Healthcare Revolution: Len May's Battle Against 'One Size Fits All

Imagine transforming your biggest challenge into your greatest asset. That's exactly what Len May, CEO and co-founder of EndoDNA, did with his ADD, channeling it into becoming a pioneer in genomic testing for wellness. This episode uncovers Len's remarkable story—from a young immigrant battling with ADD medication to a visionary leader using cannabis for focus. Join us as we navigate Len's childhood tales, his unexpected plunge into the cannabis industry, and his innovative approach to personalized healthcare through the lens of genomics. His anecdotes offer a poignant look at the transformative power of passion and the road to creating groundbreaking work in understanding our bodies' unique needs.

Ever wondered how the quest for dopamine shapes our productivity and pursuit of self-improvement? Our discussion with Len May dives into the intricacies of reward systems and how individuals like Richard Branson utilize their ADD to forge empires. We unravel the strategies for crafting systems and rewards that propel us towards positive activities, the importance of environmental balance, and the euphoria found in flow states. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone intrigued by the interplay between mental health and personal growth, offering a blueprint for harnessing the power of our own neurochemistry to better our lives and the world around us.

Finally, envision a future where your health span matches your lifespan—this is the aspiration driving Len May's work. In this episode, we scrutinize the shift from managing illness to preventing it, the potential of genetic editing, AI in healthcare, and the intimate relation between mental and physical well-being. Discover Len's perspectives on the future of healthcare, detailed in his book "Making Cannabis Personal" and the podcast "Everything is Personal," along with his company's efforts in empowering personalized healthcare. This is an eye-opener for the curious minds looking to understand how innovation can empower us to take control of our wellness in ways we never thought possible.

Colorado’s best business coach, Baz Porter, has a new mindset strategy mentoring service to help you unlock new heights of growth, prosperity, happiness, and success. Book your first meeting with the coaching visionary at https://www.ramsbybaz.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Cannabis and Dopamine
• 7:59 Understanding Dopamine and Reward Systems
• 15:37 From Real Estate to Cannabis CEO
• 24:54 Overcoming Obstacles Through Resilience
• 37:24 Empowering Personalized Health Through Innovation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Good evening, good morning wherever you're from. Welcome to another episode of Rice and the Ashes. I'm your host, baz Porter. Now I'd like to introduce my next guest. His name is Len May. Incredible background, from coaching to cannabis, been around the world a bit. His passion is music, but I'm going to let him, as always, introduce himself, because there's no one speaks better about themselves than the person actually behind the mask. Len, please say hello to the world and tell everyone what you do.

Speaker 2: 0:34

I appreciate it, baz. You basically hit the nail on the head. I'm a CEO and co-founder of a company called EndoDNA. We do genetic testing and analysis and provide people a roadmap for precision wellness, and we started with the endocannabinoid system, but now we look at the entire genome and we give you reports and analyze different things like nutrient and supplement deficiencies, your mental health, skin. We do pharmacogenomics how drugs affect your body based on your genetics. One of the things that I recognize is, without understanding your own personal roadmap and your own GPS, you're going to keep stepping in certain potholes, and if you can avoid those potholes in life and use your lifestyle to be able to help you know what to turn on and what to turn off, you can actually have a really good health span going forward, and it's been an interesting journey.

Speaker 2: 1:31

We were talking prior to the podcast about my background. So I was born in a really small country in Eastern Europe under a Soviet rule called Lithuania, and my parents immigrated here when I was about six years old and I grew up in Philadelphia. One of the things learning the language and all those other things were interesting, but one of the things that I realized about myself I was the kid in class who the teacher would call on, but my brain was elsewhere. I was always thinking in my head. I wasn't a hyperactive kid, but I was always dreaming. And if I can give an analogy, it's like you have all the windows in your computer open. I had the windows open in my head, so I'm always looking at the next window, kind of thing. By the way, this is a sign for anybody. If you have 30 windows open in your computer, you may want to look into ADD as a possibility. So that's exactly what happened to me. Teacher would call me. I'd be like hey, what? I'm somewhere else and I got diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. I can't stand the word disorder because I actually think it's a superpower, but that's how we're being diagnosed.

Speaker 2: 2:39

And I was put on all kinds of prescription medication and when I was taking this prescription medication, I can't say it didn't quote, unquote work. There were some things that boosted dopamine and they actually allowed me to focus, but I lost myself in that. What I mean by that is it stripped me of any emotional connection to myself or to anybody else. So you can walk around and be connected and be focused, but you don't have that emotional sense that goes away. At least that was my experience.

Speaker 2: 3:08

And I was in school and I was hanging out with some older kids right before school and they said to me hey, you want to smoke a cigarette? Yeah, man, I'm hanging out with the cool kids, I'm going to smoke a cigarette. I just started dabbling in cigarettes at that time because it was a cool thing to do back in the 80s and I never questioned why they only had one cigarette. But they started passing the cigarette around and I took a drag of it and inhale and didn't taste like a cigarette. So I took another one, maybe coughed one or two times. And they're laughing at me. I'm like what's up? They're like oh, they filled the cigarette with cannabis weed. So I consumed cannabis for the first time and went to class and the funny thing happened the window is narrowed and I could focus and I'm like, wow, this is pretty interesting. So I started trying to. This is a very illegal back in the day, and I'm a kid, a teenager I'm not advocating this for anybody who's under the age but it worked for me. So I stopped taking prescription medication and cannabis became my medicine.

Speaker 2: 4:08

My parents didn't really like that too much, so they would catch me once in a while and I'd get my punishment, my beating. I came from a very rough upbringing. It was a lot of physical, mental, all kinds of abuse which we can get into as well. But eventually my parents ended up kicking me out and not only kicking me out but calling the cops on me to try to have me arrested. And so I ended up on the street. But I wasn't living in a tent or anything like that. I got.

Speaker 2: 4:37

I had maybe $500 or so, so I got motel rooms. So I was staying in motel rooms that would crash on people's couches and the girlfriend I was dating at the time she said her friend went away for three weeks and crashed in her place. So, even though she never let us crash in her place apparently after I found out but we snuck in there and we stayed there for a few weeks and then my grandmother let me stay at her place, I crashed on her couch and I was an avid music person, didn't have money, but every single time I would have money, I would go to the record store, which was Tower Records at the time and I would just stand there for hours and listen and try to get music in them opening. So I got a job at Tower Records as a cashier, got some money. My grandmother gave me some money, got my first apartment and went to university Temple University and basically was working at Tower Records and consuming cannabis.

Speaker 2: 5:33

What was happening was everybody in the store would consume cannabis as well, and then people would walk in. We'd show them music and they're like I smell like weed. I'm like'm like yeah, you know where I can get some. It was like take my beeper number. So I started. This is way back in the day the beeper right, remember them yes, exactly, and you get a call from payphone.

Speaker 2: 5:56

It's back in the day so I started. I was paying my way through college working in tower records selling selling cannabis, but I had this interesting system where I would call my buddy, he would come to my apartment, he would deliver the weed. So I had a delivery service back in I think it was 1990, I want to say something around there and then my friend owned a strip club, so then I became a DJ in a strip club as well, so at three o'clock in the morning I would finish spinning and I would not spinning. This isn't like a house music club, it's like hey, next up, everybody give it up for candy with some sugar on me, or something like that. And then I go to school, and I was, and I went to physical therapy school. That was my major. So that's a little bit about my background.

Speaker 1: 6:40

That's. We've got a lot in common.

Speaker 2: 6:42

I'm not going to go into that right now. We've got a lot in common.

Speaker 1: 6:44

You mentioned about dopamine earlier and there's different ways of producing dopamine. There is a dopamine addiction and I want to address that slightly because it's going to help. I think it's going to help people In your experience and with the incline of society having this dopamine addiction to either phones, drugs, porn, whatever, whatever. It's that quick fix, isn't it? How did the discovery of the professional uses and medicinal uses of cannabis help you understand your addiction? I have had adhd and that's got a bit similar to you. I was bullied, I was stupid, I was thick. I had also dyslexia or I call it dyspexia because it's easier, and I, like you yourself, people look down upon that as if you were just stupid or thick. Now it's coming out. It wasn't the case and people of our age group 30, 40, even to the 50s are going that that was me. So what did we miss out on? But the dopamine affects all aspects of life. How do you implement and stay balanced in that respect to manage the hormones that the brain and body naturally produce?

Speaker 2: 7:57

Yeah, it's a great point. I did a lot of research on ADD and, by the way, richard Branson has the same thing as you and I started seeing mentors. I started seeing people who I look up to, who have ADD, who have dyslexia and are super successful. And the reason why he has to open 150 companies or whatever he has is because he's no longer getting that hit of dopamine. And when I started researching ADD, I'm like wait a second. I'm born with a depletion of dopamine, so my brain is always looking for that squirt of dopamine. If I sit there and play video games for eight hours a day, I'm getting that squirt of dopamine. But what am I actually doing for myself? How am I benefiting myself?

Speaker 2: 8:37

And I had a mentor many years ago and I'm a huge music person. I would drive and listen to music. My cassettes are before even CDs and all that stuff. And the guy said when you drive, what do you listen to? I said fucking music, I don't know whatever it was. He goes. Really, you like making other people money? I'm like what do you mean? He goes. When you listen to music and you listen to radio, they get money for that. I said okay, what do you listen to he goes. I listen to self-help tapes and books on tape. So I started Tony Robbins was probably my first that I got this book Psychology of Winning and I really started working on myself and trying to learn as much as possible.

Speaker 2: 9:18

And when I started learning about ADD and this depletion of dopamine, I started looking and creating systems for myself, because if I'm getting my dopamine from video games, I'm not benefiting me. So I need to be aware and catch myself. And it's not an easy thing to do. But you got to retrain yourself to only focus on things that are giving me dopamine, but also giving me the positive follow up and follow through. What can I do to add to my life, where I can add to other people's lives? And that's became my mission in life trying to see what I can do to fill my cup when it's full, to give it to others. And then I started researching on different things that create dopamine. So for me, I started seeing okay, I know that I need to create a reward system for myself, a positive reward system after I complete something that is not giving me dopamine. So I know that there's a carrot at the end of this road. Once I'm done, I'm going to get that dopamine fix.

Speaker 2: 10:16

And then I started researching ligands like what are the other things that we consume and how does dopamine work? So drugs in general. I'll give an example of cocaine, once again not advocating drug use or anything like that, I'm just saying how we are misrepresent drugs in our society and what they really do. So when you consume cocaine binds to your dopamine receptor, squirts about a hundred times more dopamine than naturally will produce, but blocks the reuptake of the dopamine. So we have it all there and at some point there's a crash because all dopamine and your brain wants to conserve energy, so it says I don't have to work that hard to get this dopamine. I love dopamine. It's the most addictive substance that we produce. I'm going to send a signal I want more of that. So give me more of that external substance that will bind to my receptors and squirt more.

Speaker 2: 11:08

So you have to be self-aware of what these things are doing for you, and right these days we have this environmental ADD.

Speaker 2: 11:16

There's all these things that are coming at us and as parents I'm a parent of a college age student my daughter and as a parent I have to be more aware of those things and not to force things upon my kid, but also be able to educate my child to know that there are certain things that you can do.

Speaker 2: 11:36

Yes, they're environmental disruptors, but they're creating this dopamine hit and if you are getting addicted to that in some way, let's balance that out with other things that you can do to offset that. So systems are really important. And when you are understanding the dopamine, I'll give you another example hobbies. So I got into painting and I understood that when I'm painting I'm getting a lot of dopamine and I lose track of time and flow. So when the guy that ran the studio, he would tap me on my shoulders He'd been here for six hours and it didn't feel like it. It's 30 minutes because I'm in flow, but I'm getting that dopamine hit. So you can actually identify things because I'm actually creating something. You can identify things that are positive in your life, that are still getting your dopamine and you have to be self-aware of these other external factors.

Speaker 1: 12:29

I love what you just said then as well. Time is an emotion and when we get lost in our own thoughts, with something we enjoy, time doesn't exist. And studies are showing now time isn't lunar, it isn't linear. And studies are showing now time isn't lunar, it isn't linear, but it's actually four-dimensional and that being part of an emotion is tantamount to proving that or giving evidence towards that, when any of us and we've all taken, certainly of our age group, we've all taken some sort of substance at length for many reasons, being stupid and young. Again, we aren't endorsing any drug taking here whatsoever, but these experiences shape us and you mentioned Tony.

Speaker 1: 13:13

Robbins, who was very instrumental in your early part of transformation and, condensing, you said earlier, a positive result system. So you would reward yourself. Can you share with the audience what that would look like for you on the service level? You don't have to go into details, but if you wish, you can.

Speaker 2: 13:34

Yeah, the best way to reward yourself is to find your flow state. So this is a work in progress and I actually took a class from Steven Kotler on flow. A work in progress and I actually took a class from Steven Kotler on flow. And just to explain to people flow, not the scientific explanation of it, but just with the feeling of it. So if you ever watch, like a basketball game and the person can't miss, they are like the basket is like a swimming pool. They shoot from anywhere there and they are in flow and you talk to athletes and when athletes get in flow, everything's slowed down. The basket is huge, you can't miss from anywhere. So when you figure out what your flow state is, you can prime yourself for flow. So for me and then, by the way, this is really important on your reward system, because the reward system has to be positive. It's not about, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to do this task and I'm going to eat a quart of ice cream after that. Yes, you're still going to get the dopamine, there's still a reward, but there's no positive aspect for that. That's where the system comes in and discipline comes in.

Speaker 2: 14:34

For me, I started recognizing that hiking is my flow state and that is my reward. So what I would do is I would complete my task, and I never have more than seven. I try to keep my tasks really condensed and chunk them. This is all Tony Robbins techniques too. And then, once I'm completed, I reward myself by going on a hike, and it does two things.

Speaker 2: 14:56

Number one it's my reward. I get dopamine, I love it, and it's also my flow state. So what happens is my mind opens up without me thinking, and ideas and things start flowing into my brain. So then I have my phone once I'm done and I record myself with these ideas and I come up with some of the best ideas and solutions. Even if I'm stuck in my business or my personal life, it seems to open those things up without me trying to. So not only am I creating a positive reward system, but I'm actually creating a reward system that helps me stay in flow state, that actually helps me with my business and personal life. So that's an ongoing reward system that's bookended on both sides. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:37

I love that and for those people who are listening now, please pause this, go back and rewind about five minutes, because and come and take notes, because this is gold people this is a serious number. People pay literally hundreds thousands of dollars for some of this information that is now being provided for you by a seasoned coach. So pause, go back, listen again and then use, utilize it in your lives. I want to switch gears for a moment to your career, and you said you're now a ceo of a cannabis company providing services for others to help them with adhd, add, etc. Some of the disorders what we don't call disorders, but they are. But whatever, how did that get? Because you went from coaching and the understanding of the effects of medicinal purpose drugs but then you started a company. So how did that come about?

Speaker 2: 16:33

Yeah. So there's some people who are born and when they're kids they find that thing Like I was listening to Slash from Guns N' Roses. He said when he picked up a guitar he knew this was it and he would do this eight hours a day. I wasn't one of those kids. I would try everything, and that happened in my career. You also have to have some balls, I think, to be able to say I'm getting paid a really good amount of money, I got a corporate Amex, I have an account at the Ritz, I can travel around the world, but I don't like what I do. No, I don't love what I do. It's okay, but I don't love what I do. So I would leave jobs from one to another to try different things. I remember I was telling my ex-wife at the time we were married I was doing really well in this corporate job, that I really didn't like getting paid a lot of money. And I invested in a real estate property in Florida and I flipped it and made like $100,000. And I was like, wow, dopamine. It was amazing. I was like holy shit, I'm getting this dopamine.

Speaker 2: 17:43

I told my wife I said I want to do real estate, I want to quit my job. She's like you're making a lot of money, you want to quit your job. I said yeah. I said I can't see you like driving around showing houses to people. I said no, I want to do commercial real estate. And she was supportive. She said okay, she believed that I could do whatever I set my mind to. So I quit my job and I didn't even know that you need this special license or not a license.

Speaker 2: 18:07

I got my real estate license, met with this one broker and he took me out to lunch and he said you see all these properties around here where we're sitting. I either sold or leased each one of them. I don't have any kids, I'm not married. There's something you can do with me. So I went to work. I sold the property, got really lucky. He gave me the yellow pages. He said good, old-fashioned shoe leather, call and knock on doors. And I sold the property and I made 10,000 or something of that in the first two months of working there. So I was like, oh, okay, I can do this. I didn't sell anything for another year. Luckily I had savings and it was just difficult. And then the one thing he told me is you know what? Specialize in something. Maybe you can find a unique niche. So I got a gas station listing. I didn't know anything about environmentals and all that stuff. So long story a little bit longer.

Speaker 2: 18:59

I specialized in gas stations, became the gas station guy and started doing really well with big gas stations and strip centers with gas stations. And I was selling this property with another agent from another company. He said, hey, we're looking. Would you be open to grab a cup of coffee with me and my broker? I was like, yeah, sure, there was a lot of ego involved in that. I was doing really well and I was thinking that I was riding high. So I didn't even realize the signs. But they were recruiting me and there was a company called Keller Williams. Everybody probably knows that real estate company but they were opening a commercial division. So I was the managing director of KW Commercial, keller Williams Commercial on the East Coast. So I did that. I was really good in real estate.

Speaker 2: 19:43

Once again I was getting that dopamine hit, but transactional, it wasn't fulfilling in life. I was like, what am I doing? I'm making wealthy people more wealthy and my ex-wife was an actress. We'd go back and forth to LA. So I ended up moving to LA and I sat in an office and I wasn't licensed here and I didn't know what I wanted to do. But real estate was boring to me, it wasn't giving me that same thing.

Speaker 2: 20:05

And these guys came in and they wanted to open an alternative pharmacy. So they were talking to another agent. He came over to me. He was like I don't know what these guys want. So I talked to them and said what are you guys opening? So what are you guys opening? Oh, pharmacy, alternative dispensary. They wanted to open up a dispensary. I'm like just tell me where's your paperwork? What do you have? They had nothing, they didn't know. So I'm like let me help you guys organize and I'll get you under Prop 215. There was this law in California. So I did all that and they offered me a partnership. So I became a partner with them and we opened up the first dispensary in Southern California in Orange County, called Kush Kingdom and that was in Santa Ana.

Speaker 2: 20:42

And we became I ended up opening five of them and one of the things I started noticing was two people will consume the same exact chemical variety and have a completely different experience. So from there I started ADD, kicked in and hyper-focused. I started researching. I found a guy who was the first person to genetically sequence cannabis and I was obsessed with that and I went and contacted him many times and he said he had 30 minutes, went up, spending three hours together, and I became a consultant for that company called Medicinal Genomics and I would go around the country. I would meet with the top cultivators and get sample material. They taught me how to extract DNA. I would bring it to my lab, extract the DNA and we started the first library of chemical varieties of cultivars. We put it on the blockchain.

Speaker 2: 21:31

The parent company was called Cortagen Life Sciences. They were a pharmacogenomics company. They did PGX testing, which is how your body reacts to different drugs and drug-to-drug interaction. So I started getting obsessed with human genomics and it was a light bulb moment. One day it was like we have plant genetics here, we have human genetics here. Let's bring those two together to give people personalized experience. They had no interest in it. They closed down the human side. They only wanted to focus on the plant. So I got lucky.

Speaker 2: 22:00

I grabbed some science-y people much smarter than me and opened up EndoDNA in 2017, december of 2017. So the first six months all we did was research. We looked at every single genetic biomarker that, directly or indirectly, is associated with the endocannabinoid system. Once we identify those, we approach a company called Illumina to help us build this genetic saliva test and we started our company with research and everything else. And the way that it will work is we take a saliva sample, a swab, you register it's HIPAA and GDPR compliant. You would send your sample to our lab, we analyze that and provide provide your report.

Speaker 2: 22:40

Now, when we met with the FDA, they asked us what is the purpose of your test? And we said to help people either avoid or mitigate a possible adverse event. And that's exactly what we start with. People have predispositions, stress, reactivity, mood, sleep challenges and they consume the wrong thing. Even outside of cannabis, they can trigger epigenetically an adverse event. As I was mentioning that whole GPS thing, this is exactly what we do and we do that for B2B companies as well. We start them up in the DNA space. So we have 11 patents. We patent our technology with the first company in the world to have a test that is approved for recommendations associated with the endocannabinoid system using your DNA.

Speaker 2: 23:27

And then we have eight formulations that we started looking at what works for people based on their genetic predispositions. So that is what we provide to healthcare professionals around the world we empower you to have a genetic test that looks at the endocannabinoid system. But then we went above that and beyond that, looking at the whole genome. We said, if I'm taking supplements or nutrients, I'd like to know that as well. What about my skin? What about other things? So we started looking at all kinds of other reports that we provide for personalized health and wellness, and that is what we call precision wellness. So, based on your genetics and then your also epigenetics, we would swab you. We provide your report, we look at your biological age and seeing if a recommended protocol would actually reduce your biological age, so we can expand your health span and create this system of health and wellness that empowers the individual to have a collaborative experience with their healthcare professional instead of boss. Take two of these call me in the morning, don't question me at all, and that's old style healthcare.

Speaker 1: 24:37

I'm fascinated by this because this is just like mind blowing stuff. I knew it exists, but I didn't know at this level and how actually advanced it was. So what you're giving me, I'm just like. I'm just like. This is like reading me a bedtime story. Please carry on, because this is insane. So you've got this company and you've got your building. You've got allies, you've got partnership. I know what makes your company so unique, who helps you get there? And also, you must be able to describe what resilience is for you, because you must have had so many doors slammed in your face, going no chance. This isn't going to work. What was that experience? If that was the case, what was that experience like for you?

Speaker 2: 25:21

Doors are always closing in your face for multiple reasons. Some people are challenged by what you're presenting to them and some way, somehow, it hits something inside of them that they shut down and said they can't, maybe they wanted to do something, that they didn't think about it. The other challenges are when we started, we talked about cannabis so your endocannabinoid system and that was a huge door closer. We were looking for institutional investors when we were raising our series A, and anytime that I would mention cannabis, I would say 80% of the people would be doors closed. I'm like but you have an endocannabinoid system? No, they did not. They didn't even understand that they're talking about a drug from your data program. There's nothing to do with that. We have a system inside of us. Healthcare professionals were never taught about the endocannabinoid system. It was only discovered in 1992. So they're also closing doors validating our research. We are in the process I think nine clinical trials. We're in a phase two clinical trial with Harvard. So we're already published in PubMed. So we're providing. If you don't want to work with us, we're going to do it ourselves and we're going to provide the evidence and post that. So those doors were slammed.

Speaker 2: 26:44

The other part is DNA in general. It's such a new not, dna is not new, but it's such a new way to be able to look at health and wellness. Healthcare professionals don't understand DNA a lot of them also and the third part of that is just because you have DNA, you're locked in. That's it. You're born this way, and this is probably what we've been teaching in medical schools too. That's not true, because only 25% of your DNA is really locked in, 75% of it. You can actually change the epigenetic expression based on lifestyle choices. So some lifestyle choices are pretty easy. What about changing the way you eat, changing things that will be aligned with your body, instead of opposing what you actually need? So those are the kinds of things that were done.

Speaker 2: 27:30

And when you're out, I'm a hockey fan too. So Wayne Gretzky had this quote. They asked him one time how do you score all these goals? And he said I skate where the puck is going to be. So when you are skating where the puck is going to be, you are sometimes on an island by yourself and you have to have a tremendous amount of resilience and belief in yourself and passion. People underplay this whole thing. With passion, passion is created. It's not something that all of a sudden I'm going to walk into and find. You have to create your passion, be open to receiving all those things and that helps to overcome obstacles and be resilient. Also, your lifestyle coming from an abusive home, even though my parents kicked me out, they consume the products that my company manufactures. Now I speak to my dad and speak for years, every single day. We have a close relationship because I made the decision to let all that shit go.

Speaker 2: 28:36

And when you come from your lifestyle and you actually make a decision not to use that as an anchor, a crutch what happened in the past? Be able to use that in a positive way to help you overcome the obstacles. It's not scary anymore and that fear is. It does create a little bit of a dopamine and a little bit of adrenaline, because you want that fear.

Speaker 2: 29:00

It's like when you're doing public speaking, you have those little butterflies, but it's not the butterflies that prevent you from doing it. It's the butterflies that are like I'm fucking excited to kick the shit out of this right now, and that's what really helps to overcome these barriers that are set in place, and I believe that the people who are aligning with you see right away. And it's really clear when you have to fight for getting investment and all that stuff, there may not be the right partner for you. It's the people that connect with you really quickly. They get it right away and then you just have to work out deal points. But it's that connection, that energetic connection. I think people underplay that a little bit. You have to be open to receiving that. When you connect with those people, it makes things much easier, less friction.

Speaker 1: 29:48

What you're explaining here is gold, because a lot of people go through their entrepreneurial life and they're always searching in the dark and they're trying to find that lamp to turn on. You found it not by mistake, but by perseverance and really going inwards to know who you are and honing in what you want. As a result not just aimlessly going this way you look at the telokadas, look at what you wanted. How you get there step-by-step procedures. That took courage and how did your upbringing and I'm going to frame it as abuse, I'm not going to have to go into details how did that form your entrepreneurial skills? And looking back at your past, now going, actually that worked for me, not against me.

Speaker 2: 30:43

I'm going to tell a story because it's important to realize this connection that we have for the past and how we hold on to it in a negative way. So, yeah, I had a lot of therapy after that and I was in the therapist's office and he asked me if I can bring in my parents and we started talking. We're mending our relationship. So I came to my parents and I said my therapist wants to have you come in, would you be open? He said, yeah, we don't believe in that shit, but we'll go for you. So we were sitting in the therapist's office. I'm sitting next to the therapist, my dad is sitting directly across from him, my mom is sitting next to him and my dad's given these responses. He doesn't want to be there and he's asking me and then he gets annoyed. He goes. You want me to tell you about Len? Let me tell you a story. So we were living in Lithuania and this was an apartment building. There was a little street behind us and there was a store and I guess I went with my mom. Maybe I was three, four years old. I went with my mom. I went with my mom. By the way, I did not remember this story at all until he told it. I went with my mom to the store, walked across the little street, went in the store, wanted her to buy me something. She wouldn't buy it. I had a fit, and supposedly I had a fit and somewhere somehow I walked out of the store, walked across the street and went to my neighbor's house who used to babysit me every day when my parents went to work. My mom was frantic, she couldn't find me and the lady said I saw him walk out, so she knew where. I went to my neighbor's house and she's oh, wait till your dad gets home, kind of thing. And my dad tells a story where he came home and it was time for Len's punishment and it was time for my beating, I think with a belt, and he goes.

Speaker 2: 32:19

I was hitting Len and he wouldn't cry. I was hitting him harder and he still wouldn't cry and I was trying to get a response and he wouldn't cry and he goes. That's the kind of man I made, that's the man. And at that moment I cried and it was. I rarely cried in my life and I was like, really, you try to beat that out of me, you try to beat that emotion out of me Again. It's not going to happen. So at that moment when I left, I said you're not going to have that power over me anymore and I had in-depth conversation with my dad and there was some apologies. We're like we didn't know any better.

Speaker 2: 32:56

There's no book written and I learned that letting go of that anger that I had towards him released me. It lifted this weight off of me and allowed me to have a completely different relationship and understanding that you as a parent can make all kinds of mistakes. This is what he was taught. He had that happen to him and it was time for somebody to break that line. It was me. I said. My dad got really mad at me one time. He said you're a great dad and all that stuff. I'm like, yeah, because I tried to do the opposite of what you would have done. He didn't like that too much, but it's true, in a way, that I have a great relationship.

Speaker 2: 33:32

I also work in progress and this is so what was happening to me in my life and all the different things that happened. I was just telling my buddy I couldn't believe the kind of shit that I went through. There was shots fired. I was doing crazy stuff because in the cannabis industry early on and I survived and all these different things in business it's not as threatening, it doesn't really have the same impact. Yes, it's hard, no matter what. Even if you're homeless, you have the resiliency in yourself to be able to overcome and survive and I know that I can rely on me. First and when you have this idea that you can do whatever you set your mind to, really not the coachy, fluffy, surfacy stuff, but you really believe that you can do it, no matter what. Where were you put in a situation there? There are people who have shows like this Grant Cardone said you send me out with no money and I can make a million, which he does. Maybe it's for a TV show, I don't know, but maybe I believe that anybody who has this inside of themselves and it connects to their purpose and it's got to be it's not this hokey purpose, it really has to be.

Speaker 2: 34:40

I want to help people change their health and wellness and the main reason I try to really figure out what's driving this in me my grandfather, when I was a kid, after the first year we came to America, my grandfather got a stroke and he proceeded to have multiple strokes and at some point his speech. He couldn't speak and he couldn't really walk. He was a really large man. My grandmother was a really small woman. She would carry him around. It was crazy, but I would remember my mom and my grandma would sit with bags of pills and every once in a while he'd have a stroke or something else would happen. And it's the interaction between the medications and I was always scared of this whole doctors because I had to deal with. He was sick, my grandmother was sick, constantly hospitals, they didn't know what to do. We had to pull the plug, my grandmother when I was there too, and I was always scared of this thing.

Speaker 2: 35:33

Why am I trusting these people? Look at this the interaction between the drugs may be even causing this. So my idea was always to see how can empower myself to take care of my own health and wellness. What can I do to empower others to be in control over their health and wellness and make it really precise for the individual? And when I connected the passion, even out of fear, of traditional medicine that is really driving me. And every single time there's like that obstacle in the road, I float over that because I focus on that purpose. Why am I doing this whole thing? And I know it's the why and all that stuff, but it really is. It really is the why and, if it's the right, why it'll really help you cross over those barriers.

Speaker 1: 36:16

I love that advice and I think you briefly touched on this question and I like to ask this because it gives people a vision of who you are behind what you do. If you could start a global movement, what would that be? I know that's a very complex question from where you're coming from right now, but can you simplify it of between health and wellness and doing what you're doing, between health and wellness and doing what you're doing, what would that global movement be and what would you like to see change as a result of?

Speaker 2: 36:48

that I am starting global movement. It is precision wellness. It is exactly what we're doing, and precision wellness means that with the use of AI, whatever you look at AI, there's probably negative uses, and we can do much better utilizing machine learning to help make predictive inferences for people. So for Len May, this is my genome, this is my epigenome. There's thousands of people that are similar to me where AI said you know what this protocol worked and it's a collaborative experience with your health and wellness.

Speaker 2: 37:24

And it's not just health and wellness to the way that we're doing it today. It's more preventative health and wellness to make sure that we don't live our lives the way that we live our lives today, which is we live a life, we start getting sick and medicine prolongs our lifespan, so we live longer but we're not healthier, we're sicker than we ever were. When we get into our 70s and 80s, I want to make sure that we do whatever we can to prevent ourselves from being sick and have a healthy health span, not just a long life. So live healthy throughout. And this is the movement that has to happen. And the one main thing that we have to make a change in is the way this subscription model of the pharmaceutical industry works, if you think about the gazillions of dollars that we spent on cancer research. We've done incredible work on breast cancer, there's amazing organizations, but we did not eradicate cancer. We just prolonged and made a law, and the reason why is maybe it's controversial, but the pharmaceutical industry has the best subscription model in the world.

Speaker 2: 38:40

You're going to have a pain in your elbow. They're going to give you a pill for it. If that pill makes you constipated, guess what? There's another pill for that. And you're on the cycle and you're not getting off once you're on. So the idea is let's see if we can prevent some of these conditions from expressing themselves. And if we're going to focus on something, let's focus on eradicating diseases. Like genetic editing with CRISPR can actually eradicate genetic diseases right now, but governments are stopping that because of multiple reasons, and lobbying may be one of them. So the global movement if I can get everybody to join in and say listen, let's focus on precision, wellness, precision medicine, preventative medicine, and let's have a collaborative experience through AI to make sure that we can put ourselves in this personalized, bespoke way of health and wellness so we can live longer lives and not just focus on symptoms.

Speaker 2: 39:37

Something's on my elbow, but what is causing that pain? Okay, sometimes it's stress. Why is it stress? We have this release of cortisol. Our immune system is overreacting from that. A lot of these conditions that we're feeling, that we're taking pills for, are probably caused by an autoimmune response to something that's going on with that cortisol release. Mentally Aligning that mental and physical health. That's the movement that I want to focus on.

Speaker 1: 40:03

I love that and this is why I love interviewing people like you, because you have such a forward vision and integrating AI and everything available with it. And that's the expanse. We don't have time to touch on it. I'd love to. Let's talk offline about that. Is there anything you'd like to share with the audience? Whether it's send people your book, whatever it is, just fill your boots.

Speaker 2: 40:26

Yeah, my book. It's called Making Cannabis Personal. You can find it on Amazon or wherever it is. I have a podcast called Everything is Personal, similar to what you're doing. I love to talk to interesting people and I want to find out what makes them tick. So it's not for everybody, it's for me interesting people and I want to find out what makes them tick. So it's not for everybody, it's for me. I do the podcast for me because I'm interested in interesting people and we are raising our series B of my company and we're doing some global expansion.

Speaker 2: 40:51

I made a decision in the end of 2023 that we're getting out of direct-to-consumer space and the reason why we're doing that is because I talked to my reseller partners white label reseller partners and a lot of them were like you're competing with us, everything is great. I'm like how they can go on endodna and buy a genetic test or they can go to my company and now I have to spend a lot of money in marketing to differentiate your product from ours? I made the decision. We're only focusing on empowering our partners. If anybody wants a test kit, we'll point you to one of our partners to do that. So we change our business that way.

Speaker 2: 41:27

Three things. We have this lab in a box that if any healthcare professional, anybody wants to get into the DNA space, we can get you into the DNA space, your own personalized kit, reports, portal, everything that's white label branded. The second thing is our interpretation services, where we can take raw data from DNA ours or anybody else's, interpret and provide you a number of reports. We have a women's health report called menopause biotype, so it looks at predispositions to perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause and the adverse effects of that. And what can you do Men's health, mental health, vitamin and nutrient, skin and pharmacogenomics. And the third thing that we do is we call it an eye treatment plan, so an interactive treatment plan. So one of the things that really differentiates us from any other genetic companies we book in the experience with a treatment plan.

Speaker 2: 42:20

So, just because you have a genetic predisposition, what action can you take? And this is created with healthcare professionals and also AI to provide an interactive treatment plan for you. Now you have this predisposition. These are the things that you can do supplement-wise, maybe hormone et cetera, and then we can measure the efficacy of how well that works. So all that data goes into the cloud. We use patient-reported outcome. We use biometric device, feedback from your wearable, your Oura Ring, your Fitbit, and that data anonymized, fully anonymized, so it's not my personal information. You get a number to associate with you, but now AI can start putting people in buckets and saying there was thousands of people like you that took this protocol. This is a suggestive protocol to take and it's always learning, it's always modifying itself. So that's really the future and that's what we're doing and that's my company going.

Speaker 1: 43:15

I love that. Thank you very much, Len, for joining me today. It is a privilege to speak to people like yourself and keep doing what you're doing. I believe in what you do. If there's anything else I can do for you, please let me know. I'm more than happy to support you.

Speaker 2: 43:30

For myself.

Speaker 1: 43:31

please share this message. You will change someone's life. I know that 100%. Download it, subscribe to the channel, subscribe to the podcast. It's not expensive and you can help me carry on having these important conversations with people myself. Have a great day, be safe, be well, glenn. Thank you so much for being here and providing this valuable information for my, the listeners here no, thank you so much, man.

Speaker 2: 43:56

I really appreciate. It's amazing.

Speaker 1: 43:58

Thank you, you're welcome, thank you for myself, live with purpose and inspire with legacy. I'm bass porter signing off today. Be safe.