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Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Dr. Josh Axe: From Healing My Mom of Cancer to Building a Multi-Million-Dollar Health Brand | E118
00:49:46
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- [00:00]
Ilana Gulen
Wow. This show is going to be incredible. So buckle up and I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. But before we get started, I want to ask you for a favor. See, it's really, really important for me to help millions of people elevate their career. Fast track to leadership land, dream roles, jump to entrepreneurship or create portfolio careers. And this podcast is all about enabling this for millions of people to see a map of what it actually takes for big leaders to reach success. So subscribe and download so you never miss it. Plus, it really, really helps me continue to bring amazing guests. Okay, so let's dive in.
- [00:36]
Dr. Josh Axe
I had so my mom reversed what the doctor said was an irreversible condition. I went from having a doctor tell me you're gonna be permanently disabled and today, now I'm back and lifting weights. Zero surgery. Nothing like that at all.
- [00:47]
Ilana Gulen
Dr. Josh Axe, he's the founder of Draxe.com, one of the most visited natural health platform in the world.
- [00:55]
Dr. Josh Axe
My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through chemo. She seemed worse than we did before. She went through. I remember her just vomiting in a bucket, being so sick. And that's what motivated me to become a doctor focusing on natural medicine. I get a call from my mom right before I graduate and she said I've been diagnosed with cancer again. We felt really led to take care of her all naturally. Nine months later she was in complete remission. And so today my mom's in her seventies, in the best shape of her life. I've built five multimillion dollar businesses. It helped a lot of people heal as well. And it's because the two things I focus on most are and when you do those two things, your business just absolutely starts to snowball and grow very, very quickly.
- [01:36]
Ilana Gulen
For people who want to get healthier, what should they do if they're listening to this?
- [01:42]
Dr. Josh Axe
I think a few things.
- [01:43]
Ilana Gulen
1. Dr. Josh Axe is a doct doctor of natural medicine, chiropractor and clinical nutrition. He's the founder of DRAXE.com, one of the most visited natural health platform in the world and co founder of Ancient Nutrition, a company rooted in whole food functional solutions. He's also a multiple time bestselling author of books like Eat Dirt, Keto Diet, Ancient Remedies and most recently Think this, Not that where he explores the powerful connection between mindset and healing. This is going to be a really, really interesting episode about different career path and how he created this really impactful brand. Josh, thank you for coming to the show.
- [02:39]
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, Ilana, thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here.
- [02:42]
Ilana Gulen
Your journey into health wellness started with a personal story way back. Can I take you back to your childhood and what drove that passion for health and wellness?
- [02:54]
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, for starters, I'll say I find this a lot with entrepreneurs and people that have a successful career is that there is some sort of fuel and why behind what they do, right? And oftentimes it's birthed out of pain. And for me, it's a very similar story. You know, when I was in junior high, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. And it was sort of shocking to our family because my mom was physically very fit and active. She was a PE teacher, she was a swim instructor. She looked really fit herself. And we exercised a lot as a family, but we didn't know anything about nutrition or holistic medicine. And when my mom got her breast cancer diagnosis, she went through rounds and rounds of chemotherapy. And the chemotherapy back then was even more severe than today. I mean, she lost all of her hair. I remember her just vomiting in a bucket, being so sick and almost dying. Actually, my grandmother came in at one point and said, say goodbye to your mom, because we thought she was going to pass. And praise God, she made it through the treatments, and she was diagnosed as being cancer free and healthy. But the shocking thing after going through the conventional medical system was after she went through chemo, she seemed worse than she did before she went through. My mom developed chronic fatigue syndrome, hypothyroidism, digestive issues, chronic constipation, clinical depression, and anxiety. She got put on multiple drugs, including antidepressants. And my mom was sick and tired all the time growing up, and that's what motivated me to become a doctor. I remember thinking to myself, I want to help people like my mom. And I also thought to myself, there's got to be a better way of actually helping treat issues and get people healthy. Well, I went in and I was about to open my functional medicine clinic because I was working on my doctorate and focusing on natural medicine. And I get a call from my mom right before I graduate, and she's in tears, she's sobbing. And I said, what's wrong, Mom? She said, I've been diagnosed with cancer again. This time it's on my lungs. She said, what do I do? And I said, mom, I'll be home. I flew home. We sat down. We felt really led to take care of her all naturally. And we just radically changed everything. And her doctors were saying, we want you to go do radiation and surgery in three days. And we said, listen, we want you to give us three months to do a natural protocol. And so we did a mixture of something called a Gershom protocol and Budwig therapy and other cancer forms of therapy. And we juice vegetables, a lot of vegetables. It was probably 70% of our diet. We did some berries, did wild caught fish, like salmon, lots of herbs, turmeric, reishi, mushroom. And also really focused on prayer and healing herself spiritually and emotionally. And we did this program for about three to four months and went back into the CT scan. And I remember we got a call from the doctor a couple days later, and they said, what have you been doing? We shared with them what we've been doing. Her female oncologist said, hmm, this is highly unusual. We don't typically see this, but your tumors have shrunk by more than half. They said, come back again in nine months. We want to redo a CT scan, see where you're at. Did it then nine months later, and she was in complete remission. And so today my Mom's in her 70s, in the best shape of her life, has great health. But it's really that experience that drew me into and led me into functional medicine and really teaching my patients how to use food and lifestyle medicine to heal themselves.
- [05:55]
Ilana Gulen
So I should have met you about a decade ago when my mom passed from lung cancer. But so you are taking this passion that fuels you, which is an incredible story. And I think also in school, you saw firsthand the power of limiting belief that changed how you grew up. What is the power of limiting belief and belief overall? Because again, I think that plays also a big role in this.
- [06:23]
Dr. Josh Axe
A few references and ideas here. One, I truly believe our beliefs are one of the most critical aspects for our identity, for us being successful in anything, whether it's healing, successfully overcoming condition, or building a successful business, or being a great parent. So our beliefs are very, very important. One of the reasons I knew this was actually via the Bible. Growing up, I read a lot of the Bible and Jesus never says anything like, take this supplement or this medication or this thing to heal. He says, your belief or your faith, that will heal you. And so when he talks about your belief will help you move mountains. So there are a lot of things there. I think, in terms of success, that belief is very important. And most people have beliefs about themselves, about the world, about others, about God that is crushing their ability to be successful. And I'll give you an example of this. When I was freshman year high school, this is the year after my mom battled cancer and I had a teacher. My English professor, a teacher in freshman year of high school, said, josh, can you stay after class? I stayed after class. And she said, josh, what do you want to do after high school? And I said, I want to be a doctor. She literally laughed out loud at me. And she said, listen, you'll never be a doctor with your GPA. She said, My daughter had a 3.8 GPA and she barely got into med school. She said, you got an F on this paper, which is why I wanted you to stay. After you're getting a D minus in my class, you'll be lucky to graduate. And that was all she said. And I walked out of there feeling pretty defeated. And then two weeks later, I went to see a doctor with my mom. And the doctor spoke to my mom like I wasn't in the room. And he said, listen, your son has severe adhd. He has a learning disability. And that's what I took away was, oh, I have a learning disability. So I felt like walking out of there like I was medically not smart. So because of that, I just believed I wasn't smart. I barely graduated high school. I mean, I graduated with, like a 2.0 GPA. I mean, like, bottom of the bottom, barely graduated. The only reason I graduated was I knew my dad would just be irate if I didn't graduate. And I applied to a bunch of colleges, didn't really get into most, but there was one I wanted to go to. And they sent me a letter back, and it said something like this. It said, you're not in, but if you come and take summer school, an average above a 3.0, we'll let you in. So I thought, okay, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to really try. So I went there, I tried. The first class I had to take was English 101. The first thing I had to do was write a paper. So I wrote a paper. I felt really good about it, turned it in, and a few days later, Ms. Williams, this teacher said, josh, can you stay after class? And my stomach sunk.
- [08:52]
Ilana Gulen
I thought, oh, my God, not again.
- [08:54]
Dr. Josh Axe
Not this. Yeah. And she said, what's your major? And I said, Mr. Williams, I haven't chosen a major yet. I'm not sure. She said, well, I think you should consider being an English major or journalism major because you're really talented writer. She said, you got the highest grade in the class of 40 kids. You got an A on the paper. Just wanted to let you know, great job. And for me, Ilana, it was like. I'll call it a memory transplant. Like, my belief about myself was I'm not smart, I'm not capable, I'm not good at school with something else I thought about. And after that, it totally changed my confidence. I literally felt like, you know what? After doing pretty well my first year, I changed back to pre med and started taking all my biology courses in chemistry and did great. You know, I averaged above a 3.0 there. And then eventually this is much later on, but I went to Johns Hopkins University.
- [09:40]
Ilana Gulen
I know.
- [09:40]
Dr. Josh Axe
And I graduated there with a. Yeah, with a Master's, with a 3.9 GPA. And then, you know, had successful businesses and a number of things. I don't say any of that to boast, but I just say it to say there are a lot of people out there who have a false belief about themselves. I'm not good at business, I'm not good at sales. I don't have the credential behind my name. And because of it, this belief, they're not successful versus if they created a new empowering belief and replaced it with what the truth is. There are people I know, for instance, in the health field, they have zero degrees that are massively successful. There's a friend of mine, his name is Max Lugavere. I think about Ben Greenfield, there's several others. They don't have doctorates, but they make millions of dollars. They help transform the lives of millions of people and they don't have a credential. So the reality is, is that your belief about yourself and others in the world, it's so critical. So for most people, they need to create new empowering beliefs if they want to succeed.
- [10:38]
Ilana Gulen
It's so easy to wrap yourself up in a very limiting belief of this is my cap. This is all I get. And I think part of the mission of Leap Academy is to open this up. So I'm so excited we are talking about it and I want to take it also back to your mom a little bit because I think there's also a belief that needs to happen with health as well. She needed to believe that this can work as well. So I think no matter where, it's all over. That belief is not just for career, it's for everything.
- [11:09]
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, you know, the other thing about belief is it helps with follow through. If you don't believe it's going to work, you don't go at it the same way. You don't take those risks, you don't take those Steps, you don't go the extra mile. So, yeah, my mom believed that she was going to heal from cancer. And I think that's really important that you think and know one. Of course, there's the placebo effect. I mean, this is something I write about in my book, think this, not that, is you want to incorporate and use the placebo effect to your advantage. And there's something the opposite of the placebo effect called the nocebo effect, which, for instance, there are a few case studies of this. And by the way, this has happened millions of times. But there is a patient who was diagnosed with liver cancer, and they told him he had three months to live. His oncologist, he died about three and a half months later. When they wanted to do the biopsy on him, they realized, oh, we misdiagnosed him. He had a small benign lump on the side of his tumor, non cancerous, not an issue. And the man died. And by the way, this is a real medical case. There are many other medical cases just like this. And, you know, the placebo effect came true during one of the world wars. There was a practicing physician who, when a soldier had a major injury, they gave them the drug morphine. We all know morphine is an incredibly powerful painkilling drug. Well, they ran out of morphine. So the doctor told the nurse, listen, we have to give these soldiers something. So just fill up that vial with salt water, with saline and inject it in them. The crazy part was 40% of them said they experienced the same level of pain relief as if they were getting morphine. Think about that. Your body can create the same neurochemicals in order to relieve pain, like a drug, morphine. And the same happens with healing. There are plenty of studies showing if you believe you're going to be healed, you are way, way more likely to be healed because your body, biochemically, like your nervous system, it's called your neuroendocrine system, your nervous system will start creating hormones to be released that then allow your body to rejuvenate and heal. And there was another study I read on. You can amplify the placebo effect for your own healing. And here's what they said. They said, one, you need to know what you want. And you will know it best. If you can picture it with my mom, I said, mom, what do you want your future to look like? What does the perfect future look like for you one year from now, 20 years from now? And my mom was a big Disney fan. And so she's like, I Want to bring my grandkids to Disney World. I'm like, what are you doing? I'm going on Space Mountain. We're going to Character Breakfast. We're doing these things. I'm holding their hand, your three year old's hand, all this stuff. She pictured it, what she wanted. The second thing the study showed was you want to be able to feel the emotions of what that's going to feel like in the future, but feel it now. And there's something neurochemically that happens when you experience an emotion related to that. So I said, what are you gonna experience? She's like, excitement, joy, happiness. I'm like, feel that right now. And then the third part of the placebo effect, amplifying it is this, is that you need to strategize how this will happen. Because sometimes your nervous system doesn't believe you. I don't know if we have anyone here who used to watch Saturday Night Live, SNL from years ago. They had this skit and the guy's name was Stuart Smalley. And he would say, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me. That doesn't always work. Like a lot of people try and do affirmations and tell themselves, I'm amazing, I'm wonderful, I'm amazing.
- [14:18]
Ilana Gulen
Yeah, but then you don't believe in, so it doesn't work, right?
- [14:21]
Dr. Josh Axe
Then you don't believe it. So what they found in the study was if you have a plan and you can prove to yourself this will work. So with my mom, I said, listen, mom, here's how you're going to heal. Think about this. We're doing beetroot juice. We're doing a hyperbaric chamber. We're flooding your body with oxygen. We're doing this green vegetable juice that alkalizes your body. And I would explain and educate my mom on the exact diet plan, all the therapies she was doing, and why it was reversing and healing cancer, and she believed it.
- [14:47]
Ilana Gulen
So you get the evidence and the belief that it works.
- [14:50]
Dr. Josh Axe
Basically, it reinforced and strengthened the belief. Yes.
- [14:54]
Ilana Gulen
And the beautiful thing, again, we're talking about health. This is true for careers. This is true for everything. I mean, Ford says, right, whether you think you can, you think you can't, you're right. And we see it in a career all the time. Like, if somebody believes that this is not gonna work for them, it's not gonna work for them no matter what they do, right? And if they think they will, it will. But I want to take you for a second. You decide to study chiropractic care when in natural medicine, when it was far from mainstream. Was it a scary decision or was it part of that passion anyway, or where did that take you, Josh?
- [15:27]
Dr. Josh Axe
When I was in school, I knew I wanted to go a little bit more natural. So I thought about being a medical doctor, an MD And I thought I knew that it was basically pill pushing drugs. And that's not really the path I wanted to take because my mom had been there, I saw didn't create the life we wanted. So then I was looking between being coming an osteopath or a nutritionist, and then I had no idea what chiropractic was. I ended up my dad water skied with a friend who had a clinic and he said, why don't you come visit my practice? I said, okay. And the thing I loved about his practice was he did some chiropractic, but really it was predominantly nutrition. So he did a lot of something called kinesiology, did a lot of nutritional counseling, a lot of vitamins and supplements. He did chiropractic, he worked with a lot of professional athletes. So I was really impressed going in there and I thought, well, this is great. I didn't know with this degree I could do nutrition, I can do physical therapy, I could do chiropractic, I can do all kinds of things. So that's why I chose to go to chiropractic school. And also chiropractic school really focused a lot more on root causes. I had nutrition classes. You get 0 of those in medical school. And really I took the same amount of hours and learned a lot more about anatomy and physiology. I learned a lot less about pharmaceuticals. Of course, only had one class on pharmaceuticals, but I learned a lot about nutrition in chiropractic. People don't realize there's a fair amount of that in that college. So for me, it was a really great degree for doing what I wanted to do.
- [16:47]
Ilana Gulen
In the future, if you're feeling stuck, underpaid or unappreciated, or you're simply ready to take your career in life to the next level, I have the perfect solution for you. We have a program that helps you fast track and leap your reputation and career. Become the best version of yourself, get the dream role you deserve, move up to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship, or even build a portfolio career. This program helps hundreds a year and it will help you gain the income, influence and impact that will transform the second part of your life. Watch our free training today@leapacademy.com free training. The link is in the show notes. Now back to the show. So I want to take you because at that point, or maybe later, but you started one of the most visited natural health websites, drx.com and again I think it was before content was such a big model. Today it's easy. You have, I don't know, you drag and drop a few things with wix, but it's hard to make it popular. But you did that when it wasn't even a thing. What made you bet on education and digital when everybody else was building clinics, what was it? Josh?
- [18:00]
Dr. Josh Axe
I think for myself if something changes my life, I want to be able to then use that to change someone else's life. I mean the thing that allowed me to learn the most was I was reading other people's newsletters. You know, there was Dr. David Williams, there was Andrew Weil, Joe Mercola, all kinds of different sort of health newsletters. And I would read these. I was a consumer of content, I loved reading. And so I would read these newsletters every day and I would learn so much from them. And then when I started my own practice, I started doing newsletters for patients. And I was big on education because I really found and discovered that I could tell somebody to take this supplement. But they saw the biggest and greatest results when I said, hey. When I would do educational workshops, when I would do shopping classes, I used to go to Whole Foods Market and I would go up and down the aisles with big group. And sometimes it was funny because I would have my patients come, but then people in the store would just randomly just start joining. So we'd have 40 or 50 people. I'd be like yelling and so I'd show them, buy this meat at Whole Foods, buy the grass fed, buy this extra virgin olive oil, eat this not that, right? So I started doing that a lot. And I just found that education helped transform my life. It was more effective at transforming my patients lives and sometimes even doing treatments on them. And so I thought, well actually here's what happened. I had a newsletter that I would give to people physically. And then I had somebody saying, hey, I would really like to send this to my father in law in North Carolina cause he's got high blood pressure. Because I would write things like here's the top five supplements for high blood pressure, the top 10 foods you should eat, that sort of thing and maybe have a recipe on there. And I would give that to patients. And I said okay, well I can give you an extra copy they're like, well, could you put it online? And I thought, well, yeah, I can put it online. And my assistant, I said, hey, your husband's a web designer, right? She was like, yeah, this is. Could I hire him? And then could you start posting this articles that I write online? And then it just took off. It was crazy. All of a sudden somebody's like, you have 100,000 visitors a month. And I had people start coming into my practice, like calling from like different states, saying, hey, can I come see you? And I'm like, well, how'd you even hear about me? And it was via this newsletter. I didn't start this website thinking I'm going to become the most visited natural health website in the world. And that wasn't my intent. But that's what eventually happened.
- [20:13]
Ilana Gulen
That's what happened. What year is that? Do you remember? Roughly?
- [20:16]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah, that would have been in 2008 probably.
- [20:20]
Ilana Gulen
That's incredible. And a few months ago we had Craig from Craigslist and he has a similar story. So it was just really funny. And I love that. Right, because when you start something big, we have this notion of this overnight success that just happened. Right. But it doesn't start as an overnight success. It starts as a newsletter or it starts by helping yourself, helping others, you know, helping a small group and slowly growing. And I think that's really an important distinction for people to listen.
- [20:48]
Dr. Josh Axe
Well, I would say this too. Like, my businesses have been successful. And by the way, I never say this just to prove the point there. Like, I've built five multimillion dollar businesses and helped a lot of people heal as well. And it's because the two things I focus on most are why and who. Why do I do what I do? What's the mission behind it? It was to help people like my mom heal of cancer. It was to help people heal and reverse autoimmune disease. For me, if people weren't healing, I wouldn't do it. I don't care how much money I would make. I have a really big why and powerful purpose. The second thing is I really focus on who are the best of the best people. High integrity, high character, great work ethic, super skilled in their area. And I'm going to hire the best and also train them and pour into them. And when you do those two things, you, your business just absolutely launches. And it tends to grow slowly at first, but at some point you have this sort of hockey stick moment where it really, really starts to snowball and grow very, very quickly.
- [21:46]
Ilana Gulen
And I do believe that mission driven businesses will always be more successful. Because I think you can always go back to your mission and to your own. Why? To motivate yourself and to push forward and to push through the hard moments. But in business, there's never a clear hockey stick. There's some terrifying moments, especially when you start hiring and there's cash issues and need to lay off lead teams, operations, manufacturing. There's always things. Can you talk a little bit about some of the terrifying moments that you're like, oh, my God, will this work? Because I came from this mission of saving lives, but now I'm marketing and sales and finance. Like, I'm doing all these things.
- [22:26]
Dr. Josh Axe
So when I was running my functional medicine clinic, eventually I realized I want to go and do things online. And I had a friend of mine, Jordan Rubin, he was starting a food company. It was called Beyond Organic. And I thought, okay, I want to do this. And so my associate had actually asked if he could have ownership of the practice. And I said, well, why don't you take over the full practice? Okay. And I sold my portion of the clinic to him. He took it over. And I went from having, you know, making a really great income to almost nothing. Because draxe.com was not monetized. I was afraid to sell to people. And so, like, the only thing I had was a cookbook. You cannot make money off of selling a hardback full color cookbook. Okay. And then I had a fitness video that was actually a physical dvd, and you can't make money selling those either. Okay. So I was losing money every month on the website. And then I started this business with Jordan, and I took all my money and put it into it that I'd saved. And the business failed because, like, we were the first company doing, like, raw kefir, kombucha, frozen grass fed beef. But, like, in the summers, it would all thaw. It was just a disaster. So I lost everything. And Dr. Axe.com wasn't doing that well. And so what happened was I had gone from doing really well to having $10,000 left in the bank total. My wife and I were like, how are we going to pay two months from now if we don't make a lot of money? Like, I don't know what we're going to do. And I had a friend of mine tell me, he said, how big is your email list? I said, we've got about 33,000. He said, I. I heard from somebody at a recent seminar, for every email you have, that should be worth a dollar a Month. I'm like, so you're telling me I should be making $33,000 a month because of the size of my email list? He said, yeah, and this was back years ago. And I said, well, how do I learn how to monetize an email list and that sort of thing? He said, well, go to this coaching group out in California. Go to their conference. So I went and I heard somebody talk about starting a program, and I thought, oh, I can do a program. So I went back and thought about, what's a program I can create? I'm like, well, I like detoxification. So I created a program in, like, six weeks, and we called it the Dr. Axe detox program. And we launched it in eight weeks. And I made more in one launch than I had in the whole history of draxe.com we made, like, $300,000 in one launch. And people's lives transformed, too. I mean, it was really an amazing thing. And this is why I'm a big believer, like, mastermind groups or just having other people you rely on, because if my friend would have not told me that, you know, I don't know how I would have made money. And that's really what launched draxe.com success, because we finally had a product attached to it that could be part of that as well.
- [25:00]
Ilana Gulen
Thank you, first of all, for sharing. Josh. I think this is critical because I think there's a few things here. First of all, Leap Academy would not be what it is today. Without a ton of coaches and masterminds and people by my side. There's no way that I would know what to do. And I. Every time you stand on the shoulders of what you achieved and you aim higher, I truly believe that that's the fastest way. But I would also say what you mentioned about being afraid of charging, I think is something that I want to drill a little bit into, because I think that is so common. Like, we feel like we need to do good in the world, so we need to always donate it. And the truth is, you can't create a machine that changes lives if you want to always donate. Plus, when people pay, they pay more attention. And I want to talk a little bit about that change for you, because I think most of our listeners are like, yeah, but I'm giving this thing for free, and I want to do this, and everybody's always calling me for free. So how do you change?
- [25:57]
Dr. Josh Axe
I just had to have a change of perspective and think about it like this one. I can reach more people when I run A profitable business. I mean, that's the reality. And also, you have to have a level of identity and confidence of knowing what your services are worth in the marketplace. You know, I thought about this with my mom. My mom, when we went through all her therapies, all the things we did, like the nutrition plan, all the stuff that I went with her, if another doctor would have charged my mom for it, I don't know, I mean, it would have probably been $5,000 or something for the consultations, all those things. And I did it with my mom for free. But I kind of had to look at that and say, okay, when I take what saved my mom's life and I now offer that same service, what do I need to charge for it? And I think at first I was surprised that people would pay that much for it, but the thing about was, like, well, I was like, well, I would have paid that much for myself. I would have paid that much for my mom, my sister, my wife, anyone I knew that I would support financially in going through something like this. So. And the other thing I really did realize is I can really reach more people. When I run and own a profitable business, I can give more. My wife and I are big believers in giving to charities and nonprofits, tithing to the church, all those things. And so we sat down and wrote down, okay, what are we going to do with the money we make? And it's a combination of, number one, giving to God and people in need, taking care of our own needs, and also helping grow and fuel the businesses to help more people. So I think when you are able to really sit down and think about it logically, that's helpful.
- [27:22]
Ilana Gulen
Yeah, yeah. But then I think it ties really well to the fact that you built a very, very strong brand. That a actually works. Right. It needs to work. Right. And I think that creates a. You can reach more people, people believe you, more people can pay you more. Right. Like, it's all very, very tied together. What do you think contributed to that really strong brand? I think some of it is the fact that it worked. So I'm sure word of mouth is part of it. The newsletter, what else? What do you think are some of the things that you've done? Because that is key.
- [27:55]
Dr. Josh Axe
Some of the brands have been a part of starting. Draxe.com, ancient nutrition, of course, is a pretty big brand. The Health Institute is another big brand. I have right now. I have a new one called the Longevity Clinic. I still see, I mean, mostly VMI Health coaches, but I Still do the weekly education for all patients. So I have a virtual clinic where we have people come in and that's that. So anyways, I've started quite a few and actually several others. So I have brands I've started. But what I always do is I go through the exercise of thinking about who needs this and what is it they're looking for. And I want the brand to say and represent something. So draxe.com, the tagline was always food is medicine. You know, and really thinking about, I wanted the brand to stand for that. Food is medicine and passion and purpose and my why. So I would do exercises like what are the right colors and what are colors? Also I like, but also my demographic would like. By the way, my demographic on Instagram is probably like 85% female. A lot of Gen X is probably my dominance. I mean there's some millennials and baby boomers too, but it's definitely predominantly that. Now YouTube, there's a lot more, more men than on Instagram, but still I have a pretty heavy female audience. My point there is, is, you know, we did this exercise in ancient nutrition. It's we called her Gen X and we use like Jennifer Aniston as an example because she's a Gen Xer. What would she be drawn to? What would she love? Because people follow her. So what does the leader of this group of women that really would admire her, what do they love? We also thought about Candace Cameron Burr because we have a big faith based audience. So think about Jennifer Aniston, Candace Cameron Bure, what are the things that they love? And we thought about that and we thought where do they shop at? They shop at Whole Foods. They probably at the time, maybe not anymore, but shopped at Lululemon. What are the colors they would like? Well, they want things to feel very high class, the absolute top of the line premium. So we did that exercise and then what words describe that? So we did some good quality branding exercises of, of really looking at how do we best serve and reach our people that need this the most. Because for myself right now, my practice, we deal with a lot of hormonal issues, a lot of hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's, menopause, infertility, pcos, low testosterone, diabetes. And so like we knew the demographic of people and what we were treating. Even today, this is what I treat at the health institute at that clinic. But again, knowing your audience I think is so important.
- [30:14]
Ilana Gulen
What you just shared is so important. I want to make sure the listeners get It, Because I think when you're looking not at the audience as a million people, but you're looking at a very specific Persona. Where does she buy? What does she do? What would speak to her, whatever it is. So when you can speak to that one person, that becomes the millions, right? Am I understanding it?
- [30:37]
Dr. Josh Axe
That's correct. And I think there's a second thing, though. You also need to be authentic to who you are. And I'll share this with myself. If anybody watches my podcasts, they'll know I talk a lot about health, but I also talk about other things I like, like personal growth and leadership. And I also talk about faith, because that's who I am. This is a big part of my life, and I'm not ashamed of it, and I'm excited and thrilled to talk about it. So I think there's also a magnetism that happens and an attraction when somebody is authentically sharing things that change their own life. Like my business partner, Jordan Rubin. He founded a company called Garden of Life in the past. Really successful entrepreneur. And I asked him, I said, hey, how did you build that business and how did you have so much success? And here's what he told me. He said, I told my story for him. He had Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, almost died, and he healed himself with a biblical diet, using food as medicine and with probiotics, essentially. And he said, I just told my story over and over and over again. He's like, that's how I built my entire business, this business that's now worth over a billion dollars. He's like, I just told my story, and that's what I learned to do. I told my mom's story, and then I created products and programs to help people get similar results to my mom. And that's it. That's the core. You know, that's the core.
- [31:50]
Ilana Gulen
And I agree a thousand percent. You know, in Leap Academy, I just share my story. I share my story of being stuck in my career or sharing, you know, losing my clarity or getting kicked out of my own startup and starting to think, what's next, right? And it's like, am I the only crazy person that, you know, there's this land of opportunity, and I don't know what's next for me, and I don't know what will get me excited. And it's really interesting how bad career will actually impact or, you know, when you're feeling bad about yourself in your career, it will impact the health, it will impact your relationship, it will impact Everything, Right? So I agree. Once you're more aligned with yourself and you share your own story, it's just really, really impactful. So for people who want to get healthier, do better, feel better. Because again, it's all related. Like you can't be the best version of yourself if your health is deteriorating, right? There's this saying, you can have a thousand problems, but if you have a health problem, you have one problem. So share with me for a second. First of all, in terms of health, what should they do if they're listening to this and they want to feel better?
- [32:54]
Dr. Josh Axe
I think a few things. One, have a plan. And also know that you're a unique individual. I think that's an important concept and I'll talk about that more at the end. But I would say start with diet, even just start with breakfast. Let's say you're not a healthy eater and if you just change breakfast, that's one third of your diet, that's a great improvement, I think for a lot of people doing a superfood smoothie. Here's the thing though. The way that I do smoothies and recommend them are different than other people doing ice cold smoothies all the time is actually kind of hard on your digestive system. So I would recommend sweet potato or applesauce, or room temperature blueberries or strawberries, something like that. About maybe a half to three fourths a cup. You could do water or something like coconut milk. That's a fat, that's pretty healthy for your cells. And then I would do 40 grams of protein powder. I would do about 20 to 30 grams of like a plant based or high quality protein and another 10 to 20 grams of a collagen protein. You could do vanilla flavor, chocolate flavor, use sweeteners like monk fruit or stevia, but put that in there, that's a great way to get healthy. And then focus on organic meat and vegetables for lunch and for dinner. And if somebody could follow a diet like that, they'll tend to see really good results. So I said number one is diet, number two is just movement. And walking is tremendous. If you go to a gym, that's fantastic. If you do peloton, that's wonderful. If you swim, if you cycle, do those things if you can. But at the very least, walk an hour a day and walk around your meals. Walk 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes around lunch, 20 minutes in the evening, or 30 and 30, or do what you can, even if it's 30 minutes, but walk and move regularly. Get more time outside those two Things will do tremendous things for your health. And less blue light at night. Listen to an audiobook, read a book an hour before bed, shut the TV off an hour before bed. And you should be in bed by 10pm ideally. So shut it off at 9. And if you do those things, it'll make a big difference. And here's the other thing. If you've got a condition, make sure you seek out the top 1% of doctors. Cause, I mean, I hate to say this, there are so many doctors that have not looked at the latest research and they don't know what they should. They're not doing a good job. If you go to a doctor and you have diabetes and they just put you on metformin or insulin, that's a bad doctor. We know today that if you just changed your diet, you can reverse diabetes in most cases. If you have hypothyroidism, then just prescribing Synthroid, that's a bad doctor. They're just giving you a drug that's gonna cause another deficiency and you're gonna have another problem later on, and it's not getting to the root of the problem. So you need to make sure you're seeing a doctor that's going to help you with diet, help you with lifestyle, help you with holistic treatments, with vitamin supplements, those sort of things. And one, you can find a functional medicine doctor in your area if you do need help. I have some amazing practitioners that I have trained at the Health Institute. You go to thehealthinstitute.com so that's one option if you have an issue and you want somebody to create a plan for what to eat, for every meal, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the exact supplements you should be on, that's personalized for you. So again, find a good practitioner if that's something that you really want to have a big change with. But overall, again, I think people can really move the needle with just eating more real food, especially more vegetables and organic meat.
- [35:53]
Ilana Gulen
I love that. And I think I do want to go back for a second to your book. Think this, not that it's your latest book because you wrote it in a very specific time in your life. Can I take you there for a second?
- [36:08]
Dr. Josh Axe
I've always written health books. I've written a lot of books on health. Ancient remedies, keto diet, number of things. And one of the things I noticed in patients is that the patients that got the best results had the best mindset. I remember some of my first patients coming in. I realized very Quickly if they would see results or not. The people that tended to not see as good a result. So what I would do their first day, they would come in, I'd have them fill out a diet diary of typically what they eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner. And, you know, it was a lot of, like, bagels and cream cheese and loads of coffee and then processed cereal with skim milk. I mean, you know, stuff that's just not good and sometimes donuts, you know, just bad, not good stuff. And I would say, listen, we're going to go over an advanced diet next time for you, but between now and then, between now and next week, I want you to just change breakfast and start doing the superfood smoothie, very similar recipe I just shared with you. And it tastes great. It's like a strawberry smoothie or a sweet potato. I mean, you know, vanilla protein or chocolate protein, but it tastes great. But I'd get one of two reactions. One was, oh, no, I can't do my bagel and cream cheese every morning. And they would feel like they were so deprived and they just had a bad attitude about it. And the others, some group that tended to see the better results were like, well, this is great. I mean, they were really committed. They were actually excited. They were willing and dedicated to doing the work, and they would tend to get better results. So when writing this book, I thought, I want to write a book about mindset medicine of how do you live the best life possible? And so that's really what inspired the book. Now, what was crazy is the day before I started writing the book, I went to get a stem cell treatment. I had injured my back doing CrossFit and doing some heavyweight training. And I herniated two discs in my back. And I had got stem cell done once. And I thought, okay, it was a really amazing results. And I thought, I'm going to get this done one more time. Well, something happened where when they went in, my disc got infected. I didn't know this. And over the course of months, I felt worse and worse and worse. Finally, I woke up one day and I could not walk. And my family and I, we were in Puerto Rico at the time. And I had to have an ambulance come pick me up. They drove me into this hospital in Puerto Rico. They took an MRI and the results came back that an infection, and it wasn't only in my disc, it had gotten to my bone and an abscess growing around my spinal cord. And I had to take a medical flight. Like, they put me on a gurney, put Me in a medical plane, flew me to Florida, met with an infectious disease specialist who said, josh, listen, this infection is really serious, it could kill you. He said, your best case scenario is you're gonna have chronic pain the rest of your life. He said, the worst case scenario is, listen, I think we're gonna save your life here, but there's a good likelihood you're gonna be permanently disabled. We're gonna have to put in rods in your spine and screws. And this was three years ago, about two and a half. And listen, it was so crazy, Ilana, because I went from, I mean, I was like able to do triathlons. I was like squatting, deadlifting and in the best shape of my life, throwing my 2 year old daughter 5, 10ft up in the air in the pool. And I went from having a doctor tell me, you're gonna be permanently disabled physically. And I honestly, for 48 hours, I was like a wreck. I felt like my life was over. And then I spent some time in prayer and I just felt like the peace of God and I just really felt like, you know what? All I can do is my best and I'm gonna do everything I can to heal my body. And I really felt like God said, you're gonna be healed. Just this consciousness. And I thought, okay. So I did everything I could. And they were recommending three months of antibiotics. I was able to cut it down to one month because I got in a hyperbaric chamber every day. That oxygen helps kill an infection and drives the healing deeper. I did a hyperbaric chamber, like for three months straight. I did a lot of vitamin IVs, methylene blue, silver, Meyer's cocktails. I ate perfectly. Just meat, vegetables and berries for the most part. I was taking super high dose probiotics of 1 trillion daily, a lot of mitochondrial supplements, all this stuff. It took me a full year to walk again. Well, 10 months. And then I was on a walker for two. So a full year before I could walk on my own. But then I got better and better and better. And today now I'm back and lifting weights, carrying my daughters. I'd say about 90, 95% back. We just went on a snow ski trip. I went and, you know, skied every day for a couple of weeks in Park City, so. And I don't have pain. And so all that being said, I learned so much through the process and I think because of it, I'm a better doctor. You know, there's something in the Bible that says God uses all things for good for those who love him and for those who are called according to his purposes. So for me, I really believed and leaned into that that this pain would be turned into purpose. And now I really learned how to help heal a lot of irreversible conditions. You know, I learned a lot about these advanced therapies, everything from ozone to hyperbaric to plasma exchange to a lot of certain herbs and supplements that can really, really help transform somebody's health and how to do that. So now when I see a patient with cancer or somebody with autoimmune disease or hormone conditions, I really have very powerful protocols, even more powerful than before, on how to reverse these conditions. I think, like, maybe nobody else probably has, but it was because of my own experience in healing. And so, anyways, I could say more about that. But overall, two years ago, I was just starting to walk again. From this month we're recording this.
- [41:06]
Ilana Gulen
That's incredible. And eventually, they didn't need to operate.
- [41:09]
Dr. Josh Axe
No. Zero surgery. Nothing like that at all.
- [41:11]
Ilana Gulen
Amazing. And you literally wrote the book from bed, if I'm remembering correctly. Right.
- [41:17]
Dr. Josh Axe
The whole thing was written from being bedridden. Yeah.
- [41:20]
Ilana Gulen
So take me just for a second for that shift in belief in those 48 hours. You did allude a lot of it to faith. But I think one of the things that we see is that, again, people are spiraling down like they got a layoff or they have something in health or, you know, something happened, and instead of being able to shift it around and to believe again and then they can, whatever, leap again again. In my world, in your world, it's different. But how do you create that shift?
- [41:51]
Dr. Josh Axe
I think there's a couple things. One, my belief wasn't 100% immediately overnight. Right. But it was strengthened in knowing God works miracles. So that was big for me. I had saw my mom reverse what the doctor said was an irreversible condition. I'd help patients reverse Ms. And other irreversible conditions. So for me, there was a level of faith and belief in knowing irreversible conditions and bad diagnoses can be reversed. And here's what I'll tell you, too. The thing that actually concreted for me that I could 100% completely heal was I'd met a doctor whose daughter had a spinal infection like I had, and his daughter had fully recovered. Now, I knew another doctor, though, I want to say this, another doctor who had what I had, and he had to have metal rods put in his spine, and he ended up having, like, major issues. So I had two People where one was fully healed and others had what I had, and they literally had that scenario that the doctor told me I would have, but I chose to believe this one, that I would be 100% and completely healed. Fix your eyes on the right thing. I mean, I could have sat thinking about all the bad things and all the worst possible scenarios. First off, people have to understand that doesn't serve them. If you think, I can never heal this, my body isn't good at healing. The doctor's probably right.
- [43:08]
Ilana Gulen
How is that taking you to their goal?
- [43:10]
Dr. Josh Axe
Yeah. Yeah. If I ask the person, do you want to heal? And they say, yes, well, then the first thing I'll tell them was, don't believe that, then that's going to be the biggest thing that's going to keep you from healing. You need to believe in study and move forward with this. And I'm not saying you have to believe 100% right now. Maybe your belief is there's a 10% chance, but let's build that up over time by reading the right things, meditating on the right things, and moving forward the right way with the right plan. So I think that that belief is strengthened over time.
- [43:38]
Ilana Gulen
Sometimes I give this example. On a bike, if you're looking at the path and you're looking at a rock on the path, if this is where your eyesight is, you're going down on that rock. And I tried that many times. But if you're going to look around, the bike will just take you there. Right? And I think it's the same with everything. So, Josh, looking back on your career, on your life, what would be some things that you wish somebody told you earlier?
- [44:04]
Dr. Josh Axe
I do think the who before how principle is really important. I mean, if you read Jim Collins book good to great, he just says, get the right people on the bus. And I've done that in my career. But you could always do it better. And so I think being committed to having a why and sharing your why and making sure it's virtuous. And here's the other thing is try and focus on becoming a better person. The chapter two of my book is about this. Focus on becoming before accomplishing. If your goal is to accomplish big things in the world, that's fine. But that should be the secondary thing to becoming a great person. The Bible never talks about you're called to accomplish great things. You know, it says you're called to become like Jesus. A person that's loving, a person that's sacrificial, a person that's Compassionate. A person that's truly good and does good in the world. There are people that have done great things in the world. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Marx. These people that destroyed society. They did great things. It's the people that were becoming good people and using their skill for good and their character for good. Like Mother Teresa, Michelangelo, the artist. These people that have actually done lasting good in the world and focused on becoming so. One of the things I think that for most people, like a person who taught me this pretty early on, was John Maxwell. I've read loads of John Maxwell books because I wanted to learn how to be a truly virtuous leader. I wanted to sacrifice for my team. I wanted to do things not for myself, but for others, even more so. And I think that gets lost in society today. That's very individualistic. I think that if you truly want to be happy, it should be about serving others and making others dreams come true. You want to have a great marriage, don't focus on trying to make yourself happy. Focus on trying to serve and love and bless your spouse. What does your wife love to do? What does your husband love to do? Go and serve them in that way. Be their biggest cheerleader, their encourager. Try and connect with them. And so I think that for most people, focusing on building your character is much more important than focusing on growing your skill. But you want to do both. If you want to become your best self, you should be growing your character and your skill to the highest level possible.
- [46:06]
Ilana Gulen
I love becoming before accomplishment. I think it's so true. Because again, you can't accomplish what you're not becoming. And I think that's so smart.
- [46:16]
Dr. Josh Axe
I used to be a big Lance Armstrong fan. Cause I was a triathlete in college.
- [46:19]
Ilana Gulen
Me too.
- [46:20]
Dr. Josh Axe
And after, for 10 years. And I was so disappointed. You know, I was so disappointed when he was doping and lying and all those things. And it's like there's a Bible verse about this, and it's, what good is gaining the world but losing your soul? And then I thought about my grandfather. I had a grandfather that lived to be 96 years old. I was at his funeral, and there was a moment where the pastor said, does anyone have any final words about Howard? He was an amazing man. World War II veteran in the Navy. And the man next to me stood up in tears, just sobbing. And he said, howard was my best friend. And it was funny. As I looked at him, I thought, you're not my grandfather's best friend, because that's my uncle Don and Alan. But then I Felt a little guilty. I thought, you know what? I'm sure my grandfather was this person's best friend. Like, there's 150 people here, and they probably all feel like my grandfather was their best friend. And people were standing up saying, howard saved my marriage. He led me to the Lord. He, you know, gave me money when I didn't have. It was really amazing. And I thought to myself, this is what success is like. Nobody gets the end of their life. And it's like, you're successful because you built a big business. The people, your family and your real friends, they're saying, this was this sort of person, this sort of person you were. If people focus on that, they'll be much more fulfilled with their life and actually even more successful.
- [47:29]
Ilana Gulen
That's incredible. Well, I love that example, Josh, if somebody needs to reach you, if they have a problem, if they want to consult, what is the best way to.
- [47:40]
Dr. Josh Axe
Reach out if somebody needs help with their health? It's at my functional medicine clinic online with my practitioners. It's called the Health Institute. You can go on there. We typically have like videos to watch to really understand the way we practice. We call it personalized cellular medicine, but the way that we practice this form of nutrition and healing. But watch the video or try and set up a consultation with one of my health advisors or practitioners to work with you. You know, a lot of times we do some pretty advanced, incredible blood work with people to find out how their cellular and organ health is. We have this incredible test for organ age where we can actually test the age of everyone's different organ to be able to tell what it is. And that allows us to know and how to dial in what supplements for healing people. Like, for instance, a lot of people, if somebody has hypothyroidism, they think it's their thyroid. Most cases it's their gut or their adrenal glands that really need healing. And then that'll fix the thyroid. So anyway, sorry, that's a little bit of a tangent, but go to the thehealthinstitute.com or look up Dr. Josh Axe Clinic or the Health Institute and see me on there. And that's probably a great place if people want help with their health. Then I also say my podcast and YouTube videos. So if you look up the Dr. Josh Axe show, I cover a lot of in depth health content, a lot on YouTube as well, Instagram. But those are probably the best places to find me. Ilana.
- [48:54]
Ilana Gulen
Josh, this was so impactful. Thank you so much for sharing your story and all these incredible tips. I know I took a lot of notes. I hope your listeners had a brilliant time. Thank you. Josh.
- [49:05]
Dr. Josh Axe
Thanks so much for having me. Foreign.
- [49:18]
Ilana Gulen
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. If you did, please share it with friends now. Also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch this 30 minute free training@leapacademy.com training. That's leapacademy.com training. See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy with Ilana Gulen.