Health Optimization for Business Owners: Why Biohacking Doesn't Work (And What Does)

**Kayvon Kay** (0:00)
Your business will only ever be as optimized as you are. Most founders never hear that. They pour everything into the company and let their own body fall behind. I have lived that. I have been the guy with a closet full of gadgets and no real plan. Today, I sit down with John Goldman, founder of Rebel Health Alliance. He helps CEOs, founders, and operators cut through the noise. The supplements, the peptides, the ozempic hype, the thousand dollar devices that stop working two weeks after you buy them. We break down what health optimization actually means and what it can do for you in your life. Let's unlock it.
John, welcome to the show.

**John Goldman** (0:48)
Hey man, good to be here, good to see you.

**Kayvon Kay** (0:52)
I'm excited to have you here because I know we're usually talking about on the podcast, business, marketing, stuff, but we don't rarely ever do health.
But I think health is super important because as a business owner, entrepreneur, leader, if you're not healthy inside and out, your business is not healthy. And I can go on to stories and stories about how that's a direct reflection even of my life, but I truly believe health optimization, we know it's a huge thing today in this world. So I'm happy to have you. My goals, just so people are listening, my goals here is I would love to really understand because I know you're one of the leading powers in health optimization and specifically for CEOs, and leaders, and business owners, and athletes. But I really would love to see if we can debunk some stuff that I know that's going through some of my head and give some people today a real understanding of what does health optimization really mean. I have burning desire questions like, where did this come from? Like all of a sudden I look around and it's just health optimization. And now you're hearing all this stuff. You're like, I don't know what's real anymore. I don't know what's true. I don't know what optimize because you can't optimize everything. So as you can tell, I'm excited. What I'm going to do, John, I'm so excited to have you here. Why don't you start off, tell us a little bit of who you are and how you even got to this place.

**John Goldman** (2:13)
Sure. And before I even get in that, I just want to echo something that you said earlier. I have always said that your business will never be as optimized.
Your business will only be as optimized as you are.

**Kayvon Kay** (2:26)
Yeah.

**John Goldman** (2:26)
And I have personal experience, you have personal experience. If I go back in my life and I look at times where business was bad, health was bad. And if I go back and I look at times when business was good, health was good. Now, what comes first? I don't know. I think they go hand in hand and it's about the vibe that you're on and about the energy you're putting out in the world and the focus that you have on yourself. But I can definitely see back in 2008 and 9 when like the world was crumbling, when I was in real estate development, my health also same cliff. It went off the same cliff as the rest of the financial markets in those years. And it was a bad spot. But I know today in working with leaders, CEOs, partner lawyers, investment bankers, wealth managers, doctors, small business owners, construction company owners, executives, software guys. I have seen time and time again that the better condition they are in physically and mentally and thus emotionally and mentally as well, their work stuff takes off at the same time. So who am I? I'm John Goldman. I am the founder and CEO at Rebel Health Alliance. I have always been an entrepreneur. I worked in private equity first. I worked in hedge fund right out of school, graduate degree. Then I got into real estate, individual real estate, independent real estate development for like 2000 to like 2008 And if you're not old enough to know what that means, great financial crash really took out almost everybody I know working in real estate at that time.
And then did some side work, did some non-profit work, did school turnaround work where like I just jumped into the middle of the charter school universe and helped turn around schools because I came to it from a balance sheet management perspective and personnel management perspective, and we were really successful at that.
From there, I got into social media and whatnot, and here I am today, I woke up in 2022 feeling like crap, man. I said to my friend, I said, are there guys my age who say, they say, I feel better than ever in their late 40s or whatever. And I'm like, those guys are full of it, right? They are lying. There's no way that is possible. And he's like, no, man, there are definitely people who are 40 and 50 years old, who are feeling good today and better than they did yesterday and getting better every single day. And I thought, man, the way I feel every morning when I wake up, if this is it, if this is my peak existence at 46 or 47 and from here, it's just decline, the rest of my life is going to suck. And so I really found motivation because I was feeling bad and I didn't know why I was feeling bad. And again, this is like four, five years ago, and it was before the boom, right? And he introduced me to like functional health, blood panels, you know, ultrasounds for your liver, coronary calcium scores for your heart and arteries, DEXA scans for your body composition, VO2 max. He introduced me to this whole world. And in doing these diagnostics with him, I learned words that I'd never heard before in my life. Prediabetic. I was prediabetic at age 46 I had no idea. I thought I was fine. I had lifted weights my whole life, been an athlete my whole life. Even as an adult, I was a two time Muay Thai national champion, undefeated amateur Muay Thai kickboxer. I did CrossFit. I did power lifting. I played sports in high school. I thought I was like, all right, I'm in good shape. I'm good. I'm a little fat right now, but I'm probably in generally good health. Man, I had high blood pressure. I had hyperlipidemia, which means my cholesterol was really high. My blood sugars were out of whack. I had fatty liver disease. I was prediabetic. My C-reactive protein, which is a condition of your inflammation in your body, was through the roof.