Regaining Peak Performance with Dr. Tracy Gapin

george grombacher 0:02
Doctor. Jonathan liberty is the founder and CEO of remedy place. They are the world’s first social wellness club. Welcome to the show, Jonathan, thanks for having me. Yeah, excited to have you on. Tell us a little about your personal lives, more about your work and why you do what you do.

Jonathan Leary 0:17
Right? I’ve been working on remedies since 2012 it was my original practice idea. I just didn’t want to work in a hospital. And I was like, Alright, I’m going to create a different type of environment with some hospitality standards so it could be an enjoyable experience. You know, I went into it worked on my doctorate. I’ve worked on my business plan through my doctorate, and I graduated, thinking I was going to start this amazing dream practice, and realized that business loans aren’t that easy. So I pivoted and I opened up a sports medicine practice that I had for five years where I got to update the business plan after listening to patients, what worked, what didn’t work, what were they willing to do? What were they not willing to do, common lifestyle habits, and in 2019 I was able to open our first club. And as you mentioned, Remy the world’s first social wellness club. So we’re not a gym, we’re not a spa, we don’t do beauty we don’t do esthetics. We’re just trying to make people feel good and change the narrative of how they’re socializing so they can take care of themselves and have fun at the same time.

george grombacher 1:21
Awesome. So you get the idea in 2012 because money and and obtaining large sums of money, which I’m sure that it took, it’s a little trickier than you thought. You spent five years in practice. Then you open the thing, and then COVID comes along. So I don’t,

Jonathan Leary 1:39
you know, all of these things have made us stronger. And you know, instead of looking at everything in life as a stress, I look at it as a nice form of resistance. And as we know, resistance makes us stronger. So very grateful for the timeline and the experiences, and I think that’s what makes us such a strong business couldn’t

george grombacher 1:57
have happened any other way. Alright? So, so what is a social wellness club?

Jonathan Leary 2:02
Yeah, so it’s just self care made social. You know, right now, most people go to socialize by having food or drink. And I’m like, you know, to bring people together for a date, or they go after work, or they go on a Friday night, everything to where they host a big event. I’m like, let’s just take away the food and alcohol and add a self care experience, and then naturally, you know, as a test in the beginning, in 2019 when people actually do this as a date, but they actually do this as a meeting, would they actually throw an event here? And that’s actually what stuck. And it’s just cool to see that the pandemic and the time and the place and the decrease in alcohol consumption and people feeling alone, it’s kind of like all come together at the perfect time where people are sicker than they’ve ever been. We’re making them feel better and healthier. People are lonelier than they’ve ever been. We’re giving them new ways to connect with people. And then lastly, we see is that most of the time our social life negatively impacts our health, so it’s interesting. But I think, as we see in the future, with alcohol consumption going down and down every year in this sorry, the statistics show how fast it’s declining, people are going to need new experiences to come and connect, so why not pick something that makes you better?

george grombacher 3:23
It all makes it sounds like it makes perfect sense. I mean, I’m somebody who I’m 46, years old. I try to be really healthy. I’ve got kids and a family, and one of my only social outlets forever has been going to happy hour or grabbing a drink. And I recognize that. Number one, I don’t always want to do that. Number two, it’s not necessarily good for me, so I imagine I’m probably part of the demographic that you’re looking for. Yeah.

Jonathan Leary 3:48
I mean, it’s crazy when we think Alcohol is a depressant and a dissociative and people are struggling with mental health and don’t feel connected. So it’s just pushing us more and more into feeling isolated and alone, where, like being in a sauna together, or an ice bath together, or any of these experiences are actually enhancing your physiology and bringing out the better sides of you, and that’s where you actually can test connections and strengthen connections with the people that you’re doing

george grombacher 4:18
it with. It’s funny, I did an IV drip for the first time a couple of years ago, and I was sitting there thinking, what a great place to do like a networking meeting. I’m not just blowing smoke at you. I swear to God, I thought, yeah, a great way to get to know somebody. You’re just sitting here having the same experience. And then my wife just did a friend’s date at a spa this past weekend, and she said it was so great, we’re able to go and get a massage and then just hang out. So yeah, sort of what you’re sort of what you’ve created.

Jonathan Leary 4:47
Well, it’s even like last night, me and one of my close friends, we had the contrast suite, which is like a rotating through sauna shower experience and cold plunge, and we had like a mini bar and bottle service, but it’s all fancy waters and. So you know, to end the weekend on something that like, we feel incredible. We got really deep conversations. We were like present in the moment. We were on our phones. It just makes so much sense. And once you start making we call them like social substitutions, once you start making these substitutions, you start to realize how much better these experiences can be and then you feel incredible the next day and you sleep incredible that night. I

george grombacher 5:26
think that that’s a great term, social substitutions. So are you? Do you view yourself as as competition for with the lifetime fitnesses of the world, with country clubs, with health clubs? No,

Jonathan Leary 5:41
I think the way I look at this industry is like, it’s almost like restaurants, right? Every restaurant, they all serve food, so everyone’s serving wellness, but how they deliver the experience, the environments, the type of people that go there, in the innovation that happens with the in each people are going to gravitate to wherever they feel that they trust the most, that they feel the best and like is the community that they want to be a part of. And I think most health clubs in the past have like, you know, they try to do it all right? They have the restaurant, they have the gym, they have the spa, but it’s usually what I’ve seen. It’s really hard to be a master of all of those and to perfect all of them. And, you know, I used to work in the restaurant industry. I’ve seen them all. Have so much time there, I don’t want to run a restaurant. It’s not my expertise. It’s a tough business. That’s why we don’t have a restaurant. People would love for us to have a restaurant, but not going to be in the wheelhouse. Same thing with gyms. You know, there’s a million gyms in these cities that we’re going I don’t want to be a gym, you know, I think that’s where we’re just like, owning this category. We trademark and own social wellness club, social self care, all these things that we created. And I’m still trying to really define what that means, because it’s not a traditional health club. It’s not a spa. And I think a lot of the times, you know, people get pushed into like, beauty or esthetics or more medical based procedures because they’re like, higher price tags and good for business. But I’m like, I just want to perfect self care, make it social, and just change the narrative of how people are socializing.

george grombacher 7:23
As you’re as you’re explaining that it certainly makes sense. And I was thinking about the different sort of med spas that are coming up or coming online, and I don’t necessarily view any of those as as as being social. It just is where I’m going to go and get some kind of a treatment, but not socialize.

Jonathan Leary 7:40
Yeah, and listen that that might work for that demographic. But for us, now that we’ve been open since 2019, we have so much data we like have been listening, and I’ve also was listening for five years before, in my practice, we have a really good understanding of what our consumer wants, but there’s going to be different needs in different communities and different approaches. And I’m just happy that all of this is getting the attention that it finally deserves, and people are really waking up about their health. So for me, it’s less about competition, it’s more about this movement. You know, it’s a multi trillion dollar industry that’s growing extremely fast, and most things need to be corrected or fully transformed or haven’t even started yet. So like all of our dreams and our goals are super ambitious, but so is the opportunity, and it’s not about competing against anyone. It’s about everyone in the world needs these things. And I feel so strongly about that that I’m just excited that there are so many things popping up, because that just means that the things that are not traditional or ordinary are finally being considered normal. And that’s what excites me,

george grombacher 8:52
was, was there competition when you started this, do you view that there’s competition now that you’ve been in business for five, going on six years.

Jonathan Leary 9:00
No. I mean, listen, there’s places that do IVs or ice baths or saunas or hyperbarics, but there’s still really nothing like remedy. And I think a lot of a lot of companies or health clubs have popped up. They have the gym, they have the restaurant, but their approach is so different. And I, you know, in the industry and within the network, I’ve met with a lot of these owners, and it’s exciting. We’ll go into each other’s spaces, and they’ll be like, Oh, we’re we’re nothing really alike, and even if we offer a similar service, it’s still so different. So yeah, I wouldn’t say that really any direct competition, other than there’s direct service competition.

george grombacher 9:44
How do you how do you describe what, what, what remedy place is, or who it’s for? Is this a luxury item? Is it mass affluent?

Jonathan Leary 9:53
Yeah, no, we’re definitely luxury. We’re not a high volume place, we’re not high traffic. We’re. Uh, you know, luxury, private experiences for you and your party size, and that’s important to us. You know, we’re working with the top people in in each industry, naturally that have just gravitated towards us, um, and that’s really where we fully, that’s where we ended up catering to. And I think you me, yeah,

george grombacher 10:25
I think that. I think that that certainly makes sense. So I saw that you have seven pillars of holistic, holistic wellness. Did you start off with more? Was it fewer? How did you How has it been distilled all the way down? And I’m sure that you’re always open to change and evolve as needs change or desires change. Yeah.

Jonathan Leary 10:45
I mean, we’ve that’s where we started. So at the end of the business coming to life, when we first opened in 2019 we had seven pillars, but now they’ve substantially changed and have grown so much. And that’s just based on our data collection and based on listening to people and also us testing like everything’s in remedy. Not there because someone pitched me a fancy technology. It’s there because I’ve used it firsthand and with my patients for a really long period of time, and I don’t ever want to put anything in remedy unless they know it works, because it’s really important for us to have trust and for people to know that everything there is the best of the best, and we only want to offer the best for our clientele. Got

george grombacher 11:31
it so as you are developing your business plan, I imagine that you’re obviously asking questions and you have this idea, and then the five years of asking and listening and just thought process always changing, it strikes me that, well, what were you most concerned with, and did that bear out to be a legitimate concern? Or,

Jonathan Leary 11:56
yeah, the number one complaint that I heard for five years was Dr Leary. I feel incredible, but all of these lifestyle changes that you’ve implemented have ruined my social life, and now I’m lonely. And I remember just being like, wow, like it’s true, like they aren’t doing any of their normal social activities because most of them are centered around alcohol or not sleeping. And I just remember documenting it over and over again. Why is it everything we do when we socialize has to have a negative consequence to our health? And that’s what really spun remedy plays to be social. You know, we’ve always known social connection. Human connection was important for mental health. And I think what we’ve seen since the remedies open is the actual proof of physical health and the role of human connection and longevity. I mean, Harvard just released an 80 year old study showing these connections, but that wasn’t the original intention. It was really the social component. But now it kind of all has come together. Can you

george grombacher 12:58
tell me a little bit more about the Harvard study,

Jonathan Leary 13:00
yeah, so it’s an 80 year old study just on key like understanding the impact of human connection on longevity. And I think what we’re finding with in that study and outside of that study is even things within, like Blue Zones. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the actual area. Sometimes it’s about the communities and the amount of human interaction. And then now we’re actually being able to measure the correlation of the human connection on physical health. And I think there’s a lot of interesting statistics and studies that are now showing that, especially with all the isolation that happened with COVID, and how much that deteriorates not only our mental health, but our physical health and the there was just one statistic that was released a couple months ago that pure social isolation, being completely alone, could be as as toxic as having six alcohol beverages a day.

george grombacher 13:59
It’s scary for sure, crazy,

Jonathan Leary 14:01
and it sounds it doesn’t. I mean, when you said human connection years ago is like, a very woo thing, but no, it’s like, no, this is scientifically proven. We need human connection, we need human interaction. We need community.

george grombacher 14:16
Yeah, that the the, I wasn’t sure if you were referring to the same study. I think it’s, I think it’s called the grant study from Harvard, and it’s the longest running study on what makes for a happy, rich life. And that was the big finding across generations of people, is is the quality of their connection. So I speak, I think about that a lot, and everything you’re saying certainly makes a lot of sense to me, and a lot of the hazards, as I already mentioned, that I’ve run into trying to socialize and stay connected with people. So I think that, I think that this is great what have, just from an operational standpoint, I feel like most gyms fail because their overhead is too high, and then not enough people join. But. Maybe I’m wrong.

Jonathan Leary 15:02
Yeah, I mean, gyms are tough, tough business models. I think their their goal is to get, like, if you have 10 or 15% EBITDA in a gym, it’s like, that’s a good a good win. But our models a little bit different than a gym. I think a lot of gyms are hoping a lot of members that don’t show up, and that’s how the good ones really, or the big ones really stay, right? Um, but it is interesting that our members don’t just not come. Not only do they come, they use everything and then go above. So our problem is kind of like the inverse, where it’s not high, like memberships with no one coming, it’s like memberships, and they’re using everything and then doing more.

george grombacher 15:45
Yeah, that’s really funny. The business model for XYZ fitness center is sell as many memberships as you possibly can, and then hope that nobody actually shows up. You’re trying the opposite. You want to sell a handful, and hope that everybody comes every single day and loves it so much that they tell all of their other friends and they join as well. Yeah,

Jonathan Leary 16:06
and I think, well with health, right? You know, in order to actually really care and to like, educate people and check on them, it takes a lot of time. So if you are delivering like care in a brick and mortar in order to give the proper time and attention that someone actually needs, especially when they’re so vulnerable and everyone’s so sick and everyone is struggling, you can’t really do high volume, you know, because that’s it’s tough, because then you’re not giving each patient their the amount of like time. I think the average doctor visit in America is eight minutes long. You tell me how I can get to know somebody and educate them and give them a plan in eight minutes. We’re not really set up for success. And I think that’s the tough part, where that is one of the biggest areas of improvements that I think the healthcare system needs. I think how we change everything that’s going on the world is through education. Your body and your mind are your number one asset. You don’t even know how it works. You don’t even know how to take care of it. So no one’s set up for success. And education takes a lot of time. Then it takes a lot of hard work on on the patient. The patient has to put in the work, not the doctor. But I just feel like everyone’s so hopeless because no one knows what to do, and in order to actually do that at scale or individualized, it just takes a lot of time. So I’m hoping, with like advancements in AI and new software, that will be able to educate on the masses based on like educated data, I think that we’re going to see a lot of amazing things come out of AI with healthcare. Because if the goal is really just to educate, and that’s what makes everything accessible, AI is going to do that for sure.

george grombacher 17:54
Yeah, I think that that makes sense. So how many locations do you have? What does the future hold? Yeah.

Jonathan Leary 18:00
So we have three locations open. We’re opening one more in a couple months in at the end of q1 in Boston, which we’re very excited about. The goal is to scale these across the country. You know, we’re mapping those out, but we’re not allowed to say, Call and tell you up to Boston. We just released our first big product with Kohler as an ice bath, we are the first place in the world turn ice baths into a class format in a commercial setting. So instead of booking into a workout class, you’re booking into a breath work ice bath class. And it blew up off the bat. We put out all the people in industry and these celebrities in their first ice bath. We had hundreds of millions of views online. And then, naturally, when we’re thinking about the first product to make, we knew we needed to make an ice bath. So when trying to figure out the right partner, because we’re not manufacturers or engineers, I know what our strength was, which was our expertise and our data and our design. And then when trying to find the perfect partner, Kohler has been making baths for 150 years, so it was a no brainer that it was the perfect compliment, and we worked on it for two years and just released it in October, and that is the first of many you know, our hope is to help build out every piece of technology we have. So as we create the industry, we also can supply the industry and then use our brand and our platform to educate the industry and create safety protocols, treatment protocols, regulatory protocols. Once again, this is so much bigger than myself or remedy that I really want to help the industry as a whole. And I think through our clubs, our products, our future digital infrastructure and platform, I think we can really, you know, help a lot of people. And the goal is just to keep, you know, last year we had two clubs. Now we’re gonna have four clubs this year that I want to double the amount of people that we were able to help and double the amount of times we were able to do that. And I just want to do cool things with cool people that. To really want to make impact. I feel like there’s so much to do, and I think that’s what keeps me up at night, is because there’s endless opportunities and endless things to do. There’s only so much time, so I’m trying to take it at the slowest pace that I can, while trying to do as much as possible,

george grombacher 20:21
doing cool things with cool people. The essence of doing a cold plunge with your best friends. I absolutely love it. Well, Jonathan, this is, this is really exciting. Thank you so much for coming on and telling us a little bit about remedy place. How do we learn more?

Jonathan Leary 20:38
So I would say follow along on Instagram. I think that’s our probably most frequent platform that we utilize, at remedy place, just at reming place. And then for me personally, is at Dr Jonathan Leary, both will be up to date on our events, our clubs, educational information and just staying in the loop of all the things that we have going on.

george grombacher 21:00
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, show Jonathan your appreciation. Share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, who also likes doing cool things with cool people. Find him on Instagram at remedy place and at Jonathan Leary, dr, Jonathan Leary, I will link all of those in the notes of the show. Thanks again, Jonathan.

Jonathan Leary 21:19
Thank you so much for having me till next time,

george grombacher 21:23
remember do your part by doing your best. You.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.