Doctors Told Us We Could Never Have a Family. They Were Wrong.

Sean Weisbrot: Ari Tullaa is the CEO and co-founder of ELO Health. An AI personalization engine delivering the exact nutrients to live better. ELO has recently raised a $10 million series a round, so congratulations to them for that. I wanted to talk with Ari because he has a tremendous amount of experience around health, nutrition, wellness related to himself and entrepreneurs in general. So I wanted to talk with him about how nutrition is really important in our lives as entrepreneurs, and also how we spend our time as entrepreneurs affects our health. These are two really important topics, and it was really great to talk to him about both of those, and hopefully we did a good job with stringing them together in, in a way that. Makes you excited about nutrition and want you to take better care of yourself, because whether you believe it or not, how you spend your time and what you do with your body affects your ability to be an entrepreneur and take care of your business, and take care of your teams, and take care of your investors if you have any for the long term. So I know you're gonna love this episode with Ari. Let's get to it. Health is something extremely important that. I've come to understand is something that once you lose a measure of health, it's very difficult to get it back. And the older you are, the harder it is to do. Do you agree with that or disagree with that?

Ari Tulla: It, it depends a bit on what do you mean by health and uh, and what do you mean by losing it? But, um, the one thing is certain that when you. Have any type of struggle with your health. You, you don't feel good. You have a sickness. Uh, you get afraid of something that might bo bug you. That becomes the primary motivation, the one thing you think about every day. And then you can't get anything else done properly. So that is the challenge in a way. And, um, and often in health or you know, how you feel. There's a lot of unknown in in it. So you. You feel off, you don't know why. Then you end up getting to, you know, doctor's office and, uh, you often don't get an answer. You, you are, you know, getting these clues. Maybe you definitely get medication, but, uh, you often don't know what's going on. And, and that is not very empowering. You feel always like you lose control when you go and interact with them with the healthcare system.

Sean Weisbrot: You're speaking specifically about the us

Ari Tulla: Yeah, so I mean, primary I've been, I've been living, uh, in, you know, us for the last many years, but, you know, I also have pretty deep experience in the u in the u European healthcare system in the, in the northern Europe and Finland and, uh, a little bit in, in the uk. Um. I think the, the, the challenge in the US is that, you know, it's very difficult to find care, get access, and, uh, I don't know, wherever you go, you don't have time. Like the, the caregiver, the doctor, the, the nurse, whoever you interact, they are on a clock. They have, you know, 10 minutes or five minutes. And that's not enough to get deeper into you. And if you think about the, the dilemma today, you go to a doctor's office. They spend half the time or more on taking your weight, taking your measurement, uh, typing about you on a computer, not looking you into your eyes and asking questions. And, and you know, often when we go there, I. If you don't feel great, I, I go to the doctor because I feel bad. I have something wrong, and I have a list of questions. And how many times you end up not even going through all the questions you have because you have no time. So that is a big problem, in my opinion, for, because we, we really are needing help. We are looking for somebody, not just to give us pills, but somebody to listen to us, maybe hold our hand when we are getting sick. So how do we fix that? Um, I, I think, uh. If you, if you ask me, maybe two years ago, I would've said that, um, I have no idea. Uh, but today I think, uh, that one fix at least will be ai and, and the fact that, you know, we will be able to build, uh, these companion bots, uh, companion ais that are able to communicate with people, talk to people, and be there when you, when you need support. And, and that will happen I think in, in the next two years already. And, uh, it may sound cold and, and not, not real, but I think it will really help a lot, many people.

Sean Weisbrot: I, I had an idea, I wanted to ask you a question. I'm gonna keep it for later. It's more about the future of medicine. I think we'll probably turn some people off if we get into it, but it's really, really cool and you've probably thought about it, but I'll keep it alone just for now, because this is more about right now how we're feeling, how we're doing all that. So before we decided to do this interview. We came up with the idea to talk about, as entrepreneurs, how can we remain healthy so that we can run companies in the long term? And you threw back at me. Why don't we also cover how the businesses we choose to run and the thing, the way we spend our time affects our health? And so both of those things are intertwined. So. What came, what gave you the idea that this was important? That what you spend your time on part and how it affects your health?

Ari Tulla: Yeah, because I think, um, if we go take a step back and think about what matters to us, and one of the key things I think in life that is important is, is happiness. I mean, we all wanna be happy, we all wanna be here and, you know, feel that, you know. We are doing the right things. Um, we feel content and happiness are very difficult to measure term, but what happiness really is, if you think about broadly, um, it it's about being able to do things you want to do, having control. Like if you are working in a, in a safe where, you know, in a factory where you, you have, you know, stuff coming your way and you can't even control whether you're gonna do night shift or the day shift. You don't have control, but in most subs today, you have some control and you need that. We also need, you know, people around us. We need people that, you know, care about us, family, friends, uh, coworkers. Uh, that's super important for us. And, and then of course we need to have, you know, uh, some type of a goal in life. I think we all need like a, like a vision or like a. You know, thread that we are, we are holding and pulling back like some people want to, you know, they wanna become a doctor. They become a doctor, they wanna help people. So helping people becomes kind of the, the guiding light for their life. Um, some of the people they, they wanna make, make ton of money. I mean, that could be maybe not the best motivation, but, you know, that is at least something that they are, they're thriving for. Um, some people want to, you know, make enough money that they can, uh, they can, you know, help their siblings and the parents, maybe they, you know, get a new house for their parents. Maybe they gave from poverty. So those three things having kind of. Being empowered to decide what you do when you do it, having you know, love around you and then having this sort of a vision in life, uh, are critical. And think about where do we spend our life? We spend most of our life in two things, sleeping and working. You know, sleeping is kind of, you know, we knock us out. I mean, I know I'm a big fan of, you know, we can talk about it later, but, you know, sleep is super important. Recovery, but, you know, we don't really do much in the sleep. We are kinda, we are, we are unconscious in a way, and then the work is the other part and, and that we can decide. So if you think about your life, I think that, that choosing what type of work with whom you work on, what you work, are gonna be maybe the most important decision in your life. And, and there's another point that I really think is interesting that we don't spend a lot of time thinking, um, the most important decisions of, of our, of our lives. Like what, what makes us who we are? One point, of course is that, you know, uh, where are you born? To whom you were born. That has a big impact on what you become. We can't really control that. You know, we are born and there's no control on who, who were your parents? Where did you born? But what we can control is who we play with, uh, who are our friends. We can also control which school do we go in the end. And, uh, we can also control who do we marry and think about. Often those decisions are all made. At one point of our life, maybe, you know, we are 16, 17, 18, 19, and we, we do many of those decisions. You know, many even get, you know, they find a, find a spouse when 18, 19, 20, 21. That happened to me. I mean, like, I made all my big decisions basically within one or two years of life. And then of course, the one big, big question is also where do you wanna live? After you become an adult. And, and funny enough, like most people I talk to, they, they go back and we have very deep conversation about this topic and they come to back and they, I had no recollection of even thinking any of those diseases. I went to school because, you know, my friend went there, I met my, you know, my wife in a bar, uh, and I was drunk. I wasn't looking for. It was, it is all kind of serendipitous, you know, wondering, and we spent a lot of time on some other things to think about, but the most important factors that impact our life, we often make, uh, make on a whim.

Sean Weisbrot: I feel like I, I had the pleasure of not making those decisions on a whim. Then again, I'm. Yeah, like I decided when I was 17, I was gonna leave America, but it took me a few years to be able to actually do it. So I, I had a goal of I don't wanna live in America as an adult. And so I worked towards that every year. And so then I got to choose where I was gonna live. Uh, I didn't get to choose unfortunately, where in China I ended up, but. That was because my agent lied to me about the value of the place I was going to, but I ended up in Wuhan. So that's a, a funny story in itself. Um, but I was able to choose how long I lived in Wuhan and I was able to choose that I wanted to leave Wuhan. So I feel like I've, there are people that stick to a place, as you say, like, oh yeah, I made this decision when I'm 18 and like, I'm here. Um, I definitely went to university. I. Because my dad and my brother and my aunts and my uncles and my cousins went to university, and I went to the same university as them, but only because I knew it was the best option. Like they had the best program for what I wanted to learn. And I got married, but I was like 33 when I got married. So I was able to choose where I was living and who I was living with and therefore who I was going to marry when I did it. The marriage didn't last. I made the wrong decision, but I got to at least choose. It was a conscious decision about the kind of person I thought I wanted at least. Um, so I don't think it matters when. How old you are when you make those decisions, because you can always make mistakes. And my grandfather married four women, you know, in his time now he only diviv he was only divorced the first time 'cause he was widowed. So he didn't really have a choice. He, he didn't decide for his wife to die. Um, so maybe his life would've been very different. But, so I, I think we all make mistakes. I've definitely made my share of mistakes and I think one of the, the things I try to live my life by is. There's something, I guess like I think Jeff Bezos said it. It was something like, there's two types of decisions. One where it's a door and one where it's a window. Maybe it's not exactly like that, but it's like in one instance, you can always open the door and go back outward if you don't like your decision and the other one is you've gone out the window, you're pretty much gonna have to live with that decision. I think everyone has to accept that and still know that they need to take risks, even if they're gonna make a mistake. Like with my startup, I didn't know what I was getting into. I made a mistake. I had the wrong idea. I had too ambitious of an idea. I didn't have enough money to pay for the idea. I made tons of mistakes. I learned a lot from it. But because I lacked so much of the things I needed to do, it was extremely stressful. It caused me a lot of heartache. It caused me a lot of stress, anxiety, panic attacks. Uh, I gained a lot of weight doing my startup. So, you know. Yeah, I, I, I, I'm already on, on this, your side. When it comes to this idea of. What you do is almost as important as what you eat and how, how much you sleep.

Ari Tulla: And I think I, I love the, love the point you said about, you know, um, you know, the failure. We talk about failure, we talk about mistakes. I mean, that's life. I mean, it's not, we have this sort of stigma off and on, you know, you, you fail, you know, uh, I don't know if you know, but this, uh, you live in Europe now. And, uh, there is a rule in, in Germany, you know, it's like, you know, Berlin is a really cool place to live today and, you know, build companies. I have, uh, many friends there, but I don't know if you build a company in Germany and the company goes under and goes bankrupt, you are, you are banned of starting a new company within a certain timeline. And that is insane in my opinion. Because if you think about what only thing that makes people. Succeed more in building a company, for example, a startup. Um, you know, it's not about the school you went to. It's not about, you know, even where you are of course might be easier to do it in, you know, the Bay Area where you have more money. But it is only thing that impacts people's likelihood of making it big. It's the fact that they have failed before. So there's a book called The Super Founders that goes deep into the topic. Looks at the data for 20, 30 years back. All the companies founded it and then the people who founded them, and they found out that, you know, the, the big companies, the, the great companies are founded by young, older, you know, tech, non-tech women, men, whatever. And you know, the very different, you know, population, but many of them had built another company before and failed. That was the only thing that they found that increases the likelihood of succeeding in the future. And that to me is a really interesting thing. And, you know, I come from, you know, Finland and, and we have a really, I think, intriguing point that, uh, most people don't know because we speak an obscure language that, you know, only 5 million people in the world speak. But we are, our word for entrepreneurship is, uh, uh, is. And that word is really funny when you think about it. It means I'm trialing, I'm trying, like if you think about entrepreneurship, it's like, you know, this mosen and you know, I'm gonna go through the stone and the wall to, you know, make things happen. And in Finland we call it, you are trying a little bit. By default, it means you're failing because you're only trying and doing it. Uh, so to me that's like, I've been trying to get a talk in Finland a lot, and why can't we change the word, because the word is by default wrong. And, and that's why I think the words matter and what you said is the key. The thing in here, in the mind is the key point. Because if we think we can do something, if we believe in something, we believe in a, in a mission. Then we can do anything you want. The brain is really powerful. It can heal our body. It can also get you up in the morning and do things you would never do otherwise. So that's why things, it's all about, you know, you need to be balanced and you need to be healthy because if you worry about the fact that you have a, you know, you have a back ache or, or you are worrying about, you know, being obese every morning, you can't think about things that matter. If you are building something cool or you try to change the world.

Sean Weisbrot: I think so many people start companies and they have this idea from, let's say Gary V or one of these guys that are really bad influences on entrepreneurs where they have to hustle, right? There's, there's a saying, uh, I'll, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Which I think is terrible. I think so many people start companies with the wrong idea of what success could look like and practically kill themselves in the pursuit of that goal because of people who are successful who did that and they think they've gotta do that as well. And. I've met a number of people that are very successful and never took a single dollar from other investors, and they look at life slightly differently. They work a little bit slower. They know that they're on a longer timeline. You know, they, those are the ones that are successful, not the startup founders. So many of the startup founders I've talked to are burnt out. They've gained a lot of weight. They are having panic attacks. The ones that are running companies from. Bootstrapped to profit. They're enjoying life. They're taking holidays. They're building nice teams that are not very big, but can take what they need to do away from them and, and give them opportunities to think about, you know, bigger things. And so I just feel like this whole concept of startups is a giant lie. Honestly. Uh, I don't know what your experience has been, but for me, running a startup was a big fat lie. I, I was. Brainwashed into believing that it was a great thing.

Ari Tulla: Uh, it it's a game. Um, it, it's kind of the same that, you know, you, you really like driving cars. You know, you buy old, you know, Beamer or you buy old pos and you're gonna drive, you know, you on Portugal, you can drive the coast up and down. I can do it here in California, highway one that's really fun, like, you know. You go alone, you or you take a motorcycle, you, you, it's fun. And then, you know, you go to, you wanna go drive in a Formula ones. That's the difference in a way. Like, you know, like, I think the fun is, I don't think the people who are driving Formula Ones is really fun. I mean, super stressful. I mean like you have 20 people around you spool feeding you the right food every moment, you know, waking you up five in the morning to, you know, train. Uh, you are pro athlete at a different level than even many, you know, other professional athletes. So that's the difference between, I think, you know, we all love to build and many of us, you know, become entrepreneurs because we love to build. We, we built all our life from the Legos to whatever we do now. And, and then, you know, we, we are just living now in, there's a game when if you, if you want to do it, you gonna come to, you know, places where you have funding and you live in this, uh, cycle where you know you have an idea. You kind of build something small, then you get funding. You try to see if it works, and you're trying to compress time into, uh, let's say maybe two to three to four years. Because if you do what you said and you built a business, for example, by bootstrapping it, it can take 10 years or 15 to 20 years. And then you have how many slopes and goal you have in life. You maybe have two or three because you can't build five of these because it's just not having enough time in your life. So the entrepreneurship and the, and the idea with VC funding, you're compressing dime into finding the success of failure faster. And, and I think there's a one point that is really interesting, and I talk about this a lot and I think about this every day. And, um, and this week I was at the, at the tech runs, uh, the, the Techstar, uh, founder has gone here in San Francisco, a thousand people within the Techstar community. It's an incubator, uh, like a community, a small, early stage funder. Came together and they talked about, you know, many things. First of all, I, I learned that, you know, there are, I dunno, a hundred companies, two companies that were there are building ai. So AI is, is absolutely dominating today. If you think about the new companies, and of course, you know, people, they are building a new company. They're like, AI looks cool, lemme do something, there's a lot of money, whatever. But anyway, the, the point that I really learned is that David Goen and Brad felt are the two founders of the Techstars. They founded the thing 17 years ago. And you know, they have incubated and built, I don't know, a thousand, maybe 2000 companies. And, and you know, Brad felt, has written books about this, I don't know, 10, 15 books. Really great mind. And one thing that they said at the ending thing of the event, they said that, think about this. The first question that people always ask us is, what is the product market fit? How do I know I have it? If you think about, you know, building a, a company bootstrapping it, you, you have to find people who like to give you money to buy a service or buy your thing or whatever you do. But you have to find it, otherwise it won't work. And now if you get visa funding, this is only new phenomenon, maybe last maybe 10 years where you can actually buy customers. Think about you built, uh, like I do, I built, um. Products for consumers. I can go to Facebook and TikTok and Meta and I get influencers. I can find thousands of people who buy my product, even if I have no product market fit at all, if I'm really good at marketing it, getting the word out there. And that was not the case. You know, maybe 15 years ago you couldn't buy a TV ad because it cost a hundred, $200,000. Making a TV ad will cost you 50 to a hundred k. Now you can buy users with, with pennies. And and they said really well two days ago at, on the, on the, on the stage that guys, most companies here don't have a product market fit. You are really good at marketing an idea and getting people to buy it, but you are pushing, you are not, they're not pulling you. And when you have the product market fit, you will run out of product. You, you can't stop selling. People will call you and they want your product. That is the real thing you are looking for. Most people never have that. So that I think is one cause of stress because you know people, they get, young people get a lot of money in the first time, millions of dollars in their bank account, not your but the company. And then you have to make most out of it in a short timeline. That's by definition of stress in my opinion.

Sean Weisbrot: Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. And if you are, I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work, and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story, and what we do requires so much love. So that we can bring you something amazing and every week we try really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So, your subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back to the show now. Hmm. I like the way they put it. That makes sense because I remember having people say to me, I'll give you money when you have product, product market fit. And I was like, yeah, but I need your money to have to get to product market fit. Because the way I was looking at it was people giving you money and more people giving you more money than you it costs to run the business. Right. If you, for for me, product market fit is you have profit. Bootstrap to profit. Businesses have discovered how to profit. That's why they're alive, and most startups fail. Because they learn how to build it and they grow organically. I have a friend who's run a company, uh, for about 10 or 11 years. They're about to hit 5 million for, they've got a B2B SaaS. They're about to hit 5 million for the first time this year. They, you know, they, they're growing every year, but you know, it's not like they had 1,000,001 year and then 20 million the next year because they hustled. Like, no, it's just not how the market grows for them, because they didn't wanna take other people's money, and that's fine. I used to think that they should take other people's money, but the older I've gotten, I've known them for 25 years. The older I've gotten, the more I've been like, honestly, like, you're so smart. You should like, I'm glad you didn't listen to me to take people's money because you would've been so stressed. Trying to, you know, grow your company because they, they have operational issues like every company does, and so they have to like take a pause for a few months and figure out what's going wrong. But when you've raised money from investors, you don't have time to stop and fix your problems. You have to just keep growing for the purpose of making your valuation look like it's going up so that your investors. Can get new LPs into their next fund because look at us, our startups that we're investing in have, or they're growing. They're we're, we're moving towards an exit and it's, it's just insane. And I lived that for several years and I just, I, I never want to do that again. Honestly. It like, if the difference between me doing it again and not doing it is my sanity minus a hundred million dollars. I would take the sanity over the a hundred million dollars in a day.

Ari Tulla: Uh, like I said, it's a game and, um, and, you know, we live in a, in a western capitalism, you know, running by the stock market, running by certain type of, you know, financing structure. And that's a game as well. And, you know, we need to, we need to treat things as a game. And of course they are, they're there that you can capitalize, you can benefit from, uh, or you can kind of work. Around them a little bit. And I think one thing that, um, like I think you talked about your, your past and, you know, your decisions to, you know, move to China, you know, go study a certain thing. Um, a few years ago, I, I found a, oh my, my mom found a letter that I wrote to myself. Um, I think that was maybe, um, at the beginning of high school. And everybody kind of had to write a letter and, and seal it and then, uh, you know, open it when you are maybe, I don't know, 18 when you crash the wedding. I dunno. I moved, you know, I went to Army or something and I, I moved out of home, so I think I forgot the whole thing. And my mom found it like 25 years later, the letter and gave it to me, uh, two years ago. And it's pretty cool. I had no recollection of ever writing that letter. That's how your memory works. Kind of funny, but I, anyway, opened it up and, and it was really like, I, I was a good writer. Uh, back in the days made better than today because now we only use chat c pt, and, you know, wrote on a computer handwritten letter. And I, I, I, I read it and it told me that, you know, I wanted to do certain things. I wanted to, you know, see the world. I wanted to, you know, study abroad. I wanted to go work abroad. I, I wanted to build a business or build a company, something. I didn't have like a name for it, really, the idea. But, you know, anyway, I read it and then I was like, looking at it and I was like, I, I have done all of these things. Game over. And it was, it was really like a good feeling in a way that, you know, the young me had, had hope for these things. And then intuitively I have, I had kind accomplished all of the things I had written down. And, uh, and then of course you wanna find new goals, you wanna level up. And I, I've been very lucky to be able to, you know, be part of building multiple different companies and multiple different things over the last 25 years. And, um, but one thing that I, I've been thinking lately quite a bit is that, uh, this idea of building a company or building a startup or, or doing your own thing is, is really great for, for you because you have the freedom, uh, you have the power to decide, you have power to do the things you exactly want in a way you want, and in a timeline you want. So that's wonderful. But then I look at my, my friends who are, you know, they were at the same school maybe where we worked together back in the days, and now they happen to be, they are, you know, SVP or C-level executive in a bigger company. Maybe they're not the CEO. Uh, but they are having a massive impact. Some of them are, let's say, like, uh, uh, at the management team level now in Google or somewhere, and, uh, they have an unbelievable impact. I mean, they are impacting billions of people and I'm still dabbling in building these small companies, you know, helping thousands of people, maybe millions of people at, at most. So it's very difficult to use the, the vehicle. Of entrepreneurship and building a company and really have a true impact in the world around you in a big scale because the big scale impact is done by the big companies. And for you to found a big company like Google or Facebook, you know, that's one in a trillion or one in a million. I mean, good luck not gonna happen. And, and my challenge is just that, you know, having been an entrepreneur for a long time. It's very difficult to believe that I could go work in a big company as a, you know, executive. I don't really see that happening. Only way to happen is that, you know, maybe I build a company and sell it to big company and then get, you know, get there. But, uh, you are kind of giving up also this hope of having like the massive impact in the world around you because, I mean, it's not, maybe not good or bad, but you know, if you think about Facebook and those guys even, they can still impact the world in a way that almost no company's ever done. We all spend two, three hours of our time in different things that they built and they are now evolving them in a different direction. So that's an interesting idea when think about, I wanna be an entrepreneur, it's cool and sexy and whatever like we talked about. But I think, you know, at the same time, if you go to the right big companies, you can probably have more impact sooner.

Sean Weisbrot: So I never wanted to work with a corporation. I, I saw my brother go through Intercontinental. He worked with them for a number of years, and he was my inspiration to run away from, to run away from having a corporate job so that I could go and live in Asia and teach English and kind of find myself out, you know, somewhere else. I mean, I, those things kind of went hand in hand. I, I wanted to leave, but I also saw him going through corporations and I was like, I don't want that. Um. So I've always avoided that. And to this day, I've never worked inside of a corporation, um, for those reasons. And when you look at the stories that have come out of Google and Facebook and, and Apple and Amazon, these employees are getting paid incredible packages, but they're either stressed beyond. Whatever's fair and and humane, or they're doing absolutely nothing and just getting paid because the company doesn't want them working with a competitor. So I feel like the, the value you're talking about that's being provided to the world by these executives is, I don't know, maybe it's not as. Important as we think it is. Maybe they're not actually doing that much unless you're like the president of Amazon Cloud, right? Maybe you're the, or the, you're the CEO of of, of YouTube, right? Maybe like these people are having a, uh, an impact, but maybe the people that are working for them. Aren't, I don't know. I don't really want to get bogged down in, in that particularly. I wanted to talk more about the nutrition though, so I was hoping that we could turn to that, um, especially because, you know, you're running a nutrition company, so what have you learned about nutrition and how has that helped you to be a better entrepreneur? Meaning as a human, it, it's enabled you to. Have longevity, right? Because you think about these athletes that are paid millions upon millions of dollars a year, the, their sole purpose is to stay as healthy as they can for as long as they can. Someone like Tom Brady is like 46 and he is still throwing quarter, you know, still throwing touch downs. Uh, I'm not, I'm not band, I'm not even gonna try. Uh, but like, he's still, he's still doing it. There's these guys that are now in their forties. You know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, it was unthinkable that you would be doing this in your thirties. You would do it for five, six years and you'd retire and you'd have millions upon millions of, as entrepreneurs, some of us are still working into our seventies. So what have you learned about nutrition and how has that helped you to be capable of running companies long term in a healthy way sustainably?

Ari Tulla: Yeah, so I, I think, um, I, I have a. You know, long history now to, to think about health and, uh, and think about, uh, different things that, you know, make you healthy. Um, I already said about, you know, sleep, very important, recovery. Maybe most important, uh, the stress. Like we talk about, you know, feeling that, you know, you have something to, you know, go for and you know, mind is in the right spot. Very important. If you have stress, you eat while you sleep well, you can still get unhealthy. And then, you know, you have the, the, you know, activity. You need to move around enough. You need to be outside. You need to, you know, have some sort of, you know. Uh, regimen, I think to, to be active. You don't need to run marathons or you need to do anything like that. And then lastly, you need to be able to eat well. I mean, food is really key because, you know, if you think about it has a big impact. We, every, every day we, we eat multiple, you know, pounds of food and you can get the right food or the wrong food. And, um, and for me, this all started, uh, about, uh, about 20 years ago. My, my wife, uh, had a. Then, then she was a girlfriend at that, that time. She had a thyroid, uh, tumor, 20, you know, two years ago and out of nothing, you know, she had a big lump in her neck and uh, and you know, it was scary. Like we were 20 something and we were basically facing mortality first time in our life. And, um, you know, we get her into operation table to take it away in a week. And, um, luckily there was no, no, you know, tumor beyond that one. It was very, uh, solid in a way. And as, as part of that, they had to take away half the thyroid. You know, I don't know if you know, but, you know, humans have two thyroid, you know, they regulate your hormones, really critical for a woman. And, uh, the other thyroid, you know. Was taken half out and then the other one was kind of working but not completely taking over the operation. Usually you can live with one and that led into a lot of different, you know, unknowns, autoimmune diseases, hormonal imbalances, and, and medications that, you know, say was better medicated for life. And those medications made it impossible forever to get pregnant. So we got the verdict at, you know, young age, you know, we fell in love, you know, you know, you found your mate and then you get the word that you will never have a family. I mean, not a big deal when you're 20 something. But then over the years, you know, it started to bug us a lot. Like, I mean, do, is this what we want? Do we wanna be like, you know, do couple with, with no family? And uh, we ended up spending about 10 years of trying to find a solution for her condition. And of course I went along in all these trials so we. We work with a lot of different doctors, different type of, you know, healthcare providers, Western, Eastern medicine, mindfulness. And then in the end we found out that, you know, diet and food was a big culprit because her body was inflamed, uh, chronically inflamed, and we had to lower the inflammation. The only way to do that is to get your mind in the right place and then get your nutrition in the right place. So we went into a diet that was really no meat, uh, no sugar, added sugar, uh, no wheat. And um, and that type of diet is used today. A lot of people with autoimmune diseases like hashimo dose or Lyme disease and so forth. Even a LS, I mean, can be put in check with similar type of diet. So anyway, we learned that early and um, and we were able to help her, you know, heal her body, get out of the medication. And then of course we found out that, you know, we, we don't. Like, we can't conceive naturally because of, you know, that's very difficult today when you get older. Um, and then we had to do IVF and you know, that route took us sometime, maybe two more years. And, and then finally in the end we, we, we lost our first son, totally unrelated to this, um, this mess. Today we have two healthy kids to thriving and doing well. So all good today, but it was a long battle. Like 10, 15 years of our life went into. On this one topic, and that became my mission in life. It became, uh, my guiding light, uh, of helping people, uh, who are struggling. So I built now, you know, three third company in healthcare, uh, based on my own learning as being a patient, as being, uh, in the trenches to try to fight for wildlife. And, uh, one thing that I learned the most, I think was that, you know, the healthcare system is difficult. I talked about that already a little bit. That's really complicated. But then the other one is that, you know, the food system is even more complicated. And the way we eat today, we all know what to do. We all know that, you know, we shouldn't eat the pizza every day. We shouldn't eat the Coke. We shouldn't buy the, you know, the, the Oxy or moca latte, whatever bullshit that has more cigarette than coffee. That doesn't make any sense, but we still do it. Why? Because we are addicted. And, uh, and often when we get, you know, into this, this dilemma that you already said, like, we are stressed, we are time compressed. We are, we are like, we are VC funding. You know, we are, we, we, we have to do something quickly now, then we, we forget our own life. We forget our friends, we forget our parents, we forget our spouse. We forget the help. We forget to do how many people, you know, that, you know, they started this companies. And then, well, you know, I'm gonna exercise again when I, when I get, you know, when I have time. I do this and that. I mean like you can't do that. You have to have a regimen of focusing on your health, sleeping, eating, exercising, or moving. You have to have that, and you have to have time for yourself for the mindfulness. That is what what I believe, and I've been preaching and practicing for 15 years. Or more. Now I, people call me a biohacker. I don't think that's the right word. I'm, I'm trying to, you know, live good life and be able to thrive when I'm 70 years old. My goal is to be 70, 80 years old and to be able to do the things I love to do today, which are of course to be with my family. You know, build things, have a great mind, and also be able to go and, you know, I hope I can hike, hike the big trail still. I hope I can still go snowboarding. I hope I can still go rock climbing at 70 and I will, uh, and I'm doing everything I can today to have that op, that, that, that option in my life. And, uh, that has been I think, a really important factor for me having that 30, 40 year horizon ahead of me when I was 30 already. And, you know, I'm the same age as, you know, pretty, and, you know, I'm still competing. I'm still performing at the same level as I did when I was 20. And I was, you know, really like real athlete training twice a day because I'm training smarter. I'm fueling better. I'm recovering better. Um, and it takes time, but it makes me feel great. And you know, it's great when I go see my classmates from high school, for example, you know, they're all with no hair and fat and look old and I look pretty good. So I feel great about that. I mean, and it's the dissonance in a way that, you know, they're like, how can you look like that? And, you know, you did all the stuff. I'm like, well, it's about decisions you make in your life. Every day we make, you know, three or four times a decision on food we eat and you can decide to eat the bad food or the right food. Not that difficult. Um, and that I think is a really important fact that, you know, most people just don't know how to do or don't have time to do it. Right.

Sean Weisbrot: I definitely struggle with sugar. I think you can see that in my face. I, uh. There was one time in my life where I was able to get rid of sugar, and that was when I got divorced and I realized I was way too overweight and no one wanted to date me unless I was thinner and I really was embarrassed for myself and, and I kind of used shame and embarrassment to. To fuel myself to lose weight. And it worked in a way, probably not the healthiest way to do it, but it worked. Um, and I was able to, I basically had a keto, I was like doing, uh, vegan keto for like six months. I, I didn't, that's hard, man. I didn't get rid of the meat for that. I stopped eating meat before that. That was just, it just happened to be that getting rid of the sugar and the carbs was in conjunction with not eating meat. Um. Even though there was maybe a year period, or year and a half period between when I stopped eating meat and when I stopped the, the carbs. Um, but I felt so much energy because sugar is so bad for us that like when you actually detox from sugar, you feel like you're dying for a week or two. You just, you can't move really, you can't think you have headaches. It's, it's a serious addiction. It's worse than, than cocaine and heroin. Like there, there's been studies that have been done. You've probably seen this. I don't have the data in front of me, but I've read some of these studies and it's fascinating and I've lived it myself. I mean. I had horrific headaches, and even when I try to get off of caffeine, I have horrific headaches for, for like nine days or 10 days, so I totally get it, and if I could do that again, no caffeine, no sugar, I'm sure I would sleep a lot better, feel a lot better, have a lot more energy. Right now I'm crashing because I didn't have my second coffee for the day. Um, and I've only recently started having two coffees a day. I don't even need two coffees. I only started getting a second coffee because I work out, I work from home, but often I'm in the cafes, and you can't just sit in the cafe and spend nothing. So like, you sit there for hours at a time, you're, you get a coffee, you know, you get a tea, you get some sort of a meal. So it's really hard to make those decisions, to make good decisions sometimes, even though. You want to, like, if I could work from home and have just my own space and my own kitchen, right now I'm sharing with other people. But if I, if I had that space which I'm working towards, 'cause I'm looking to buy a place in Lisbon, then I can make my own meals at home. Then I won't have to go to the cafes and then I won't need to go and get that coffee. I can actually not put myself in this situation to do it. I read a book, um, about habits recently, I think like, uh. The seven smartest habits of pe I, I can't remember the name. Some something like this. Habits of Smart seven, habits of Smart People, whatever it is. I can't remember. Um, an amazing book and it, it talks about how you can make better decisions and, and how you can get rid of habits and addictions. One of the ways is like, make this thing something that is impossible to access. Or find a better replacement. So someone might go and say, I want to have, uh, you know, a piece of cake. Well, instead of having a piece of cake, maybe you have like an apple. Maybe you want an apple, you know, an apple pie. Well just eat an apple instead of the apple pie. You get the sugar. But you know, let's say you want, uh, to have tea. Well, don't put sugar in the tea. Put honey, right, you get the natural sugar. It's not gonna make your. Glucose spike. So there's like decisions you can do to kind of get yourself away from those bad habits. But everything in America is basically chemical trash, so it's quite difficult to do that because even when you wanna make good decisions in America. Your options are really bad, unfortunately, which is one of the reasons why I don't wanna live in America. It's 'cause I know that the food I'm eating in Europe, it's like it's real food. It's not chemically formulated trash.

Ari Tulla: Many people, they, they travel to Europe. I mean, last two years I think many people been there few weeks and uh, they come back and they lost weight and they ate like a king. How can it be like they bread and pasta and they just, you know, lost weight because they were eating food that is cleaner, better, less fortified by, by sugar or, you know, sugar type of things from any, anything like corn syrup. But I think, you know, the, the concrete here, if I give a couple points that, you know, I think I learned and I'm, I'm really religious about myself, um, we start the day. You talk about habits, I bet in the book there was a topic about when do you stack up habits, new things. You stack up them in the morning because you know, the afternoon, the evening, the, the, the more you wanna do new things in the evening, the less you're gonna do them because you know, the, the, the day carries away everything. You wanna do a new thing. You wanna start training, for example, do it in the morning before you eat a breakfast. Uh, you wanna do meditation, you could, nobody will be able to succeed of doing that at 7:00 PM no way. You're cannot be watching Netflix or whatever you do, do it in the morning when you wake up. So that's how you have to kind of do it. And what is the most important meal of the day? It likely is the breakfast. Uh, some people, they decide to skip it and you know, today I'm, I'm fasting because I didn't train hard yesterday. I'm gonna eat lunch next, but you know, most days, you know, I do breakfast and what you eat for breakfast has a massive impact on how your day will go. I. If you eat even like an oatmeal and if you put stuff on it like, you know, something like maple syrup and raisins, you're gonna have a massive glucose spike in the morning, and that will end up you eating 15 to 20% more of calories throughout the day compared if you eat, let's say a uh, omelet. With, uh, with maybe like, you know, eggs and, um, and spinach for example. Or you, you eat like a low glycemic, low carb, uh, you know, like a protein powder sake, uh, with maybe like blueberries and, you know, spinach and stuff, or avocado. So the difference is that, you know, if you eat the, the high carb, as many do high carb breakfast every morning, you end up eating 15% more calories throughout the day. That 15% or 10 year period will add up and you're gonna wait. Maybe, you know, 30, 40 pounds more than you want. And just by switching the breakfast to be something different, you can likely start losing weight. Once I tell everybody that, you know, I do a salad every every day, uh, that's easy. I, I, that's my decision. That's what I do, that stick with it. And then there's no arguing about it. I go to any restaurant, there's always a salad. Often I do a csar and I don't maybe love it, but you know, that's what I do. And then dinner, that's your time I. Don't worry about it. Have whatever you want. Uh, but don't have it too late. I try to eat my dinner before 7:00 PM and then after that I don't eat anything anymore. Then I get my fasting window from 7:00 PM to, you know, today's gonna be 11 or noon. So you, you keep your body in a and I'm pretty hungry now. I feel like, I mean, man, I would love to eat something, but you know, you learn, learn to control that and you feel good. Um, I feel great when I wanna eat lunch today. Great salad. I, I look for it. How many times you are hungry in a, in, in a normal day, you are always, you know, taking a protein bar here and a and a whatever here and there. So we eat all the time and I, I've been fasting now for a decade, almost every quarter. I fast for three to five days, like four times a year. Man, I mean, it, it was hard in the beginning. Now I, I'm looking forward for it and uh, most people are like, you are crazy. No, I mean, like you learn, your body can survive. Your body is resilient and the the benefit you do by fasting, you know, I, I'm a big believer that, you know, you can rejuvenate your stem cells, you can reset your body. You have this time to think about, you know, most religions in the world, they do fasting once a year. Most people in the world do fasting. We don't do it in the, in the western world because, you know, we are, we are used to eating all the time. But to me, like the breakfast thing is something that, you know, I really talk to a lot of people about and hey, modify that don't make like a traumatic change. And I hate the diets. I hate the idea of going like keto or going vegan. That's bloody difficult. And I was a vegan for a long time. I was a vegetarian today. I'm, I eat pretty much everything. I'm really, really sensible about it. And yes, I do track, I have, you know, all these different trackers. I have a, you know, glucose monitors, all these things and you don't need them. I'm more like, because I want to, I'm building a company to really learn deeply about this stuff. So you don't need to, I need to, so I track everything and um, and I learned that, you know, oftentimes your body. Will end up being the best, uh, measurement. My how I feel is gonna be really important, but it took me a long time to learn that feeling. So, last point of this, that I think, I really think it's really cool. Like, um, I, I've been using the glucose monitor now for I maybe like three or four years I use, not all the time, but quite often. And what I learned that was really surprising to me. I didn't believe this possible even before, but I learned a new sense in my body. I can feel when my glucose is going up and down. It's like an inner ear feeling. And, um, I had not, I didn't have that before, but because I have had a sensor for so long, I learned that and now I can, you know, when I eat something new that is not good for me, I can feel it. My glucose going up in real time. And how cool is that, that the tech. Enabled me to have a new feeling in my body, a new sense in a way.

Sean Weisbrot: So I tried to get one of those watches that you can track with and you could track your sleep and all of that, and it didn't work for me. My dad swears by it. Um, he actually. Uses it to see when he has like deep sleep versus not so great sleep. He's from sleep and all that, and his sleep tracker actually helped him discover that he was having heart problems. I mean, we, I, he was born with heart problems, so we knew that he had heart problems and uh, he had surgery when he was a kid. He had surgery again a few years ago, about five, six years ago to replace his aorta. But he discovered that like his. There was something wrong and he had to go to the doctor and the doctor was like, yeah, there's a problem. We need to like put you in the hospital for like a few days to observe you because of it. And they had to like pump fluid from his body, but it was only because of the tracker that he figured it out. So it was really cool. Um, I would love to keep talking with you more. I think there's so much that we could touch upon. Um, but I do wanna. Observe your, uh, your time schedule. So I'd like to end it here by asking you what's the most important thing that you've learned. I know you've learned a tremendous amount from all of your experiences, but what's the most important thing you've learned so far in your life?

Ari Tulla: Well, I think there are many, but one thing that we haven't talked about today that is maybe a controversial topic, um, we talked about the importance of having a goal. Um, we, we talked about belief and, uh, you know, many people, they have things like religion that they believe in, and that's not who I am. I don't, I don't do that, but you need to have something to believe in, in your life. And, um, I've been really good at making the goals that I work on or make the thing I work on to be important for me, almost on a physical level. Like, you know, I, I'm, I'm driving these things. I do. Of my past history of struggle and, you know, pain. And that's a really powerful way of, you know, doing it. And, but I think, you know, in the end we are all hormones. Uh, the human being, like everything we feel is just hormones. I mean, there's nothing is really real in a way. It's like a, this matrix idea. So what we do, we are either telling us what to do, what we believe in or not, and all of us, in a way are lying. To ourselves. Some people are better at lying to us than others and making meaning out of nothing. That's what we do as humans. And I, I think that is something that, you know, maybe it's very, I don't know, very black and white way of thinking, the world, but it's maybe good to think about that. Like think about what drives you, what motivates you, why you do things, and maybe think about it in a moment that it's all hormones and it's all something that you can change by rewiring how you are thinking. Hear me this, you can, every morning you go to you, you're pressing the teeth. You can look at the mirror, try this out tomorrow, look at the mirror and smile. Smile and, and, and, you know, look happy, and you will feel happier. That's how we are wired. You know, hang out with people who are happy, you'll be happier. It's just unbelievable how, how everything is about this. It's not really nothing more, and that, that's been a learning that, you know, I, I don't know how to really put it in words. Maybe I write a book about it someday, but it's a really interesting thinking when you understand that you can be happy, you can be in the moment, you can be excited, you can be really great at what you do by just wiring your brain in the right way.