317. Perimenopause Symptoms Beyond Hot Flashes - Shahab & Durana Elmi

Perimenopause is more than hot flashes, and Gary says it can start as early as your 30s. Gary Brecka and Sage Workinger sit down with Shahab and Durana Elmi to talk night sweats, crushing morning exhaustion, brain fog, bloating and mood shifts, what husbands often miss, and how the DUTCH hormone test helped Gary and Sage figure out what was going on. Plus, what it takes to build a business with your spouse. Don’t guess, test. Click here to join Gary’s VIP Community: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Connect with Shahab Elmi Website: https://bit.ly/3WvTmHF Instagram: https://bit.ly/4kkTvaP Facebook: https://bit.ly/3Umcp6v LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4ipwjWv Connect with Durana Elmi Website: https://bit.ly/3UnFlLC Instagram: https://bit.ly/4yMu4Ti TikTok: https://bit.ly/4yQCOb0 LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/47MlHvT Thank you to our partners CYMBIOTIKA: “BRECKACYM30” FOR 30% OFF: https://bit.ly/4tjyluP AION: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD AIRES: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/4a3Duze BAJA GOLD: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BREW: THE ULTIMATE COFFEE: https://bit.ly/4elHM82 COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN SHOWER HEAD: https://thecoldlife.com/products/ultimate-showerhead CYMBIOTIKA: “BRECKACYM30” FOR 30% OFF: https://bit.ly/4tjyluP GENETIC METHYLATION TEST (UK ONLY): https://bit.ly/48QJJrk GENETIC TEST (USA ONLY): https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC H2TABS: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S PEPTUAL: “TUH10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4mKxgcn SNOOZE: LET’S GET TO SLEEP!: https://bit.ly/4pt1T6V WHOOP: JOIN & GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps 00:00 - Introduction: Perimenopause and Building a Business Together 02:37 - Night Sweats and the First Perimenopause Signs 04:49 - Starting a Business During Menopause 08:49 - DUTCH Test and Perimenopause Symptoms 09:23 - Early Onset and the Rocket Fuel Book 11:26 - Why Spouse Business Partners Can't Unplug 14:24 - Helping People as the Company's Why 23:41 - Hot Flashes and Broken Sleep 27:41 - Altitude Control Rooms and Intermittent Hypoxia 32:24 - Stepping Away Instead of Acting on Emotion 34:21 - Gummies vs Liposomal Supplements 36:46 - Single-Use Packets and Oxygen Degradation 39:30 - Why Vitamin C Needs Cofactors 41:20 - Underdosed All-in-One Multivitamins 43:34 - What It Means to Be an Ultimate Human Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  When you have kids, they introduce complexities, go through menopause, that different complexities. Every time you add one of these layers, it becomes more difficult. I was so ignorant of the whole thing. I panicked because I had no idea what it was. She was going through hell.

• 0:11Gary Brecka?

  First, we like built a business, which is basically taking your relationship through everything that's meant to tear you apart. And then we hit menopause.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  Like, I wonder about people that might be just starting it now with someone and then they're going through that on top of the stresses of building a business with your spouse. It was already hard enough when I was normal. I can't even imagine trying to start something with somebody now.

• 0:31Speaker 03

  Initially, it's so scary because you don't know what you're going through. But once you can put your arms around it, it's such an embracing moment of womanhood. Because for me, what menopause did is it made me more confident in my skin than I've ever been.

• 0:45Gary Brecka?

  When you have a business partner with it, your spouse or not, you still have a partner in the business. And it's perfectly normal for you to constantly gauge who's providing more value at any given time. And it caused a lot of friction.

• 0:55Speaker 03

  Entrepreneurship, I say, really forces you to face every unhealed part of yourself. It has its ups and downs. We're so passionate about our business. It's hard to separate the two.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  When you do come to a disagreement, and you guys have a lot of stuff going on right now, how do you resolve it?

• 1:12Speaker 00

  When people ask us, what's the most difficult part?

• 1:27Gary Brecka?

  Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And I'm joined today by my wife, by Shahab and Durana. We are going to go down the road of what it takes to build a business with your spouse. Because Sage and I don't run into a lot of other couples that have built a business from scratch together. And I'm always curious about how they survived because...

• 1:55Speaker 00

  Well, because they've killed each other.

• 1:57Gary Brecka?

  We barely survived.

• 2:01Gary Brecka?

  No, and you were telling an amazing story, which I want to get to in a second about our wives. But we are in the next chapter. First, we like built a business, which is like basically taking your relationship through everything that's meant to tear you apart.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16Gary Brecka?

  And if you're still standing on the other side of it, you're good.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Celebrate.

• 2:20Gary Brecka?

  Celebrate. And then we hit menopause.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Yes, we.

• 2:24Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, it's a fresh, new, bright, new category for me as a biohacker. And to all the other husbands that are out there, that's a...

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Let's just worry about the husbands.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I made the mistake of telling, using a similar verbiage with my wife around perimenopause. I said, "we."

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  Oh, and she said, "all this we, we, we." Speak French.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  I'm going through it. But yes, it's, you know, the guys, we're part of this too.

• 2:51Gary Brecka?

  Well, you were telling me before the podcast that you woke up in the middle of the night one night and your wife was like sweating like she had been in a monsoon storm.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:58Gary Brecka?

  And that's when you knew that it started.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  I was so, to be honest, I was so ignorant of the whole thing. I hate to admit it, but I was so ignorant. And I panicked because I had no idea what it was. It was like...

• 3:09Gary Brecka?

  Alien.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  It was like one of these storms you have here in Miami where it was just drenched. And from that moment on, it was, I've never seen my wife, 27 years now, she was going through hell. And we marginalize it, I think, because it's just part of the process. But it's, yes, it's part of the process that women go through, but holy...

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Nobody's ever talked about it publicly until now. I feel like it's such a conversation now. And maybe it's just because we're in it. And so, you know, my Instagram feed is all about perimenopause and all the symptoms and everything. But I just feel like now, even my gynecologist, you know, my OB-GYN, she had no idea. It was just like, drink some green tea and take some folic acid. I'm like, that would put me...

• 3:52Gary Brecka?

  You're like, I want to stab my husband for no reason. Literally, I would walk into the room and she'd go, "Look, you may want to leave the room. I am furious with you, but I'll just tell you, I have nothing to be upset with you about, but I'm furious with you right now." I go, "Okay, I'm gonna bang a U-turn and just leave." I would wake up in the morning, go, "Babe, I'm sorry."

• 4:12Speaker 03

  I love that. When I heard that on your podcast, I thought that was the best thing ever.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  I knew there was something wrong with me because after 28 years, it was the first time I wanted to kill him.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  It took 28 years?

• 4:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. But it was a different type of, "I want to kill you."

• 4:26Speaker 00

  It was that's real murder, actual, not metaphorical murder, like real murder.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  But I was struggling with myself, not knowing, right? It's the unknown.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  And then, then you're so irritable. Everything irritates you.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  What a journey that is.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:42Gary Brecka?

  So how, I'll tell you how we walked out of it. I didn't mean to turn this into a menopause podcast.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  No, it's, I mean, it's all part of it.

• 4:47Gary Brecka?

  Down that road. Did I bang a...

• 4:48Speaker 02

  I honestly, do you think that with what you guys are going through right now, could you have started a successful business together? And then, like, I wonder about people that might be just starting it now with someone and then they're going through that on top of the stresses of building a business with your spouse. I mean, it was already hard enough.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  When I was normal. I can't even imagine, you know, trying to start something with somebody now.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  I can't imagine going through menopause and starting something. So I think first you should probably tackle the menopause and then start something. But entrepreneurship, I say, really forces you to face every unhealed part of yourself. Right? It really does. I mean, you have to face your ego. You have to face your confidence up or down. And so, we, we've been building for a long time and beyond just...

• 5:39Speaker 00

  This is our fifth company. And so, we've gone through this ride before, up and down.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  It's impressive.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  I agree with Durana. I think, like, to the viewers out there, anything's possible at any age.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  I think it's much easier before you have kids. So like, there's stages to this thing, right? So like, when you have kids, they introduce complexities. And then when the kids get older and you go through menopause, that different complexities. Every time you add one of these layers, it becomes more difficult. And so, I look back and looking back to our twenties, it was so much easier then.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  You know more now, but your variables were different then. So I agree with you, Sage. I think it's just tougher. Everything is tougher when you get older. But you know more stuff. Like, there's a give and take. You know more stuff. You have more experience. You have a little more money.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  And I've been experienced enough around my wife to know how to survive when things get wrong. And look, I gave a couple of best man speeches last year, and I've learned this very valuable lesson. And for yours out there, this one is free.

• 6:32Gary Brecka?

  This one's free.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  This is a very simple formula. Stick with this formula. When you're right as a husband or a man, you're really wrong.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  When your wife is right, she's really, really right. Okay? When your wife is wrong, she's actually right.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  She's still right. Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 00

  And when you're wrong, you're not regular wrong. You're disastrous wrong. So if you, if you listen to this formula, you'll be fine.

• 6:59Gary Brecka?

  You'll be fine.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  We'll survive 28 years.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  And look, and I'll give you the mic, but I'll tell you this. I'm not one of these guys that says like, you have to just bend over because your wife is upset. I think it's a give and take. This relationship is two ways. But also, it's also important to recognize what women go through. Women's journey is way different to guys. Our guys, we're simple. We watch some football. We want to work out. Feed us. And we're pretty happy.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Maybe one more thing.

• 7:24Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  And we're all very happy.

• 7:25Gary Brecka?

  Which was the biggest struggle for menopause for me is because that went right out the window.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Family may be watching, so I don't want to go there. But I was complaining to Sage about that off air earlier. But guys are easy. Women, we have two little girls, 11 and 13. So they're starting to go through that first process. And then they get older and then they have kids. And then they have to give birth. And then postpartum, you have to raise, most, most women are the ones that raise kids. Men participate. Moms are moms. They're number one always. And then finally, the kids get older and they leave. Women go, "Yes, we're in the clear." And then perimenopause kicks in. It's like, come on, man. The whole journey is ups and downs with difficulty. So as guys, we got to recognize that and be supportive.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. But perimenopause, interesting. Initially, it's so scary because you don't know what you're going through. And what's great is now women are educating themselves. The education, the tools, and the resources are out there more than ever. But once you can put your arms around it, I think it's such an embracing moment of womanhood. Because for me, what menopause did is it made me more confident in my skin than I've ever been.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:32Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  It's also helped me shed the things that no longer serve me in all levels. Because now I'm like, I'm at a different level than I've ever been before, and I feel more confident than ever. Like, I don't know. I just feel like I'm in the zone.

• 8:49Gary Brecka?

  Well, the hormone thing for us was a huge, like, that was a huge transition. Like, when we, when we got the Dutch test and figured it out and put her on the entire complement, complement of hormones, we did a whole podcast on it. Three weeks, like, she was a completely different person. Because I think a lot of women just frame menopause as like the hot flashes, maybe a little bit of irritability. But it's like crushing exhaustion in the morning, brain fog.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Blowed it.

• 9:16Gary Brecka?

  The most organized person in the world is not the most disorganized person in the world.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  It's like all of a sudden I have ADD and...

• 9:22Gary Brecka?

  The irritability, you know, libido, leaving the building, like, and all of it happens in, in a relatively short period of time. And I think a lot of women think it's reserved for women in their 50s. And it can really start in your late 30s.

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:34Gary Brecka?

  And so, getting the...

• 9:37Speaker 00

  The Dutch test and getting the hormone component figured out, that was, that was magical for us. But we were on the other side of having built our, our business at that point. When we started building the business, my little piece of advice is if you're starting a business with your spouse, read a book called Rocket Fuel. It, it talks about the difference between an integrator and a visionary. Cause I was the visionary, she was the integrator. So I was the one that was like making the, the phone ring and bringing people through the door and creating the traffic. So I placed all the value on that. She was the one to make sure the bills got paid on time and, and payroll got made and that employees had contracts and our vendors were taken care of. And I didn't place much value on that and it caused a lot of friction because it's almost, you know, when you have a business, business partner with it, your spouse or not,

• 10:21Speaker 00

  you still have a partner in, in the business and it's perfectly normal for you to constantly gauge who's providing more value at any given time. And I'm like, hey, if it wasn't for me, the door, no one would be coming through that door and the phone wouldn't be ringing. So I should be making all the decisions. But what that book did was help me reframe the importance of having an integrator and being the visionary. And I think after we read that, like our arguments went down by 90%. And actually the whole trajectory of the business.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really changed how we looked at things. I also started to respect him more too, instead of just thinking it was this crazy guy who comes up with a million ideas that we cannot do. You know, and, and being the bad guy and having to say, okay, that's great. You came up with 300 awesome ideas, but we have the time, energy, staff and money for three. So pick your favorite three and you'd be like, you're so negative.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  I used to call her Negative Nancy.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got that one a lot. And, um, you know, and it was, that was hard and you bring it home at the end of the day and it's hard not to.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  That's the piece.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  Share it with the kids.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  That's the piece.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  The piece, when, when people ask us what's the most difficult part is when you have a normal job or a normal partnership, you can unplug at some point.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. When the partner sleeps next to you.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  There's really no unplugging and we do this all the time. We go to Darren's and saying like, no business talk today. It lasts four seconds.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Four seconds.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  No dinner is without business.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  And then the conversation, so when you do that, there's no separation of state and church, right? It's like, everything is in one place. That makes it difficult. It really does. But I think you, you just find your way over the years.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  Our relationship is similar to yours. Like our skillsets are different. That helps too.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  I think I have, we have friends of ours who've attempted it and failed miserably because their skillsets override. If that happens, it's tough. And you have to have confidence and trust that, that your partner is really, really good at what they do. And you kind of give up that piece, which was tough for me initially. But she's the greatest at what she does. So now we divide and conquer. I can hand some stuff to her. I know it's going to get done because she's a monster and I run around and do other things.

• 12:27Gary Brecka?

  And we fundamentally are different people from the standpoint, she's like a serious planner. And I'm like a very much a fly by the seat of my pants. Like when we went to the airport in London two days ago, I was like, well, the flight's in three hours. So let's leave in an hour and a half. It's a half hour to the airport. It takes an hour to get through, get to the plane. She's like, no, no, we need to be at the airport like three hours ahead of time.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  No, I didn't, you're dramatizing.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  It was three hours.

• 12:55Gary Brecka?

  Post by the way.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  I did post it.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  We were there early is because our flight got delayed when we got to the airport.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Well, that made it, that made it three hours instead of two hours. We were there a full, solid two hours beforehand.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Delayed an hour and I actually.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  First of all, we missed one flight in our career, married career, one flight.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, but usually he's the guy that likes to be literally like sliding through the door at the last second, like barely. Last person on sweat running down because we just ran a mile through Miami airport.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  No wasted time, dude. See what I mean?

• 13:28Speaker 02

  And we have missed more than one flight. We have missed multiple flights over the last.

• 13:32Gary Brecka?

  I found the content was hilarious. That was really good.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  You know, I was going to say that, you know, part of it also is like, we, we know each other's strengths, right? In this journey and our mission aligns. We've been building life together. We've been building our dreams together. We've built a family together. So back on the building piece, like it's, it's so incredible because well, as we mentioned, we all have such different skillsets. And we don't, we complement each other, but we don't get in each other's lanes.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  And we're not trying to be the same leader. And I think that when your mission and your values align, then whatever you're building is, is easy. And of course it has its ups and downs, but when we talk about business being, we go home and we still talk about work. It's, it has to be because we're so, you know, we're so passionate about our business. It's hard to separate the two.

• 14:24Gary Brecka?

  What's been the best thing that you, you've done together for the business?

• 14:28Speaker 03

  You can't talk about me during the segment.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Just one, it's helping. I know it sounds corny and cliche. I was, people know I roll when I say this, but helping people, it's been a big, it's been the, it's the reason we started this company. When we sold the last one, we had a chain of retail stores, 173 of them nationally. And when we sold them, um, we're going to take some time off and we're very engaged parents. We drop our kids off every day, pick them up every day together and we're very engaged. And we really wanted to do something that was more important than just making money. And you know, you, you guys own this stuff. You can't share 99% of the feedback you get from customers because of some of the laws out there around, uh, around the health stuff. But we've changed people's lives, their families, their children's lives. That part means something and our kids now are old enough to read them, read these comments and read these emails. And it's been fulfilling.

• 15:14Speaker 00

  Like we're, we're here in Miami, not only to see you beautiful guys, but we're doing a nonprofit event in a couple of days. Your mutual friend, David Grutman.

• 15:22Gary Brecka?

  Oh, I want to hear the rest of David Grutman's story too, that you started before the podcast.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Isabella's, uh.

• 15:28Gary Brecka?

  Oh.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  It's, it's one of those things if, if you don't show up and cry, there's something wrong with your, your ducks. You can't cry.

• 15:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  But when you bring kids in 25,000 this year, right?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  25,000 kids who are underprivileged homes, who don't have clothing, school supplies. And they basically build a pseudo mall in this convention center, Isabella, David's wife and Dave do. And, uh, Durana is a big advocate and supporter as well. And like the kids walk around and actually pick all their own stuff. And they walk, walk out, if you guys are in town, you guys should come by if you can.

• 15:58Gary Brecka?

  A hundred percent.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  But it's, but those type of things are the best part of what we do is I know sometimes the presses, the revenues and our, our safe round and our upcoming series A. But what really matters is that stuff.

• 16:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Because sorry, the kids, I was going to say have really redefined our why. And I think it's important, anything that you do in life, that you know your why. Um, and that becomes, you know, your, uh, your, your shooting star that always brings you back. For us, we realized early on, like we did corporate America, we made money. We realized that our purpose is so much greater than us. And for our children to experience that, we always say, we don't want our children to inherit a business. We want them to inherit our values and who, how we show up every single day. For us, we're teaching our kids. And so this journey has been so exceptional, especially when we're out and about with our children and people come by, they go, are you guys symbiotica? Let me tell you about how you've changed my life.

• 16:55Gary Brecka?

  Really? That's so cool.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  It's incredible. So it's, it's taught our kids that.

• 17:00Gary Brecka?

  And your kids are around to see that too.

• 17:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. And they're old enough not to embrace it. The, our, the one learning, learning lesson that we always push on them, I don't care what they do in life. I don't care how much money they make. I don't care what degree they get in, doesn't matter to me. What we tell them though is this one very simple rule. Okay. When you take your last breath on this earth, whenever your time is up, were you a net positive or net negative through this world? And I think it's, I think we overcomplicate life. I think it's that simple. Did you give more than they took? We all take, um, work we took here. We had those great snacks and had some tanta coffee. That's taking, when I take tonight dinner together. But did you give a little bit more than you took from this world? And if my girls, if our girls can say that they gave a little bit more, I'm proud of them. That's all I want from them. And if we did that, there's eight and a half billion of us.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  If everyone can say that they gave this much more than they took, we would live in a great place, but that's not the case.

• 17:50Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. I'm going to, um, I want to go back to the David Grutman story because it was starting to get good, right? Before the podcast started. Cause you're in town and, and your wife's got a crush on a tennis player.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  So you know, look, man, it's been 27, almost 20.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  28. 28 years on the, on the 10th. Is that tomorrow?

• 18:08Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 18:09Gary Brecka?

  Congratulations guys.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Tomorrow?

• 18:11Gary Brecka?

  Four days.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Four days. What day is it today?

• 18:15Speaker 02

  It feels like tomorrow.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  I'm glad our, our relationship is such a strain that four days now becomes just like nothing to you.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  So, you know, after 27, 28 years, my wife, I let her slide on these comments like Tom Brady writes. Who cares if Tom Brady is 6'5" with blue eyes, chiseled jawline.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  We don't care about that.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  What's in?

• 18:36Gary Brecka?

  Those animals, who cares?

• 18:37Speaker 00

  Bald is in.

• 18:38Gary Brecka?

  Whatever.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  I'm telling you, I'm, I'm sticking to this five and a bald. I'm like one of those crypto coins that hasn't hit yet, but just, just hang along long enough, it's going to hit.

• 18:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  One of these guys, one of these guys, a guy named Matteo Beratini, damn this guy, you know? I think God, when he gives out things to people, it should only be a few things you can give to someone. You can give them, if you're 6'5", you should be 6'5" and ugly.

• 19:00Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  My view, okay? Or if you're going to be 6'5" and good looking, you should be 6'5" and good looking and super unsuccessful and dumb. You cannot be 6'5", 6'6", good looking and one of the greatest athletes, athletes on the planet. It's just too much for one person to have. You know what I mean? And so the Matteo Beratini is, is any, for those who don't follow tennis, he's an Italian tennis player. He's phenomenal. He's going to wind up winning a major championship one of these days. And he's also the face of what, Hugo Boss or something?

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Something like that. I don't follow him.

• 19:27Gary Brecka?

  She doesn't care.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's three restraining orders against Durana and all of Italy.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  So anyways.

• 19:34Gary Brecka?

  Say he's got a few too.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  She's got this thing.

• 19:36Gary Brecka?

  We won't bring it up.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  And so we're in Miami, we're on one of our buddy's boats, Byron Roth. And, and David Grutman, mutual friend of ours, brother of ours calls me and says, what are you doing? I said, I'm, I'm on a boat right next to your home, actually. He goes swing by, David has a, a dock on this back, back of this house. I got Mateo, he's in our living room, he's just hanging out here. Looked at Durana, we're, we're going really fast on this boat. So her makeup is smeared, like eyes are black, lipstick is.

• 20:01Gary Brecka?

  It's your moment to strike.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  Perfect. I said, Dron, want to swing by Grutman's house, grab a bite? She goes, I look at myself like, it's just us.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  He says, it's just us.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  It's just us. We'll just swing by, grab a bite. She goes, hey, is Isabella there? Yeah, Isabella's there. Great. Let's swing by and say hi.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 20:19Gary Brecka?

  See, this is the good shit.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  We roll up, Dave is back there, greatest host who brings us in. And Durana's cat is walking up and Mateo's sitting right there and she does a triple check.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  I like froze.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Literally froze in time. Like she didn't know what to do. She runs in a panic to the bathroom. It was even sadder. The run to the bathroom was really sad. She tried to get herself back up and running.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  It was so bad. I was asking my daughters, I'm like, do you have like a lipstick?

• 20:46Speaker 00

  My poor 11 year olds from some help from lipstick. And so she comes back out trying to, you know, act right.

• 20:52Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  But she's mad at me. She says, I blew her chance.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:56Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  So Mateo, give me a call, please. I like, I like to run that back.

• 21:01Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  I was very happy. I was very happy about that.

• 21:05Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, Sage has, Sage has a few of those that have actually become private clients of mine. I won't put their names on the podcast.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Please don't.

• 21:12Gary Brecka?

  There was like zero chance that she was ever going to meet this celebrity. And then he became a private client of mine.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  I know who this is. I won't say the name.

• 21:20Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I won't say the name. Cause he'll probably watch this. And, and she was obsessed. And then I flew out to see him in LA and she was like, well, I'm going with you. I'm like, there's absolutely no reason.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  I go to a lot of client appointments.

• 21:35Gary Brecka?

  You go to no client appointment?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  That is not true.

• 21:38Gary Brecka?

  I have a client appointment at 4:30 today.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  No, I'm not going to that.

• 21:40Gary Brecka?

  Okay, so there you go.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  His client wasn't that close.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  I used to go to a lot of client appointments.

• 21:47Gary Brecka?

  Anyway, she tried to, she tried to jump on. So I ended up going out there by myself. And then we became like really good friends and he invited us to movie premieres and a couple of other things. And I did drag Sage to the movie premiere.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  You didn't have to drag me.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  I'm sure Sage was there earlier.

• 22:01Gary Brecka?

  And he's a huge fan of my Good Morning Babe series. Have you ever seen where I wake her up on the Good Morning Babe?

• 22:08Speaker 00

  You stopped doing that. That was my favorite thing ever.

• 22:12Gary Brecka?

  See babe, I told you people love that.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  That was the best.

• 22:15Gary Brecka?

  They love waking you up in the morning.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  It was, because you know what? Cause Gary's such a morning guy. His energy is like.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  It's insane.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  Gary goes from zero to 100 at 5:00 AM, 6:00.

• 22:23Gary Brecka?

  Instantly as soon as the lights come on.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  To see Sage trying to cover herself up and they look, it was, you gotta get that back on.

• 22:29Gary Brecka?

  We were in polar opposite.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Did you see the birthday one?

• 22:30Speaker 00

  It was actually. Yes. It was the best thing you've ever done. I don't know why you stopped that.

• 22:34Gary Brecka?

  I hadn't done one in a while, so we did the birthday one and I got away with that.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Take a poll of what percentage of your viewers are yay and nay? I bet you get 98%.

• 22:42Gary Brecka?

  Oh dude, we got DMs all the time and I stopped doing it. They were like, bring back the Good Morning Babe series.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  It's like the biggest thing people ask for. It cracks me up. I'm like, why?

• 22:50Gary Brecka?

  Here's the, like the foundation of it. Whenever we're traveling, if I do it in a foreign city, I always give her a fun fact about the city. Right? Like this, this city has the longest bridge, it has the tallest mountain and has the longest road. There's more kangaroos here than in Egypt, whatever it is. Right? So I give her a fun fact about the city. I always give her a gift and then I always blast her with sunlight. And I bring her coffee. So that's, that's the foundation of the Good Morning Babe. Yeah, no, it's a great morning.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  I told you about the gift she gave me, right?

• 23:17Gary Brecka?

  Thanks a lot, Gary. Thanks a lot, Gary, for saying that.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  The sunlight.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  The best.

• 23:20Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, but then, but then it's six o'clock in the morning. She is definitely not a morning person. And since, well, we're on the other side of menopause now, but since menopause it.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  He slowed it down.

• 23:28Gary Brecka?

  Even less of a morning person.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Well, because I don't sleep at all.

• 23:31Gary Brecka?

  Threat to my life.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, true.

• 23:33Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  There were a couple of times.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  You weren't sleeping well either. Durana wasn't sleeping, like she would sleep, but not really sleep. She'd wake up just drained and exhausted.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, also with the hot flush thing, like literally I will be freezing cold and then I'm boiling hot. So it's like blankets are on, blankets are off, blankets are on, blankets are off. And I don't sleep because I'm just like flipping in and out of the covers.

• 23:53Gary Brecka?

  I woke up one morning, it's three o'clock in the morning, I'm dead asleep, right? And I feel all the covers go, just fly off me.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  I was angry.

• 24:00Gary Brecka?

  So I like start like trying to find the covers and I got an eye mask on, so I can't see. So then I lift the eye mask, she's standing on the side of the bed and she goes, why are these freaking covers so heavy? I go, they're the same covers we've been sleeping under for like three years. Like they didn't suddenly get heavy. She goes, they're so freaking heavy. Why do they make covers this heavy?

• 24:19Speaker 02

  I'm ripping my clothes off.

• 24:20Gary Brecka?

  Then she starts going off about the pillows. I, they can't decide if they're soft or hard in my neck. I'm like, you wouldn't sleep on a pillow. Like she isn't a full blown.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  By the way, no chance to use the word fricking.

• 24:31Gary Brecka?

  I wake up. I'm starting making with my mask on. She's telling me the covers are too heavy. I'm like, well, I was actually enjoying the covers, so you can put them back on me.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  That's what's so special, right? You're so irritable, like all the things that traditionally.

• 24:45Gary Brecka?

  I'm itching everywhere. I'm itching everywhere.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Trigger you, trigger you now because your hormones are all over the place. Back to what you were talking about, like it empowering you too. I find that I am, so I'm a cancer. So I'm motherly, I want to take care of everybody. I always put others, you know, needs before my own. I've always been that way my whole life. That's gone. That's out the window. I'm like, I'm going to take care of me.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, you become a little self, selfish.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:10Speaker 03

  For the right reasons.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  For the right reasons. And I, I don't put up, I don't have the patience for the bullshit anymore.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Well, that's what I mean. You kind of start, you shed the things that no longer serve you. And that's, that's all things, right?

• 25:24Speaker 02

  The people.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Yep. I don't need, I don't need it in my life anymore. If it's not bringing me joy, it's like that, the, the lady who cleans out the closets and she's like, if something doesn't bring you joy anymore, throw it out. That's my new.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  Terrifying. You guys sound like the same, that's exactly what Durana says.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  That's what it is.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  Only word for words.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  But it's cool. It's also like, like I said, it's empowering.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  If something or someone doesn't pour into you.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  At some capacity. Then I always tell them, they're not for me and that's okay. Not everyone's your people.

• 25:55Gary Brecka?

  Did your wife start the perma vacation in menopause like mine did? Because we went, we went on a friend's boat for New Year's and this was like the tipping point. It's been like two years now. And after we spent the weekend on their boat for New Year's and she came back, she started this sort of permanent vacation.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  It's called retirement.

• 26:17Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, like she fully, like every time we go out to Cali, I mean to Colorado, I'm worried that she's not coming back with me.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  That might happen. He's building me a greenhouse. I thought I was just going to get like a little baby greenhouse, like made it, you know, grow a couple of tomatoes and some basil or something. It is, it might be bigger than our house. Like it's huge. I'm actually quite excited about it. But I'm entering my Martha Stewart phase.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  Is that, is that your favorite place now?

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  I get that feeling from you too, Gary.

• 26:43Gary Brecka?

  Well, I think that our final like, you know, ride it out strategy is a regenerative farm.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:48Gary Brecka?

  So we're, we're starting the green thumb, like learning how to grow vegetables at 10,500 feet. Year round. And this thing is all, there's one greenhouse manufacturer and he makes these greenhouses and he made the, the, the water's in these black plastic, or black aluminum barrels. And so it heats up, it circulates the water, it waters the, the vegetables. It even opens and closes these louvers and there's no electricity connected to it. It completely runs independent by itself. So it's like the greenest greenhouse.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  That's unbelievable, especially over there, the winter is no joke.

• 27:21Gary Brecka?

  He says it's 15 degrees below zero.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, he said, even if it's snowing outside, I should be, I should be good. Like be able to grow everything.

• 27:28Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  Save a bedroom for us, please.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Oh, you're, you have a bedroom and this is very cool. So since it's at 10,500 feet, this was one of those crazy Gary ideas that I was like, we're doing what?

• 27:39Speaker 00

  What are those 300?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  So he made, there, there's a room, or well, we have multiple rooms in the house that have ACT technology. It's altitude control technology. So it'll bring it from 10,500 feet down to sea level. So when you come, if you have issues with altitude sickness, you just go into the room and it brings you back down to almost zero.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  They put like on jets, like private jets or.

• 28:02Gary Brecka?

  No, I mean, all jets are pressurized like a hyperbaric chamber. I mean, all jets are like mini hyperbaric chambers, but they're usually.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Blast oxygen in there. So people don't get sick when they come and stay with us.

• 28:10Gary Brecka?

  No, so you sleep at sea level and then you wake up at 10,500 feet. Which I can go down the whole rabbit hole of intermittent hypoxia, but, um, which is probably going to win the X Prize this year for life extension. They're at 8.6 years, seven months into the study.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 28:26Gary Brecka?

  And they're probably going to win the $100 million X Prize and it's short periods of oxygen deprivation by, followed by oxygen excess. And, uh, so seven months in, they're about 8.6 years of, of age reversal. So we have it like kind of naturally in this house. And when I was telling my contractor out there who was like a serious like mountain, mountain hillbilly. And I was like, you know, I want to put bio centric lighting in. And he goes, bow, what? Why are you always using them big words?

• 28:54Gary Brecka?

  I want flicker free lighting. He goes, none of the lights flicker. And if they do, we'll replace them. I'm like, no, it's flickering. You just can't see it.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  That's the best accent I've ever heard from you.

• 29:02Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, that's exactly what he sounds like. He goes, bow, what? And they got, they got beards down to here that rip Marlboro lights in the snow and work at 10,500 feet 12 hours a day.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  See, but they, see, one, one thing that defies all the longevity stuff, they live to 102. I don't know how they do it. They have, you know, Jack Daniels for breakfast, have nine cigarettes an hour and then live to 100.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  They're moving, they're walking, they're working, they're, you know, they're outside all day. I'm telling you, that has a lot to do with it.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  And you, this is like the food they probably eat.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  And the food is not so. Cause it's in the middle of nowhere in Colorado. And so there is no like fast food around. There's no, you know, it's, it's like good food.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  Do you guys have fishing on your property?

• 29:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. You fish? You guys fish?

• 29:47Gary Brecka?

  I mean, not very well.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  A lot more than I do now.

• 29:50Gary Brecka?

  But yeah, you catch rainbow trout.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Trout in the stream.

• 29:53Gary Brecka?

  And you catch them that afternoon and eat them that evening. Yeah, nice, nice fat rainbow trout from the mountain.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Delicious. And my dad. I used to, my dad had me, I would tie my own flies. I'd go out and catch them myself. And then he taught me how to fillet it and then pan fry it on a fire. So that's how I grew up. Um, I have not pan fried a fish in a while, but that's like my dad's job now. So my parents have a cabin out there as well.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  In Colorado?

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Yeah, they're literally a five minute walk from us.

• 30:22Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, we got like a 70 acre compound with the family. Our uncle owns 10 acres, our parents own 10 acres. We own 50 acres. We put the majority of it into this conservancy. But it's like, so our kids can never sell it.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  How cool is that?

• 30:33Gary Brecka?

  Cause you know, my kids are a little modernized.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:35Gary Brecka?

  And I don't want to pass it on to them and then they bail.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  I could see Cole out there for a long time.

• 30:39Gary Brecka?

  No, Cole, Cole loves it and Lena really loves it. It's like redneck fun, you know, we got shooting range, we got the ATVs, you rage all over the mountain then.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  I think that reset's important though. You know, we have our friend Damon, Damon goes out.

• 30:53Gary Brecka?

  Damon John?

• 30:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  Maybe his place is similar. He like goes middle of nowhere. He was on the stream. He was knife throwing the other day on some.

• 30:59Gary Brecka?

  He secretly connects, uh, fire engines, like full blown.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Fire trucks.

• 31:04Gary Brecka?

  Fire trucks.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. So funny.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  I think that reset's such an important, healthy thing to do with all the, all the longevity that we always talk about.

• 31:11Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  You gotta reset.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  And just getting out of the city and away from work. Like when he, when Gary goes out to Colorado, he's a different version than he is here. Here it's, you know, and I get it. Like.

• 31:20Gary Brecka?

  She calls it Colorado Gary.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's got, I got Miami Gary and Colorado Gary, vastly different people, vastly different. But in Colorado, he goes out there and he's, you know, chopping up wood and hiking and, and he turns his phone off. You know, his phone here, as you could probably hear on the podcast, is constantly on. So, but it's great because he's, he's very intentional. And that's how we, I think, did so well with our businesses. He's got a lot of energy and he never runs out of it to help people. So I had a question for you guys earlier. When you do come to a disagreement and you guys have a lot of stuff going on right now, how do you resolve it? Like if you are vast, like on totally opposite sides of making a decision on something, what is the best way to resolve it?

• 32:08Speaker 03

  You just say she's right. When she's right, she's right.

• 32:11Gary Brecka?

  Step one.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  Step one is, I would never answer that question. That's a disastrous one way question.

• 32:16Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Gary Brecka?

  He's a great politician, dude.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  What do you think? What do you think?

• 32:22Gary Brecka?

  Great politician.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  You know, honestly, we'll step away from something.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  And I always say you have to, I try to teach my kids this at a very early age. Don't act on emotion because you never make a good choice. So generally speaking, we're both very emotional people, um, high energy. We step away and we go, you know what? Let's, let's step away from this and, and revisit it when we're not so emotional.

• 32:47Gary Brecka?

  So do not engage.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Do not engage at all. We just, we just close that chapter and then the next day, when we are at a better state of mind and emotions have subsided, that's when we revisit it.

• 32:59Speaker 00

  I tell you now, we don't have many of those.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:01Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, we don't need that.

• 33:02Speaker 00

  Mainly because we, as Dr. said, we stay in our own lanes. So I'm the CEO of the company. I do finance and strategy. And so Dr. Run runs operations and marketing. And so there's not much overlap there. Once in a while we may disagree on something somewhere. It doesn't really last that long because there's, there's a tenure, like there's experience that says, I know she's going to come through and she knows I'm going to come through. So we don't have many of those.

• 33:23Gary Brecka?

  What's the vision for the company right, right now? What's, what's the next two years hold for symbiotica?

• 33:28Speaker 00

  Really busy. So we're scaling at, you know, mass retail. Technically bootstrapped. We haven't gone through institutional round like many others go through private equity. And we don't, we haven't done this by, by design. Once you get private equity involved, no offense to private equity, but there's a board and the board dictates what you do. And you know, you saw Thorn's, Thorn's announcement the other day and they, I think Thorn made really good products, but now there's complexities involved because now they're owned by someone else.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  I hate to say it, but.

• 33:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:54Gary Brecka?

  I saw the same thing with Nestle.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  Nestle, and this is not a knock against any other companies out there, but we built this company to help people.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  And the second you start deviating from the quality of your products, when you're a health company, you're not making widgets. You're making health products for people and their families. And ours are really expensive to make. And the reason is, as you guys know, you guys are experts, the complexity of our products make them unique. They're the best in the world. And it's not our opinion, it's what the data shows.

• 34:19Gary Brecka?

  Yep.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  As most of our competitors have run the gummies because they're inexpensive, they're, you know, you can get a 30 day supply of fill in the blank gummies. You can get a made package for like two bucks, a buck 50. It's nothing.

• 34:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  They're filled with sugars. They're like candy masquerading as, as health products. We haven't done that because we don't have a board that tells us, go run after that. We've seen every one of our competitors launch a gummy line. We won't do it. Our products are liposomal. They're very complex to make. Our competitors don't want to do that because it's too expensive.

• 34:49Gary Brecka?

  Yep.

• 34:49Speaker 00

  The second you go down, down that path, you lose control over your product lineup. And, and I'd rather sell our company before we do that. The short of it is we're scaling into retail fast.

• 35:00Gary Brecka?

  So what national chains are those?

• 35:01Speaker 00

  We're in Target today. We're in Whole Foods today. We're in Aldo today. We're going to be in Walmart and then, uh, I'll leave it to your imagination, the other stuff that were almost contractualized and they'll come right after that. In the Q1, beginning of Q2, but we'll be everywhere there is to be. And I'm proud of us because we've done it on our own for the most part. We don't have a private equity firm or.

• 35:18Gary Brecka?

  The sachets are super unique.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:20Gary Brecka?

  Um, what made you go that direction? Cause I, I love them. But when I travel, there's like three must haves that I travel with, but I, I love those. And the, and the majority of your products fall into that category.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:31Gary Brecka?

  Was that a formulation issue? Was I got formulation?

• 35:33Speaker 03

  Not a formulation issue, but just to go back to answer when you said, what are you guys going to continue to do? We're going to continue to build trust because I think that's so important. Today in the wellness space, you have a lot of copycats. You have a lot of different trends that are popping up. And the trends, they come and go, but trust doesn't. Trust is what keeps your company to stick. So we're going to focus and continue to build trust with our consumers and our community. The second thing that I would add is, you know, we just surpassed over 200 million packets. And we're learning from the consumers that.

• 36:05Gary Brecka?

  200 million of these sachets.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  200 million.

• 36:07Gary Brecka?

  Wow. That's massive.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  And consumers have the appetite. They, they, they want higher quality products. So we're going to continue to educate our consumers and we're going to drive experience.

• 36:18Gary Brecka?

  Travel convenience too. It's just convenient.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. So that, that was, sorry, that was it. Convenience. It's how do you create rituals? Will you create rituals through something being convenient so that it could become a daily habit? And that was the driving force behind.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Also though, I think you guys will appreciate this more than most because you're experts in this field. Maintaining the consistency of the product over shelf lifetime.

• 36:40Gary Brecka?

  Hardest thing in the world.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  I'll give you some examples. The competitor, we used to have pumps initially, many, many years ago. And we started testing our own products over time and over time they would degrade because every time you used a pump, oxygen would get in and there's no way to stop that. So all of our competitors who have pumps are like bottles that are this big that open and close. Every time you open and close something, oxygen gets in there. And so over time, whatever that thing is, it's not going to stand. And then it puts you in a really bad position. You got to start using really bad preservative systems like potassium sorbate and other things. And two, the consistency of the product goes down. For example, we took one of our competitors, Krieteens, I won't say whom. We tested them recently. Had about a third of the Krieteen in there that they advertised. And it wasn't that they lied when they made it. It had what they, I'm sure it had what they had.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  But over time, because sitting in with oxygen over time, it's a degraded quality. The packets prevent that. So one use. So it's in there. It stays consistent. No air gets in. Use it and it's done. And so our products now have shelf life for about 18 months at the same exact quality. Don't lose anything. So it's the highest quality. It's convenient. You can share them. You can travel with them. But most importantly, it doesn't degrade over time.

• 37:46Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, that's huge. The same thing in the peptide space. You know, like people think that you're like, you know, peptides have to be refrigerated, but it's not refrigerated. So it doesn't, so it harm, doesn't harm you. You refrigerate it so it doesn't break down and degrade so that, you know, molecularly you don't have less and less and less and less and less of the active ingredient. So that if you left it on the shelf for 30 days, you would be basically injecting sterile water. And I think that the challenge in the, in the supplement space is everyone, the novel delivery systems, like liposomal delivery systems, um, which are phenomenal delivery systems. It's not just enough to put a product into a liposome and put it into the body. You need lots of other carrier molecules and cofactors surrounding that.

• 38:30Gary Brecka?

  When we first started talking, that was the thing that I was impressed most about with symbiotica was someone on your formulation team, some PhD somewhere that had a lot of care and a lot of knowledge and a thorough understanding of methylation, put the entire complement of cofactors together. That's why you rarely see single ingredient products of yours, not one ingredient on a label. Because it's also not the way it occurs in nature. It's not the way the body produces it. Not, not the way that it's utilized. It's not the way that it's carried or transported. It's also not what allows it to get through, through certain terrain in the human body. So, you know, I found that the delivery system to be super intelligent. And I'm not just saying that as a plug for symbiotica. That is the, that is the gospel truth.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  I mean, that, that was when I, when we first started this, this journey. I'm not a health expert. I don't advocate to be. I'm a business person. We brought in the smartest people in the world and they taught me as if I was a third grader. And one of the examples they gave me that stuck with me was there is no vitamin C in nature. There's an orange. When you eat that orange, a bunch of stuff in that orange allows you to absorb that vitamin C. So if you ever go to get a tablet or a capsule of vitamin C from the grocery store or pharmacy.

• 39:41Gary Brecka?

  There's actually no single ingredients in it.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  You use the restroom and you realize your body's just gotten rid of everything, has no clue what this thing was. And so when we make our products, we make them as foods. We want your body to be tricked into you having a food that contains what you need, like in this case, glutathione. And so it's become our life's work and we won't deviate from it. We've had so many opportunities to quote unquote cash out and we haven't. We could have taken, we haven't taken any cash off the table yet. We haven't got any funding that we put in our pockets. And the reason is the second you start doing that, there is an exchange. The exchange just says, all right, now you have bosses that tell you what to do. And the first thing they want to do, you guys know this, they want to cut costs. The only way you can cut costs is there's only three things you can do to cut costs. One is you gotta use synthetics versus organics. We won't do. Two is you gotta use less

• 40:27Speaker 00

  of the stuff Gary talked about. So you gotta go less ingredients and it doesn't work properly. Or reduce the amount of stuff in there. So like reduce your amount of vitamin C or do you do your B12. And again, you're not getting a clinical dose needed to do what you're saying you do. Those are the only three ways you can do it.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  And that I think a lot of supplement companies are screwing up and I won't call out names, but they're not, there's just not enough stuff in their product. So, but they do really good job in marketing and advertising, but when you look at the numbers, there's not enough B12 to make a difference. So you're just buying nothing. I mean, you might as well just, you know, eat some.

• 41:02Gary Brecka?

  How kind of nice, Q.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  That's one of our frustrations. One of our frustrations is, you know, the all in ones have become really in vogue now. It's easy and I get it. You take it and you're done for the day. It's great. The problem with that is exactly what Sage just said. There's most of the stuff in there. If you look at clinical doses, all the research has been done for like 50 years, says you need X amount. And they're giving you Y, which is like a 10th or 15th or 20th sometimes.

• 41:26Gary Brecka?

  Just to pad the label and put it like more ingredients on the label.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  It says 48 things in this one thing. You take it and everything's great. And then you go take one of you guys' tests and you realize you're missing out on a bunch of stuff and you wonder why your body's not responding. So.

• 41:39Speaker 03

  I was gonna say compromising efficacy is something we'll never do. And then the consumers are becoming more and more educated, but what good is it to take something if your body can't actually absorb it? So then what you're really doing is you're taking down sugar and the results aren't even there. So our absorption rates are 300 times more than any, any other products that are on the shelf today.

• 42:01Gary Brecka?

  I just did a big post about the glutathione.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  That has to be also just from you guys are using methylated, you know, versions of everything. No synthetic. So like, I'm not a person that I cannot process anything synthetic. So it makes me feel terrible. So when people start taking a multivitamin that has all this synthetic vitamins in it and they feel terrible, they don't attribute it to the vitamin because they think they're doing something good for themselves. But it's actually backfiring.

• 42:26Speaker 00

  We grew up on Flintstones, right?

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Right. I feel like they were good back then.

• 42:30Gary Brecka?

  I love Flintstone cereal and Lucky Charms.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, I don't want to start naming them. Like Centrum, for example.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Oh, it's terrible.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  These type of things are, they're fantastic marketing companies. They've done a really good job convincing Americans that XYZ.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  And it's cheap.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  And it's cheap and it's easy. And thanks to people like your guys and Gary, what he's doing in Washington. I think because the FDA now is shifting the way that the land, the actual landscape around how people think. For the first time ever, people are questioning things. Before, I'm one of them. I'm not preaching. I was taught that if the government tells you this is good, it must be okay. And then now you're like, wait a minute, we should take a step back. We have access to more data than ever before. Your phone is an AI-driven supercomputer. You have access. We just need to take a little time to do a little research and listen to people like yourselves. And I think.

• 43:18Gary Brecka?

  I want to, I want to wind this down by asking all of you guys the same question.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Wait, I don't want to wind it down. I could talk to them forever.

• 43:24Gary Brecka?

  Okay, well, go ahead.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Well, that's okay. We can.

• 43:26Gary Brecka?

  Well, I want to ask you, because I never ask you this question.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Well, shoot. Okay. I'm nervous.

• 43:31Gary Brecka?

  What it means to you to be an ultimate human?

• 43:34Speaker 02

  You've asked me this multiple times.

• 43:35Gary Brecka?

  But you've never answered it on air.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  That is not true. We've done multiple podcasts together.

• 43:41Gary Brecka?

  See?

• 43:41Speaker 02

  I have no idea what I said, but I, oh, I put this at me right now. It means to take care of yourself.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  I love to answer that.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  I'm gonna, yes, please.

• 43:56Gary Brecka?

  You're on the spot.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  I think it's to live fully. There's a lot of people that are alive, right? But living fully, I think is really important. And, and tapping into the level where you feel like you're in the zone every day. I think when you wake up in the mornings, Gary, all that energy, like you're in the zone. You're so present. And what gives you that is the foundation of your health. I always say health is what keeps your dreams alive.

• 44:20Gary Brecka?

  Gosh, that's so true.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  And so you, you've got to invest in your health. That is, that's the business that you need to invest in. It's your body, your mind, it's your soul. Because when you invest in that, then you can show up, not just for everyone around you, at your fullest, but for yourself.

• 44:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  I also think taking care of your health is so important for the people that you have to take care of. I think that people that aren't taking care of their health, it's a selfish thing because how, if you are fat and tired and sick all the time, how are you taking care of the people that depend on you? So we, you know, we're all parents. We have to be there for our kids. We're gonna need to be there for grandkids. And if we're shuffling around and, you know, and we're not healthy and we're sick all the time.

• 45:09Gary Brecka?

  I'm going through with my parents right now.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Take care of everybody.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  My, my mother says, I love you. And I go, Mom, if you love me, then I want you to take care of yourself. Because that's what I love you should mean today. It should mean that you take care of yourself. So that one day you don't put yourself in a position that's gonna impact all of us.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that somebody else has to take care of you.

• 45:27Speaker 03

  I love you should be rephrased today. It should, it should center around. Well, I think the problem is, is in the past, when you took care of yourself, there was this notion that you were selfish. Right? And so I think today, the world, it requires you to be a little selfish because there's no way that you can be good to anyone around you if you're not good within yourself.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  So my answer is similar to Sage's. I think the term longevity is overused and incorrectly used. I actually, I prefer the ultimate human. I really do. Not because it's yours. I think to live, be your best as long as you possibly can. That's really, that's the key for me. I don't care about living to 120. I care about the time that God gives me on this earth. I could be at my best for my wife, my kids, my parents, my coworkers, everyone around me that depends on me. I like Sage's answer, I think, and yours too. I think.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  So it's all about living long. It's about living fully.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. And also living long enough to ensure Durana doesn't talk to Matt or Bertini. You want to be around.

• 46:25Gary Brecka?

  I think you've, I think you've pretty much sabotaged that one, dude.

• 46:27Speaker 00

  All those guys.

• 46:28Gary Brecka?

  Very effectively.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Tom Brady, I'm gonna tell you, Bertini, I'm talking to you.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 46:32Gary Brecka?

  You're looking right in the camera, dude. That one hit hard. That one got you, dude.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  I just realized I squinted at him.

• 46:36Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  One thing that I loved, one of my grandmothers, my dad's mom, she was still doing yoga well into her late 80s. She was still working part-time. She's still, because she was an interior designer, so she just enjoyed the creativity of it. She was still singing in the choir. She was still driving herself everywhere. And she literally, when she passed away, it was, it was so sudden, but up until she, she got pneumonia and she passed away almost immediately. But up until she was, she was 91, 92, she was so healthy. I mean, I remember just thinking like, there's, she was always active. She was always out walking and cooking for herself and shopping for herself and nobody had to take care of her. And I think it's because her husband passed

• 47:21Speaker 02

  away much earlier in his seventies and, and she just was on her own for so long, but she really took care of herself. And I, that was, she was such an inspiration to me.

• 47:31Speaker 00

  Not that Gary's older by any means, but I'm saying Gary, be careful. Look at Cole and his buddies. These guys are world-class athletes. Cole, Cole did the what? The 34 races in 18 hours and 19 contests or something. And so like.

• 47:44Gary Brecka?

  Seven marathons, seven, seven days, yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  All this got going on, he's still working out with this boy and all those young studs.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Have you done one of those workouts with him?

• 47:51Speaker 00

  I'm gonna try to do tomorrow.

• 47:52Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, 7:30, we're doing it.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  Pictures, it's like, first of all, like UFC guys show up and like Zac Efron is there, all these studs. And then, but Gary's hanging with them. How cool is that? Go back and look at some of the movies from two generations, one generation ago.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  Remember that movie? I know you gotta go, but I'll wrap it on this one. What's that movie called? Father of the Bride. Okay. If you look how, how old they look in that movie?

• 48:15Speaker 02

  They were our age.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  They were 42, they were 43 and 44 in that movie and in real life at that period. So 40-year-olds were depicted as like, she's wearing a cardigan and he's like, old man on his last leg. Those times have changed. You know, people like, Gary's working out in his 50s with world-class athletes and they got, they had the picture of the six packs afterward. It's awesome. What, how, what's it gonna look like in 10, 20 years where 70-year-olds now are working out with world-class athletes? And that's what the ultimate human really means.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  And also I don't think there's any time that is too late to start. So I think a lot of people feel like, well, I'm already almost 50 and I've never worked out before. Can't, you know, can't possibly start now. Now, start. Even if you're 60, even if you're 70, just start walking around with weighted vests or, you know, going for walks every day or, you know, doing some lifting.

• 49:05Gary Brecka?

  I feel like you guys should write a book.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, the, the ultimate human is the human.

• 49:10Speaker 00

  You got a follow-up answer?

• 49:10Speaker 03

  I do have a follow-up answer. Is the human that's living a life of love. I think that's really important. Because all the things that you do with Cole, all the things you do with Sage, it comes from a place of love. And I think that, that we got to get back to some of those basics. Again, it's about living fully and part of living fully is living a life of love, loving everything you do.

• 49:30Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Well, I gotta plug ION before we go, because I get.

• 49:32Gary Brecka?

  Go ahead. Well, I mean, we're obviously both wearing it, so.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  I don't get paid. I actually paid for my, on my other one. This one Gary gave me. My other one I bought without even telling Gary, went to the site, bought it. The best thing I bought, I bought for working out, ever, ever. I'll tell you why. I have lower back problems. And Gary called me one time, we're talking, I'm like, Gary, I gotta lose this love handle. So he goes, look, get a heavyweight vest, walk. Don't run, walk. Empty stomach in the mornings or, but that you put me on protein in the mornings. I'm gonna change it. Say, trip me up, but I'm gonna do that tomorrow. So I tried buying the other brands and they, they're like overloaded on your shoulders. So it put pressure on your back. So I bought that other one, not this one. Unbelievable. I lost so much body fat in a short period of time.

• 50:13Gary Brecka?

  You look great, man.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  Thank you. No, no back pain, no shoulder pain. And then you gave me this one today. I've worn it for a couple of hours now. You don't, you forget you're wearing it. I know there's.

• 50:20Gary Brecka?

  I wear it constantly.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  This thing is awesome. Fantastic. So thank you if you want to sell me some stuff.

• 50:26Speaker 03

  You bought a new model here.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  I love it, man. It's fantastic.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Now we're gonna get you one too.

• 50:30Gary Brecka?

  All right, guys, I'm gonna put links to all of those things in the show notes below. Guys, thank you so much for coming back on the Ultimate Human Podcast. I think it's always great to get tidbits of information from like-minded couples like you guys. And congratulations on the success of symbiotic.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  Thank you very much.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  We love you guys.

• 50:47Speaker 00

  I can't wait to see you guys in a cold plunge soon.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I'm gonna get Durana in a cold plunge. She's been nervous since last night.

• 50:53Gary Brecka?

  We'll splice that into the, into the podcast. But until next time, guys, that's just science.