Franchising is a very dynamic field of business. New concepts are popping up all the time, but few are as innovative as Restore Hyper Wellness + Cryotherapy. They are taking many different biohacking and health services and combining them into one location.
Scott Thompson is joining Nat and Pete to discuss their services and what makes them special. Any potential franchisee should listen and learn about this sector of the franchising market.
Pete: Morning Nat, how are you?
Nat: I'm doing pretty good, Pete.
Pete: Oh, I am pumped for today's podcast, I got to tell you. This is going to be very exciting. But before we jump into bringing our guest. I got to tell you, pretty amazing. I was reading a little bit today, and you've been talking about this bio-hacking, you're about ready to turn 50, self-declared, kind of mid-life crisis. Got to get myself better, right?
Nat: Yes.
Pete: So I found the cure for you, I found it, right?
Nat: Coffee?
Pete: Coffee? Well, not exactly, right? So you and I were in a bio-hacking conference about a month ago, which was really cool. But I was reading in popular mechanics; yes, I can read that, but anyways.
Nat: That has pictures all right.
Pete: Yes, it does have big pictures, right? So in popular mechanics, in this article, they basically say they have found the hack to reverse aging.
Nat: Okay, sign me up. Take my money.
Pete: So you're definitely trying to stay away from that 50; I think I found it. So these Israeli scientists have found a way to basically stop aging, and it's through the cells. And so they use, for lack of better terms, oxygen therapy and pressure tanks, right?
Nat: Interesting.
Pete: So the good news is they're getting some really positive results with their research. I don't know how much the pressure tank is going to cost you. But the idea is that the technology is catching up, so you've got a really good chance of achieving your goal here, of staying younger.
Nat: Nice.
Pete: But as we talk about staying younger, and you and I have talked about bio-hacking a lot. Our guest today is all about bio-hacking, this idea of living kind of a hyper wellness lifestyle from that standpoint. And so we're going to have a guest that can kind of help you, maybe you and I will even take a field trip to go try these services.
Nat: Yes, business expense.
Pete: All right, business expense, yes. Your business expense, of course. So all right, so why don't we bring in our guest, please.
Nat: Today, we have Scott.
Pete: Scott, welcome, how are you?
Scott: I'm doing well. How are you doing, Pete?
Pete: Well, Scott, I know you're a senior-level executive at level five capital, and it's so exciting to have you here to talk about one of your awesome brands that you guys are involved with.
Nat: I was going to say Pete just was telling me about a franchise; sounds like I might have to invest in one. I'm kind of excited to hear about it.
Pete: All right. Now Scott, what you're going to realize is that Nat will always jump the agenda of the podcast. So he'll take everything that I was planning to talk about and go right to the end. So it kind of screws me up.
But you are; you guys are level five or big investors or the investors in a franchise concept called restore, right? And restore is in the hyper wellness industry cryotherapy, right? So we want to talk to you a little bit about this awesome franchise concept.
Scott: Yes, thanks for having me, Pete. Restore is a really unique brand based out of Austin, Texas. Steve Welch and Jim Donnelly are founders, co-founders of restore. And they created hyper wellness based on the fact that they were triathletes trying to stay healthy and young. And then they really just kind of got into anti-aging and bio-hacking.
And at the end of the day, the main thing that makes restore special is it doesn't matter if you're a 15-year-old athlete or a 70-year-old trying to feel better and not have arthritis from playing golf the day before.
Pete: Okay, so let's talk a little bit about it, right? So restore is in the oneness, so this is a franchise concept that plays in health and wellness for lack of better terms, right? But leveraging technology in a way that most people aren't doing it right now.
Or it's being done, but only by really affluent people, people that can afford the type of stuff that you guys do, right? So the athletes, the elite athletes, and stuff like that. So let's talk about this, so this is a new space, right? There isn't really anybody that does completely what you guys do, is that correct?
Scott: That's correct, yes. There are folks that do IVs; there are folks that do cryo; there are folks that do some of these other modalities. But they don't bring it all together to allow for the customizing for each patient or client, to where they can stack the services to feel better.
Pete: Okay. So this is a franchise where I can become a member, and I can come in to restore, and I can try different services that make me feel better, right? Takes away pain that kind of stuff. So let's talk about the modalities or give me a little bit more.
Scott: Yes, sure. There's two buckets, right? Within the business. So there's your non-medical and your medical. Kind of your non-medical services are going to be your photo, bio-modulation which is your red light laser therapy. Pete, you should do it; it makes you get sort of wrinkles, builds collagen in your skin, makes your mood better.
Pete: Why'd you pick on me with that one? Why'd you pick out that, okay? I got it.
Scott: Yes. Okay, and then there is the cryotherapy, which most folks know it's nitrogen; it gets really cold blue, they're 200 degrees below zero. And you go in there for three minutes. And really, it's all about just anti-inflammatory, getting rid of inflammation in the body, right? There's stretch therapy. So most folks like to get stretched and get loose, there's infrared sauna, which is pretty neat.
And so all that stuff the non-medical services, you pay a monthly membership fee, you get a discounted rate. You get two free services per month, and you can add more services if you like. Your medical, we have a whole medical infrastructure across the country. So we have a director national medical director Dr. Heminer, and he then has nurse practitioners and PA's that work for him, that ultimately do the initial telemedicine appointments for people when they first come in.
And those are good for a year in each of the states that they do it. And then at each location, at the local location, there are nurses, registered nurses that are on site. And they're doing blood tests, right? So to see where you're deficient. And then they're going to provide you with custom cocktails for IV therapy; you can also do compression therapy.
I like to do the squeeze and freeze when you get compression therapy, and then you go into cryotherapy, and you're out the door, you feel like a million bucks. If you're a runner or anything like that, your legs like feel heavy, like this immediately makes that heaviness go away. And the medical is a little bit more expensive, so it's about 20 more months, but you get two of those services as well, with an IV.
And then the other thing is the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and that's a medical service. And it's a pressurized chamber; you can go take a nap in there. But you're getting basically almost 100% oxygen infused in your body. So if you have any damaged cells, if you're a cancer patient and you want to, you're trying to get healthy. It's just a great way to do that.
Pete: Yes. I was reading in popular mechanics that the scientists in Israel with the pressure oxygen therapy and the pressure tanks have actually figured out that they can reverse aging, right? Because they stop the cells from dying?
Scott: 100%. That's a lot of what we're learning here, and we're trying to increase the healthspan of people's lives. So most people have 16 years of their life, of their complete lifespan that are not healthy. Where you're just on medications, doctor's appointments, you're in the hospital, it's just not a great quality of life.
But that doesn't have to happen. We've got so much science on the cellular level now that we can stop the aging process through these types of treatments. So inflammation, look at Tom Brady, he's playing at 43 in the NFL; I mean, he's older than me. I don't know if I took a hit from a 300-pound lineman; I'd probably be out for a while.
Pete: Yes, absolutely. So I've read a lot about; I have not tried it, but the oxygen or not the oxygen tanks, but the cryotherapy where they freeze you, right? For the three minutes.
Scott: Yes.
Pete: That sounds so cool. Tell me about that experience, because I've never done that. It's awesome.
Scott: Yes. When you first come in for your first appointment, you fill out a waiver.
Pete: Yes, of course, you do. [Inaudible 00:08:37.00]
Nat: Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
Scott: I mean, well, here's the thing, when you do these therapies if you do have an underlying condition that no one's found, you're going to find it. So if you go in and you get cryo, and you have a brain aneurysm, it's going to show up, you're going to have a massive headache. So I mean, but there have been, but it also saves lives from that, right?
Pete: Yes, sure.
Scott: People come out, and they have, like the doc, the nurses pay attention to folks. And if they're in the wellness, people if they're seeing someone's off, they're going to recommend they go see their doctor. So they can save them essentially. But you get changed down to your skippies, put a robe on, you put some gloves on. Put some socks on; you got to wear socks.
So your extremities get covered. Put your favorite music on that you like, you go into the chamber. We have two types of chambers; we have our nitrogen chamber and our electric chamber. Our nitrogen chamber is a one person, it's got a nitrogen tank. It pumps the nitrogen into the machine.
You stand in there usually for the first time, you're going to have the window down, so the wellness coach can see your face. And they talk to you, and usually, it's about two, two and a half minutes. And it's at level one, which is maybe 180 degrees below zero. And they take your temperature before they go in at your leg to see what your internal temperature is and then on your out.
You should drop, so let's say your temperature is 90, right? 95, you'll get down to maybe 50, 45 internal. So what happens is the blood flows to all your center mass, and all your organs, and so to protect you, and then you go into a fight or flight response, and so all these endorphins are released, and you're just feeling amazing.
But the inflammation goes right now. If you've had surgery or anything like that recently, you go to cryotherapy. Actually, our founder had a car accident, and he was going to cryotherapy after he got out of the hospital every day. Went back to the doctors and doctors, like, what are you doing? You're healing so fast; how is this possible?
And he just told him I do cryo every day. And so, if you keep that inflammation down, you can really help the body and its natural immune system to heal itself.
Pete: Well, that's very cool. Now tell me about drip therapy because that the IV therapy; I was reading about that. And they talk a little bit about when you use IV to administer like vitamins and stuff like that, your body it's a better, more efficient way to deliver it. So everybody's worried about do I have the right levels of vitamin D right now because of COVID-19. So tell us a little bit about that?
Scott: We've got an awesome immunity booster IV, we've got our high-dose vitamin C, vitamin D, glutathione all those chemicals or compounds are going to protect your body. It's going to boost your immune system. But when you put a, and what's the first thing that happens when you go to the hospital if you're sick? They give you an IV, right? It's such a great thing.
Fluids directly into your veins allow your body to absorb whatever you're putting in there immediately. So you're not digesting it and losing some of it in the digestive tract, it's going right into the blood, going right into all the areas, the cells that need it the most. So it's traveling through the body immediately.
And so like glutathione really, it's like if you're a big drinker, glutathione is great, because it filters the liver, it cleans it out, right? It makes your liver more powerful. Vitamin C, everyone knows that it's going to protect you from. It's going to put that protective measure around you from any viruses and bacteria.
And then vitamin D, it makes you happy. It's good for your bones, your skin, your nails; it also puts a protective sheath on your cells as well. The big thing about COVID is it attacks the cell and causes the cells to replicate; taking these vitamins on a regular basis really makes you make it hard for the COVID to penetrate.
Pete: Oh, that's cool. So how often would you have to do an IV to make it effective?
Scott: I go every two weeks; my wife goes every two weeks. I go cryo once a week. We have patients that come every day; clients come every day. Their fibromyalgia, they've got Lyme disease. We have one people that basically, they just don't want to take the medication for the pain, and so this is their pain management.
Pete: Okay, so it sounds very cool. Nat and I might have to take a field trip to your location in Northern Chicago, so we're going to come try some of those if you don't mind.
Scott: Absolutely, you should absolutely try the services. One last thing we have is called NAD therapy; all the athletes are doing it. It's an anti-aging, basically IVs type of treatment. It's over four series, so it's a little expensive, it's a couple of thousand dollars. But what it does is it actually repairs any damaged cells in your body.
So if you have some cells in your shoulder, in your hips, and your back and your lungs, whatever that are damaged, this NAD, don't ask me how to pronounce it, you guys can look it up, NAD plus online on Google. It basically repairs those damaged cells and base the mitochondria in those cells so that they're back to a normal state.
And everyone has damaged cells; we all have dormant cancer cells in our body. And we have a damaged cell; cancer can come in pretty easily and take over those cells. So this helps with that as well; it helps repair possibly damaged cells essentially.
Pete: And what is that called again?
Scott: NAD plus, nucleic acid, dionucleic, it's a long word.
Pete: I'm glad I don't have to pronounce it, that's good. So all right, so the question I got is that you guys, it's incredible because I don't know of any other franchise or any other business that does what you guys do.
I mean, you truly are separating yourself from everybody else with this whole portfolio or more all these modalities. I think there were ten modalities if I remember correctly.
Scott: There's 11 modalities.
Pete: 11, all right, you snuck one in there on me, okay good. So that's very cool, but that really separates you guys from everybody else.
Scott: Yes, it does. And it also doesn't limit us from a revenue perspective. What we've noticed over the last, so the restore was started in 2015 in Austin just as a cryotherapy center. And then eventually, so Steve Welch was one of the founders of dream it, which is kind of a venture capital early-stage kind of investor in companies that want to test new products, medical device products, and stuff. So we're always seeing what's coming next.
We have a thing called restore labs, where we're testing new ingredients for IVs. We're testing new equipment to put in the facilities. One of the new things that's going to come out here is zero body, and it's basically a sensory deprivation bed. However, you don't have to take your clothes off like a tank.
So the salt tanks there, as you lay on top of the bed and then it lowers you into the machine, and you stay in there for a period of time, you have stuff up your eyes and your ears. And you have meditation kind of being pumped into your ears. And what happens is all your joints, you're not having.
Basically, you feel like you're floating. But it almost feels like you're in; again, I don't know what it feels like to be inside a womb. But it felt like you're inside something you're surrounded by.
Pete: Oh, that is very cool. I can't wait to try some of this stuff, we'll definitely take a field trip. Well, congratulations on having something that nobody else does, and what a great opportunity for people to work on this wellness and reduce pain in a place where I can get it all done in one place.
So thank you for doing that. One of the things we do on our podcast is we always ask people just some couple of random questions, just to get the thoughts.
Scott: Sure.
Pete: First question I'm going to ask you is what's the best advice somebody's ever given you?
Scott: That's a great question.
Pete: Don't be on a podcast with Pete and Nat.
Scott: No, I love you guys. So way back early in my career, I was a franchisee for fitness together, and I was just struggling as a 20-year-old trying to manage people and run a business. And one of my clients was a CFO for the Celtics, Richmond.
And he told me, Scott, don't be emotional, in the moment, don't get caught up in what's stressing you out, because you always have another day. So it's not guaranteed to you, but you're here now, and the next day is always there for you to.
Pete: Yes. And if we go to restore, we'll be here even longer.
Scott: That's right, yes. They're saying people lived to 125, 150 the generation before us, so we'll see.
Pete: Well, Nat is trying to stay away from 50. So he's going to be at restore just to try to put that off.
Nat: 50 is a new 30.
Scott: It is.
Pete: Absolutely, very good. All right, and then the second question is, what is your favorite book?
Scott: I'm reading one right now; I like it. It's called calling Bullshit.
Pete: I haven't heard of that, what's it about?
Scott: It's called, it's the art of skepticism in the data-driven world.
Pete: I doubt that.
Scott: Yes. We see so many stats with COVID and this percentage, that percentage, and everything's spiking. And the reality is most statistics you see is, it's sensationalized to get whatever headline is there, to sync with you or to make you fearful or whatever. And so this is a great book to really understand how data works and how to call bullshit.
Pete: That's cool. I'm going to go get that book this weekend, so that's awesome. All right, very good. I know you're involved with some other brands; what other brands is level five involved with?
Scott: So we have a few brands, but our one of our bigger brands that we're on the franchisor side is big blue swim school. It's a kids swim school, and love to be on your podcast next to talk about that.
Pete: All right. Well, it's been so much fun. Yes, we'll absolutely have you on, we'll talk about big blue from that standpoint. So very good, great for having you here today.
Scott: Thanks, Pete.
Nat: All right, guys, let's rock and roll.