Rethinking Your Lab Results with AI and Insight with Brent Eck

Most people get their labs once a year and never hear back—unless something’s “wrong.” But what if “normal” isn’t the same as optimal? In this episode, Brent Eck shares how AI and functional medicine are helping people see their health data as a roadmap for better energy, focus, and longevity

Have you ever walked out of your doctor’s office thinking, “That’s it?”
 You got your labs drawn, you were told everything looks “normal,” but something still feels off.

In this week’s thought-provoking conversation, Brent Eck, founder of Sage HealthSpan, joins me to unpack how technology and functional medicine are finally helping people make sense of their lab data—and reclaim ownership of their health.

We explore why “normal” lab results can still hide suboptimal health, how AI can reveal deeper connections in your biomarkers, and why wisdom is prevention in an age of information overload.

 Brent also shares what it means to treat health as a skill—something we can all learn and master over timeand how small, consistent actions can create powerful, long-term results.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:

• Why “normal” lab results don’t always mean you’re thriving
• How AI and technology are helping people translate their labs into actionable insights
• Why treating health as a skill might be the mindset shift you’ve been missing
• How curiosity, not fear, can help you take control of your health journey
  
  

CONNECT WITH BRENT ECK

 Special Message from Dr. Tamar Lawful: Discover the InHer Glow® Concierge Wellness Experience , a precision health program designed exclusively for high-achieving women ready to lose weight, boost energy, and reduce medications without guesswork. Spots are limited! Apply today at thelyfebalance.com/concierge

Chapters

• 0:00 Rethinking Pills And Personalization
• 3:53 Meet Sage HealthSpan And Its Mission
• 5:37 Brent’s Wake-Up Call From “Normal” Labs
• 9:08 Making Sense Of Labs With AI
• 13:18 Normal Versus Optimal Health
• 16:18 Health As A Learnable Skill
• 20:08 Fixing The Patient–Doctor Gap
• 23:28 Translating Biomarkers Into Actions
• 27:08 Privacy By Design On Your Device
• 30:08 Wisdom Over Data: Focus The Fundamentals
• 33:08 Biohacking Hype Versus What Matters

Transcript

Speaker 4: 1:00

Medications certainly have their place, but what if there was a way to support your body naturally by working with your genetics?

Speaker 3: 1:09

We are a pill for an ill society. We take 18 pills per person per American per day. It was so hard to find somebody who took my insurance.

Speaker 4: 1:18

And for me to get well, it took thousands of dollars. And I thought, though what do regular people do? This is not right.

Speaker 1: 1:24

Despite my best efforts, I wasn't actually reversing disease and helping people to heal in the way that I thought I would.

Speaker: 1:30

We want to empower yourselves to take care of this root cause. We don't just want to cover it up.

Speaker 4: 1:37

If you're ready to break free from outdated, one-size-fits-all health care, you're in the right place. Welcome to Raise the Script with Nutrigenomics, brought to you by InHer Glow® by LYFE Balance. Here's a literature from we're all unique, right down to our DNA. So it's no wonder we respond differently to the same medications, foods, and environments. How do you discover what your body needs? Which medications, foods, supplements, or exercises are right for you? How can you manage chronic conditions without piling on more prescriptions? That's what we're here to explore. I'm your host, Dr. Tamar Lawful, Doctor of Pharmacy, Nutrigenomics Specialist, and your partner in reimagining how we personalize care for better outcomes. Whether you're a patient or a practitioner, let's raise the script and bring healthcare to higher levels together. Because the future of health is personal. What if your next breakthrough in health didn't come from your doctor's office but from your own data? Think about it. Your phone can tell you how many steps you took, how you slept last night, and what song lifts your mood. But when it comes to your health records, we're still stuck waiting for a phone call that may never come. That's the gap today's guest, Brent X, set out to close. He's the founder and CEO of Sage HealthSpan, a platform using AI and functional medicine to help people translate their health data into plain language and take action. We talk about how technology is shifting the balance of power in healthcare, why health is a skill we can learn, and how wisdom, not information, is a new frontier of longevity. Because the future of personalized health isn't coming. It's already here. The question is, are you ready to lead it? Hey friends, I'm Dr. Tamar Lawful, Doctor of Pharmacy and Nutritional Genomics Specialist. Welcome back to Raise the Script with Nutrigenomics, the show where we decode your DNA so you can live and lead with energy, confidence, and longevity. Welcome to Raise the Script with Nutrigenomics. I'm so happy to have you here with us today because your work, you know, it sits right an interaction of what we love to talk about on this show science, empowerment, and rethinking what it really means to take control of our health. So for those meeting you for the first time, Brent, can you take us back to the beginning? Like what first sparked your passion for health optimization and ultimately led you from the traditional healthcare world into creating Sage HealthSpan?

Speaker 2: 4:19

Yeah, you know, listen, there's like the long version and the short version. I'll give you the short version. Uh I've been at this in one way, shape, or form for like 25 years, kind of sitting at the intersection of healthcare and nutrition and technology, and you know, kept creating different technologies to solve different problems in healthcare because there's plenty of problems that need solved. But in this specific case with Sage, really what it comes down to is I went to my annual physical and my doctor drew blood and he said, Listen, I'll call you if something's wrong. And I remember like walking out of the doctor's office and just being like, Well, I'm looking for more than that. So a few weeks went by. I didn't get a phone call, and I guess that's a good thing, right? Uh, but ended up calling the doctor's office and just said, Hey, you know, did my blood work come back? How is it? I guess I was talking to the person at the front desk, opened up the EMR, and just said, I don't see any notes, so I guess everything's okay. And I just thought, well, there's gotta be more than that, right? Uh so I, you know, I had that individual send me the labs, and you know, I got a uh a PDF that I think it came either from Lab Corp Requests, I don't remember which one it came from. And I got that PDF, and I just remember looking at it and being like, okay, well, some things here are a little bit out of range, some things are high, some things are low. Like, what does good mean? What does that mean? What the heck's the neutrophil? What the heck's the basophil? What the heck's all this sort of stuff, right? Uh so you end up getting into Dr. Google. At that time, it was sort of one of the first iterations of Chat GPT and putting all my data in there and being like, okay, what's going on here? And it turns out, you know, what I kind of discovered was, well, first and foremost, a bunch of stuff was missing. Like I never had my LP little A checked, I never had my APOB checked. There was a bunch of stuff that wasn't in there. Because I guess the doctor basically prescribed for me the lab that my insurance would cover. I think. I'm not exactly sure why my doctor prescribed that lab. And then, you know, there was actually a bunch of stuff that I could do to optimize things, right? There were a couple of things going on with my testosterone level that wasn't as good as I was hoping it could be. Uh, my cholesterol was a little bit on the high side. So there were certainly things I could do there. So, you know, there was things that frankly I think the healthcare system should have called me back on and didn't. Uh, and so that's really what Sage came out of. It came out of that moment of saying, okay, listen, there's got to be more people like me that get their labs drawn every year or their blood drawn every year or every few years, and want to know more. They want to hold that data in one place on their phone. They want to see what the trends look like over time, they want to understand what it means, and they want to understand what they can do about it. And so that's what Sage does. You can take any blood lab, upload a PDF, or take a picture of it, and we use machine learning to take that data, pull it out of that document, normalize it. So if you have different labs from different places, sometimes it does things in, you know, I don't know, in animals per deciliter, sometimes it does things in milligrams per whatever. Um, we'll normalize all that data, put it in one trend line, and then help you understand it. Hey, what is a neutrophil? What is a basophil? What is this? What is that? Uh, and then what you can do about it, right? If something is perfect, great, maybe you don't want to do anything, but we can always get better, right? We can always improve our health in one way, shape, or form. So um it does that. Then we'll put this data into AI and look at synthesizing the information, you know, across labs. You know, we like to say if you if you're just looking at hormones individually, it's kind of like listening to one instrument of a band instead of listening to a song. Uh so you know, how can you look at hormones and understand how one thing's impacting each uh another or your cholesterol and your glucose or this, this, and the other? Uh and so AI is great at seeing these trends and seeing how things connect together. And so Sage can help you figure all that out. So that's kind of where it came from, and that's kind of what we do.

Speaker 4: 7:47

Okay, I love it. Thanks for sharing the background and how you got to where we are today with Sage Health Span. Yeah, because many people they get these labs, they don't know what it means. The doctor should, should talk to them about it, but there are some that might slip through the crack where they're not informed about what's really going on. And even if it's normal, you still want to know. It still doesn't hurt to know that this is normal, that's okay. You're on the right track, keep doing what you're doing, right?

Speaker 2: 8:14

Well, and I don't want to go down the rabbit hole, right? But if normal is like uh an average over the population in America today, I mean, what percent of America, you know, which how many Americans are actually normal? Very few, right? We're all distinct, we're all individuals, that's for certain. So we believe in personalization. But also, you know, if normal is just where you sit on the distribution curve, I mean, I don't know, what percent of Americans today have some sort of metabolic issue, right? Doesn't it something like 68%? It's like a ridiculous amount, right? So normal is going to be metabolic dysfunction, right? In one way, shape, or form. So if you're normal on all your metabolism markers, maybe that isn't optimal. We think there's a pretty big gap actually between normal and optimal. And so that's a little bit what we're trying to help people understand is the space between the two things.

Speaker 4: 8:54

Great point, Brent. Now, you described uh this moment with developing stage health span as a health renaissance, right? So, what does that mean to you personally and what convinced you that the world is ready for it now, especially with skepticism when it comes to AI?

Speaker 2: 9:11

We hope the world's ready for it, right? Because we're we're spending all our energy trying to build it. Uh so we're hoping the world's interested in it. Listen, it's, I think, you know, so many of us have had this experience, this sort of enlightening moment where like we realize, okay, our health is just is not our fate. Our health is not what happens to us, and we either have health or we don't have health. You know, we like to think about it at stage like health is a skill. It's something you can learn, right? How to improve your sleep, how to improve your biomarkers, how to exercise, how to get better at exercise, what foods impact you in what way, right? So many of these core things in our life are things we can get better at, right? So, you know, probably in my mother's generation, health was something she outsourced to the healthcare system and she either has health or she doesn't have health. Now, fortunately, she's had health and she's uh living a nice, healthy life. But I think for a lot of us, health is a skill we can learn. And like when you go through that mindset shift from, you know, health is something that happens to me to like health is something I'm in control of, health is something that that I'm I'm empowered to do something about. I think that's a big mental step forward. And it's like any skill in life. It's like being in a relationship. It's like, I don't know, learning how to play basketball. Pick your skill, right? It's something that that you start off when when you start off, you're actually not very good at it. And you have to learn about it and you have to get more information and you have to get better and better and better at it over time. Uh so you got to put in the work. So Sage is really about, I don't want to say it's a shortcut, but it's it's a guide on that path that's considered like your coach if you're learning a sport. It helps you on that journey to feeling empowered to have control over your health and hopefully do something about it. And so that's what we're we're trying to do at Sage. And we think the world's ready. We think, you know, everybody I talk to in my social circle, I think the days of feeling like health is something that just happens to you, we're kind of starting to move past that. I'm not sure yet if all of America feels that way. Uh, but certainly more people in my generation, I think, are feeling empowered to feel have a little bit more control over the health, right? I mean, I'm 50 actually in about two weeks. And, you know, my whole social circle, you know, we get together and uh, you know, maybe we don't have more than one beer anymore at dinner, and maybe we do spend a little bit of time talking about, uh, oh, geez, you know, here's what works to get good sleep. And oh, I have an aura ring and my deep sleep is garbage. What can I do to improve my deep sleep, right? Using the dorky conversations I'm having in my social network now that we're getting uh to a certain age where we can't get away with without thinking about uh about these sorts of things. So I do think, you know, more and more we're ready for that sort of thing. And then we hope Sage helps people on that uh, you know, on their journey.

Speaker 4: 11:43

My how the conversations change as we aim. And happy early birthday to you, by the way. Oh, thank you. I love that you you mentioned that it's a skill, right? Health is a skill. Because yeah, we know it, it's it's work. We have to be consistent at it, but I never thought about it as viewing it like a skill, because a skill is something you have to, you have to work at till you've mastered it in a way. That's right. So I've I've never thought about it that way.

Speaker 2: 12:09

And we can always get better, right? It's like you look at a sport like Formula One, right? And you go to, I don't know, take Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen or one of these drivers in Formula One, and you say, like, what are 10 things you can do to get better at driving your car? They're gonna tell you. Like, they're the pinnacle, they're the best drivers in the world, but I'm sure there's still things that they can do to get better. And I would love if we all felt that way about our health. I'm not sure we do. I bet if you ask my mom, what are 10 things you can do to get better at your health, uh, she's gonna tell me, well, listen, I've made it to 80 something years old. Uh, I'm doing pretty good, you know, leave me alone. Uh, but you ask a professional, a professional race car driver, what are 10 things they can do to get better at driving? They're gonna tell you. Uh, and I think if we can all embrace that learning mindset when it comes to our health, I think we're all gonna go a lot further.

Speaker 4: 12:54

I agreed, agreed. Now, Brent, you often say that the medical system was built to keep people dependent, not informed. What do you think it will take culturally and practically to flip that script?

Speaker 2: 13:07

Oh, that's such a good question. I mean, the medical system, it's a it's a byproduct of so many different layers of history, right? Like we're here because this thing grew organically out of, I mean, I don't know, back in the day, having a doctor in your village who was there when you were born and was there when you died and saw you through all stages of your life and knew your friends and knew the neighborhood and knew everything, to a system where you see your doctor maybe for what, seven minutes once a year nowadays, and you spend the first three or four minutes trying to remember if you actually remember each other and hopefully your doctor had a few minutes to look at your medical rector before you walked into the office. And yeah, they're only going to recommend the labs that insurance pays for and this, that, the other. It's it's I think change is needed. Um, you know, I spent a lot of years working at a company called Medigenics where we were part of the foundation of functional medicine and the whole functional medicine movement. And, you know, the functional medicine movement, I think, has has been a real catalyst for change for a lot of healthcare providers and giving them new tools and and empowering them to think about uh you know root cause medicine in a new way. But I think that's really, you know, today it's really just a small fragment of the healthcare system. And I think there's a there's a lot further that that system needs to go to say that in a in a generous way. And so we hope to be part of that change. You know, one of the things that that we take to heart at Sage is how do we improve the relationship that a patient has with their doctor? So one of the things you can do with the Sage app, for example, is you can take the whole synthesis of all your information, some AI summaries, and actually create a PDF and send an email to your doctor with 10 questions that you want to talk about about your blood labs, right? And hopefully you can send that to your doctor before you go out and see your doctor so that when you go out there, you're actually not figuring something out in the room. You've given your doctor a bunch of information about you and about uh your blood labs, and you've even given them the questions that you want to talk to them about. And the AI within Sage really helps you, helps you do all that. So we hope that Sage can be part of the solution, uh, for lack of a better way to put it, part of a way to connect you to your doctor in a more meaningful way, uh, and hopefully have a more productive uh relationship for your health there.

Speaker 4: 15:18

I love that. I love that you're creating this means for the patients and doctors to have that communication going both ways so they they know what's going on with their health and that these patients are empowered to have these questions to ask and take it a step further versus just, you know, a year later coming back and just not asking any questions at all.

Speaker 2: 15:40

And change isn't gonna happen if you aren't, right? I mean, what is there's an expression here, and I'm gonna misquote it, but you know, real learning is is actually changing your behavior. If you're not changing your behavior, you're just being entertained, you're not actually learning anything, right? Uh and so how do you how do you make that leap from I'm informed to actually I'm doing something different tomorrow because of what I know? Um, and that's just a huge jump that we hope that we can help people on that journey towards.

Speaker 4: 16:02

Right. So you've talked a little bit more about this, but I know you've compared lab results to raw computer code. It's useful to doctors, useless to most people. So, with technology in general, how can it help people translate these labs into something meaningful? Could you give an example of how Sage could help?

Speaker 2: 16:25

Sure. I mean 100%, right? It's like uh you look at these printouts from that PDF, and I certainly did, you know, when I got mine from my doctor, uh, you know, and sort of the impetus to start Sage. And, you know, what was clear is I didn't know what half these things were. What is a basophil? What is a neutrophil? Uh, you know, what is a CBC? What is a metabolic panel? And even the things that we're missing, like what's an APOB, what's an LP little A? What are all the different ways that you can you can understand your cholesterol uh and what they mean for you? And so, you know, half the battle is just giving a translation of these things in plain English, like what are they? What do they do? But I also think if you take the next step and say, okay, what are things I can do with diet, with exercise, with lifestyle to improve those things, I think it brings it home on what these what these markers actually mean because they become practical, they become tangible, but they become something you can do something about. And I think otherwise, it is just sitting out there uh, you know, in a medical record, not doing anybody any good. I hate to say it that way, if you don't understand your numbers. You know, for for a lot of us, we understand, okay, high cholesterol is not a good thing, or or maybe, you know, is bad. And I know there's even some controversy on the internet as cholesterol even an important marker to be looking at. Certainly we think it is its age, and uh, we think it's important to get to know your cholesterol. But cholesterol has a bunch of different phenotypes. We're all different, we're all unique. Uh, and how our cholesterol pattern shows up is really interesting. And so, you know, we hope to demystify that for folks because that isn't actually that complicated. We think actually part of the problem that the healthcare system has is it is a little bit of this black box that doesn't give you the time and energy to understand it. You put your blood labs in, maybe your doctor calls you back, maybe your doctor doesn't call you back. And if they do call you back, they're probably gonna focus on one or two of these things, not the entire panel. And so we want to move away from that black box. We want to give you the time and energy to understand these things, probably on your own. You're gonna have to do a little bit of self-study in the Sage app, but we try to make it as easy as possible, simple to understand, and help you understand the connectivity of all these different things and what you can do about it. And then next time you're sitting with your doctor, the doctor then can focus on a little more than just one or two things. They can focus on hopefully your health in general and the different ways that you can optimize it.

Speaker 4: 18:34

Yeah. So we talked about the biomarkers. You mentioned some when it comes to technology and AI, we want to talk about data privacy because we mentioned empowerment for patients and people that are wanting to know what their labs mean, but data privacy is such a huge part of that. How does Sage ensure people can safely own their health data without safely own it so it's not compromised and they can still benefit from AI and machine learning?

Speaker 2: 19:02

You know, that's something that we take very, very seriously. I know for me personally and just everybody around me, you know, when they think about interacting, putting their data in the health system, uh privacy is one of the most important things, obviously, right? I think our health is something that is very sensitive and what we can do about our health is very sensitive. So what we've done is basically all of that data sits only on your device. So we never, like when when you're you're uploading data, when I say upload, I mean upload to your phone. I don't mean upload to the cloud. I don't mean upload to servers when you take pictures of your health data. Again, all this data is staying on your phone. Sage never sees any of your data if you don't want us to. That's what's great about this modern technology is the machine learning is actually working on your device itself to synthesize all this data, normalize it, and put it into a data set that is understandable and easy to use. And then what we do when we do go out and put this data in in these AI large language models to help synthesize the data in a meaningful way, we've done two things. First thing, we strip out all personal information. So none of your information would ever go with that data. The data is there and normalized. But second, when we put it in these LLMs or in these AI models, we don't just send it out to the internet at large. We've actually worked with some of our favorite doctors in functional medicine, and we've built a closed data set. So it's how they understand these lab markers, it's how they understand this data, and it's their recommendations for things you can do to optimize. So we're sure that you're never gonna get a hallucination from your data because the data that we're using is a closed data model. So we've basically taken the best thinking of functional medicine, put it in a data set, and we're gonna apply that information to you to come up with your personalized uh health recommendations.

Speaker 4: 20:41

That's good to know. You know, you're definitely bridging that gap between the information and the privacy and then the action that they can take by having those recommendations in there from those um functional medicine doctors. And it's refreshing that you're bringing, when I think about it, the wisdom back into technology. So I want to dive into that because you mentioned that wisdom is prevention. And in an age where everyone has access to more data than ever, you know, how do we make sure that we're not just collecting numbers, but we're understanding and applying them wisely.

Speaker 2: 21:18

Yeah, it's it for us, it's so important that we help you get to what is the most essential thing for you to do next in your health. I think in health, especially with the internet, it's so easy to get lost in interesting rabbit holes, but rabbit holes nonetheless. I love the quote from Peter Atia, you know, be careful you're not majoring in the minors, you know, and certainly on the internet, it's very easy to get caught up in focusing on, I don't know, a few very obscure things and understanding what they are. We're really focusing on the basic stuff. Uh, you know, we think it's super important that everybody gets a great night's sleep. I think it's super important that everybody exercises on a regular basis. Exercise is the single most potent longevity drug, for lack of a better way to put it. Uh, we want folks to stay away from too much uh negative stress and smoking and drinking and, you know, kind of keep away from the bad stuff. And then, you know, focus on having healthy positive relationships. And we figure if you get those four or five things right, uh, that kind of takes care of 90% of health issues right there. And so everything we do at Sage is really trying to keep you focused on what are the most important core things. And so if we can do that, we figure we're gonna help you get pretty far on your journey to a healthy life.

Speaker 4: 22:24

Great. Now I want to talk about biohacking a little bit. You've called elite biohacking performance theater, uh, which I love. Now, what what would you say the difference is between hype true and accessible health optimization?

Speaker 2: 22:38

Yeah, I mean, listen, there's a lot of fun, obscure things that we can all think about and talk about. But kind of like I was saying with the, you know, the last bit of our conversation, it's it's really four or five things that that make the most difference, right? Uh how to sleep, uh, how to make sure you're getting, you know, you're staying in calorie balance and getting adequate protein, uh, making sure you're exercising on a regular basis, making sure you're staying away from some of the bad things and making sure you're you're engaging in healthy relationships. I think, you know, saunas, cold plunges, all that kind of crazy fun stuff is super fun and super interesting. And there's a lot of great data and science behind that, uh, but none of those are gonna solve the core original problems, right? If you're not doing those other five things well, if you don't have those skills mastered first, learning the skills of a lot of supplementation and a lot of those obscure things isn't gonna do you any good. So that's where we want to help people stay focused on the most important things, the things that really, really matter. Uh, you know, I don't want to disparage anybody that's into cold plunging and so on. I have a sauna in my backyard and I love it as well. And frankly, if I could tolerate making myself super cold, I'd probably be cold plunging too. So, you know, I am a total biohacker dork. So I don't mean to uh disparage, you know, the biohackers too too bad because then I'd be making fun of myself, which I guess I do. But, you know, really for me, it's all in service of those of those core five things first. Um, because, you know, I know when I'm taking care of myself and I'm taking care of those five things, uh, the obscure stuff matters a lot less, right? Uh and if I'm not taking care of myself, if I haven't been eating well, if I've been maybe spending too many nights out with the boys or whatever it may be, you know, you can you can really feel yourself suffering from that. Uh so that's where we wanna we wanna stay on the on the most important things that matter the most.

Speaker 4: 24:13

Yes, definitely. Now I want to transition slightly because uh some of our listeners are leaders in their specialties, they're running companies, they're entrepreneurs. So I love to consider your leadership background, I love to tap into your mind a little bit when it comes to some lessons that leaders that you've learned that you could share because you've led some of the biggest players in the supplement and medical industries. So, what leadership lessons have stuck with you the most?

Speaker 2: 24:40

Oh goodness. That's a good question.

Speaker 4: 24:44

Are there any that you had to unlearn so that you could even build stage?

Speaker 2: 24:48

Oh, so many of the things. I mean, entrepreneurship and and and business leadership, like anything else, is a skill, right? And certainly you get better at it over time. The longer that I've been doing this, the more you realize, you know, your job as a leader of any of these large organizations is really figuring out how to unlock the potential of the people you have working with you every day. And being a great leader is really about helping folks express themselves, uh, helping folks feel confident uh in their ideas, uh, helping them understand what's a risk that they should be taking versus what's a risk that is too much for the company to bear. Uh but really it's about, you know, how do you get the most out of the team of people you have working around you? That for me is is what I spend most of my time thinking about. Uh, probably spend most of my time coaching and mentoring more than anything else, but but keeping everybody's eye on the big prize, keeping everybody's eye on, you know, what's the most important thing that we have to get done as an organization today and tomorrow and the next day, uh, and then helping people uh really uh, you know, optimize their get the most out of themselves, right? How do they show up and be their best selves at work most days of the week? That's really the goal for me.

Speaker 4: 25:54

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yeah, there's a lot of coaching involved, a lot of coaching. And they look up to you to be that leader and that source of motivation, inspiration to keep going. It can be tiring, I'm sure, at times.

Speaker 2: 26:07

So what is something nobody wants to see that part of it though, right?

Speaker 4: 26:11

No, no one wants to see it. You don't want to show them that side either necessarily. Uh, so I want to ask you uh, what's one metric that you personally track for yourself so that you're staying sharp and focused and energized as a CEO?

Speaker 2: 26:23

You know, one of the things I'm really careful of, and I it's probably true in sort of how Sage thinks about health, is not let myself get distracted with a lot of rabbit holes. You know, I spend a little bit of time every morning and a little bit of time every evening, and I kind of isolate myself for about an hour and a half every Sunday afternoon as well. And I think to myself, okay, what is the single most important thing that this organization needs to accomplish next? And just try to stay hyper-focused on that. Uh, and I can tell when I get distracted. And that's where I would say the the thing that I try to hold myself most accountable to is those those making sure we're achieving our key goals and the key most important things that we have to do and getting everybody focused and aligned around that. So I'm constantly checking in with folks. How do we do? You know, we're the organizations that I run now, we always all do EOS. So at the end of each meeting, we give the meeting a rating, even. How's the meeting doing? And those are the metrics that sort of matter the most to me is are people locked in? Are people engaged? Are we using our time well? And are we focused on the most, getting the most important thing done next? And if that's the case, I think the organization will always be very successful. I say most organizations, there's there's a silly expression, right, that we used to say all the time, uh metagenics, but a lot of the companies that I've worked at, you know, the risk is really indigestion, not starvation. We have too much to do, too many things that we can do. Uh, and so uh, you know, the risk is we try to do too many things at once. And so it's not the opposite. We we were never hungry for new ideas on how to grow the business uh and how to do new things. So it's really staying staying focused on the prize uh and making sure that you're you're not gonna uh get yourself completely distracted and thrown off. And the joke on indigestion versus starvation is is is just that it's a joke. It's not meant to be literal, but um, that makes sure you're not getting distracted by too many obscure things.

Speaker 4: 28:05

Oh, that's a great analogy though, because that is something that's easily, easily done when um when you're running a business, because there's so many different ways you can do things, but just being able to focus in on one or the fewer, what's important um and focus on that versus going down that rabbit hole. You know, that's right. Great advice right there. Now, on your on your journey in creating Sage, uh, were there any pushbacks that you you faced as a disruptor in in health? And how did you how did you handle that to stay grounded and aligned with your mission?

Speaker 2: 28:39

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of pushbacks, right? You're always worried about the competition, you're worried about, you know, where the next bit of funding is going to come from, uh, how to grow the business. I would say to me, a lot of it is, you know, a lot of the pushback we get is really around competition. You know, there's a bunch of other people uh selling you blood labs, a bunch of other people that that we're competing against. Uh, but the reality is the competitive arena isn't just me and function health or me and three other blood lab companies. The competitive arena is healthcare in general. And so I think if you can keep some perspective over the long term and say, listen, America isn't its healthiest. And there's still a lot of folks in this country and around the world that could benefit from the services that Sage offers and the ideas that we have in our roadmap that we want to bring to the market. And I think if you get too focused narrowly on the competition for tomorrow, uh, I think you can feel overwhelmed. You can feel like, okay, you've lost the bigger goal, you've lost the longer term foresight. Uh so that's usually where I get pushback and feedback and how we push through is to really just make sure we're focused on on the long term. We're not focused on just, you know, killing the competition tomorrow. There's actually, in this, in the game of healthcare, fortunately, there's plenty of room for all of us to be incredibly successful. Uh and so staying away from the zero-sum thinking, I think is is really important. Uh, and trying to think more about, okay, listen, how can can we all get into this uh this virtuous cycle and really work on the big picture, which is changing the healthcare trajectory of this country, uh, not necessarily just on beating up the next competitor.

Speaker 4: 30:08

I love it. So much insight and tips uh for our leaders and entrepreneurs out there. Great takeaway points. Now, a final question for you is if every listener could take one step today toward becoming the sage of their own health, Brent, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 30:25

Pick one thing, whether it's getting a better night's sleep, whether it's staying in calorie balance, whether it's just getting to the gym, pick one, having better relationships. I don't care which of the five things that are there, but pick one of those things and focus to the exclusion of almost everything else and just getting a little bit better at that every day. Our health is a skill. We're not going to go from dishealth to full health from one day to the next. We're not going to go from good health to optimal health from one day to the next. It's a journey. We've got to be on it for the long term. We've got to stay focused. It's the small steps, it's the continuous improvement. That's how we get any. That's how we get better at everything. So pick one thing, focus on it, and just be happy with some continuous improvement.

Speaker 4: 31:05

Yes. Great advice. Great advice. Brent, this has been such an eye-opening conversation. I know our listeners who want to explore Sage HealthSpan and start seeing their lab data in a whole new way. Is there anything else you would like to leave with our listeners before we close out?

Speaker 2: 31:20

No, this has been super awesome. I really appreciate the thought-provoking and insightful questions. It hasn't been easy to answer them all, but it's certainly been fun and interesting. So uh so please, yeah, check out the app, Sage HealthSpan. Uh, check out the website, uh, the social media. It's it's Sage HealthSpan everywhere. So we should be hopefully pretty easy to find. And uh and hopefully we can help bring some fresh insights to the folks that look at their data in a new way.

Speaker 4: 31:42

Thank you, Brent. You did great answering to questions, no problem. And thank you for being part of Raise the Script with Nutrigenomics today.

Speaker 2: 31:48

Awesome. Appreciate it.

Speaker 4: 31:50

What I love most about this conversation with Brent is how we he reframed health, not as luck or genetics alone, but as a learnable skill. You don't have to wait for a doctor to tell you you're fine. You can take charge of your data, your decisions, and your destiny. If you're a woman who leads, whether that's in a boardroom or classroom, or your own household, you can get on that track to take the lead by downloading your inner CEO blueprint at thelifebalance.com. It's a free guide that walks you through five DNA-based strategies to boost energy clarity and confidence without his dreams or burnout so you can be the CEO of your own health. And if you're listening as a healthcare or wellness professional, a pharmacist, nurse practitioner, health coach, or doctor, there's a resource for you too. Visit the same site and explore the DNA strategy starter kit. It's your roadmap for integrating Nutrigenomics into your practice so you can help clients or patients create precision wellness plans that truly last. Because health isn't guesswork, it's design. Talk to you next Friday. Until then, always remember to raise the script on health because together we can bring healthcare to higher levels.

Speaker 1: 33:02

Raise the script with Nutrigenomics is a production of InHer Glow® by LYFE Balance.