← Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
Stem Cells, Exosomes & the Future of Recovery ft. Seth Berge I Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
00:46:39
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- [00:00]
A
My passion is so many people still think stem cells therapy is unattainable. Yeah, it's not cheap.
- [00:05]
B
I thought it was unattainable.
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A
People think it's unattainable. They think they have to go somewhere else. And even if, you know, they might hear some ad that says you need to go to Panama, they're like, well, I'm not spending 50 grand to go to Panama.
- [00:15]
B
Welcome to another episode of Coffees. Thanks for coming on today's show, Seth.
- [00:19]
A
Good to be here.
- [00:20]
B
All right, cool. So I'd like to start the show off. Seth, a guy like you, very, very fit guy in the health and wellness space. What's your morning routine?
- [00:26]
A
Morning routine? Buy it. I am not at this point, I've not got myself to get up at 4am and do the cold plunges. So I'm not going to give you a really good answer here. I like to stay up a little bit late, watch some TV, wind down. So I'm not really getting up until 7, 7:30 probably. So I know that's not going to play very well in the super health and wellness space. But I also like to be there when my kids get ready for school. So I have a 13 year old and a 9 year old. The 13 year old's up at about 7, gets ready for school, then the 9 year old comes down about 8. So I'm kind of just checking emails, getting ready for the day and then when they go to school then I really start working. So when you hit the gym and.
- [01:01]
B
Do all the other stuff.
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A
So I am different. I don't like this. But because I can't get myself to get up at 4 or 5 in the morning, which would require going to bed super early most of the time I don't get to the gym till after 5:30, sometimes after 6:30 because it's just hard for me to take an hour, hour and a half in the middle of the day with everything I have going on. So usually when I'm done working then I can just go to the gym and kind of focus on the gym and not be as distracted. The days I try to get up in the morning and do it, you know, at like nine or even at one or two, it's just I find I get calls and emails and texts I don't get a good workout in so I'm saving it for later in the day.
- [01:34]
B
Usually you get thrown off there.
- [01:36]
A
You get thrown off. Yeah.
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B
Nice. So let me ask you, I mean like right now the health and wellness space is, I would argue One of the most emerging, if not one of the most dominant businesses. You hear the health and med spa business just exploding. What is it that drew you to specifically the stem cell space? Now, you didn't get into the normal health and wellness labs, you know, they got going on.
- [02:01]
A
Yeah. So I've always been a sports guy. I grew up loving team sports. My dad instilled a love of basketball, baseball, football to me. So my heroes growing up were always pro athletes, you know, 80s 90s kids, so pro wrestlers, you know, you know, the guys with the big bodies and, you know, the freak athletes. So I've always, you know, as a kid, everybody wants to be an action figure, right? So I certainly was not naturally built that way, but I did play a lot of sports growing up. I played, you know, all the way baseball, basketball, all the way through high school, played Division 3 basketball, baseball. But even then I wasn't. I was by no means a biohacker. So I'm a serial entrepreneur, too. So about eight and a half years ago, former business partner of mine went to a marketing conference in Florida where there was a speaker. He was a medical guy, but also a marketer, and he was basically selling a stem cell business in a box. And really, nobody hardly knew anything about what a stem cell was. I think maybe people had heard about it from the early 2000s and the controversy with the George W. Bush years where they're talking about embryonic stem cell research, which is kind of a taboo subject. And then maybe people heard about Kobe Bryant going over to Germany and getting some crazy new stem cell procedure. But that's about the extent that I knew of Ste. But he brought it back to me as a business opportunity. And so I first looked at it from the business opportunity, not even necessarily the health and wellness space. So I kind of tell people there isn't some great hero, like, origin story, necessarily for my beginning in this space, But I've done a lot of different things, a lot of different industries, and without a doubt, I'm really glad or blessed that I kind of fell into the space because it is what I'm passionate about. I've done financial planning, I've done home improvement stuff before that. All that was just a business. But this is. This is actually fun and rewarding, you know, getting to see lives change. And, you know, I've gotten more dialed into my own fitness and health, of course, since being into this space. So I'm super happy and fortunate that I did get into it.
- [03:57]
B
So it was presented back when. I mean, now, I mean, if it was presented to you as a business opportunity eight and a half years ago, I'm surprised that we don't see many district. I mean, you're one of the biggest distributors in America of stem cells. Like, I'm surprised. This isn't just, you know, a rampant business.
- [04:15]
A
It's. It's getting there. So it might seem like to somebody who isn't in the industry, you know, you. You don't hear about it that much, of course. So I'm. I'm in the industry. There's. There's been a huge uptick in med spas and places that are offering regenerative therapies like stem cells and exosomes. Even in the last couple years, it's really, really gone up. But it is still it. People still tell me, and I have to remind myself that we are still in the early stages and there's exponential growth to be had. And I just say that's kind of funny because I've been in it for eight and a half years. I've seen it go from basically nothing to what it is now. I think it's about a $10 billion industry, and within a year or two, it's expected, at least by 2030, expected to be 40 to $50 billion industry, if not more. So.
- [04:58]
B
Wow.
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A
So it is. It's. Yeah. I like it when people tell me that because it reminds me that, hey, you're still in the ground floor. Yeah. Still in the infancy. And, you know, again, fortunate enough that I've been in it for a little while, so I've been able to get my. I've got really anchored in. In this world. It's kind of a small world. So, yeah, you know, it's a big world, but it's a. It's.
- [05:18]
B
You don't see a lot of. You don't see any of the big biohackers talking about Simpsons. Gary Becker's not talking about it. Or Brian Johnson. Maybe he's doing some of it or.
- [05:28]
A
Yeah, yeah. Maybe not publicly, but I can tell you some stories about Gary Brecke and some of his most famous clients. He uses stem cells and exosomes. They've been a little bit controversial in the past, so I think Gary Breca just doesn't like to talk about it as much. But if you talk to some of Gary Brecker's clients, they'll tell you that they've been doing exosome and stem cell treatments with. With Gary Breca. So he actually does have. He has his hands in the line as well. Yep, he does.
- [05:54]
B
I distribute to this group.
- [05:56]
A
Yeah, I've been trying to get him as my client, but not yet.
- [06:00]
B
So maybe after the show.
- [06:01]
A
Yeah, yeah. Who do you know?
- [06:03]
B
Yeah, okay, cool. Was, you know when did like this vision for regenerative revival first come to you?
- [06:11]
A
Yeah, so originally when I got into the space. We're going way back here. But my, my previous, I've been about 20, I've got in, I've been in business for myself since I was in my early 20s and I've always done one to many type of sales. So dinner seminars. So I started in the home improvement business. We dropped direct mail. We'd invite a bunch of homeowners in the area that fit our demographic, feed them dinner, a steak dinner, present what we were selling. And the whole idea was to get them interested in a one on one meeting. So I've been doing that model since I was 23 years old for home improvement. I went on to walk in bathtubs using that same model. Then I went to financial planning using that same model. So the reason the stem cell thing intrigued me when my former business partner went there is he said, hey, I think that we can plug in the stem cell business using our dinner seminar. One to many approach. So that's really what we did. So we at first hired doctors to do these educational talks and tried to send them to the doctor's clinic. So we were doing, we were kind of overseeing everything. And the first three weeks out these doctors did the seminar. They knew all the science behind stem cells, but they couldn't communicate it. So we went three weeks with zero sales. We stuck like 40 grand into marketing and we got nothing. And me and my business partner were like, we don't know that much of the science of stem cells, but we do know how to explain things to people at a level that can resonate. Because really what we're presenting with regenerative therapy, stem cell therapy, whatever you want to call it, is we're presenting a solution to a problem. These people have a problem, that problem is they're in pain, it's chronic. And the options that they've been given so far haven't been working. So meaning somebody might say you're a 60 year old pickleball player and you've got an old knee injury and you've been doing cortisone shots, they only last for a couple of weeks. There's a lot of side effects. You've got chronic pain in that knee and you've been told the only thing that you can do you know, by your traditional orthopedic doctor, is get a knee replacement. So it's kind of like pain management, pain management and then surgery. Well, nobody really wants to get a. An artificial knee or a hip or things like that. There's a lot of downsides to having hardware in your body. So what we're presenting is a solution, an alternative, you know, to the problem. So by doing the dinner seminars and explaining, you know, hitting on all the points, it's not just how do stem cells talk to each other. And, you know, nobody really cares about the bio. I shouldn't say nobody. But the average consumer doesn't really care that much about the. The deep biology that goes on, you know, with the body and the products. They want to know what's it going to do for me. So what we decided was we're better. You know, the problem isn't the science, it's the communicating the science. So that we just took over doing the dinner seminars ourselves. And, you know, we did like $175,000 of business off of one meeting. And that's kind of where we took off. We said, okay, we need to be able to communicate the story. The results are there, the products there. The science is there. We just need to be able to tell the story better. So we took that vision, and then we just started expanding it. And the other thing that we've done that I've done, we've. Since I'm not working with this guy anymore, what we've decided to do is the only barrier for a lot of people to get this treatment is they don't know where to go. So these dinner seminars, which are educational, solve the problem of explaining the solution. And then what we decided, instead of having brick and mortar clinics in every city all across America, we just started hiring nurse practitioners, getting them certified to do stem cell therapies. And they're mobile, so we can treat patients in any part of the country, and we can send a nurse practitioner directly to their home. So that was the vision that I had about eight, eight and a half years ago when we got into it, is how can we take some of the overhead away, too? Because stem cell therapy is expensive. And part of the reasons it's so expensive, the products cost a lot of money, but there's a lot of overhead in running a brick and mortar clinic. So I thought, well, if the only service we're doing doesn't require, like a surgery room, because we're talking about injections and IV pushes, there's no reason to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in startup costs in every territory when we can be mobile, have our nurse practitioners and our doctors be concierge, white glove style. And that's really where it's grown to today. Now I have almost 100 nurse practitioners, doctors, and I'm in all 50 states. And we can send our medical team directly to somebody and anywhere in the country virtually to get the treatment done. So that's a long answer to your short question, but that, that was kind of always the vision. It just takes a little while to, to get, you know, to get all 50 states to get enough providers to be able to cover the whole country. But that's pretty much where we're at now.
- [10:47]
B
That's fantastic. And now you're able to go direct consumer in the comfort of their own home. What have been some of the biggest challenges that you faced? Building a stage stem cell empire.
- [11:00]
A
Yeah, so obviously one of the, it's hiring is always tough. There's plenty of nurse practitioners out there, but you got to find them that are willing to travel, go on the road. We pay them very well, but you still have to be able to find ones that are independent enough to just be gone all day. Or sometimes it's two or three days and they're going house. They're, remember, they're, you know, they're making house calls too. So it's, it's always a challenge finding enough providers to take care of the patients. That's, that's, you know, that's probably a normal business challenge. This world of regenerative therapy, there are regulatory challenges, so that's probably without, I don't think. Yeah, hyper regulated. Yeah, it is, it is hyper regulated. So you have to be very, very careful. I've seen a lot of people in this space say the wrong things, try to cut corners, you know, try to fly under the radar, do things maybe not on the up and up. And I've seen a lot of people get in trouble because they're making salacious, they're making unfounded claims. So the biggest challenge even to this day is running a medical company, a regenerative therapy company, because these products are not FDA approved. Right. Because the FDA stands for Food and Drug Administration, stem cell products, regenerative products. Another term for that is biologics. They are not a drug, they're not food. So they're regulated somewhat by the fda. It just means, it just means it's a gray area. So you have to be very, very careful.
- [12:20]
B
So who regulates stem cells? It's not the fda.
- [12:23]
A
Well, the FDA regulates the labs, they regulate the process of how we collect the tissue. They regulate how we can. You know, we're not even allowed to manipulate the umbilical cord tissue. So there's a tons of regulation. The ftc, along with the FDA regulates the marketing side. It's really the marketing side that you have to be careful of. So you can't say things like, we guarantee that this stem cell therapy will completely eliminate your osteoarthritis, even though it's done that for the vast majority of people that have used it. If you make that claim now, you're, according to the fda, you're making a claim as if it were a drug. And they'll say, well, since it's not a drug, you can't make that claim. And if you're claiming it, even if.
- [13:06]
B
It'S a drug though, you can't.
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A
Well, if a drug has been FDA approved for a specific indication. So you take a drug that gets approved for osteoarthritis and they can say, this drug is for your osteoarthritis specifically because it's been approved, it's done that.
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B
$800 million, it's going to heal.
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A
No, but they can say it's specifically designed for your osteoarthritis. We're not even really supposed to say this will, this, this will treat your osteoarthritis. We have to say things like this can address the symptoms of your, your osteoarthritis. A lot of it is almost like wink, wink is like, look it up on your own.
- [13:43]
B
Yeah.
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A
You'll see what it's done. You know, here's thousands of testimonials.
- [13:47]
B
See what Chat GPT says.
- [13:48]
A
Yes, go to Chat GPT and see.
- [13:51]
B
What stem cells is doing for. Yeah, you know, millions of people.
- [13:55]
A
So it is a, it is walking a, it's walking a tightrope, making sure that you're staying out of the, out of the bullseye of the regulators. And I've grown a lot people know who I am in the industry. I'm sure every, I'm sure the FDA knows who I am, who my companies are. And I've never had any trouble because we try to make sure we're doing everything on the up and up. Like we go above and beyond when we educate people to let them know everything. You know, we're not trying to tell people like, this is your insurance, your insurance not going to cover stem cell therapy. It's just not going to. So we're very upfront about that.
- [14:26]
B
Which is crazy. You know, they'd rather cover a $50,000 surgery.
- [14:30]
A
Yeah, yeah, man. We could talk. How much time do we have? Yeah, there's, there's all sorts of, you know, there's big. Pharma is very powerful in this country, so they, they've probably been the biggest inhibitor of getting that, you know, more access to, to, to this type of treatment. And they've been really fighting it tooth and nail for over 20 years, and they're still fighting it. If they had their way, they would, you know, they, they would have the government shut down this whole industry, and they've spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying to keep this a little bit more in the gray, because the last thing they want is for people to get better quickly.
- [15:07]
B
Yeah, they don't want you healed.
- [15:08]
A
No, they don't want you healed. A patient cured is a customer lost. And I don't think that's. I always be very careful with this. I know hundreds and hundreds of doctors, medical professionals. I think the vast majority of them are doing the best they can. But if you talk to any one of them, even younger doctors, they learn nothing about regenerative medicine in med school. They've spent very little time on your. On nutrition or prevention. It's. They're practicing medicine. There's a reason we say practice medicine, man.
- [15:35]
B
It's sad because all they know is just to basically feed people poison and then fix them later.
- [15:41]
A
Yeah. What's that saying? If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail or something like that? It's like if you're an orthopedic surgeon and you get paid big bucks to do knee replacements. I've had so many people, like customers, potential customers that are this close to getting the stem cell therapy for their knee, and they're like, I just got to talk to my orthopedic doctor first. It's like, well, what do you think the guy who makes a living off of giving you a knee replacement is going to tell you when you say you're going to do this experimental thing? It's like, good luck with that. He's not going to sign off.
- [16:07]
B
Are they still calling stem cells experimental?
- [16:10]
A
They are technically experimental. Technically, they are. It's not an FDA again, it's not an FDA approved drug, but neither is any supplement you take. You know, so if you take a multivitamin, you look at the bottle or even vitamin D. Yeah. I always ask, what does it say about the fda? It says, these statements have not been evaluated by the fda. It doesn't mean that the FDA looked at them and said they're no good. But if it's not a food, if it's not food or a drug, it's outside of their jurisdiction. So that's really where the biologics industry, the stem cell exosome industry is. It's not FDA approved, so doctors are able to use it at their own discretion.
- [16:49]
B
So what do you think the future is of stem cells? And when you collaborate this new variable, AI, what does that world of AI and stem cells?
- [16:57]
A
Well, I don't know exactly about AI on the medical side yet. I know AI has obviously changed the way we market, the way we can narrow down our demographics. I do know what I think is going to happen, what I think in the very short term anyway, I'm seeing it is, it's kind of, this current administration is far more stem cell peptide, natural healing, they're a lot more for that. So that's partly why you're seeing more and more people getting into the space.
- [17:28]
B
Yeah.
- [17:29]
A
So I think that's a good thing. Generally speaking. RFK even tweeted, he said, stem cells, peptides, leave them alone, let people have access to them. So obviously I'm, I'm not political, but that's, that's a good thing. And in my opinion. But what I'm seeing is there's going to be less action by the FDA trying to, they're not going to try to shut down anything. They're going to try to probably start making sure that the people that are in the business are doing it correctly. So I think there's going to be a lot more rules and regulations, but not in a bad way. I think they're going to be put in place to make sure that nobody's, that the consumer is not being taken advantage of. There's going to be more compliance regulations. But if you're doing it the right way, like we are, we always have been, I welcome that because there are some, there are some nefarious players that just jump in and see a money grab and they start saying, oh, stem cells will cure anything. Just, you know, oh, you've got a bad knee and a shoulder. We'll do an IV and you're, you know, everything will be better. You're going to be back to 20 years old. There needs to be some regulation in the healthcare space. So what I'm seeing is there's going to be some more uniform, I'm going to say this uniformity where there's going to. Because it's kind of Now Wild west. But I think what's coming is there's going to be some more specific rules in place that if you follow them, great. If you don't, hopefully just get some bad actors out.
- [18:46]
B
I mean, that seems like there's gonna be a lot of competition then.
- [18:49]
A
Yep, definitely. Competition is healthy, you know, for me, which brings to the other side of it. So we're talking about my direct to consumer model, which is great. We'll educate you, we'll send a nurse practitioner.
- [19:03]
B
So you love the competition because you're feed the competition.
- [19:05]
A
Yeah. So the other thing I'm in, Precision Biologics is my wholesale company. So a few years ago I got together with some of the big players in the industry and we said we're tired of buying these products and making some distributor rich. We just got into the manufacturing side. So we're actually buying the raw materials from, we have contracts with hospitals. So the raw materials being birthing tissue. So that birthing tissue, after it's been screened at the hospital, the core, the placenta, the amniotic fluid, the tissue, all that, that gets sent to third party, which the FDA oversees, it gets screened for sterility. So then we purchase tons of raw material from these third party labs that have cleaned it, cleared it. And then we purchase millions of dollars worth at a time. And then we have cut, we have a, we have deals with manufacturers that take those cords and make the products for us to our specifications. So what we, what we pride ourselves at on the wholesale side is nobody has more stem cell and umbilical cord dense or exosome rich products than we have. So we actually get to make them the way we want, the way the marketplace wants them. And because we do such volume, we, we have a very, very good, affordable business model.
- [20:15]
B
What are exosomes? So the crowd.
- [20:17]
A
Yeah, so exosomes are like stem cells. So stem cells actually naturally secrete stem exosomes. So if you're getting a, a product from the umbilical cord tissue, like what we have, there's going to be some exosomes that are naturally secreted. Exosomes are like. So think about if you're building a house, the stem cells are like the workers, they're going to be doing the work. The exosomes are going to be sending the messages to the workers of what they need to do. Or maybe it's like the exosomes are like the blueprint. So if you can get stem cells and exosomes working together, that's going to be your, your best bet. So all of our stem cell products that we sell have naturally occurring exosomes in them, but we also have a line of exosome only products where we're actually taking out in the lab, not me, but the, the manufacturers are actually able to extract, extract just the exosomes. So it's just pure exosomes. So like what you got today was a stem cell product. 80 million live stem cells plus 180 billion exosomes. We put them together and the, the exosomes are going to kind of tell the, the stem cells what to do. So it's.
- [21:21]
B
I feel great. There was no recovery time. And they're like, yeah, you just went through a procedure. I'm like, that was a procedure. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't feel like a procedure.
- [21:29]
A
So stem cells and exosomes, I mean, I don't think we want to get, I don't know how scientific, how scientific we want to get, but there's different applications for both and that, but it's all derived from the placental birthing tissue, the cord, the placenta, all that.
- [21:43]
B
Now, you know, building in the health space often comes with a lot of skepticism and hyper regulation, as we discussed. What are some of the like, early hurdles you had to overcome to build that momentum that you have right now?
- [21:55]
A
Yeah, obviously when people are spending thousands of dollars, some people are more skeptical than others. So that's why we love the dinner seminars. We love one on ones to educate. But one of the hurdles is, like I said earlier, if somebody goes and asks their traditional doctor who makes their house payment, their car payment by doing traditional medicine, doing cortisone shots and knee surgeries, it's pretty hard to, pretty hard to get them on your side regarding something new like stem cell therapy. So you know, you're, there's general skepticism and each person's different. So that's always a little bit hard, you know, hard, hard to get around. We talked about the regulation side that's, you know, that's, that's always walking a tightrope. But we, we've got that.
- [22:41]
B
Is it mostly young doctors that you work with now?
- [22:45]
A
All across the board. The common denominator for the doctors we work with is they're all going to be, they're almost all going to be independent. So, so you're not gonna, it's very hard to sell into some hospital because there's so much bureaucracy, there's so many decision makers trying to get a board to agree on doing a non FDA approved procedure at a hospital that's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That's pretty tough. So the doctors we work with are usually private practice, so somebody might own an interventional pain clinic. And I just signed one up yesterday. It's like they came to me because they've had so many patients come to them asking, hey, do you guys do stem cells? Do you guys do you know these cellular therapies? And like, no, we don't. And they finally had enough people ask them about it that I don't know how they got my, My, my info, but they're like, hey, we've had enough people ask about it. It seems like this is something we should be doing. But again, that's a, that's an independent practice.
- [23:37]
B
Yeah, yeah. You're not going to get Hoag Hospital.
- [23:39]
A
No, it's, it's tough. The future. They asked me, you know, what, what do I see happening the next. Certainly, certainly there will probably be some product that does get an FDA approval in this space, and that'll probably change the game. And, you know, I wish they just.
- [23:53]
B
Offered it to all those with torn meniscus, torn Achilles, torn. This.
- [23:57]
A
They should, they should. If, if, if actual patient outcomes was the most important thing, they would do that. There's a couple countries in the eu it's changes now, but there's a. Several countries in the EU that before they will pay for like a knee replacement or surgery, they require you to try some form of regenerative therapy first. And the insurance covers that.
- [24:16]
B
That just makes so much more sense.
- [24:17]
A
It does. It makes too much sense. And that's. That's the problem.
- [24:21]
B
Yeah. I mean, what if it did and then you saved yourself a surgery and then not having to destroy your knee?
- [24:26]
A
Yeah, I mean, I've, I probably helped facilitate 14, 1500 of these treatment packages. And one of the most common things we hear three months, six months, nine months, a year later is I'm out of pain. Almost. Almost completely out of pain. And surgery is now off the table. That's many people's end goal is to avoid that surgery.
- [24:43]
B
Now, let me ask you this. What's the world of cellular repair headed to in the next five years? What do you think it looks like?
- [24:49]
A
Yeah, I think it's going to continue to get buttoned up a little bit more like we talked about. I think they're going to try to get some uniformity across some of the protocols, which, again, I'm all about that. In fact, some of my group that we work with is actually working with some government agencies. We're trying to put some. For lack Of a better term, peer reviewed studies together, case studies. What's really neat about the regenerative medicine industry, it's competitive, but most of us in this space are actually cheering for each other because we want to advance this forward. So there's a lot of collaboration even with competing, I say competing from one clinic to the next. Like we're like, we want you to share us your best practices. So you know, there's a Facebook group that, that one of my companies has made. It's four providers and there's almost, there's almost 2,000 providers that are on this group now. And every day it's just constant back and forth talking about, hey, I've got a 43 year old patient in here with XYZ. Has anybody seen anybody like this? What, you know, what, what protocols exactly work best? It's pretty neat to see a lot, a lot of collaboration, thank God, in the industry.
- [25:58]
B
It's like all industries need more collaboration because we go so much faster.
- [26:03]
A
Yeah.
- [26:04]
B
When we're there, when we're together.
- [26:05]
A
Yep. Collaboration, not competition is one of the things we say in that group. Yeah.
- [26:09]
B
Yeah. Thank God. Especially in this, in an emerging field like this, we need as much collaboration as possible because, you know, it's growing so fast and everything's changing so quickly, especially with AI. I was telling you, one of the guys now who's taken AI and taken stem cells and trying to create the human brain, that the stem cell industry is directly correlated with AI.
- [26:34]
A
Yeah.
- [26:35]
B
Just because you could do so much with stem cells and artificial intelligence. I mean. Yeah. Oh, one thing, it's like the embodiment of the word.
- [26:42]
A
Yeah. You asked me, I probably should have mentioned this earlier about the future. There's probably in the not too distant future they're going to be able to use stem cells to like recreate entire organs. You know, like you'll be able to.
- [26:53]
B
Yeah. The not too distant Future. Meaning like Q1, Q1 26.
- [26:57]
A
Oh, you need a new heart. We'll take some of your own stem cells, give us a month in the lab, will grow you a new one. That's honestly the future of stem cell therapy even for. There's also some major advancements. Some of this is overseas. A lot of American doctors and clinics like mine also we don't want to touch things like Alzheimer's and dementia. But there's some pretty crazy things going on overseas where people will go and they're desperate and you know, you hear some crazy stories about it shouldn't be like that.
- [27:24]
B
We shouldn't have to leave America when we're desperate and when it comes to our health.
- [27:28]
A
Yeah, one of the.
- [27:29]
B
We should be coming to America.
- [27:30]
A
I agree. I agree. And one of the. Yeah, that.
- [27:32]
B
That's not going to Panama.
- [27:33]
A
It's. No, it's medical tourism, but reverse. And part of the problem is the fda. I mean. Yeah, I'll just say it. And then we are a very litigious country, especially in healthcare, so.
- [27:44]
B
Especially in anything.
- [27:44]
A
Yeah, yeah, in anything. So a lot of these docs, especially with employment.
- [27:48]
B
Anything employment based.
- [27:49]
A
That's true. But they don't want, you know, no matter how many waivers of patient signs, there's still always a risk that if you do something that's totally outside of the ordinary, that either malpractice won't cover or you know, that some good litigious attorney can overrule even a consent form that a patient clearly signs. So there is still stuff that people are going overseas for, and it's not that the American doctors can't do it. In fact, I know a lot of doctors that have practices here in the States that will use stem cell therapy for things like joints and IVs, like the normal run of the mill stuff. But then they have a clinic in like Antigua or Panama or somewhere where they don't have the FDA oversight. And they have that specifically for cases that are a little bit more severe. You know, brain function, spinal cord injuries, stuff that they don't dare touch here because it's too dangerous. I'd say dangerous. Not actually dangerous, but dangerous. FDA regulation wise. So then they have clinics overseas for those cases.
- [28:50]
B
I have a question. So we all know, like what Kobe Bryant did in Germany and all these people would go to Panama to get stem cells. That was a big trend.
- [28:58]
A
Yes.
- [28:58]
B
So we still, we have that here. This is what we're talking about.
- [29:01]
A
Yeah. Yep. So again, the only reason you need to go to Panama or overseas to get stem cells would be if you're trying to do something. Like I said, if, if you have a spinal cord injury, you're probably not going to get, get a doctor to do some crazy thing where they go into your spine and there's stuff that goes above my pay grade. Again, that's the only reason you would need to go to Panama. There are some experimental things, but if you're talking about the run of the mill, you want longevity. You've got soft tissue damage in your body, inflammation, autoimmune conditions. All that stuff can be done right here in the States for a fraction of the cost and done in the comfort of your own home.
- [29:36]
B
So the Panama stuff is real niche stuff in your body, like going into your spine the way.
- [29:43]
A
And again, I've never been there to do this. Thank God I don't have a spinal cord injury. But there's things that they'll do over there that doctors won't do here. But the other thing is there's still a large medical tourism industry for stem cells simply because of. Of intentional misdirection. Meaning, I don't necessarily fault these people. It's marketing. I'm a marketer, you're a marketer. They, these overseas clinics want Americans to think that the only place they can get good stem cells is by going overseas. So all their advertisements are, you know, you gotta get. In order to get real stem cells or real good stem cells. Yeah, you gotta get out there. It's just simply not true. But there's still. There's still people who I still.
- [30:25]
B
That's why I just asked them, like, is this the same stem cells that I'm getting?
- [30:27]
A
Same. It's safer, actually. So, I mean, we could. We could totally nerd out on this too. But in the US So for better or worse, in the United States, our products have to be minimally manipulated. We are not allowed to take one single stem cell and divide it or culture it and expand it. You can do that overseas. So they can take one stem cell, divide it. So there's a hundred. So they'll be like, we'll give you 300 million stem cells. Well, every. Every iteration of that cell that's been divided, it loses less of its original character. We know less. So it's not as powerful as the original cell. And we don't know exactly what it's going to do in your body once.
- [31:05]
B
So you don't divide it.
- [31:07]
A
No, it's all. So those 80 million cells that we put, that we ran through, that's 80 million. Original, undifferentiated, uncultured.
- [31:14]
B
Now, that went into my knee, but, like, will it just specifically repair the knee or repair everything in my body?
- [31:22]
A
You got an iv. So those cells are going to run. They're going to go wherever the. Wherever the blood takes it. So it's going to get a lot of. It's going to your heart, your lungs, your other organs. It's going to find the inflammation throughout the body. That's for. Just think anything inside your body you want to do an IV for. We did your knee because you had recent meniscus surgery. So if we're going to do a direct injection we did a slightly different product and a different procedure for, for your knee. We actually directly put a ton of stem cells into your knee joint. So those cells, because your knees, an encapsulated joint, I'd say around 90% of that product will stay in the knee. There's a reason we did a direct injection in your knee and an iv, because the IV alone would not have gotten enough into the knee to do what.
- [32:06]
B
But it'll go through all the, any inflammation I have in the body.
- [32:09]
A
Interior. Yes, especially interior. And there's a lot of, you know, for people that have, not to be gross, but like irritable bowel syndrome or things like people that have gut issues, a lot of times it's, they have inflammation of their gut. So a lot of people get a lot of benefit from doing, you know, biannual or annual or even quarterly stem cell IVs to help with their, you know, gut, their gut health, especially if you have inflammation as being one of the issues. So again, long answer to short question. If you have a direct injury, soft tissue damage, an injury, we want to directly put the cells right in that area. So it's, it's like there's two different modes. And a lot of people, if they're going to get their knee or their back or their shoulder done, as long as they've set up the treatment, we like to give them the iv because why not? There's, it's, there's so many benefits to the body and we're already up there. So that's part of the concierge service. You don't have to get, you wouldn't have had to get an IV today for your knee to get better. Yeah, but you know, you're, you're into health and wellness. So.
- [33:06]
B
Yeah, I mean, listen, in the biohacking space, I'm just like, I'll do whatever.
- [33:11]
A
Yeah, you'll do it. Yeah.
- [33:12]
B
You know, like. So they talk about stem cells for like vampire faceless stem cells for like. What's a vampire?
- [33:18]
A
Yes. So that's the other world. That's the, that's the beauty world. That's the beauty work, cosmetic and aesthetics. The last few years, that's taken off like crazy. So on my wholesale side, that, that's, that's going crazy because all these med spas, they're looking for natural.
- [33:32]
B
So our dermatologists are pushing exosomes.
- [33:34]
A
Yeah, they're. Yep. Exosome stem cells so you can microneedle them into the face. My wife has done her under eye, I think they call it.
- [33:42]
B
That's exosomes.
- [33:43]
A
That's actually stem cells too. So you can do both. So without. I don't know how deep we want to get into the difference, but she's done both. So she's done like a skin pen with exosomes where she might. Where she can microneedle the face. And she's actually put the stem cells directly under the eye. And I think they call that biological bleph or something like that. And she's had some amazing results.
- [34:07]
B
What kind of results?
- [34:08]
A
It's just. Just filling the under eye. It actually, because in the stem cell product, there's so much naturally occurring collagen, and collagen is a building block of healthy tissue. So, you know, there's a reason people inject collagen and things like that.
- [34:21]
B
So much collagen, but it's all pill.
- [34:22]
A
Form, water form, so.
- [34:25]
B
And that doesn't work nearly as well.
- [34:27]
A
No. Remember the term. We're going a little bit deeper, but the term Wharton's Jelly. Nobody would ever know what Wharton's Jelly is, but it's actually the stem cell product we use. It comes from Wharton's Jelly. Wharton's Jelly is this gooey good stuff that runs through every umbilical cord. And yes, it was named after Dr. Wharton, who discovered this in like 1794, I think, in Germany. But the specific part of the umbilical cord called the Wharton's jelly is the richest source in all of earth for stem cells, for collagens, type 1 and 3, there's naturally occurring hyaluronic acid. Again, the stem cells secrete exosomes. There's growth factors, there's cytokines. It's called. It's got all the good stuff. Yes, all the good stuff.
- [35:07]
B
Miraculous stuff.
- [35:07]
A
Joe Rogan talks about it on one of his podcasts. He said there's this, and we show it at our seminars. He says there's this new stuff out called Wharton's Jelly. It's the strongest stuff and it's not new anymore. This is from about three or four years ago, but that's that. That's what we put into the face. So we put Wharton's jelly in there because it's got such strong collagen factors. So she's got some volume lift in the under eye from doing three rounds of that of the warden.
- [35:31]
B
So you don't need to do a full facelift. It's just a vampire facelift.
- [35:34]
A
Yep. And again, I'm not saying that, you know, who is it? What, Kris Jenner? The Kardashian mom, she got that facelift. She looks pretty good. I'm not saying she, she got that from just doing stem cells or exosomes.
- [35:45]
B
She did the vampire facelift.
- [35:46]
A
I'm. No, I'm sure she did more than that. I'm sure she had some. I'm sure she was under the knife for a while. But a lot of people are using these same products or similar products. There's slight differences when we make the products. You know, slightly different concentrations and things based on cosmetic and aesthetic versus joints, but it's all coming from the same donated tissue. So it's natural. You know, natural biologics. And they're also. The other big one is they're doing it in, in the hair to the scalp for hair restoration. Yep.
- [36:16]
B
So that's a new thing. Is that prp?
- [36:18]
A
The PRP is the old way. PRP has limitations. So this Wharton's jelly stuff is far, far. It's like PRP on steroids, but steroids in a good way. So we'll use, we'll mix. So Morton's jelly, which is stem cells, exosomes, hyaluronic acid, Ghku, copper peptide. We blend it all together and then use a micro needle, open it up and then put the product that's all mixed together and microneedle into the pores to get healthier, thicker hair.
- [36:46]
B
Wow.
- [36:46]
A
Yeah. So that's a big, big, big market now, too. The cosmetic and aesthetic side is growing exponentially.
- [36:52]
B
I would think that's probably going to be, you know, the most dominant market.
- [36:57]
A
I think so. I mean, it's certainly because that's all age groups. You know, even girls, these girls younger and younger are doing more and more stuff. So. But unlike some other things, this, this, this is natural. So. And you know, there is a lot of.
- [37:10]
B
They don't go under the knife, right?
- [37:12]
A
Yeah. And some of those fillers, I'm not an expert. I'm not here to, you know, crap on any of these procedures. But, you know, there's probably some truth to some of these fillers. And even Botox is. It's certainly not natural. There's, you know, there's, there's some stuff in these products that aren't in the stem cell and exosome because, remember, it is purely natural. We're not even allowed to add anything to the stem cells and the exosome products. So there's, there's really no downside as far as health.
- [37:41]
B
Listen, I'm a believer.
- [37:43]
A
Yeah.
- [37:43]
B
How do the audience members or how did the audience get a. Get stem Cell treatment. How does a general person get stem cell treatment?
- [37:53]
A
So I'm on Instagram, you know, I'm on socials.
- [37:57]
B
They got to reach out to you. Like this isn't something they can just Google.
- [38:00]
A
Yeah, I mean you can Google and whoever has put paid the most in SEO, you know, in your territory is going to pop up. There's probably tons of great med spas out there.
- [38:12]
B
So general med spas now have stem cell treatment because I haven't seen them.
- [38:15]
A
Not general ones, but more and more med spas are, are offering Wharton's jelly and Exosomes. Again, Wharton's jelly is stem cells. So more and more of them are getting into the space. But for every 10 med spas, probably only two of them are offering it for now. So a lot of my daily things, weekly things, is taking calls from med spa owners that hear about it and I'm just doing like a 30 minute Zoom call and it's just explaining to them what we have, how it works and a little bit of the science. But then I'm a business guy, they always want to know the economics. So if anybody out there is listening that owns a med spa, is in the medical field, wants to start one. I do a ton of consulting for startups so obviously I can get them the products. Our products are going to be more dense, more effective, less expensive. So there's that side of it. But I always tell people we're not like on my wholesale, wholesale business side. It's not just product. We're going to show you how to implement it in your practice. We're going to show you how to make money on it, we're going to show you how to market it, we're going to show you how to stay out of trouble, you know, market it in a way that's compliant. So we have, we have, we have a whole lot of support for business owners that's, you know, at the end of the day, since a private practice is a business now, they're, you know, they're in the healthcare space but they still have to keep their lights on and everything too. So we help them get into the space, show them how to make money in the space, show them how to stay out of trouble in the space, show them how to get the best patient outcomes, all that.
- [39:42]
B
A couple last questions I have for you. What's a personal goal you have for yourself, a family goal that you have for your family and a business goal that you have for both companies?
- [39:54]
A
Personal goal first. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm as A former athlete. I think business is a sport. Right. So that's, that's, you know, I'm 42 now. Yeah. I still play some. I'll play sub in for volleyball, softball, basketball. But now my main sport is his business.
- [40:10]
B
So you play to win?
- [40:12]
A
I, I like.
- [40:13]
B
I want to be the biggest stem cell.
- [40:14]
A
I do play to win. Yeah. So I want to be the biggest stem cell distributor on the wholesale side. I'm always looking for new partnerships, more clients to sell product to. But you asked about a personal goal. I would personally like to get my businesses to the point where I can step away a little bit.
- [40:32]
B
And even though you're not the type of guy to step away.
- [40:34]
A
No, I, I say that too. I don't even know what to do with it. But, you know, we're all in a.
- [40:39]
B
Position to step away a little bit. But like, so you can do more podcasts.
- [40:42]
A
That's right. It's like I could step away. I suppose I could, but it's hard. Personal goal would be to get maybe a little bit better work. Life balance. Yeah. Which would require getting a little bit. You know, I'm still in the growth mode, so. And maybe, maybe it's wishful thinking to think that I'll ever not be. You know, it's probably just the way I am. But professionally, I really want to get regenerative revival out to everybody out there. That's kind of my, my passion is. So many people still think stem cells therapy is unattainable. Yeah. It's not cheap.
- [41:15]
B
I thought it was unattainable.
- [41:16]
A
People think it's unattainable. They think they have to go somewhere else. And even if, you know, they might hear some ad that says you need to go to Panama, they're like, well, I'm not spending 50 grand to go to Panama. And then they might hear a local med spa, but then they hear conflicting information. So most people just get information constipation and they don't do anything.
- [41:33]
B
Yeah. At that point, once you get a met, someone telling you locally and then they say you gotta go to Panama, you really don't know what to believe.
- [41:40]
A
You don't know what to believe. So that's what I try. So educational seminars work great for that. But that's usually a demographic of like 50 to 80 year olds that go to these free dinners. So that's great. We've got that market corner and there's.
- [41:51]
B
No stem cell influencers.
- [41:52]
A
There's not, there's. That's, that's kind of what I'm doing. So what I'm trying to be is, is the accessible stem cell guy for anybody. You don't have to be 70 years old and almost dead to want to do this. There's tons of people that, you know, just say you're somebody who likes to work out a lot and you've been lifting heavy weights for a long time. So many people have tears in their shoulders. So I can't tell you how many people's lives I've changed. You know, their words, not mine. It's like, man, I couldn't do an overhead press for the last four years since I, you know, messed up my shoulder four years ago. I get them a stem cell shot. Within a couple months they're back to doing what they were doing five years ago. And it's, you know, so it's, that's really fun to hear and I just want more people to know about it, that they can get it, they can get it done in the comfort of their home. They don't have to take out a second mortgage for it. It works, it's safe, it's totally safe, it's effective. And again, the biggest thing for so many people is you don't have to go anywhere to do it.
- [42:45]
B
It's amazing.
- [42:45]
A
Yeah. And family goals. Yeah, I would love to. For my, I've got a 13 year old son and a 9 year old son. I would love to have such an empire, such a well oiled machine in this space, wherever it takes me that they can work with me one day. That's, that's because they're both, you know, I don't think anybody's going pro in my family. I'm, I'm a six, two and a half white guy. My wife's five, four white girl. We're probably not going, Nobody's playing in the NBA. But my kids are really, you know, we love sports. That's just, that's what we bond over. So I know that they think, Even though my 13 year old might not say it out loud, I know he thinks what I do is pretty cool when I just take pictures with like football players and, and all that type of stuff. So my hope would be that my business is still cool enough that he doesn't have to wonder what's he going to do one day. He's like, I want to get in the business with dad.
- [43:34]
B
Yeah. I mean we think about that for our kids all the time. I think about, yeah, I, all the time. Because for me I'm in Newport beach. Like I don't even There is no. When I grew up, the profession was be a doctor. Then you'll be able to live a comfortable life. Well, I'm in Newport Beach. There's no doctors on my street.
- [43:51]
A
No, they're not making money.
- [43:53]
B
There's no doctors on my, my street. So that's not the world.
- [43:56]
A
Yeah.
- [43:57]
B
Agree that ticket. Just to go to act like, well.
- [43:59]
A
We grew up college, you had to go to college.
- [44:01]
B
You know, you got to go to college and then med school and then you could live a good life. Like that's not how it is anymore. No, you go to college, you go to med school and then you have to open a business.
- [44:07]
A
Yeah. If you want to make real money.
- [44:09]
B
If you want to make real money. So, you know, like I always have that in my back of my mind. I'm training my kids be entrepreneurs and influencers and you know, like that's the kind. And also be educated.
- [44:19]
A
Yes.
- [44:19]
B
You know, it's just a hyper competitive.
- [44:21]
A
It is, it is world now. It is.
- [44:23]
B
So they got to just check all the boxes. Last question. When you're in front of the pearly gates, what do you think God's going to tell you?
- [44:34]
A
I hope I hear that I had a positive impact on everybody that I was around again. Family first. You know, I'm a pretty loving guy. Like I want the best for everybody that's close to me. So I hope that that's. I think that if you talk to my closest friends, family, people that work for me, I've got a lot of employees, a lot of people that rely on my hard work to feed their families. And that's probably what I personally pride myself on the most is, you know, working hard enough so that I don't let anybody else down. Like the people that I care about and I care about the people that work for me. I've got seven assistants. I got about 15 sales guys, you know, my wife, my two kids. So I work when I don't want to work. You know, I'm on this 10 day whirlwind trip right now. It's not like I love being home away from home for 10 days, but I'd like to think that I've made enough impact on people and I would get rewarded for that. So I think that feel pretty good to say, you know, you've helped a lot of people.
- [45:32]
B
That's it, man. That's what it's about. God bless you. I hope you hit all your goals. If people want to connect with you, how do they find you?
- [45:39]
A
Regenerative Revival.com Regenerative Revival.com is my website. It's got all my contact info out there. My Insta it's also Instagram regenerative revival.com I do most of my social media media stuff on my Instagram, my personal Instagram, which is Seth D. Bergey. So my last name is Bergey. B E R G E. It's pronounced Bergey. Most people say it's Burger Berg, but Seth Dberge is my Instagram handle. Regenerative Revival Precision Biologics is it's not a very sexy website. It's just product kind of nerdy science stuff. But yeah, find me on socials.
- [46:13]
B
Love it.
- [46:14]
A
Thanks.
- [46:14]
B
Thanks for jumping on the show today, Seth. It's been a pleasure to get to know you and hang out with you and you're awesome. Thank you.
- [46:19]
A
Thank you.
- [46:20]
B
Joe.