for the entire user experience.

When Pharma Starts Thinking Like Apple

Here’s where it gets interesting. Novo Nordisk showed up at this wellness conference announcing they’re developing a high bioavailable protein supplement to go with their GLP-1 drugs. Why? Because they’re seeing massive drop-off after 12 months when patients should ideally stay on for 24-36 months.

This isn’t just about being “capitalist” - though it certainly is that. This is pharma recognizing they need customer success. In software, customer success teams replaced support teams when companies realized they wanted customers to actually succeed with their products, not just troubleshoot problems.

The Missing Customer Success Layer

There’s a company with a supplement that matches a $40,000 biologic pharmaceutical for IBS. When patients struggle with complications from the expensive drug, they often quit. This supplement keeps them on the therapy. The pharma company suddenly got very interested when they realized: “Oh wait, you have a supplement that keeps people using our $40,000 drug AND you have digital information about our consumers that we don’t have.”

Tesla has customer success. Apple has customer success. Pharma doesn’t. Food doesn’t. Healthcare doesn’t.

You walk into an Apple stor