All right, we're live with Steph Smith.
Steph Smith, this is your eighth time on the podcast.
Is that right? I know.
It's wild. Yes. You sent me a document in advance and had a bunch of stuff.
But there was one topic that caught my eye.
It's called the silver tsunami, which basically just means that we are living way longer than expected.
If it's cool with you, I kind of just want to talk about that topic this entire time, because like there was so many stats here that kind of shocked me.
Give me the background.
Tell the lesson in the background.
What's the silver tsunami, and what's like the one sentence summary of this entire topic?
I mean, the simplest summary is just we're expected to live way, way later.
And I think there's this kind of misconception that we've hit some sort of, basically plateau in aging, so in the last I think several decades, the stat is for every decade, we've added two to three years to the average lifespan.
Which means that we are expected to grow older compared to our parents, compared to their parents, et cetera, et cetera.
So you can just go to, I mean, the simplest way to look at it is if you just go to our world and data life expectancy, you can see around 1900 something fundamentally changes and we're just growing way, way older.
That has to do with child mortality, but also just, again, extending that maybe like 50 year period.
And so what that means is that you have this cohort of people, you called it the silver tsunami, who are just going to be around for a lot longer than maybe people expected.
And that impacts tons of things.
That impacts the pensions that people were expecting.
It impacts the kind of nursing homes you need.
It impacts the kind of healthcare people think about in that later age.
It impacts a lot of young people who then, at least in theory, have to support those old people.
And so this whole silver tsunami is a little bit overlooked.
So, all right. So I want to go through the story.
So the story of what has changed, and the story of what to expect in the next...
Well, I guess if you're listening to this, you're probably at least 18 years old, all the way up to 80 years old.
But let's just say the average is 25 to 35 years old.
If you're in that demographic, what to expect.
And then after that, we'll go through the different business opportunities or potential issues and other things like that that might exist if all this comes to fruition.
Yeah. So maybe let's start with a really simple stat.
I got this from a book called Longevity Imperative that I read recently.
And he's from the UK.
So he uses UK data here.
But he says, in the UK in 1965, the most common age of death was the first year.
That's perhaps not surprising.
But today, the most common age to die is 87.
So that's a really simple just encapsulation of how things have completely flipped on their side.
But then let's move on to maybe cohort data.
So I'd like you to guess the chance of a newborn girl in Japan as of 2020 data.
What is their chance of living till 20?
Close to 100%. So 99 .6 % chance.
Now guess the same for living till 40.
To 40? 90 %? 99 % and the chance of making it to 60.
98? No, no, no, that's too high.
95 again. 96%. So if you think about it, a woman in Japan, born in 2020, or as of 2020 data, has a 96 % chance of making it to 60.
That's pretty close to 100%.
Obviously, it's not 100%.
But the point is your calculus changes when you fundamentally expect to live to 60.
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Now back to the pod.
So what whenever I think about my life, it's kind of messed up.
So I actually think that like, I'm only going to live to be 75.
Which means at the age of 35, I'm nearly halfway through my life.
But then when I calculate...
So I do this weird thing with my net worth where I edit in these calculators and I'm like, all right, at this, if I have what I have now, and it grows at 8 % a year, that means that the age of 40, I'll have this, at the age of 50, I have this, and I'll drag it out to like 110.
And I'm like, holy crap, at age 110, I'm going to have this, and the number's just massive.
And so in some ways, I assume I'm going to live to be 110, and other ways I assume I'm going to live to be 75.
Which is actually totally that range is problematic.
What ages do people like you and me, so we do a lot of stuff that is good for our health and we have resources, what are we going to live to then?
Well, I think, yeah, even just the average lifespan in America is longer than 75.
But I mean, in theory, it's going to be a range.
But that's part of the perspective of you sold a company, you have a nest egg, and so you can imagine how that nest egg grows over time.
But you imagine the flip side for the average American who expects to retire at 65.
Well, if you're only expecting to live to 75, then you can probably save up for 10 years of life.
But as soon as you're living to 85, maybe even 95, then you are, in theory, having to save up for 30 years of life.
And the way that, again, our economics, real estate, all of that isn't really set up for people living substantially longer.
And by the way, the last thing I'll say there is one thing that I was surprised by in the book is one, so this isn't surprising, America is falling behind some of the other G7 nations around longevity.
But I thought it was because generally people were dying earlier.
But it's actually due to these things called diseases of despair.
So just like alcoholism, drugs, etc.
But if you remove those, Americans are living just as long as the comparable nations.
And so what are some other crazy stats around this?
Because you had some ridiculous stuff.
So for example, you said something like America was spending some absurd number for NASA and getting to the moon, which is awesome.
I'm in favor of that.
And then you compared it to how much they were spending for longevity or expanding life and it was like a fraction of the amount.
Is that true? Well, so I think there's a couple different stats there.
So America, I think like healthcare is like 20 % of GDP, which is huge.
But I think the stats specifically that you were looking at was shared on Twitter.
And it was basically that 0 .8 % of the US budget is spent on kidney dialysis, which was basically three times NASA.
So all these people need dialysis.
It's like I think Medicare spends over $50 billion annually on dialysis and other related treatments, which is just wild.
And it's I think, an example of how, like when health goes awry and all these people are living to old age, the budget that's required for it is just blowing up.
And so what are the opportunities here?
Let's start with one that maybe the MFM listener base won't be super stoked on maybe the four female listeners, but one really interesting one is menopause.
So menopause is when women's ovaries stop working.
So it obviously impacts anyone with ovaries, once you get to a certain point.
And here's an interesting stat, again, from that book below the age of 55, cardiovascular illness is a more likely cause of mortality in men.
And then after 55, again, around that menopause stage, it basically reverses because what menopause is, is like, I'm obviously oversimplifying.
It's just like an ex of super, super accelerated aging period for women.
What age does that typically happen?
50? Yeah, around like 50 or 60.
Like in that, that range, I think sometimes even earlier, sometimes in forties, but I haven't hit it yet.
So not having experienced it firsthand.
But what happens because it's like kind of a fundamentally your hormones are changing.
One of your most significant organs is just no longer producing eggs.
Your body ends up having all these symptoms, people often refer to 34 symptoms of menopause.
And just due to the nature of like, you could say, Tam, 6 ,000 women in the US hit menopause every single day.
So if you think about people who all of a sudden are facing this thing that they've never faced before, kind of like pregnancy.
And interestingly, there's all these companies that are oriented around people getting pregnant and having that done successfully.
There's apps like Flow.
Dude, Flow is a massive business, isn't it?
Yeah, I mean, at least even publicly on their site, they say over 380 million people use it.
And what's Flow do?
So Flow is a period tracking app, or at least that's how they started.
But also, I think they've expanded and like even when you track your period, I use it, right?
It'll give you suggestions on like, are you bloated?
Or like, you should you be eating this, this, or this.
It's actually pretty simplistic.
But 380 million people use it because it's just like, again, the dam is so big of people who care about this thing.
And so where are the different opportunities you think in with that?
I mean, there are some companies that have sprung up already one of them is called Bonafide or Bonafide, another called Genev.
But basically, all of the symptoms, the 34 of them that women start to face like hot flashes, but that's just an example of where I think even just fundamentally, there are less female entrepreneurs.
There are less entrepreneurs over the age of 50, who are starting companies.
And so I think it's a completely overlooked space because once people hit this age, they're not really trying to start a company.
And then all the other people aren't really aware of how significant this transformation is for all of these women, for literally billions of women around the world.
And so I feel like it's just totally overlooked.
We use this phrase, one chart businesses, because you just see this chart and it like, you said, well, that thing's obvious, just get into that industry.
You have one here. You said, in the United States, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that nursing will be the fastest growing occupation between 2020 and 2030, growing in number by 275 ,000 jobs.
That's insane. That's insane.
Talk to you about this nursing thing.
Yeah. Well, I mean, again, it's like a pretty clear trend that comes with a bunch of people getting older.
Everyone's talking about AI and that's great.
But what about the billions of people around the globe that are 65 plus that are just going to need physical human support?
So nursing is one area.
Also, the rest of that stat talks about in Japan, the number of nursing homes has risen nearly 50 % over the last decade.
And Japan is interesting because it's kind of like this early case study, where they've hit this silver tsunami a little earlier than a lot of other countries.
Why has Japan hit this first?
All these stats are...
Japanese stuff is always referenced when it comes to getting old.
Why Japan? I think they just hit the declining birth rate earlier than many other countries.
And so another interesting, you could say, opportunity, maybe just an interesting thing for individuals to explore.
But because Japan hit the silver tsunami a little earlier, they have this interesting thing where they're giving away free houses or super cheap houses, sometimes free.
They're called Akiyas, A -K -I -Y -A.
I was in Japan this summer and we did a walking tour and they took us around and they were showing us these houses and they're like, see this house?
And it was in the middle of Osaka.
It was a little rundown for sure.
But they were like, this house is free.
And we were like, what do you mean?
But because there's so many of these people who have grown old, unfortunately passed away.
And then there's also some social aspects of the Akiyas where in some cases not all, because Japanese people really care about status.
If let's say they grew up in a poor neighborhood, their parents passed away and then they've moved into a different social strata, they don't want to claim the house because they're like, I don't want to be associated with that neighborhood.
And there's over...
There's tons of articles on this, over eight million Akiyas that are being given away by the government or again, sometimes for very cheap.
Well, have you heard the theory about Osaka and how a lot of people are lying about their age?
Oh yeah, the blue zones and how?
Yeah, there's a book called the blue zones.
And basically, I read it 10 years ago or something and I was like, this is my Bible for living a long healthy life.
Turns out, now this is a, I believe a hypothesis.
I'm kind of regurgitating a headline a little bit.
So I would have to like actually research it to definitively say.
But the idea is that someone studied Osaka's population and they found that too many people claim to have the same birth date in Osaka to the point where the only way that this could be possibly true is if many of them committed fraud in order to say that they are of a certain age, so they can start
receiving social security and other like benefits that you get when you potentially puts a lot of like this idea of we study this particular population for old health or old people and like looking at like, wow, they're so healthy.
When they're just liars and they're actually a lot younger, they're a lot younger potentially than they've said they are.
What are some other stats about those?
I love talking to you because you just have like...
You actually have the data and the stats instead of just like guessing.
Okay. So we didn't really drill down as much on the...
I mean, you talked about nursing homes and assisted living.
Tell me about that.
More from Numwok, which by the way is a great newsletter.
Walt Hickey runs it.
I feel like MFM listeners would love it.
It's great because you talk about these one chart businesses.
I've done a thread on something similar and I call them digits, but he calls them just numbers.
So basically every single day actually he sends a newsletter of maybe five or so different, just small paragraphs and each paragraph has just like one statistic.
And I like his because some of them are really important like this silver tsunami and how that's going to impact things much greater than ourselves.
But then sometimes it's like there's this random gerbil that has infested homes in South Carolina or something like that.
This is awesome. Yeah.
He sent this paragraph about assisted living.
So let me just read this out.
This is directly from Numwok.
From 2004 to 2021, the median annual price of assisted living increased 31 % faster than inflation and has hit $54 ,000 per year.
This is a crazy stat to me.
There are 31 ,000 assisted living facilities in the United States.
Four out of every five are run as for profits and half of all the operators in the industry are clearing annual returns of 20 % or more than it costs to operate.
With 850 ,000 older Americans living within assisted living, the rents are getting jacked up.
So I don't actually know how assisted living businesses are valued.
Is it considered like a real estate valuation where it's just like a way to finance or pay for real estate or is it considered a proper operating business?
I guess you know how hotels are classified as real estate?
Yeah. You know what I mean?
So I would assume that's the case of which 20 % is fantastic and 20 % were operating profit on a proper internet business that's not that great.
But if it's on real estate, that's really great.
However, when I read this, I think, yeah, that's lucrative.
I don't want to operate this.
This sounds like the worst thing ever.
You'd have a funeral a day.
You know what I mean?
Well, I mean, I think people are in this for quite some time.
So you could say, again, purely from the business perspective that you have this recurring revenue for years before obviously some eventual very unfortunate form of term.
I would love to invest in a nursing home fund, but I would not want to operate a nursing home.
Well, what I'll say is, I mean, I have parents that are getting older and there's also tons of assisted living for not just elderly, right?
People with mental illness or who need other support, mental or physical.
And I think what I've seen from exploring this space anecdotally is that most of the options really suck, as in you don't really feel great about sending your parent or loved one to these places.
And so I haven't explored this deeply enough.
This might exist. So if folks are listening and they know of this, I would love to hear about it.
But imagine the premium version of assisted living where you feel really, really good about sending your grandparent, your mom, your sister, whatever it is, to one of these places.
And obviously, the price would have to go way up.
But people are already like this stat is saying they're spending $54 ,000 per year as the average.
And so, for the wealthy, wouldn't you pay five times that to send your loved one to something a lot better?
Yeah, and I think people do.
I know people who have people in nursing homes and they spend $20 ,000 or $30 ,000 a month.
It's insane. It's absolutely insane.
Why haven't there been any new startups in this space?
For example, I got sick a few years ago and I had an IV in my arm for, I think, 35 days.
And I used to have a nurse have to come to my house every three or four days to change out the IV.
And typically, these nurses that did this, I wasn't normal.
It's mostly older people who they work with.
And finding these nurses was a nightmare.
Finding them via my healthcare provider, nightmare.
Shockingly, a large percentage of the people...
And this was when I was in New York.
I got sick over summertime and had I get this.
And shockingly, a large percentage of these businesses were mom and pop businesses.
And so it was actually quite hard to operate.
They didn't have a web portal that I could interact with.
I had to call them all the time to schedule them.
Why hasn't there been interesting technology -based startups in this space?
I'm sure there are some that exist, but I'll revert back to what I said about even menopause.
This is not a sexy space.
The problems that people face at this point in their life, most entrepreneurs have not experienced.
They are not thinking about what an 80 -year -old might need because they've never been 80.
And so I think it's a little different.
If I'm in Gen Z, I'm very...
But if I were, I'd be more likely to want to create a business for people that I understand.
And so for that reason, I think these industries haven't really been tackled as much.
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Here's an example of where I think you could merge knowledge from a younger base with the assisted living facilities.
I don't know if this would work, but there's this idea I also read Outlived by Peter Otea.
And he talks about the centenary and decathlon, right?
And he talks about how he works with people and he tries to get them to basically the fitness level of people two decades younger.
And actually what he tries to do is to get them at the fitness level at the elite top 2 % of people two decades younger.
And he talks about in his book how when people first hear that, he's like, most people think it's impossible, right?
I can't even get in the top 2 % of my age, let alone two decades younger.
But he gives all these examples.
And the one that I'll cite is, have you heard of Robert Marchand?
No, what's that? So he's unfortunately passed away.
He passed away at 109, but he at 101 was still cycling.
And he broke some records at 101 and he decided that wasn't enough.
So he then worked with a bunch of trainers and tried to break his existing record at 103.
He hit 27 kilometers an hour on a bike.
And he continued competing until he's 105.
If you look him up on YouTube, there's all these videos of him, like getting past the finish line.
And there's all these reporters like coming in and trying to film him because he's just like, he shouldn't be doing the things that he's doing at 101, three or five.
And so he gives several examples as in Peter does in his book of these people who at 80, 90, even over a hundred like Robert, who have kind of not just competed throughout their life, but in some cases didn't take care of themselves, and then got on this regimen and completely reshaped their fitness.
And so you could imagine what if you could send your loved one or they opt into this hopefully to a place where it's not just this idea of assisted living where you kind of go there to die.
What if you go there for like a revival?
What if you go there with a VO two max of 15 and all of a sudden you leave with it at 25 and you're 80.
That is really cool.
And it kind of merges some of the trends that we're seeing in like the kind of more new age fitness and longevity with this massive business around assisted living.
So when I lived in Austin, I would say Austin is probably the most fit place I've ever been in.
If you go along the trail and Ladybug Lake, everyone is jacked and muscular and women there tend to like lifting weights more than I've ever seen in different cities.
It's pretty wild. Everyone's into it.
And so amongst my friends, being healthy is definitely a lifestyle that we're all bought into.
When you're doing this research, is there something where it's just like...
So in order to do what you're saying, I think there needs to be like a...
It needs to be part of like the fabric of society.
Whereas right now it's not.
So for example, I love watching prison TV shows.
It's a confession. I'm Sam Parr, I like watching prison TV shows.
And one of my favorite things to watch are in different European countries, as well as in China and a few other countries in Asia, they make the inmates do exercise hour, where you have to get out of the cell and you must do a routine.
And the idea is if you care about your body and exercise, you're going to start caring about other things and hopefully you'll be a better person.
Another example is I've got this name, Ann.
Ann started this company called Solid Core, which is like a Pilates business that she sold for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Her first company was a nonprofit that taught homeless men how to run.
And the reason she taught homeless men how to run is because if you learn how to get up at 5am and care about fitness, you're likely to care about other things and thus hopefully get clean and sober and get a stable job, whatever.
And so anyway, I'm on board with what you're saying.
But I don't think any of this will actually happen, at least in America, not for a while.
And a lot of people listening to this podcast are coastal people.
They're basically coastal elites.
They live in New York.
They live in San Francisco like you or me.
They live in LA, where they're used to seeing the fit stuff.
But if you go to Missouri, where I'm from, or you go to other parts in the Midwest, this all fitness stuff ain't exactly a thing.
For example, I had a family member who got diabetes.
And when he saw the doctor, he was like, I got really sick and hospitalized.
And the doctor was like, yeah, you have diabetes.
And the person was like, well, what do I do?
And the doctor was like, just eat healthy.
I was like, I don't know, man.
I figured it out. And the doctor was fat.
So anyway, my point being is like, is this realistic that any of this can actually happen?
Or that any of this...
Or that if you started some of these businesses that people would actually take to it?
Yeah. So I think this is actually an opportunity in the sense that if you think about, yeah, like you said, we're coastal elites.
We're also highly competitive.
I think the people who listen to this podcast are the same.
So what do we gravitate towards?
75 hard. You gravitate towards hitting new PBs on Strava.
You go to doctors like Peter Atia, who only sees a few dozen patients a year.
And it's a quarter of a million dollars.
Exactly. Exactly. So I agree.
But I actually tweeted this the other day.
I was like, how much better would a lot of people's lives be if they just moved for three miles a day?
I know that sounds like a lot to some people.
You could even bring it down to one or two.
But we don't need 75 hard and nothing against it.
But we need... Someone commented, we need 30 moderate.
Because if you actually...
It takes a little bit of time for people if they're out of shape to get here.
But if you get into even moderate shape, you can run three miles in 30 minutes.
And if you think about that's half the length of a yoga class, it doesn't take that much of your day.
You don't need the hour plus morning routine.
You just need something really, really moderate.
And that's obviously, like you said, it's...
What does James Clear talk about?
Keystone habits. You do that and everything else unlocks.
And so I think there's some sort of very, very average, and I mean average in a good way program that should be out there that is not 75 hard.
That is something way, way more approachable that the average American can do.
And maybe they're not even three miles at this point.
Maybe it's one, and then the second year you go to two, and then the third year you go to three.
But I say that because I used to hate running and there's all these...
You said something.
Do you even exercise?
I'm probably going to hit around 500 miles this year in running and then soccer, spin, etc.
But it took me... Here's the real takeaway for the average person who hates running.
It took me probably a year and a half to like running, which was way longer than I thought.
People talk about the runner's high and if you just do it enough, it'll kick in.
Took me a year and a half of pretty consistent running for some switch to flip, where all of a sudden it was enjoyable.
Tell me some... Let's keep just rattling off some of these interesting stats, and it's okay if it's not related to longevity.
Well, let's talk about one thing real quick on the longevity side.
I think one of the reasons that I got into running was because I started using Strava and I had data.
So another example of people getting data.
You used a CGM before, right?
Yeah, I'm an investor of levels.
So I used one of those for a long time.
I've also done a lot of telomere length.
I think it's telomere.
Anyway, measuring those cells.
I do a lot of blood work.
I do a ton of blood work actually probably quarterly.
I track my weight every day for the last four years, I think for three years.
I've tracked almost everything I've eaten on my body or I use my body tutor, which is like nutritional service, but I track all of my food on my fitness pal.
But yeah, I track a lot of stuff.
You do a lot more than the average human.
But CGM is in particular.
By the way, what I just said sounds like a lot.
It adds up to roughly 10 minutes a week.
Wow. It's not that hard.
Well, let me just quickly share this one thing on the CGM, which is Dexcom, which is one of the companies that manufacturers them.
I think they have like 40 % market share or something in that range.
Their new product, Stelo, is the first over -the -counter FDA approved CGM.
This was just as of last month, end of August.
To me, this is really interesting because I think before I can't, I don't know exactly how you got one.
I think you needed a prescription, but you could get that if you're overweight or you had diabetes.
Most people didn't seek it out.
I've been testing one for the last two weeks and I love it.
I'm obviously not affiliated at all.
By the way, CGM, that stands for continuous glucose monitor, which basically you put this little like quarter size...
Got it. I'm a little dirty from my sweater.
But yeah, you basically inject that into your arm and it measures your blood glucose levels.
So you can just like put your app to it at any given point.
It will tell you what your blood glucose monitor is or your blood glucose levels are.
Yeah, exactly. So each one lasts around two weeks.
I think a lot of people just do it for two to four weeks and they get a lot of data around like what's your resting or fasting glucose level.
And it basically does the same thing that DEXA does, which is a lot of people will say, oh, I'm 15 % body fat.
And they go do a DEXA and they're really like 22.
It's like a very harsh thing.
DEXA's very harsh. Oh, totally.
And CGM's are very harsh too.
You'll think, oh, I'm going to eat healthy.
I'm going to eat a salad.
And then you eat just a little bit of cranberries in your salad or a little bit of like dressing, like some type of sugary dressing in your salad and your blood glucose spikes.
Or you're like, I'm just going to eat steak and a potato or like something that you view as a whole food, and your blood glucose monitor starts going off like an alarm because it's shocking how some of this stuff peaks your blood.
Yeah, the reason I love it is because of what you're saying.
So we are a family at home with an eight sleep.
I've got an Apple Watch.
My husband's bought four aura rings.
We are similar to you.
Where's he put all his aura rings?
They get a new version.
He's like, I need the new version.
I don't know. Point is, we've used a lot of this technology, and my problem with some of it is that it is so broad that you're like, OK, I slept bad last night.
How do I fix it? And I think the most major thing people talk about is alcohol.
But on a more granular level, what changes should I make?
Like you said, it's so reactive where you can see exactly what spikes you.
And sometimes it's not very reassuring where you're like, OK, I can't hide basically is the idea.
And so I've really been enjoying it.
And I think the fact that it now is over the counter.
I think there's levels as a company already doing this.
By the way, I did invest in levels, so I will promote it levels .com.
I think you can go to their website right now and you can get one of these things.
That is my plug. And I'm letting have a stake here.
Just let everyone know.
But go ahead. Well, I was going to say, DeXcom, the company that sells these Stellos and they have a few other more expensive CGM's, they have an API.
I don't think it's fully open, but I think you can apply to use it.
And very simple idea.
I hate to even use this comparable, but I think there should be a Strava for CGM's.
Now that more people are using it, even during just that trial period of a month of learning.
I think being able to socialize what you're learning, but also compete in a way.
That's what Strava is.
You're congratulating each other, but you're also seeing other people's PPs.
In the equivalent version with the CGM, you see, are you spending your day in range?
How big are your spikes?
What's your dawn effect?
Which is when it's basically your rising glucose after you wake up.
I think that there's going to be some sort of socialization of this.
I don't know exactly what it looks like.
And maybe just one example of where you can already see this before Stello existed.
Have you heard of the glucose goddess?
No, what is this? It's just this woman.
She's got 5 million followers on Instagram, 1 million on YouTube.
She has a recipe club where she charges $5 a month.
And she recently released, I think it was just as of the last few months, a product called Anti -Spike.
Dude, her website is awesome.
I love this woman. Is that her in the main photo?
She looks like in the 1970s.
This woman is... She's got a cool haircut.
Yeah, I know. She's cool to look at.
This lady is cool. All right, so go ahead.
Who is this lady? She calls herself the glucose goddess.
And she basically is an educator on glucose.
And I think, or as in specifically, how your body reacts.
And is this a big business?
Well, so again, she just released Anti -Spike, which is her first product.
I have no idea if it's good or not.
I think she said it's four ingredients.
It's cinnamon, mulberry leaves, and two other things.
And that website, which is separate from her made one, is already doing over 100 ,000 views a month.
So I don't know what her sales are.
But she's definitely getting traffic there.
And I think that's just one example where people are really engaged in this channel.
What's the point of this?
Why is keeping my blood glucose from spiking good for me?
When your blood glucose is high, it's basically doing damage to your organs.
I think, basically, the granules impact your artery walls.
If you, over time, have too much blood glucose, when your body is secreting insulin to bring it down, your insulin resistance goes up.
And basically, I think a lot of people are aware of type 2 diabetes.
That is one way that your body breaks down with high glucose.
But again, just having an elevated glucose level over time just impacts yourself specifically and how they operate.
So there's a few things that you want to pay attention to.
It's how high the spike is.
But also, I think the more important part is the area under the curve of your spikes.
So how long does it take for you to bring your glucose down?
But the point is that I've started to do this for two weeks.
And similar to you, it's an endless stream of questions around how high is too high.
And what does it mean if I have a double hump?
And what does it mean if my glucose is higher the next day?
And so I think there's a community aspect.
I also think, if we think about the marketing side of this, I think there's probably some genius business where you actually use something like a Stelloe as a loss leader.
So it's around $50 for one for two weeks.
And you could imagine a business where you'd have to get this really right.
But you give them the Stelloe for free.
You make sure they have to use it for two weeks and jot down what they're eating and their lifestyle.
And at the end of that two weeks, think of all of the information you have about that person's metabolic health, the way they eat, the way they exercise.
And there are so many different businesses that...
I mean, you mentioned some of them.
You have the health concierge that they sign up for after that.
You have someone who educates them on their nutrition and their exercise.
Maybe they get a personal trainer.
Maybe you have some sort of referral with specific gyms in their area.
Maybe you have a deal with Dexcom directly for their next CGM because they're probably going to want to keep going.
I think there's something genius in that loss leader idea, given the price point of it being around $50 for two weeks.
You know what one of my friends did?
And I think you know I'm Justin Meir.
So he did it during COVID, I believe.
It was called wearablechallenge .com.
And the way it worked was I Venmoed him $900.
And I would have to send him proof.
So basically, I sent him $900.
The goal of the challenge was to keep my blood glucose level below.
I forget the metric.
Would be like 80 to 140 healthy.
But a lot of health geeks are like, that's way too broad.
And they say like 120.
So whatever the threshold is, like 115 or 120.
I forget. Anyway, it was like 120.
Whatever. And I had to send him proof that day that I did not go above 120.
And every day that I sent him proof, I got $30 back.
And so by the end of the challenge, if I had a 100 % success rate, I got my whole $900 back if I did it well, or if I screwed up, which I actually screwed up like four times, I think it was like four times on accident where I was like, this particular fruit, I'm able to have a little bit of that is...
And it was like shit or another time it was like a raspberry flavored dressing or something like that, that totally made me spike.
And it was pretty brilliant.
And I think Justin said that it was like fairly successful.
I don't know. Anyway, that was like a cool business built on the back of that.
One last thing I wanted to ask you about what is this?
What is all this posture stuff that you had?
And by the way, I think it's crazy that you're like, all of a sudden into all this health stuff because that's not the stuff that I knew.
Because when I first started working with you, you were naturally a very thin person.
Yeah. And I think when you're naturally thin, you don't really give a shit about health because you're like, I'm skinny, therefore I'm healthy.
And so now I think it's cool that you're into all this stuff.
Well, that's exactly right.
I think there's this misconception that if you're skinny, you're healthy.
And as I've gone down this rabbit hole, I was like, oh, I was not healthy.
And I think actually one of the things that triggered me was two years ago, I did Qbio.
So you guys have talked about that before.
It's one of the full body health scans.
And my cholesterol was high.
And I was like, why is my cholesterol high?
And at first, I was like, oh, it must be genetics.
I must have a history of this.
And then I found out neither of my parents have high cholesterol.
And my dad is not very healthy at all.
And I was like, how do I have higher cholesterol than my father?
And so it was like this, I think that was the impetus.
But I think generally that's why I encourage people, do your own research, not affiliate it or whatever.
But doing something like a CGM, like you said, is you just cannot hide.
Getting your blood work, you cannot hide, you get the data.
And no matter how skinny you are, you see the results.
And by the way, I wasn't surprised in a way because I wasn't exercising properly.
I wasn't eating as well as I could.
But on the posture side, is just another one of these spinoffs of health.
But I spend way too much time online.
I think a lot of people do, too.
So I've got a bad case, hopefully improving case of nerd neck.
Some people call it forward head posture.
But basically, it's just because we're hunched over at a computer all day long.
And I haven't done a ton here.
Like I'm kind of on the very early part of this curve.
But I have played around with I'm not using it right now.
Hold up, there's this thing.
I don't know if I vouched for it or not yet.
But this thing called Better Back.
I'm looking at it. I think any time that you have to use one of these devices, I tend to get nervous that it's legit.
But go ahead, what is it?
Well, that's why I don't really say so.
It has helped me sit up more.
Basically, it runs around your knees and your back.
And I like it better than something.
There's things you can put on your back that zap you and stuff.
And I feel like that's really unnatural.
But this actually just because it's fixated around your knees, you just sit up straighter the whole time you're sitting.
So there's things like that.
For those listening, it's basically like a strap that when you're sitting down, it wraps around your back and then attaches to your knees.
And in doing that, it forces you to sit up.
Yeah, exactly. For the women, for your four female listeners, there's a sports bra that I haven't tried yet called Form, which apparently folks like Taylor Swift have used.
If you look at her posture a decade ago, it was way, way worse.
So there's a small part of me that believes that something like that works.
Can I use this? You can.
You're telling me just this shirt?
For me, it would be a shirt.
That's going to make me have better posture.
What is this thing?
I haven't tried it, but it's a sports bra that people vouch helps your posture.
But I think generally, as I've explored this a little bit, it is a function of your muscle.
If you have strength in your abdomen and your back, you're going to sit up straighter.
But there's a video I shared.
We can include all this in the show notes.
This is actually just an email I sent or I'm going to send to the internet pipes crew this month.
But it's a video from Brian Johnson around his posture.
He worked with a posture coach for several months.
And then Tim Ferriss has recommended something called the ego skew method, which I have not tried.
And what's this Brian Johnson video?
How do I just make my posture better?
There's three different exercises that he does every single day.
And he shares them in this video that improved his posture.
And what's this ego?
Ego? Esku? It's a method that I think you need to work with a practitioner for, which is why, again, I don't think I'm vouching for this in any way, but it's just something that came up.
All right. If you're listening to this pod, I already know something about you.
You, my friend are nosy.
You want to know the numbers behind all of these things that we're talking about, how much money people make, how much money people spend, how much money businesses make.
You want to know all of this people's net worth all of it.
Well, I've got good news for you.
So my company, Hampton, we're a private community for CEOs.
We do this thing where we survey our members and we ask them all types of information, like how much money they're paying themselves, how much money they're paying a lot of their employees, what their team -wide bonuses are, what their net worth is, what their portfolio looks like.
We ask all these questions, but we do it anonymously.
And so people are willing to reveal all types of amazing information.
So if you really cannot Google, you can't find anywhere else.
And you could check it out at joinhampton .com.
Click the report section on the menu.
Click the salary and compensation report.
It's going to blow your mind.
You're going to love this stuff.
Check it out. Now back to the pod.
Dude, there's this great TED Talk that you should watch it.
Why Sitting Down Destroys You.
I think it's by Roger Frampton.
I believe that's the one.
But it's a TED Talk that has millions of views.
And he basically goes through this idea of how he worked...
I think he worked in the Amazon.
He worked with some indigenous tribe where they didn't use a lot of chairs or something like that.
And what he found was that basically the people who in today's age, we don't really do this, but we used to, where if you stand a lot, you squeeze your ass.
Imagine you got a little penny in your butt cheeks that you're trying to keep from falling down on the ground.
That's basically what you do.
You squeeze your butt together when you're standing.
And there's a reason why our glutes typically tend to be our largest muscle.
It's because we were supposed to use them a lot, and how we don't really use them too much anymore.
And so instead, when we stand, we kind of lean forward.
And he was like, no, you should actually...
When you stand... He was like a lot of babies actually, if you watch like a kid, you'll notice they do a good job of this.
But you squeeze your butt together and you flex your abs as opposed to just falling forward.
And if you work on it, you can actually hold that for a fairly long time when you're standing.
And that's the proper way to stand.
And so it's not just sitting that will just show you, but standing incorrectly.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, totally. Well, even in the video, I did watch with Bryan Johnson, he was talking about how most people, when they think they want good posture, they tilt their head back.
And that's bad as well.
They're kind of like, oh, I have good posture like this.
And you really want to be more head...
The back of your neck should be absolutely straight.
So yeah. Dude, Steph, are there any more of these stats or storylines that we should dive into?
Let's do this idea of barbell sports just because we're doing this whole fitness longevity stuff.
So all I want to do is share kind of a frame with folks, which is like, you've had a bunch of the...
You'd call tier one sports that everyone knows, soccer, basketball, baseball, that have existed for a long time.
They're in every school.
But now you're seeing all of these more niche sports pop up.
Pickleball is the most famous example, but there's also sports like tech ball.
Have you heard of tech ball?
What is tech ball? TEQ ball.
So it's... I don't know how to explain it.
The best version, I think is like it's a mix of soccer and ping pong.
So imagine like a big ping pong table, and then you're using your body and it's like a large ball to basically lob the ball over the net.
There's crazy videos on YouTube of this tech ball.
I think tech ball itself has 4 million followers on Facebook.
Some of their videos on YouTube have millions of views because it really is just like freak of nature kind of stuff.
People are doing almost like flips to get the ball.
But the reason I mention it is because again, this frame is what did pickleball do?
Pickleball basically took tennis or something like it and it made it more accessible.
They changed how bouncy the ball was.
They changed the size of the court.
They changed the way that the paddle feels so that just about anyone could play.
Tennis is like pretty hard to do well.
And there's a version of people who want to do it, pickleball basically opened the aperture so more people could participate.
So I think like if you take an existing sport and you make it less agile so more people can participate, that's one direction.
And then tech ball is the opposite.
The same way that in fashion, you have fast fashion and then you have the premium brands and basically nothing in the middle succeeds.
I think it's like an interesting parallel where tech ball is like you actually make it way harder.
So that some people who just want to prove that they're extremely agile and that their competitors and their winners gravitate to sports something like that because they just want to be the best.
And that's a much more, again, shareable sport because you're clipping this thing up and you're basically showing like, look at this freak of nature.
What's Padel? All my friends keep talking about this thing called Padel and I'm like, is it Padel or Padel?
I always thought it was Padel before hearing people play.
Here's what it reminds me of one time I went to a conference in Europe and there was this like white Michigan lady who was like, had been living in Germany or something like that for like two years.
And she was this influencer asshole.
And she was talking about how she had this brand deal with Adidas.
And she's talking to me.
I'm like, dude, we're from the Midwest.
And I'm like, what the hell is Adidas?
She's like, Adidas?
You don't know Adidas?
The shoe brand. And I'm like, do you mean Adidas?
And she's like, no, I mean Adidas.
That's called Adidas.
And I was like, dude, you asshole, just call it Adidas.
You know, I don't know what that means.
And I always thought that Padel, it was someone like this fancy guy talking to me about Padel.
I'm like, are you trying to say the word paddle?
Is that really what you mean?
What the hell does Padel mean?
And I think it's actually called Padel.
Well, that's my love story.
I don't know what it's called.
All the best players are in Spain.
And I think, I don't know.
I don't know if this is one of those cases where like, you know how countries will have their own name and then other countries will be just be like, actually, we're not going to call you Sverry, which is what you call yourself.
We're just going to call you Sweden.
And just like, imagine if I did that to you, Sam.
I'm like, I know you think you're Sam, but like, I'm just going to call you Scott.
Yeah, I feel that. It's weird.
So, I don't know if Padel is correct or it's just the Americanized version of paddle, but that is, I played it while I was in New York.
It's like, also kind of like tennis, but there's a wall behind you and the wall is in play.
And it's blowing up.
It's totally blowing up.
I think that's another example of the latter example where you take something and you actually make it harder.
So, that's just the frame.
And like, maybe one other example of where you make something again, you're attracting these like go hard people is Everesting.
Have you heard of Everesting?
Yeah. So, one of the guys who started this company, Mark is in Hampton and I've gotten to know him.
Go ahead. What's it called?
Explain what it is.
It's basically just for the people who want to climb Everest but can't make it to Everest.
It's just this competition where people like run up and down any hill as many times as possible that equates to what it would be to climb Everest.
This is an interesting frame because it's actually, what can you do with no equipment?
Like running, you can do that with.
And what can you do anywhere?
But running is boring for a lot of people, just like pure play running.
So, this is an example where you can do it anywhere you've got a hill.
I am going to do one of those this year.
It's called 29029 .com.
I'm doing one this year.
Do you want to do it with me?
When is it? He's sending me the list of, he's letting me pick one and attend one for free, which is like a big deal.
I think it's like five grand.
Talk about business.
Yes, it's expensive.
It's really expensive because they give you like a glamping tent set up.
Like it's kind of like a high -end camping thing.
I could get the price wrong.
I think it's thousands of dollars.
I thought it was $5 ,000, but I could have gotten it wrong.
But he's sending me the schedule and they have them in like Maine and Utah and all these places.
It looks pretty awesome.
I mean, I'm down. I honestly don't think I'll be able to complete it.
So, he told me when he was creating it, you said that the rules are to...
Or you said that with a lot of these sports, you want it to be hard.
He said we made it hard enough that only 25 % of the participants will be able to finish.
Okay. And it just sounds really hard.
Yeah, maybe I'm not down.
I feel like I really care.
So even in setting my goal for the half marathon, I'm one of those people where I'm like, I probably should set a more ambitious goal, but I really want to hit my goal.
I'm going to feel really bad.
It's not even that...
That's what I mean.
It's nine minute mile for the half.
I think that's good.
I don't know. Who cares though, really?
I mean, I'm 5 '3", so 5 '3", female.
What does that have to do with anything?
Well, I mean, I think it's just like it's my first half.
You're better if you're shorter, by the way.
Are you? Is that true?
Yeah, yeah. So a lot of people...
So I looked into this because I was always curious.
I believe stride length and height are not necessarily correlated.
So the length of your legs is not entirely...
Now you'll have to look this up to verify that I'm right, but the length of your legs is not necessarily correlated with the strength or the length of your stride.
It's how much force you're exerting against the ground.
And so you can have similar height or different height people have very similar stride length, depending on how much force they put against the ground.
Does that make sense?
It does, but I had no idea.
I was used... Look at me.
This whole time, I was like...
No, you're using it as a bullshit excuse.
No. And in fact, if you look at some of the fastest marathons in the world, even like the 5K, 10K, a lot of them, particularly these Ethiopian women are quite short.
And I would argue...
I bet you, if you looked at who won the 5K, 10K marathon this year in so that's a bullshit excuse.
Okay. I'm guessing...
I'm getting that excuse.
Even if it's not true, I'm...
But here's another thing that I was going to ask you when we were talking about living forever.
I think a lot of people who live to be old, I think they're smaller.
So if you look like there aren't a lot of old giants.
And so what always freaks me out is I'm 6 '2", 205 pounds or so.
So I think I'm maybe the 90th percentile of height.
I get nervous that there aren't a lot of examples of tall people who live a long time.
Yeah. But I think...
So probably the references you're thinking of are people who are 100 plus.
I think it's probably pretty common for people to live into their 90s.
Yeah, but I'm trying to get to that 120, 130 range.
Come on. What's the oldest human who's lived?
Probably 120 something.
So yeah, 122. So you're aiming for oldest human to have ever lived?
I don't think that's going to be crazy uncommon for our generation to have a hand...
So you have this stat in there.
You said that you are more likely to be a billionaire of which there are something like 3 ,000.
You're more likely to be a billionaire than you are to be someone who lives to be 110 or above of which there's like 800 or 1 ,000 or something like that.
Exactly. But I think that's going to be way more common.
We've had a lot of really smart people on this podcast and they were like, I just...
And they just tell these stories where I'm not smart enough to understand the data.
But I talked to smart people and they say things like they don't think it's going to be particularly uncommon to have 110, 115, 120 in the next 50 or so years.
Well, there's actually...
Yeah, in the book, they kind of break down that basically the calculus around if you make it to 100, there's a certain percent chance that you make it to 110 versus 120, etc.
We don't know 130 because people haven't really made it there.
But if you just do the same math around like, okay, instead of having a thousand people to make it to 100, if we then have 100 ,000 people make it to 100 or a million people make it to 100, then like you just take those same percentages and you're like, oh, actually, yeah, then we're for sure going to
have... Let's say instead of one person making it to 120 something, you have, let's say, 50, right?
And in that case, it's like, well, then we're going to get some data on...
Likely not all of them are just going to drop at one.
What is it? 122. Some of them are going to make it pass out.
And all of this bums me out because it makes you realize how short life is.
Like 100 years is not a long time.
It's not a long time.
At 30 years old, you're a good chunk of the way through your life already, even though I feel like a child still.
It's just life is...
I think I felt this particularly when I had a baby because I saw how fast she grew where we're at the stage now where every two weeks there's a different brain.
Just the other day she woke up and she now knows how to high five or little small things like, oh wow, now she knows how to mimic.
She really can mimic.
And then I'll look at photos of her just three months ago, and I'm like, she didn't even have really any hair or the idea of mimicking.
That wasn't even part of the equation.
And so you go through this thing of having a kid and you're like, that's nothing.
It's going so fast.
100 years is nothing.
Or I do the math and I'm at the age of 40.
When she's 40, I'm going to be 75, which means if I continue having kids for the next six years, I'm going to be in my 80s when they're in their 30s and 40s.
And that just seems insane to me.
That seems insane, right?
By the way, have you seen the smile curve around happiness?
No. How older people just generally tend to be happy.
So people tend to be happy early in life.
And then in mid -years, they call it the smile curve because generally, they become a little less happy.
And then that curve goes up and up and up as people get older, which is really interesting.
I don't know exactly what to take away from that other than like...
Well, the takeaway is that you spend your 30s and 40s giving a shit about what other people think, climbing the ladder and you want to flex on others.
But when you're 10 and 15, you care about that a little bit less.
And then at the age of 30 and 40, you sacrifice your values in order to appease other people and to climb up this ladder.
And then at the age of 50, 60, 70, you have grandkids and you realize none of that fucking matters.
That's my assumption.
Yeah. I mean, people can interpret a lot from that, but I agree.
I think there's something around like you learn a lot about what to care about and what not to care about.
And then you're happy.
Steph Smith, thank you very much for doing the pod.
We appreciate you. Thank you.
By the way, can I say something really quick, which is just the last time I was on.
Just a shout out to the listeners.
We talked about... So the product that I had launched a year ago, Internet Pipes, for like 30 seconds at the end of an hour plus long podcast.
How much revenue did you make off that?
Off that, I'm pretty sure it's hard to tie directly, but for sure six figures, which is crazy.
So I just want to shout out to the folks and all the people who listen who are in Internet Pipes and all that.
So... Internetpipes .com.
It started as a book, but now it's a community, right?
It's a community. We run events that are weird and quirky, weird fruit tastings.
We did electric shuffleboard, documentary screenings.
So it's cool. We can do a code of...
Do people pay for the events?
No, no, no. So it's a one -time thing, and then you're in the community.
You get access to the events.
We do monthly emails.
So again, the one I'm sending is on longevity last month.
You basically just took our idea from trends and you did it on your own.
You said it, I didn't say it.
But actually the point was around Internet Pipes was meant to be a little different in the sense of trends was like, here are the trends.
Internet Pipes is meant to be here are the tools so that you can surface your own trends as well.
Like behind the scenes, how the sandwich is made.
This is awesome. You owe me a dinner then.
Oh, totally. That's a fair trade.
More than a dinner.
And we can set up in the...
No, that's all I'll take.
I'll accept a dinner.
That's a fair trade.
And if future people want to join, they can sign up.
We can set up a code.
Why don't we just do Sam?
Sam. I'm on your website right now.
Sam is a good code.
It looks like it hasn't been used.
All right, InternetPipes .com.
Use the code Sam. Steph, we're giving you all this plugs, man.
Thank you. You guys are the best.
All right, I'll talk to you a little bit.
All right. See ya.
