Episode #571: Why Personalized Men's Health Is the Future-Insights from MNLY's Founder, Luke Hartelust

0:00 I am super excited to announce that we now have a formal partnership with the Prospect Wizard. And when I say wizard, I mean wizard. Obviously you have a website. This allows you to convert your website traffic visitors directly into leads. It's not just another chatbot and it's not AI, but it allows a visitor to call, text or leave a voicemail immediately. Goes to you, your sales team or anyone else in the club instantly. MIT shows a study that if you contact the league within 10 minutes, chance of them converting goes up nine times that of the average. We got the Atlanta clubs on it. Vita Fitness, Gold's Gym, Mountainside City Fitness, Philly, College Park. Become one of the next Halo companies to deploy the Wizard.

0:48 It's easy to use. Go to the prospectwizard.com get a free 30 day trial. Talk to my boy Dave Gallen. He will get you all set up and let the leads flow based on the Wizard. Go get him. This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks nyc. I have the pleasure of bringing straight. Out of Hermosa beach from the oil and gas industry into the health tech market. Luke Heartlust, coming from California. Good to see you buddy. How you been? Phenomenal, Pete. It's great to be here, mate. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Excellent. So you know, you spent some time, give us a little background on how you kind of got to our Halo sector and how excited you are to be here.

1:34 Yeah, I mean we can go way back if we want to, if we want to highlight a bit of the journey. So as a, you know, a very, very long story, I'll try and keep it short so that we can get as much in as possible. But my career essentially started many moons ago when I was sitting on an oil rig essentially 450 clicks off the west coast of Australia. Essentially pretty miserable working 28 days on, 28 days off, kind of blistering heat, extremely dangerous conditions. And I had an epiphany one day essentially and I was standing on the middle of the drill floor, absolutely covered head to toe in shit for lack of a better term.

2:20 11 hours into a 12 hour shift. And it really kind of hit me and that I needed to get off the rigs and the way that I was going to do that was to start building companies essentially. And at the time I was, you know, I was 20, you know, I was going to say I was 23, 24 and I was 11, I was making a couple of hundred grand a year. So I had the capital to start, um, essentially, but the problem was that I Had no business experience, right? And so at that point I decided I was essentially going to kind of build the man I needed to be, to, to pursue this dream of being an entrepreneur. And it just so happened that at the time I was living in Thailand full time. So my 28 days off, I would spend time in Thailand. And I tell this story because it's a key component and it's still to this day one of the most motivating places I've ever been in my life. It was one street and it was lined with Muay Thai camps, kickboxing camps, boutique fitness gy, crossfit gyms, and bodybuilding gyms.

3:19 And I saw an opportunity in the marketplace to take hot yoga to that area. And there was a lot of athletes, UFC athletes, you know, Muay Thai athletes, high level crossfit athletes coming from all over the world, and people that were on fitness holidays. You had all walks of life there. And it was a missing piece to the marketplace. And so my first venture was obviously in a foreign country, which made that pretty difficult, and partnered with a couple of buddies and we actually leased a block of land and then built the built and designed design and built the building and then set up a beautiful studio. But long story short, that shot, that business failed, right? But I was still committed to kind of getting off these rigs and getting out of the oil and gas industry. And I knew this model of kind of entrepreneurship that I wanted to take was the ticket. So I looked into franchising. And in 2016, I relocated to the US to bring the F45 training franchise over to Southern California. At the time, there was 1 or 2 in the US only. And so we had the entire US market open to us. And I built and scaled a portfolio of training facilities between LA and San Diego and consulted doing turnarounds for dozens more that were kind of underperforming over a six year period. And we exited that portfolio in 2022.

4:47 And that I would say that journey essentially kind of hones my ability to develop systems and develop teams and lead with integrity. We made a ton of mistakes, a ton of mistakes, but exposed me really what I wanted to do with my time and how I wanted to spend my time in terms of, you know, a blend of business and lifestyle. When you take a look at the. F45, just, you know, for historical purposes, what kind of revenue, you know, were they doing it? What were you able to get them up to? Because from the FDD, I remember they were doing like 33,000amonth. And I thought that was way too low to run a sustainable, you know. Yeah, absolutely mate, that's a great question. And it's actually something I've spoken about quite a bit with other franchise owners or other boutique fitness owners. And you know, 30,000 was on average our payroll for each location. And the way that we were able to, we were doing on a, on a good month, we would hit about six figures a month on a really good month, but our average would sit around about 75,000. Okay, but that's a real business. Yeah, yeah.

5:58 And you know, we did that very specifically through community initiatives, which is something that we found was really in this industry as you know, it's all community orientated and we just found the right formula very, very early on in that sense and we're able to make them quite successful. And we did really well for a couple of 27 year olds that were coming to the US for the first time to try to chase a dream as well. Just one more point on F45 before we move on. Obviously that that company went public. You know, fair amount of negative press around the business. How have you been able to kind of think about brand protection for Manly and some of the things that you've learned that maybe you should and shouldn't do if you want to create a big company? Like what are some of your takeaways from there from looking at it from the outside? Another great question. And I think the fall of F45 had just imploded from the inside essentially. And to be completely transparent, we got a six year apprenticeship on what not to do when it comes to brand. And so when I look at what brand is today, in my opinion, it is the emotion that someone feels when they engage or interact with, with your product, your message or your people.

7:30 And so for Manly specifically, we have had a core focus foundation on building brand over customer acquisition. And I can get into some strategies how we've done that, but making sure that we show up powerfully whenever we have an engagement, whether that's a strategic partnership, whether that's a community initiative, has been really key to the business. And to be honest with you, you know, we've been on the market for 12 months or just had our 13th month on the market. And it is one of the reasons why we've got such a strong core brand and community following already at such an early stage in that sense. This is Pete Moore. I want to let you in on a little secret. There's this company called Promotion Vault and what they do is they give out rewards from Retailers that allow you to incentivize your members without having to do zero down and one month free or giving away shakes or giving away T shirts. What you want to do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people value, and that doesn't discount your own products and services. So here's the deal. There's something called rewards Vault. The rewards vault is going to allow a member to set up their own profile. They are going to answer questions, you are going to get those answers, going to be able to target those members, and you're going to reward them inside your club, inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside of the spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay their monthly dues and to be rewarded properly for the

9:02 actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't be. Promotion vault. Your answer, Trust me, this is real. So talk us through where you saw the opportunity, what you guys are delivering on right now, and how are you affecting people's lives? Yeah, yeah, Be happy to. So during my time as the CEO of the F45 training portfolio that we had, I had the pleasure of working essentially with hundreds of individuals that were in a pursuit for a better level of wellbeing. Right. And now currently experiencing. And for the latter part of that career, I was also working with predominantly with male professionals and executives in a high performance coaching capacity. So more productivity, health and happiness.

9:52 And also at the time, for myself, I was doing everything right. I was training, I was recovering, my nutrition was dialed, it was on point, I was supplementing with all the right things. And yet something was still off. And I was 30 at the time. And so I just had no zero energy whatsoever. And so I got my blood work done, and fair enough, my test was at 280, which is unbelievably low. And yet I was doing all the right things. And at the time, you know, the tech wasn't where it is today. You said 280 was. What number was that? That's what my testosterone level. Oh, testosterone level. Okay, gotcha. Yeah.

10:34 And at the time, the tech wasn't where it is today. And so my only real option at the time that was presented to me was to jump straight on trt. Right. And so that's where I really got to understand the deficiencies in the men's health market and the need for something different, essentially. And Fast forward to 2023. We had those substantial advancements in AI in genetic testing and blood analysis. And because of COVID as much as I had to bring it up more of a preventative approach to overall health care in general. And so essentially, that was the perfect storm for this personalized health model to come to the market.

11:15 And I looked at the telehealth model, which disrupted the way that we approach and think about getting checkups and prescriptions. And you no longer had to go into a doctor's office to get and fulfill those prescriptions. Right. We could do it from the comfort of our office or our own home. But the problem with that model is that at every touch point in the customer or the client journey, the client or the customer gets bottlenecked into a wait list. Right. And so when I looked at the stats on men's health in the US testosterone has been declining by 1% a year for the last three decades. Nearly 50% of men have a chronic disease, and heart disease is still a leading death for men. It kills one in four men in the US and our suicide rates are four times that of women. And I looked at these stats. Yet there's never been a better time to take control of our health with all the tech and the tools that we have available to us. And my theory on this is that we don't have a health crisis. We actually have an accountability and an ownership crisis. Right. And going back to the telehealth model, where there is still so many friction points for men to actually use that model to then take ownership of their health. And that's why we built the manly model the way that we did. Right.

12:38 So, so you're basically doing telehealth, where people can buy testosterone pellets on their own or pills after they do the blood work, or you do a consulting, like health consultant. So what we did was with the way that the model works, it has too many friction points to move the customer along the client journey to actually get them results. And I spoke to dozens of people that are in some of the top telehealth companies in the US and they all had a very similar issue. And that was from the time they got their blood work done to the time they actually had the practitioner phone call or consultation was up to about 90 days. And at that time, the blood work was redundant. Right. And so what I did is we built a phenomenal scientific team of nutritionists, neuroscientists, men's health experts, and naturopaths and data scientists to build a model that was going to automate that process using the advancements in AI that we've had. Right. And so what we did was we built, we surveyed 500 professional men to figure out what the top categories of male environmental health were that they prioritized over everything else.

13:54 And we came up with focus, confidence, stamina, mood, sleep, libido and recovery. So we built a really in depth, 86 question environmental health assessment to analyze those key pillars. And then we partnered with a third party certified lab to provide a easy, convenient at home self test solution. So it's a self test dry blood spot solution. So you prick your finger, fill up two dual strips of blood and send it back to our lab. And then our data science team built a complex recommender which is an AI model to then analyze 100 data points from the environmental health assessment and the biological health assessment and produce a really comp, really comprehensive health report which is on a dashboard. So Instead of a 42 page PDF, it's a dashboard, very interactive. You can see all of your stats very clearly and there's no need to get it interpreted by a practitioner because it's very, very clear what your issues are and how they correlate to your overall health. Gotcha. Okay, so what we did essentially was removed the practitioner component and plugged in AI to fast track the time when someone signs up to be a customer, to when they actually see their results, to then when they get the results that they want from the protocols.

15:12 And we fast track that by about 50%. So it's extremely fast. And then from a step. Yeah, keep going, sorry. The second part of the product or service is a personalized help plan. So the AI uses the, the blood work data, it uses the environmental health data to then build a custom health plan with nutrition protocols based on your blood work. So consume more of specific foods and why, and then reduce consumption of specific foods and why. And then lifestyle protocols. So think biohacks for men. We'll actually recommend the top three to five interventions in the lowest scoring environmental health categories that are designed to improve your results over time. And then our main solution right now is a completely custom supplement formulation that we formulate and ship every month.

16:05 So based on your blood work, our model will prescribe specific doses of specific micronutrients, aminos, herbs, extracts and minerals into that custom supplement formula that comes in morning, noon and night packs. And we ship it every, every month and then every 90 days we retest. And the beautiful part about this is it's a dynamic, it's an evergreen ecosystem based on the changes in your health. So when you retest with all of the changes in your biology and your environmental health, all of the protocols actually change. So the formulations update, the health plan updates, and you can see the hard data plus or minus on every marker as well. So let me ask you a question. So right now I've been on a self optimization, you know, run over the last like 90 days. I'm taking AG1, I'm taking 10 milligrams of creatine, and I'm taking a multivitamin and I'm working out about 90 minutes a day. Six, six to seven days a week. What would your solution either eliminate or add to my routine? And I'm doing keto, by the way. I'm doing a keto diet. Yeah. So in terms of the ingredients that would be attributed, it would be specific to your blood work. Right. So it would replace your multivitamin.

17:38 Because the ingredients that we use have either clinical research or dozens of case studies on the impact they have on the specific markers that we test for. So depending on your thresholds of what those markers are, is what ingredient will get attributed to that formulation as well. And look, we do at this point in time it's 19 biomarkers because it is a self test kit. So we don't currently do 100, but we're working towards stacking those labs in the future so we can get up to about 50, 50 biomarkers. But we do some vitamins and minerals, we do liver, kidney function, so alt, ast, gfr, and then we do a hormone panel as well, and we do a cholesterol panel and a thyroid panel as well. So we give you a broad range of biomarkers to give you a really good baseline of your biological health.

18:30 Because when you look at, you know, the, when you look at the marketplace and I'll kind of get back to what I said about we have an ownership problem at this point in time. We have the tools that are available available to us now. The technology is there, it's 2025. AI is advanced, the blood work that we have advanced and the tech is now able to make precise, prescriptive logic based on your exact data. So if you're taking, if, if we're just talking about supplements and you're taking a supplement off the shelf that is generic, a lot of them are really good products and they have really high quality ingredients. But because we're at a stage where you can get something custom built to your biology, why would you not use that option for basically the same price as what. So what would my, what's my startup cost or initiation cost and what is my monthly recurring if I became a member? Yeah, so when you sign up, the first step is to do the blood work and the environmental health assessment. We charge $199 upfront for the lab kit that gets shipped directly to door. You take that, you send it back. We have a contract with the lab that once they receive the blood sample, they have to result it within 48 hours. Sometimes it's a little bit out of that window, but it is much faster than going to a phlebotomist. And then we charge 249amonth for the precision packs and the health plan access. Gotcha. And that's drop

20:01 shipped to me every 30 days. Here's your. That ships to your dealer. Gotcha. And then do I have a, do I have a coach or do I have. Is there a hotline, is there an individual that I'm talking to if I, you know, for whatever reasons I want to. So we are. You're one of the first platforms I've spoken about this. So we are right now building out a Manly. The Manly concierge. So it's a hybrid product. It's a hybrid AI and human concierge service. So we have an LLM that actually is trained on millions of different bits of data when it comes to case studies and clinical research, but also is trained on your data specifically. So you can directly have conversations with the LLM, the large language model, about your specific data and about your plan. So you can get real time feedback very fast.

20:55 And then also we have the other component which is the human access. So via a chat you are able to access health coaching based on your data as well. Still trying to make sure that we do not become a telehealth company and we end up with those same bottlenecks or friction points as the rest of the marketplace. And that's why we are implementing that chat feature as well. Gotcha. And obviously we do a lot of work in the med spa space. We're doing work now with companies that are in, you know, longevity and anti aging. Yeah. So I'd say we're kind of just scratching the surface on people understanding what the potential is for themselves and what can be achieved when you take a look and say, you know, here's the results that you'll see in 90 days, 6 months, 12 months. How much of a Runway or look back do you have right now with some of the people that have been on your program?

21:50 Cause obviously you just, you know, you're a startup and you know, you need time, days to actually show results. So where are you guys at right now in the ability to do a. Look back, Yeah, I mean, we have phenomenal data. We've got data on hundreds of different individuals that have been through the program. The average person stays for just under six months at this point in time as well. And for obviously a subscription product that's definitely in the top 0.1%. But before we launched the company, we ran a beta on 100 individuals and those individuals were, we had a broad span of demographics. We had professional athletes, athletes, Hyrox athletes, investors, entrepreneurs, professionals. And our goal with that was to essentially gather evidence based data on the impact of the product, social credibility and testimonials. And we ran that and over a 90 day period, we actually collected some phenomenal results.

22:58 And on average, across the board, just for one of the markers like testosterone, we saw a 30% increase in test levels across the board. And that's an average. Some individuals, it didn't move and then other individuals, you know, we had up to 58% change. And because they're not controlled studies, you don't have, you know, complete control over what the participants are doing outside of the product as well. This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast. We are partnered up with a company called haier dose higherdose.com they are the leader in workout recovery products, infrared technology, LED light masks, neck enhancers and other products such as PEMF mats and sauna blankets. If you have not gotten on the workout recovery train yet, your time and your stop is now. You got to get these products in there before these workout recovery and spas end up saturating your market.

24:05 Having your members walk out of the club and going into one of their locations for 200 bucks per month where they're paying 39 to you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery. If we are already an authority in. Workouts, higher dose, check it out. There's a wholesale code and we look forward to helping you augment your products and services to meet the demands of your members. And hey, let's get people happy, healthy and sweating. And the recovery should be just as good as the workout. So we like to keep these two around 20, 25 minutes, get some bite size. So the last question I'll ask you is, you know, if I'm doing research on this, I come across you, I come across a couple other groups that are, you know, in and around what you're doing. You know, give me the pitch on why, you know, partnering with Manly or, or Luke, you know, because you're kind of, like, the DNA behind this thing.

25:02 And obviously you care. Obviously, you've, like, been your own kind of guinea pig to say, like, hey, I'm gonna. I'm gonna help myself. And as I like to say, Dave hears me say this all the time. Like, the best way to create a new business is to find a frustration that you have, solve the frustration, and then now scale that to other people. So what would be the reason to come to Manly? Yeah, great question. So for us, our differentiation factor is that we've created and productized men's health and automated it so it's the most seamless possible experience when it comes to optimizing and taking control of your health. We can get you guys or anyone that comes into the program results in 50% less time than it takes with most of our competitors on the marketplace. And that's really it in a nutshell. It's seamless, it's on your own time, and you're able to take ownership and control of every stage of the process. Awesome. All right, well, we'll have all the information up here as this launches. People, we going into the fall and starting to get kids back to school and thinking about what they can do to optimize themselves before.

26:17 Before hitting the holiday break. So I encourage you to take a look at manly love, what you're doing. Obviously, we're trying to get more and more people to use the term acronym H.A.L.O. and live a halo lifestyle. So one of the best ways to do that is to make sure what you're putting in your mouth actually is beneficial to you. So thanks for. Thanks for supporting the cause here and devoting your life to it. So appreciate you. And I'll see you sometime when I get back to Manhattan Beach. On there, a short visit, hopefully sometime in August. September. Pleasure, mate. I appreciate you having me on. Awesome. All right, man. Go Halo. Go Manly. I like it. Good stuff.

27:10 S.A. sam.