#230 Wade Houston - 7 Uncomfortable Truths Every Man Needs to Face

Are your habits holding you back from becoming the man you truly want to be?

In this episode, we sit down with Wade Houston, a man who has battled addiction, turned his life around and became a 7 figure entrepreneur.

We delve into Wade's experiences of overcoming addiction, the cultural influences that influenced these habits, and the mental and physical challenges he faced along the way.

Wade offers practical advice on breaking free from destructive habits, building a supportive community, and pushing through both mental and physical barriers. We also discuss the power of discipline, purpose, and a mindset shift, showing how these elements can lead to a life of success.

If you're ready to take the steps towards becoming a better man and overcoming your own challenges, hit that like button, subscribe for more life-changing insights, and share your journey or questions in the comments below!


Wade Houston’s Socials:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wadehouston/


My Socials:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/darrenlee.ks
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-lee1/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/darren_ks


(00:00) Preview and Intro
(01:54) Why Men Need Tough Love
(03:47) Signs of Addiction
(06:15) Hitting Rock Bottom as a Drug Addict
(10:13) Desperation and Seeking Help
(13:42)  The Struggle with Drugs and Alcohol in America
(15:30) Wade’s Advice for People Struggling with Addiction
(18:45) The Role of Spiritual Development and Physical Fitness
(22:01) Importance of Mentorship and Personal Growth
(27:19) Secrets to Scaling a Business 
(30:21) The Psychology of Sales
(34:06) Understanding Client Pain Points
(36:49)  Building and Managing a Sales Team
(42:46) The Secret to Employee Retention
(48:14) Wade’s Current Diet and Fitness Regimen
(55:00) Biohacking and Health Optimization

Transcript

Wade Houston: 0:00

Small, sustainable, incremental changes. The first thing I did was get sober, and I got a sponsor and a mentor. I still ate like shit, I still exercised like shit. I wasn't doing anything except for just getting sober and clearing my mind and developing a relationship with God. Ego suppressed me my entire life. You know, I think ego really, really held me back, because ego is a manifestation of the way that other people view you. Instead of being free of other people's judgment, it's an inflated desire for others' judgment Before we start this week's episode.

Darren Lee: 0:31

I have one little favor to ask you Can you please leave a five-star rating below, so we can help more people every single week. Thank you, let's kick off All right, bro. Where we want to start is do you think men need more tough love today?

Wade Houston: 0:46

Yeah, 100%. I talk about this all the time. I am so not empathetic, I am not soft at all. And when you hear the Jocko Willink adage of hey boss, we have problems, and he says, good, and hey boss, the house is burning down, good, and we can't process payments Good, the house is burning down, good, and we can't process payments good. That's how I am with my clients, with people online, with people in my life. When they say, hey, we're having a problem, I think good, because for me, those are the times that have defined me Overcoming alcohol addiction and drug addiction and having issues in my life. That's what strengthened me and that's what defined me. And so there's no growth in a time of comfort.

Wade Houston: 1:26

And I was pardoned. For much of my life, my mother showed me a lot of unconditional love and my dad, even though he didn't want to pardon me, he did. And then there was a period of time where he just said no, no more, no more, pardon. You got to figure this out on your own. I don't care if you're 100k in credit card debt, I'm not helping you out, I'm not helping you with housing. You know, I hope you live, but you got to figure this out on your own, and it was at that moment that that tough love really accelerated my journey, for me to wake up, and so I show a lot of tough love with my, with my clients.

Darren Lee: 1:54

Why do you think men like shy away from it basically, and don't want to change?

Wade Houston: 1:59

Well, I think, I think it's ego. I think people are, you know, extremely insecure and fearful, especially in today's day and age. It's very easy to hide with social media and you know there's many ways to escape in today's day and age, but people don't want to face their problems. I mean, I think that's existed since the beginning of time. But rather than just face their fears, it's like, hey, let's escape and not deal with this and, uh, I'm so worried about what other people are going to think. And especially in this, you know, sort of um, I would say, somewhat superficial culture with, with, with, you know, the, the, the height of social media and being online, everyone thinks they have to put on a front and a face and, rather than show who they really are and walk through their fear, they're too busy trying to impress other people well, if you think about it, you know you made a good point that I was.

Darren Lee: 2:45

It's been going on for forever, right, and before like the internet fucking era, even like hundreds of years ago, people would sued by just ignoring the problem. So they have a firm and there's like something wrong with their cattle and they just fucking ignore it. And then in the past hundred years people would sued with alcohol right to just find another replacement for it. So I I completely get that, like you know, we're at our worst generation, that it looks apparent that we're most fearful of facing change. But to your point, I feel like it's just always been the case. It's like a human instinct to not want to make changes because change is tough or tough right.

Darren Lee: 3:18

You left corporate america, I left corporate jobs. I was making like 100k I was like 25, 26 years old which is good in like UK, ireland, and then I had to change right and it was fucking painful and it sucked and people thought I was a dumbass. And it's only until you come through it, you break through the chasm, that people are like oh well done, great job, but most people don't want to do that. Totally couldn't agree more. Talk me through some of the telltale signs of addiction, like how do you know if you're addicted to a substance?

Wade Houston: 3:47

Well, from my experience, what defines an alcoholic or an addict is somebody who, once they begin using a substance drugs or alcohol there's no telling when they're going to stop. They're going to stop. So, whatever it is that you use uh women, drugs, uh sex food, it doesn't matter. Whatever it is, once you start, if you can't stop or there's no telling when you're going to stop, you probably are an alcoholic or an addict, or at least have alcoholic or addictive tendencies man, that extends to fucking so much shit.

Darren Lee: 4:21

Right, that could be just food, sugar, everything, and we're going to get into diet too, right, but it's like people think. People think addictions are the big ones, like just well, just drugs. Right, they genuinely think it's drugs. And where I'm from in ireland, people don't view alcohol to be a problem, right, they think that, like, it's like normal, it's in the culture, um so like, for you, like, what's your relationship with alcohol? Like, how do you view alcohol basically in society?

Wade Houston: 4:44

I mean, look, if somebody can utilize alcohol properly and they can have a drink or two and know when to stop, and they're not using it as a crutch or masking emotions or feelings, so be it. Great, utilize it. I personally believe that everybody is better without alcohol. I don't see any place or use for it. I don't see any place or use for anything that masks somebody's ability to grow and under any circumstance I can't find anything good with drugs and alcohol, like what good comes out of drugs and alcohol. Are we having a closer relationship with God? Are we getting closer with our friends? Are we working through our problems? Are we observing our mind? Are we waking up as sharp as humanly possible? Are we consistently growing and creating a better world when we're drunk and high, or is it always the complete opposite? I've never found any case in which I know somebody who's more useful to the world, creating a better place or being more altruistic when they're on drugs and alcohol. Generally, they're masking their problems and becoming more selfish and creating problems for themselves and others.

Darren Lee: 5:45

So I mean, I don't see any place for it at all. 100 you spoke about previously how, when you were like in your addiction phase, that you basically taught that you were better. You know in terms of like you taught you were better with the drug or it helped you function more, whether it was like oxycontins or even like smoking, weed and whatnot. How like? How do you think that plays into your mind? Like you were kind of convincing yourself almost at some stage that it's better for you, right? How did you find that like process to even disseminate? All right, I need to make a fucking change I just hit rock bottom one day.

Wade Houston: 6:15

you know, there was um when it came to being addicted to oxycontin, which was a drug that I used to use every day and still function. So I, I was a functioning addict. I was fine when I was on Oxycontin. I could blow an Oxycontin and smoke a couple of cigarettes and function throughout the day. I could run a financial firm or a bank you know, that's the job that I had at the time. Or there was a period of time where I was an accountant and I could actually prepare financial statements, totally fine, when I was on Oxycontin.

Wade Houston: 6:42

When I didn't have Oxycontin, I became an absolute monster and I would spend my entire day trying to get it. And this started to become very unhealthy when I started to run out of money and I started robbing kids. And after robbing a couple of kids at gunpoint and then getting robbed at gunpoint, I had no more money, no more Oxycontin, and I woke up and I felt like my entire body was breaking, all my bones were breaking, and at that point I just said, hey, I relinquished control and I'm gonna call my parents and tell them that I have an issue with oxycontin and uh, and I need help, and so that was it. I just you know hit hit one of the bottoms in my life where I admitted I needed help and taught me through that experience with fucking guns, like how did you get to that point?

Darren Lee: 7:23

like I don't know, is that normal basically in america at this point? That's just like a normal tendency.

Wade Houston: 7:29

I mean, I went through the oxycontin epidemic when it was, when it was just that. You know there's movies about it now, um, you know about the sadler family and purdue pharma and oxycontin 80s and, and we were getting oxycontin 80s shipped in in skittles bags from tex. So every week we're getting $40,000 worth of Oxycontin. And look, in Vermont it's very laid back. The gun laws are extremely loose. We all had guns.

Wade Houston: 7:52

We all used to shoot guns outside for fun and I wouldn't say it was part of the culture in Vermont in general to be drug addicts and drug dealers and thugs the way that we were. We just glorified that. You know, I think there was a small subset of kids and in my college and in my little circle that, you know, just wanted that life. You know, I think it seemed appealing and attractive and once we started getting addicted to drugs, it was fun. You know, it was like the cool kid thing to do, do and uh. So yeah, we just always had guns around. You know, we were going to the range and shooting and and the more and more drugs that were around, the more dangerous things got it's weird, right?

Darren Lee: 8:34

because, like drug addiction or alcohol, even where I grew up in ireland there was a lot of parody drugs, like a crazy amount of parody drugs, and what I always said was like you don't want to make your college habits your life habits. So, when a lot of parody drugs, like a crazy amount of parody drugs, and what I always say was like you don't want to make your college habits your life habits. So when a lot of guys were like taking like ecstasy or Coke or whatever, they kind of were like oh, like it's finished at this point. But the whole idea was that when you become 24, 25, you want to kind of relinquish that. I was trying to keep that in my mind, even when I was drinking a lot as a kid.

Darren Lee: 9:06

But the problem is that it's like a slippery slope. It's always like the extra one, it's the extra beer or more spirits or whatever, and you almost you look back and you think like how the fuck did we get here? Now, at the same time it happens in the opposite side too. When you're getting better right, when you're getting fit, getting healthy, fixing your diet, fixing your mind, fixing your body, reading more, you look back and you're like oh, I've read fucking 30 books this year, I've built a big business this year, I've got a lot better, I've got fitter, I got leaner and it works both ways.

Darren Lee: 9:34

But I think a lot of people they don't see the negative and then when they're on the increase they're like oh, I'm doing great, I'm after going to the gym today, I can go fucking out tonight. So it's almost like it doesn't work in the same uh, like returns, it doesn't return the same way. Taught me true, taught me true man. Um, I want to get into mainly more about when you were coming off it right and you're trying to like get yourself kind of set because I think this is where most people kind of struggle is like the relapse right and sticking in that kind of relapse kind of zone, whether it's even alcohol or whatnot, and you've had a few encounters of going back to drugs and alcohol. What made you stay off it for good?

Wade Houston: 10:13

I reached a point of complete desperation, of of complete despair. You know, I I gave up alcohol about 12 years ago after multiple DUIs. The consequences of alcohol were consistent judicial charges, whether it was DUIs, getting kicked out of prep schools and college assault charges. Alcohol created serious problems in my life and so it was somewhat easy to give that up Now. Smoking, weed, doing mushrooms, eating, ecstasy, doing ketamine, oxycontin, xanax those things didn't produce the immediate results. I was able to function on drugs for a long period of time. So I went through many different phases, you know, and it started with Oxycontin, that being by far the most addicting and habit forming and, like I said, that brought me to a, to a bottom in which I had to accept help. But after that I just didn't drink and didn't do painkillers and I was able to kind of get by on on weed and Xanax and Molly and ketamine and I kind of lived that existence for a long period of time, years and years, and I would come down to Miami and I would bring tons of Molly, ketamine, xanax, coke, weed, everything with me, lean, and I would come down to Miami and just party and it was great. You know, I had a really good run for like four years I had the craziest, craziest life here in Miami. You know, every Art Basel, every ultra crazy clubs tables so many celebrities. You know I was with a group of was with a group of very wealthy friends and people that love drugs, and so I ended up moving to Miami and after three months I hit rock bottom. I mean rock rock bottom.

Wade Houston: 11:54

I started drinking again. I was blowing coke to stay up. My friends were all visiting and wanting to go to the club. It would be like a Tuesday, wednesday, thursday night I'm out till 5, 6, 7, 8 am, going to 11 and then going to work at 9 or 10, not sleeping, just sort of delusional. And one night we left the club and everyone went to go to everyone to go to 11.

Wade Houston: 12:14

It was like 2.30, 3 am and and I ended up taking a ride home from some random stranger and it was. It was a hooker who you know. I got in the car and she offered me what I thought was some coke and it was some sort of drug, you know I don't know what it was, but I immediately blacked out, you know, within like a minute, and she stole my jewelry, like my chains and my Rolex, and then just left me right on the side of the road next to Flamingo Park me right on the side of the road next to Flamingo Park and I woke up and I just remember this feeling of despair, of like fuck, my life has come to this. You know, it wasn't about the fact that it was like some watch and some jewelry, it was like, wow, here I am, you know, drinking, using drugs, I don't have any real friends, my family's given up on me, I'm making no money, I'm in massive debt and I have this God-sized hole in my heart.

Wade Houston: 13:10

I just felt bankrupt, like spiritually bankrupt, and I felt like, should I continue on or should I just give up my life? And it just hit me like a ton of bricks that, hey, I got to go to AA and make a real shot at this and try and do some work. I had gone to AA before. I had never worked a program, but I had been introduced to AA, court mandated years ago. So I knew what it was and I just said, okay, you know what I'm going to do it. I'm going to go to AA and I'm actually going to get sober, because life can't get any worse at this point. It's about as bad as it can get, so it was just complete despair.

Darren Lee: 13:42

Do you think there's many people in America that are in a similar scenario like that?

Wade Houston: 13:48

There are so many people that struggle with drugs and alcohol that either don't even realize it or don't know where to get help, or how to get help, or unwilling to get help. You know, because, look at that point I remember thinking like how am I ever going to live without drugs and alcohol? Like how am I ever going to stop smoking weed? How am I ever going to cope with life without weed? How am I ever going to stop hanging out with my buddies? Like who am I going to hang out with? What am I going to do, you know.

Darren Lee: 14:11

And so man, that's, that's the biggest thing. So whenever I write about alcohol, uh, and like, I wasn't like addicted to alcohol, but again, if we could, we could go very deep into it with a fucking therapist or whatever we could discover that it was an addictive, addictive trait. Uh, people always say one thing it's what would I do when I substitute, when I get rid of alcohol? So what would I do when the football is on at the weekend and when I want to go get a date and whatnot? But they don't realize what you can substitute with it and like, for me it was like fitness, my podcast business, and then I went into like reading, like real personal development, hiking a shit ton. You're just always adding it in. But that's like, it's like an identity thing, right, it's like I feel like I can change because I'm that boy.

Darren Lee: 14:53

And I just interviewed a guy called Louis Armstrong at the week, during the week, and he lived in Ibiza, right, he lived in fucking Ibiza for two years and he was the boy, right, he got into all the big clubs, he got all his friends in the big clubs. Uh, he was a big beer guy, like obviously, like taking whatever to the same time, and the biggest thing for him was it was identity. He was recognized as the beer bro and he had to relinquish that initially, and you basically have to rebuild yourself. So my question for you now and this is like what advice do you have for someone who's young, struggling in their mid-20s and they need to make a change? Like, how do you make a change from your experience?

Wade Houston: 15:30

Well, it depends. I mean, if you're an addict and an alcoholic and the only way for you to you know, overcome what's going on, your addiction, then go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Go to a meeting. You don't have to say I'm going to stay here, you don't have to admit you're an alcoholic. Just go to a meeting and see if you resonate with any of the message that's being said and the way that people drink and the way that they think. And if you resonate with them, great, go to some more meetings and stick around.

Wade Houston: 16:08

If not, or if you're not an alcoholic or an addict, but you're just partying too much, I would start to take an inventory and know that at this point, success is subtractive. So who in your life is not contributing to your success? What places, what things and what people? And if you have friends that are just nonstop consistently partying or gossiping or negative or bringing you down, like, let's start, look at finding some new people. It's like it's not easy when you're in college, when you're 20, 22,. Like, let's start, look at finding some new people. It's like it's not easy when you're in college, when you're 2022.

Wade Houston: 16:31

Like, unless you, unless you've had some serious consequences and you say, yeah, I need to go get some serious help and go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, that's easier than, oh, it's not that bad. And I just want to do this less. You know, doing it less is like, hey, we got to cut some of this stuff out. And then the other thing about that self discovery is what do you add back in? So you're gonna have to find some things that you like to do to fill some of that boredom. You know, and like when you're younger it's hard to say, you know, I didn't know what my path was, I didn't know what I really liked. I didn't even know who I really was. All I knew was I like to go to parties and do drugs and fuck girls. You know, that's it, that's all I knew. I didn't even know. And play sports on the side, you know, I didn't know like that, I had any other passion. So that self-discovery, I think, is key.

Darren Lee: 17:20

But, man, I think what was good for you was the fact that you were so into sport right, you were into sport, right, you were a quarterback, you played fucking hockey. Like that allowed you basically to be able to kind of like I think almost like benchmark what health was. Right, because that was similar to me. I played rugby around 100 meter track, right. So I kind of knew, like, fucking, I'm so far off this because I kind of had an idea what health was so I could throw myself into bodybuilding when I kind of walked away from a lot of sport and just committed to the fucking gym, right. And what's, I think, beautiful about training the gym is the fact that you can always have a benchmark of like where your health is at right, because, like, your bench is a certain amount, your squats a certain amount.

Darren Lee: 17:58

So when you go out and party, you realize there's a disparity. So it's almost like like the gym is a meditative process, right, it's like a, it's a conditioning of so the first step of self-development, right, is going to the fucking gym, basically. Then everything else gets added, added into it. But looking at where you are now, like you're literally fucking jacked. Right, you're like 35 at the moment you're super lean, like it's crazy man. You actually look like you're in your 20s, which is pretty fucking wild right from the life you've had. Um, if you were to look back on like how would you say, like where you are now and where you were there, the process? Do you think it was as a small series of changes over the past five years or cause, like now it looks, I could never compare you to that lifestyle Basically small sustainable, incremental changes.

Wade Houston: 18:45

You know it was, uh, the first thing I did was get did was get sober, and I got a sponsor and a mentor. I still ate like shit, I still exercise like shit. I wasn't doing anything except for just getting sober and clearing my mind and developing a relationship with God. That was a lot of work of internal development, development so talking to someone else about my fears, my inadequacies, my character defects, clearing the wreckage of the past, making things right, you know, vowing to help other people and become less selfish and develop a relationship with God. And so for me, it was all about spiritual development at first and becoming less selfish. That's where I started. Then, from there, covid happened, and COVID is when I went insane with getting in shape. I started working out two days, I started designing workouts for other people, I started bringing people through these crazy workouts every day, and then I would get home from the workout and I would make my own food or I would order from this health food place right down the street and I started eating really healthy for the first time. So, all of a sudden, now I'm working out and eating really healthy and COVID is amazing for me and then I'm getting sun and then I start meditating and reading, and so COVID was the best thing that ever happened to me. I became ever.

Wade Houston: 19:57

I got a job. I got an opportunity three months into COVID to take over a hormone clinic and learn a lot about how to run a business, how to manage a sales organization, and then how to oversee sales and marketing, and then became the director of growth and then on to run that company in every facet. And so I learned a lot, an incredible amount, in a two-year period of time through spiritual development, through mindfulness, meditation, through some literature, through lots of YouTube and through working with subject matter experts. I'm blessed to have a mentor who is a 10-figure guy, who's had multiple exits from his own companies, who's run M&A for major banks, he's a lawyer, he's on the board of four Fortune 500 companies. He's an absolute savage and he's overcome some of the same issues as me, so he understands the mindset and the personal and spiritual development as well, and so I got really blessed.

Wade Houston: 21:04

God put this incredible individual in my life who helped me accelerate this curve, and that's why I do what I do. You know people like, oh, coaching is such a scam, it's like dog. You have no fucking idea. I went from a hundred K and credit card debt and a salesman making 55 K a year at a Land Rover dealership to the president of 10 X health, and we went from 9 million to 50 million in 10 months that I was there. So for me to make that jump in two years, two and a half years, it would have never, ever happened on my own accord. I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't know how to negotiate, I didn't understand leverage, I didn't understand deal flow or acquisition, how to structure or value a company, you know, and I had this unbelievable mentor in Steve, and then again with Brandon when I went to 10X, and so I just got blessed with unbelievable mentorship.

Darren Lee: 22:01

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Darren Lee: 24:16

And we were in this fucking apartment in Dublin, fucking bench, pressing off the fucking table because you're just trying to find anything you can to make it work Right and most guys are looking for fucking excuses. Man, you mentioned before we get into the scaling side, which I really want to get into because I want to pick your brains very much on that you mentioned a lot about ego, the emotional state, the internal state. Now, if I looked at you and if I saw you in the street, I would not think you've done a lot of work on that side. But I know you've done a shit ton of work and it's been a huge precursor for what you've done. How much is like ego the enemy and how do you think about like relinquishing the ego inside you?

Wade Houston: 24:53

ego suppressed me my entire life. You know, I think ego really, really held me back, because ego is a manifestation of the way that other people view you. It's, it's um, you know, it's really, instead of being free of other people's judgment, it's an inflated desire for others judgment, you know, and I think I thought I was something special as a result of the God given talent and way that I look and natural abilities that I had, and there was always a fear of being judged or a fear of trying too hard, and so that just held me back my entire life. And I think for me, I had to be rid of ego, because it was so obvious that my skills and abilities were so much greater than what I was actually achieving. You know, I found eventually, I just got sick of hearing wow, you have so much potential, you're gonna be so great, and I was like, fuck, I'm like almost 30 now and I keep hearing you're going to be so great, and it was like something's not right here I'm.

Wade Houston: 26:02

I'm smarter, I'm more intellectual, I speak better, I can handle social situations better, I can negotiate better than other people, I'm more adept, I learn things quicker. Something's off, and it was just that. It was just my ego, you know I was. I was unable and unwilling to try hard and get through the fear. So, yeah, I mean for me I think it was a dissatisfaction of where I was at and some people pointing out to me that I had some work to do. I got really blessed, like you said, to tie back from the very beginning. That tough love is really important. You know, at the beginning of COVID I asked a friend for a job and he said you should work on yourself. And that's sort of what sprung the mindfulness and the work and the self-reflection.

Darren Lee: 26:43

That's a good point, man, because, like people will often pawn it off. Like, I got a job, I'll work for this company, I'll work for this startup and I'll just soothe my problems. But you need to have a look internally at that, right, um, and I think it's only until you kind of go through it that you realize the severity of it, and it's kind of always happening. We talk about the change, right? The change that happens internally happens first before the external change taught me through the, the growth from 9 million to 50 million, because this is something that you're very uniquely positioned on, what do you think some of the drivers were there and what were some of the main skills that you've learned there, that have set you up for life?

Wade Houston: 27:19

We had a crazy influx of inbound because Gary Brecco started working with a lot of celebrities and Dana White started promoting 10X, we had an exorbitant amount of lead flow I mean 60,000 leads in a weekend, you know. And then we also had Grant and his whole you know camp throwing these events like GrowthCon and some of these other larger events, and we would get three 4,000 genetic test orders in a weekend and do 2 million in sales in three days, you know. And then we'd have to fulfill that in a weekend and do 2 million in sales in three days, you know, and then we'd have to fulfill that. And so we had a very sporadic, unplanned demand because we wouldn't even know exactly when some of these celebrities would drop these podcasts and these shows or these YouTubes, and there was no way to forecast the demand at some of these events. Initially. When we did start to forecast the demand and plan for, hey, we're going to get, you know, 3000 genetic tests in a weekend, we had to very quickly create redundancy plans, and so the biggest thing at hyperscale was getting more vendors that could fulfill the deliverables. So, for example, if we had a genetic test of 3000 orders in three days, had a genetic test of 3000 orders in three days. How many genetic tests can the vendor, you know? Or the lab process in a day, and it was like 100. So now we're like 300 days out because we have 3000 genetic test orders, right? And so we very quickly had to increase their capacity.

Wade Houston: 28:48

And so, look, I say this to everybody my job as the president was just to sell every single person with whom I spoke in order to scale as quickly as possible, and I don't say that that to be misleading, that sales is the only thing. What's extremely important is structure within the business, right, a hierarchy or a you know I don't even know, I can't think of the name right now an org chart. So making sure that you have the right org chart and the right positions, you know, and the right managers in place and communication structures that's imperative. But you have to onboard employees very quickly. Right, when you scale from 40 employees to 180 employees a year, you have to be able to onboard employees very quickly. Right, when you scale from 40 employees to 180 employees a year, you have to be able to onboard employees very quickly and have structures and systems in place.

Wade Houston: 29:32

Now I have to have new vendors we have to look at buying our vendors. We have to look at buying clinics and as we do that, my job is just to sell these vendors on why they need to increase their capacity or on why they need to consider letting us buy them. I need to sell the you know the board, or the. You know some of the, some of the other C level on why we need more money for certain initiatives and forecasting growth so that we can handle the demand. I got to sell all my managers and all my directors on how to manage people and how to handle problems and issues, and so all day long it's just really selling people on the greater vision and then, you know, convincing vendors to increase their capacity on our behalf and take a risk, because sometimes they were having to buy 500k new machinery on the hope that we were going to consistently have more orders. So it's a lot of persuasion.

Darren Lee: 30:21

Tell me true psychology of sales, like what is it that you learned and implemented?

Wade Houston: 30:30

is it that you learned and implemented? So, for me, sales is all about just understanding the pain points and the problem that the person with whom you're speaking has, or, if it's the event of persuading a vendor, it's understanding what's most important to them, and for the most part, they obviously want to maintain the relationship and make more money and grow, but they also want to mitigate the risk that comes along with making the investments and having us pull out and not consistently ordering. So it's really about isolating the problem, digging deep on the pain point and understanding the why behind it, you know, and understanding their timetable, and then making sure that we're providing the solution as eloquently as possible, based on emotion rather than just logic, and then really being persistent about moving them forward. If we know that this is the best possible outcome for them and our solution solves it. We got to do everything in our power to move them down the line.

Darren Lee: 31:29

Talk about the emotion piece there that was interesting to dig into. So why based on emotion versus logic?

Wade Houston: 31:34

Well, I mean, people make decisions based on emotion. Right, they might clarify with logic, but they're going to make their decision based on emotion. So I need to find out, like no matter who I'm speaking with, I need to understand the driver and the pain, why they're trying to make this decision Right. And so, if it's to get healthier, like why? And I don't mean just because like oh, I'm fat and I, you know, don't feel well and I'm taking prescription medication, but okay, great, how does that make you feel You're feeling a little bit overweight?

Wade Houston: 32:04

What is that doing for your confidence? How's that affecting your relationship with your wife? How's it affecting your relationship with your kids? How do you think your coworkers look at you? How do you think your employees look at you? Do you think you're the best representation that you possibly could be with your organization? Or do you think people look at you and think that guy's not that disciplined and he's a little bit out of shape?

Wade Houston: 32:28

And I would dig the fuck out of people. I would dig so deep to the point where the way I trained my salespeople was okay, guys, you're not closing on the fact that somebody doesn't have energy, that they're fat, that they're not feeling healthy or taking medications. You're closing on the fact that they feel like a piece of shit. Their wife isn't even fucking them anymore. She's not even making good home cooked meals because you're not giving her stiff dick. Your kids look at you like you're a fucking loser. Your employees have no respect for you whatsoever and they treat you like trash because you're a shitty representation. And your brother is beating you at all sports when he's a slob and you're a much better athlete than him.

Wade Houston: 33:10

How does that feel? How does that feel? Seriously, you feel good about your life right now? No, you don't. That's why you reached out. So, instead of pitter-pattering back and forth about making a decision, let's solve the issues that you're setting out to solve, because you and I both know, as a result of the solution that I've just laid out, this is step one into making sure you overcome all these issues and regain your confidence. Start fucking your wife again. She's not looking at other guys. You're getting good home cooked meals, your kids respect you, your business grows, your employees respect you and you stop losing at tennis to your brother. How does that sound? That's how deep I want every salesperson to go. I want them to be a therapist, then an educator and then a shark. That's the progress, you know, and so that's how I would teach people is just go super deep onto the feeling of why they're trying to solve this issue.

Darren Lee: 34:06

I fucking love that. Have you read Gap Selling by Keenan Bro? I gotta send you that book. You have to fucking read it. It's called Gap Selling. The framework he goes through right is called. It's basically the gap, right. So where the gap is very easy to visualize where you currently are and where you want to get to. So let's say that dude who's fat, overweight, his wife hates him. That's his current state. His future state is that she's making the home cooked meals and so on. But it's not just enough by saying what the gap is and most salespeople like. So you know, I run my company, I do the closing calls myself, I have setters too, which we'll get into. But we're trying to quantify the gap to get that person to tell it to you.

Darren Lee: 34:47

But what we're trying to focus on is five main issues. So understanding the numbers. So specifically so what weight are you in the scales? How many times has your wife cooked you meals? How many times has your brother beat you in tennis? Understanding the problem. So what is that problem? So that could be the weight issue, right. Understanding the deep problems. Understand the root cause. So you've lacked confidence, you've had a shit upbringing, you've a bad relationship with food. Understanding the future state. So where is it you really really want to get to okay and then being able to chart that out for them. And that's why discovery calls or sales calls could be like an hour long, and I'm fucking literally drawing this out for people and then the light bulb moment comes out.

Darren Lee: 35:26

And the reason why it's important is because even after you do this, you know you might get someone like oh, I don't know, should I invest in this program? Whatever the? The response you should say is I'm confused. You taught me you want to achieve all of this. You told me you're having all of these problems and you want to get there in this amount of time. Is that not correct?

Darren Lee: 35:43

And basically the way keenan writes is that he says it opens a loop in their mind and they don't want the loop being up into the ether. They don't want people thinking that this is like open loop. So they'll say, oh, no, I I do. I did believe that. I do believe that that, okay, now we're ready to make a change and it's almost like documenting someone's fucking entire life, but it's a very solid framework and it's basically how I learned sales. There's obviously been many different fucking books too right, but I had in my podcast and literally the amount of fucking change it's made for me has been absolutely monumental and it's exactly what you described. It's just more of a framework that's put on top of it I love that.

Wade Houston: 36:21

I'm gonna order it as soon as I get into my amazon here man, you will love it.

Darren Lee: 36:23

Basically, he's uh, he's from I think he's from colorado, and he's like no bullshit, like he's real fucking no bullshit. He writes with that too, right. He's like a young enough dude cool the cool guy. Talk to me about building a sales team. So I've been doing this for the past couple of months. I got a lot of help to do it. I invest in a lot of sales programs Very, very helpful. But you know, building a sales team and being the manager is completely different than being a fucking salesperson, right? How do you think about building a sales team?

Wade Houston: 36:49

First and foremost, whenever I hire salespeople, I'm looking for people that are open-minded, that have some sales experience before and have sold to the type of client that I am targeting. For example, when I was creating a hormone replacement clinic and our buyer persona was that of a wealthy person between the ages of 30 and 55 who drove nice cars, had big houses, played golf, tennis, bought big homes, bentleys, rolls Royces, ferraris, bmws, big boats. I want people that have sold to that type of buyer persona, that understand the inner workings of wealthy people and how they make decisions. So, instead of taking, I hired zero people from the medical field whatsoever. In fact, I don't even give a shit if they had any medical prowess whatsoever, because I was going to distill the medicine in a very simple way to them, in which they could regurgitate and re-explain, and they wouldn't need to explain every single little medication. They would need to be good at understanding rich people, understanding how they thought, how they functioned, and uncovering and diving deep into the problem and being consultative with delivering the potential result and outcome. So I hired luxury real estate people, yacht brokers, jet brokers, girls that worked in high-end cosmetic and jewelry stores, and we crushed as a result of this right, and this was really a lot of the key to my success.

Wade Houston: 38:17

The first thing I do in any business is define who is the buyer, and I mean I psychoanalyze the buyer as deep as probably anybody else ever does. I want to know where else are they getting information? How are they making purchasing decisions? How do they interact with car salespeople, yacht brokers, real estate brokers? What are their friends saying? What country clubs do they go to? What kind of cars are their kids driving? What kind of cars are their kids driving? What kind of jewelry does their wife have? I want to know every fucking thing about this person. Where do they live? How do they absorb information so that I can psychoanalyze that person and I can make the marketing message target that person exactly with where they're at, so that it doesn't seem like it's out of place with anything else that they buy in their life. And then I want the sales script to mimic that exact same thing and understand cues on how to move the conversation forward, because these people are rich, they're busy, don't waste their time, and be very blunt and direct with them. So I would train all of this time and time and time again and I would use my own examples, when my sales team would say, oh, but I'm not reaching anybody, and I'll say do you want to reach people?

Wade Houston: 39:18

I say, if you reach people in the first one, two, three calls or text messages, how much fucking money are they going to have? Who's going to pick up on the first ring, somebody who's busy? No, no chance. There is zero chance. I am picking up any calls. There is zero chance I'm responding to any emails. I got thousands of both. But if you text, call, voicemail and email me within a five minute period of time, you will spark my attention, and if you do that five or six times in a row, I may pay attention to you. And in the one moment in which I have 15 minutes during my day, if you catch me in that window, I will respond, but otherwise I'm fucking busy. I'm making money and this is a low priority, even if I submitted a lead, and I'm interested in this, and so you guys need to understand you're going to make the most money from the people you reach on the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th attempt, and I reframed their mind that that's when all the gold would be discovered, and so they started looking forward to that. I also taught every single one of them meditation.

Wade Houston: 40:35

Okay, I structured every company in this frame. I would personally develop all of the employees. I would pull them aside and I would find out their family, their goals and I would say what are your personal, professional, financial goals over the next one, three, five years? And then I would weave in how they could achieve those goals by working at this company whether it was through increased income, time off, leadership or moving up within the company and having a different role. How they could achieve all this. So now they have some buy-in, but instead of just weaving and showing them a path of how to mature within the company, now I need to help them with the benchmarks at which time they might be able to move up and roll or pay scale, and then what competencies they need to go from sales to management, to director, and actually give them the course content and material and train them to do so.

Wade Houston: 41:22

Moreover, I wanted to personally develop every employee by helping them with a simple set of habits, making sure that at least they understood diet and exercise and the importance of priming their day. So every single day, we did 10 minutes of silent meditation and my job as the sales manager was to make sure that every single day, I was helping them with role play, listening to call recordings, providing feedback, motivation, creating incentive systems, making a fun culture and then winding them the fuck up. I mean seriously motivating them about the potential and the future by either relating an experience of one of the salespeople's success, a customer's success, some good feedback that we got, some new marketing messaging and material, an exciting campaign that we're having, industry news, changes in new medications, something good that operations did, a great result that a patient have. I am literally the fire starter, and so my job is to be the ultimate fucking motivator to every single person there. I need to be on every single day, the person that builds them up and excites the shit out of them that they have the potential to reach every single one of their goals and they work for an incredible, amazing company that helps them develop personally, professionally and financially.

Wade Houston: 42:46

And as a result of doing that, dude, I had zero turnover. Not one employee left, whether it was at health gains or or 10X. Never Zero employee ever left, unless it was someone took like a dream job, you know, but it wasn't anyone leaving disgruntled ever. So you know, that's how I built. You know, a sales organization. Are you an?

Darren Lee: 43:11

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Darren Lee: 44:05

Man, like the fact that's a complete leadership right, because at the end of the day, even the fucking salary isn't enough usually to keep people right. They need, you need to have so much more, and I only realized that building a fucking small sales team was the fact that it's not to do with. It's not only just to do with the numbers, because sales is so tough, it's just getting brutalized every single day and rejection, rejection, rejection. So I only learned that by going through a lot of programs to be like all right, hey, this is exactly how you're going to like help your team succeed. And I love the fucking health and fitness analogy. Man, like I think, I think like when you look at someone and they're not fit right, it's like hard to think about how they're going to take care of, like their work and get everything done. You need to be focused on that because it's like, um, it's like the early habits. I interviewed bradley recently and I was like how do you, how do you, get confidence? He's a confident guy and he was like it starts by taking care of your own fucking house, brushing your teeth, getting your fitness in check, getting your health in check, and then, when you come into work, if you work for someone, if you have a business, you can slowly then start developing confidence. I loved your point about how many times it takes to hit someone.

Darren Lee: 45:10

So referencing gap setting again, the average in B2B sales is 13 touch points before someone responds, and the reason being is because it's fucking tough to get people to respond because they're busy, right, and that's across like LinkedIn, email call, voice note, fucking contact forms, everything. So most guys would run up against the wall of resistance. If you're familiar with Steven Pressfield, they'll do one. They'll just do one email, right, and it's going to be some generic fucking bullshit. And then basically they're like oh, it doesn't work, the product doesn't work, but that's not the point at all. It's the same with you or me, right? Like I'm not going to get back to people.

Darren Lee: 45:45

If it's fucking general, genetic, fucking normal shit, it has to be very personalized to you, and so there's a lot of factors. That's why you need someone like yourself to help someone. That's why you need someone like yourself to help someone. There's just so many factors going on at once that most people don't realize it, and that's why I love sales, man. It's everything. It's everything. It's even how I got my fucking partner to fall in love with me. It's sales at the end of the day, right, totally.

Wade Houston: 46:11

And I mean I would with all my salespeople, I would psychoanalyze them to the point of saying I say, help me understand a little bit about what's going on in your mind right now. And I would find out like, hey, is this a fear-based thing? Is this a limited conception thing? Is this a lack of perspective about the way these people make decisions? Is this some emotion that's being brought up in your body or your mind that you're judging the wrong way? Because I would have salespeople that say, man, I don't want a cold call, or I don't want to reach out, or I'm, yeah, I'm having a hard time because I get some nervousness or some anxiety. And I would say about what? And we talk about it. And then we'd reframe that you know, and I would always tell them this is being nervous or anxious or having fear, good or bad.

Wade Houston: 46:52

When you get on a sales call and they'd be like, well, you know, I think it's bad. And they'd be like, well, you know, I think it's bad, you know, I lock up, I tense up, and I'm like, okay, look, when you're nervous, when you're anxious and when you have fear, it means that you're locked in, it means that you're focused. It means that you care about the result. It means that you're projecting about a future outcome and that you have a desire, probably to help somebody, but you don't know if that's actually going to come true, when you're going to close them and help them. But those are amazing qualities.

Wade Houston: 47:18

That is your job as a salesperson to be focused, locked in, dialed, wanting to help somebody and projecting an outcome that serves the company and, eventually, them. So you want those emotions. If you don't have them, that means you're not focused, you're aloof and you'll never be a good salesperson. So you better start welcoming those emotions as something that you need to be the best possible salesperson. And it was just a consistent reframing of emotions for them to be able to get through and eventually they would. They would say, wow, that that reframe really helped me quite a bit.

Darren Lee: 47:50

A hundred percent man, like if you don't give a shit about the outcome, if you're not nervous, then you obviously just you're in the wrong path, right? I often found that as well with sport, right, people like us didn't really care about whether we won or lost or indifferent. They just they're in the wrong path, right it's. It's just up to them to get onto the right path. Then, right, I want to ask you about the diet and everything that you're going through at the moment. Can you walk me through, like some of your, some of your diet at the moment?

Wade Houston: 48:14

actually, because that's one thing that I'm pretty fucking amazed at, looking at your physique and everything I do uh two raw eggs every morning, and then the glyphosate free oatmeal, like the healthy oatmeal, with uh a little bit of salt and I saw your reel on that man.

Darren Lee: 48:28

Yeah, yeah, you like that. Yeah, yeah, you know, because everyone's like fucking giving shit about the, the oatmeal.

Wade Houston: 48:36

So, yeah, I mean, I, I use the healthy oatmeal and look if there's one thing that I eat that like isn't the healthiest. If people are going to talk shit about oatmeal, you know, whatever, I feel amazing on oatmeal. My blood work is unbelievable. It works well for my body. I don't have coffee, so I hydrate. Then I had the two eggs, the oatmeal, then I have coffee right before the gym, one cup of coffee, and then I have a cup of coffee after the gym. I take creatine before and after. I think that's imperative for me.

Wade Houston: 49:01

It's a very misunderstood supplement. I have. Everybody take it, including my mom. It's amazing for longevity, memory retention, cognition, everything, muscle recovery, bone density, the whole deal. And then, dude, I just eat lean. For the most part I have like a chicken, lean turkey fish and rice and sweet potatoes and veggies, and then at night I usually have a similar form of that, or a steak or like a ground beef with, you know, similar sides. So it's pretty, pretty dialed in and consistent. There. It's less about exactly what I eat and more about the total amount of calories and the macronutrient breakdown. I think that's that's imperative. Uh, but also, dude, every Friday. I have cheeseburgers every Friday night. I got a shake shack. I got a shake shack cheeseburger with cheese fries and a vanilla milkshake. Always, you know, I don't, uh, I'm not going to like completely go into a place where I'm not going to have something that that I enjoy, you know, once in a while, but also I, I do, I really love most, most of the food that I have anyway. So it's uh, it's pretty easy.

Darren Lee: 50:05

Yeah, it's like 99 one right. Like you're able to get your enjoyment from what you actually say. You're able to grow your body, your brain, your business from what you already enjoy. So then, if you want to have a fucking Shake Shack, you can at the same time. Now the question for you on that is like how the fuck are you?

Wade Houston: 50:18

staying so lean. It's just that I am eating less fat. You know, I used to eat a lot of avocado. I would have six eggs to start the day, I would have more steak, I would have steak for lunch and dinner, and now I just limit that. Like I'm not going to have more than 40, 50 grams of fat in a given day. So two eggs might be 15 and then a steak might be 35 to 40 and that's it and everything else. I'm going to eat super lean. There's zero fat in rice and chicken breast and veggies and so if I have those as staple meals during the day oatmeal and fruits no fats in that, you know.

Wade Houston: 50:58

I also understand that everybody's body burns things differently. But look, you can't have a high fat, high carb diet and stay lean. You're just going to be fluffy as fuck. But it's one or the other. Either you're in ketosis or you have a high fat diet, or you do higher carbs and low fat. I feel unreal on higher carbs and lower fat from an energy, mental clarity and physique perspective.

Wade Houston: 51:21

Now the only issue is my favorite food in the world is steak and cheeseburgers. So you know, I just pick and choose my battles, like, instead of having six eggs in the morning I'll have two eggs, and many mornings I'll add in four egg whites. You know if I'm, if I'm going to cook the eggs, I'll just add an egg whites to get enough protein I am trying to get away from. I've consumed it for a while like pea protein, which it's not even the best protein powder from a bioavailability perspective. But whey protein just wrecks me Isolate, concentrate, any of it. And now recently all of the powders have been hurting me. I'm like pretty much I'm almost 100% just raw, organic foods now, you know, like whole foods.

Darren Lee: 52:07

Same as me, yeah I don't feel that all my life I weigh protein.

Darren Lee: 52:10

I weigh protein all my life and then, uh, so it's funny I had a bodybuilding diet, so exactly. You said higher carb, lower fat, like 40, 50 grams of fat, highly like. Everything was measured and macroed out for you know, 10, 15, 10 years, and now I've moved more into animal based. So it's high fat, very low carob, like maybe like 100 grams of carobs put from fruit a day, but it's like one or the other. Right, you, you can't have your cake and eat it, right, like you physically can't have a high carb, high fat diet. But it's interesting because how I? Why I asked you about that was because whenever I used to do reverse diet so I'd diet, diet down, hit like a, you know, a low point, and then I'd reverse diet up. Whenever I did that with carbs, I had this fucking crazy craving for carbs I need, I needed more rice and so on, so I would bounce up. I wouldn't rebound crazy, but I would just bounce up a little bit faster. So maybe I put on like two kilos and maybe like six weeks as a, as a reverse, whereas now I reverse diet on, uh, animal based, so high fat, low carb, and I'm only up like probably like 0.7 in a month and a bit, so roughly a bit lower, but the energy is a lot better. I don't know the cravings and whatnot.

Darren Lee: 53:18

Um, it's interesting the way I kind of see diet is. Like you know, this could be kind of a different kind of opinion, but it's like almost nearly all diets work once you like follow them, right, because, like they're, there's all hitting some micro macronutrients. But the reason why people get so entrenched in their fucking beliefs is because when you go from no diet so standard american diet to any diet, you're obviously going to feel better. Right, my partner, she's like vegan for, uh, like environmental reasons. Right, she's big into like wildlife and so on. So she says she feels good and I was yeah, you feel good because you're just eating like vegetables and shit and whatever.

Darren Lee: 53:49

Right, but if you were eating pizza 24, seven, you'd feel like shit. So it's easy to say you just feel better. Right, obviously, there's better diets and so on. But I think like that's a, it's an interesting frame, right, and that's where, like diet, conversation is like it's never ending with people. Right, it's like is this better, is that better? It kind of goes down to your body to some degree. As long as you're hitting your macronutrients, you're getting your bloods done. You're making the precautions you're adding in the supplements right because more like let's be honest like 99 people have never had the bloods done like ever right, exactly.

Wade Houston: 54:17

I mean, it's a lot about getting the diagnostic and then a little bit of trial and error and see you know what's better for you, what, what you feel better on for sure.

Darren Lee: 54:23

So even like colin, you know he. So I'm following very similar diet to colin, but his supplements on top of it is crazy, right, he's taking not like a load of supplements, but he knows what he needs to test. So even with his diet, he knows he needs to supplement. And even with my partner's diet she needs to supplement iron b12 fucking a shit ton because obviously she doesn't get it from me, right? Uh, and it's just again. It's awareness, right? Instead of thinking like you're right about your diet, just having the fucking awareness that you need to to see what's better right now told me, true, the kind of biohacking principle, like what's your philosophy around there? Um, how are you improving?

Wade Houston: 55:00

like, your health metrics and so on I take a walk every morning, and I think that's imperative because maintaining a stable blood glucose is the easiest way to live as long as possible, so that's reducing complex carbohydrates. I wore the blood the levels, blood glucose monitor and it told me that potatoes were the thing that spikes my blood glucose the most, aside from sugar, artificial sweeteners, yeah. So that is for me hyper imperative. The other thing, too, is no processed foods, very rarely processed foods, fried foods, all these really heavy ingredients. I just don't really do that anymore, and I've noticed that my level of inflammation, which is marked by something called homocysteine, has drastically been reduced in my body, and so my blood work right now is basically perfect. Every time the doctor looks at it, she says I don't really have many recommendations to give you, wade. You know everything's amazing, you know you're doing everything that you need to do, and so it's just look.

Wade Houston: 55:54

Consistency, seven for me it's seven hours of sleep, consistent wake up time, consistent eating habits, consistent exercise, going on a walk, getting a little bit of sun. If I can't get sun, I mean I can always get sun, but if I can't get sun, then I would supplement with vitamin D and then just diet is just the biggest thing for me, you know, diet and exercise. Diet, exercise and sleep are the absolute biggest things. And then the other thing too, is just getting consistent blood work and, and you know my, my genetic test, which told me which supplements to take, and so I just take the same stack of supplements every single day, which is not much, and and I get my blood work done consistently if I need to make any changes. For me, meditation has been huge to reduce anxiety and stress and cortisol levels and that's actually helped me a lot. And I believe that, you know, having a stress is enhancing mindset and observing one's thoughts is actually one of the most overlooked parts of long term health 100%.

Darren Lee: 56:49

That's something I need to like focus more into right, because I've gotten a lot better. For sure, 100 I got a lot better, but it's I need to be much more diligent, which almost like baking it into my day right, whether it's in the in the morning, in the evening, to be able to kind of calm down. I did find that, like inflammation, my body came in a lot more when I went to animal based, like the huge, the biggest thing was definitely inflammation focus do. Actually, oddly enough, I didn't have that spikes and how were you measuring inflammation? I wasn't measuring just more observation, like I wasn't uh, I wasn't like a combination, things like in my stomach and my gut, I wasn't feeling like inflamed. Um, even when I'm running and training, even in my, my joints, I didn't feel like that kind of like puffiness and, yeah, I didn't have that kind of like even like that water retention. I know I need to fucking probably get some weight to measure it effectively, but just feeling like a lot fresher effectively.

Darren Lee: 57:40

So you mentioned there's a few things there about the supplementation oh sorry, the genetic test. So obviously, obviously 10x health. They have like that fucking 75 biomarkers off which is obviously very, very detailed and it's like almost what you need to get done. Now. There's probably replacements for it or alternatives in europe and in asia, but what I find it's very difficult to get a wide panel of bloods done, like you know, your thyroid, uh, estradiol, a few of the other fucking big ones. That isn't super expensive, like I remember, I got mine done in in asia recently and, man, it was like five of them, it wasn't even extra estradiol, wasn't even in it and it was a thousand dollars. But even with that information, I just had a prolactin and a few other ones and it's hard to observe what to do from that information. Obviously you look at the test has the ultimate fucking man metric right, but all the other shit it's hard to understand, like how to interpret the data. So what's your? How do?

Wade Houston: 58:37

you view that I mean having somebody that can look at the data is is is imperative, because looking at the values alone, based on what the normal range is, as shown on the report, is not sufficient.

Wade Houston: 58:51

You know, understanding the values in comparison to the other values around it and the patterns in the blood work that exist, and also the changes that exist from one to the next, are really the most important.

Wade Houston: 59:05

So I mean, look, I, you know, I have a natural, my natural testosterone is like a thousand, but my free testosterone, which is how much my body was using, was low, and that's because it was getting bound up in my liver, because I had another level called my sex binding globulin hormone, which is extremely high, and so what I needed was not more testosterone and it wasn't to do nothing, but it was to take something that reduced my sex binding globulin hormone, thus freeing up the my body's ability to use the testosterone that it was producing. And, as a very, very minor tweak, it's like an herb, you know, and so using a doctor that really understands functional medicine and is looking at this from a holistic perspective on how to optimize based on goals, before just resorting to testosterone and growth hormone, is imperative, you know, and so it's. That's the key is having somebody who understands this functionally, review your blood work and make recommendations.

Darren Lee: 1:00:09

I think that's what I'm missing for sure, because I'm getting the bloods done. I'm looking at my test. My coach is also looking at it and, to be fair, he's not a fucking doctor. It's not his expectation to look at it as a doctor. But I'm saying the small nuances of what I need to add in or subtract from a supplementation perspective. I don't have that because I don't have a fucking functional doctor, even though I'm getting my bloods done every six months or three months. Um, so that's what needs to be added in totally, yeah, you'll.

Wade Houston: 1:00:36

You'll never know until a really proficient doctor reviews this. No, nobody, I mean even a traditional doctor, would look at my blood work and be like, yeah, you don't need anything, you're good, your testosterone's a thousand, like you're fine, you know. But? But they're not. But are they looking at my sex binding globulin hormone, my free testosterone, my luteinizing hormone and then also my cortisol in conjunction with all this and seeing, hey, you need to take some dim to reduce your sex binding globulin hormone.

Wade Houston: 1:01:00

Then you need to take some dhea to increase your dhe levels and also, at the same time, decrease your cortisol levels so that your body can actually utilize all the testosterone that it's producing. And oh, by the way, we should probably put you on some Tongkat Ali during this time, so that the free testosterone is used as much as humanly possible and that we increase your luteinizing hormone a little bit. And so, as a result of taking DIMM, dhea and Tongkat Ali, I feel like Optimusus prime. I've never been on any hormones, right, I've never been on any hormones in my life no test, no gh, no peptide, zero. But that's my stack. It's a multivitamin, multimineral, dhea, tonkat ali and uh, I'm not even taking dim anymore, but I was for for a period of time just to get my levels where I wanted them.

Darren Lee: 1:01:47

Yeah, man, like, that's what everyone is overlooking, right, that's my fucking. When I come to america, that's the first thing I'll be doing, because it's the extra one percent, right, whether it's your business, your relationships, whatever your health, and that's why it's nearly easier to do this. Just to entrepreneurs, right, they understand the impact this has on your life. And if and if I was to compare, like where I was, like last year, health-wise, even now, um, and I was still in good health last year, right, it's crazy the transformation that can happen and also the impact on your business. And I know you talk about this too, right, like, if I look, we've looked at, like wade, five years ago to three years ago, to one year ago to now, the difference in your business is difference is a representation of your body, too right?

Wade Houston: 1:02:25

of my body, of my, of my mindset, of my discipline, of my habits, of my health, all 100%. My business is a result of who I am today. That's it.

Darren Lee: 1:02:34

Man, business is a reflection of you, right? Michael Gerber wrote that in the E-Myth in the fucking 90s and it's so true to this day. So, wade, I want to say a massive thank you, man. I really appreciate this.

Wade Houston: 1:02:51

I really appreciate this. Uh, I would love to learn in person. I feel we should do our next session in miami man in a big fuck off villa.

Darren Lee: 1:02:52

Let's do it. I'd love to man you, let me, you let me know when you're here. I'd love to run it, man 100. I hope you enjoyed the session. Uh, different type of questions running in a different angle absolutely loved it.

Wade Houston: 1:02:58

Man, thanks for having me on. I look forward to doing it again soon.