Scales Of Success Podcast

#17 - Rock Bottom to Revolution in Healthcare with Cameron Moulène

• Marcus Arredondo

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What if your biggest failure became the reason for your greatest success? In this Scale of Success Podcast episode, host Marcus Arredondo converses with Actor-turned-entrepreneur Cameron Moulène. He opens up about the moment that changed everything—becoming a single dad, battling addiction, and finding purpose beyond Hollywood. Cameron reveals how those struggles led him to create AugiHealth, a game-changing platform that puts medical data back in the hands of patients. We also unpack the hard truths of entrepreneurship, the chaos of crypto, and the lessons he took from acting into business.

Cameron Moulène is a French-American actor, entrepreneur, and founder of AugiHealth. Known for his roles in Happyland, Foursome, and A Teacher, he later transitioned into entrepreneurship, launching Non-Fungible Films and multiple startups. A dedicated single father and advocate for sobriety and innovation, Cameron’s journey is one of resilience and reinvention.

Learn more about Cameron Moulène:
Website: https://www.augihealth.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-moulene-78a027126/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronmoulene/
X: https://x.com/cameronmoulene

Episode highlights:
(2:20) Becoming a single father and the challenges of sobriety
(6:57) How sobriety influences business and fatherhood
(9:36) The inspiration behind AugiHealth and fixing healthcare
(14:36) Challenges in fixing a broken healthcare system
(17:49) Fostering deeper bonds and resilience
(24:05) Cameron’s acting career, Hollywood experiences, and rejection
(30:45) Lessons from failure and personal growth
(37:17) The power of networking in acting and business
(40:53) Non-Fungible Films, Web3, and insights on crypto space
(51:25) The vision for AugiHealth and improving healthcare
(53:33) Cameron’s daily routine and mind diet
(56:23) Outro

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Note: The transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.

Cameron Moulène: 0:00

My goal with AugiHealth is to really bring dignity back to users when it comes to their health. I want to eradicate the highest payer class in the United States, which is 65 and older and chronically ill. There are very simple level one behaviors that everyone can start to partake in for things like heart disease and diet, things that we should look at the way that we look at polio today in 20 years. These are scenarios in which very preventable micro actions throughout the day have a compound interest that make it a non-existent factor.

Marcus Arredondo: 0:32

Today's guest is Cameron Moulène, and his story is nothing short of remarkable. From a successful acting career to launching AugiHealth, cameron has mastered the art of reinvention. He shares how becoming a single father and navigating the challenges of sobriety fueled his mission to revolutionize healthcare by giving people control over their own medical data and infusing AI into the process. We talk about the lessons he took from Hollywood and how they prepared him to navigate multiple startups. My favorite parts included discussions about failure, personal transformation and why hitting rock bottom was the wake-up call he needed to build a life and company with newfound purpose. Let's start the show. Cameron Moulin, I am very excited to have you on. Thank you for joining us.

Cameron Moulène: 1:14

Thanks for having me.

Marcus Arredondo: 1:16

So, look, there's a lot of stuff that I want to talk about, not only your past acting career. I want to talk about AugiHealth and some stops along the road that I think are pretty fascinating. But I want to come out of the gates here and I want to talk about you taking custody of your son and going sober. Yeah, I'll leave it open there, and then we can sort of dive in from afterward.

Cameron Moulène: 1:41

Okay, yeah.

Marcus Arredondo: 1:42

Anything that springs to mind that you'd want to share.

Cameron Moulène: 1:45

On which issue? On which one?

Marcus Arredondo: 1:48

So I think well, first of all, as a new parent, I'm super fascinated by this, for the benefit of the audience which we'll get into. Cameron is a single dad and this was a very short stint, when you were faced with having to take custody of your son in a short amount of time, which coincided with becoming sober. So I guess the first question is what was your thought process at that moment where that was necessitated?

Cameron Moulène: 2:20

Well, it's a. Look, there's a. There's a long and shorter version of the story. I think We've got time. Yeah, good, you know.

Cameron Moulène: 2:31

The truth is that I, my son, was the greatest unplanned miracle right in my life. He was not an expected baby, but it's the best thing that he's, the best thing in my life, best thing that's ever happened to me. And from early on, we were 50-50 parents, his mom and I, and I just knew that I wanted to step up and be a part of his life. Right, I was, there was. There was no compromise there, um, despite not thinking I was ready, and um, yeah, I mean it's, it's a tragic thing his, uh, his mom passed away very unexpectedly, uh, a year ago, and for now, over a year, I've had, I've had, full custody, um, and so that was a huge shift in in both of our lives, I think. I think in in a funny way, despite, like you know, as a single dad taking on full custody. You could, you know, it would seem that that's a huge shift, but for me it it didn't feel all that different. Uh, I think for him it was a much more substantial shift, right, for obvious reasons.

Marcus Arredondo: 3:49

So what was your line of thinking when you decided to go sober, and what were your vices? That's?

Cameron Moulène: 3:55

separate. I think the honest story there is I had wanted to get sober for years. I had wanted to get sober for years. I drank too much and kind of had these long spells where I would make foolish decisions around drinking and even just partying in general. And when my son was about four months old, I had just a night that went wrong where I almost died and luckily there were no repercussions. I didn't get hurt, no one else got hurt, but it was enough of a wake-up call where I just realized and this was when Augie's mom was still around I just went it's not a you die tomorrow. It's not a question of, oh, this kid had all this potential and passed away. What a tragedy. You're leaving someone here without a father and for whatever reason. That was enough to really hit.

Cameron Moulène: 4:57

I practice a 12-step program. I'm very serious about my sobriety. I think it's, along with having had a kid, it's the greatest gift that I've ever gotten in my life, and I work that program every single day. So I've been sober four years and it's one of the best foundations of everything I do.

Marcus Arredondo: 5:16

Well, the reason I ask about the sobriety thing is there are a number of entrepreneurs I've met in my life and you know, in that Venn diagram there's inside of it a certain number that have gone sober for one reason or another and that becomes a really big focal point within their identity and sort of how they view entrepreneurship and certainly fatherhood.

Marcus Arredondo: 5:44

And so I think I'm super fascinated at this moment in my life about entrepreneurship through the lens of being a parent as well.

Marcus Arredondo: 5:53

Because you know, I think it's easy for people who've got jobs that W2 jobs, where you're, you know, serving a boss to do that job and sort of clock out and sort of do what's being required of you. But from an entrepreneurial perspective, I find that you know, what you learn in the entrepreneurial world translates to being a parent, being a responsible adult and vice versa. And I guess you know if it's not that big a role for you, that's that's also one thing. I guess you know if it's not that big a role for you, that's also one thing. But I think the discipline required to do that for someone who's attracted to that, to alcohol in this circumstance and to do it sustainably and reliably, obviously having a purpose behind it is helpful, but I guess you know what I'm most curious about is how you approached it to become a resolute part of how you operate, and has it had any influence on how you approach these entrepreneurial endeavors?

Cameron Moulène: 6:57

Yeah, I would say so. It's a multifaceted question. I think baseline removing drugs and alcohol from my recipe list was a net positive in every way. It got to a point for me that there were simply no benefits anymore. It was just a detriment, it was just a hindrance in a ton of different ways.

Cameron Moulène: 7:20

The real paradigm shift, though, I think comes out when you work any type of program with some consistency and and and earnesty for for me, you know, the my program ultimately finds itself back to a core principle trying to be of service, and I think that was a big paradigm shift as a parent, but also when you're. You know, as a parent, that's inherently what the job is. You are just of service to this tiny thing and you have to raise it and foster it and do your best in a bunch of different ways. But within a business environment, I could definitely point to a substantial net increase in productivity, creativity and also just the management of relationships for people that are working for you and you're working with.

Cameron Moulène: 8:12

Once your perspective is more geared towards okay, how are we all working to service a greater goal versus? How am I getting what I want in this moment? Because, ultimately, what I want is not always the right thing If the purpose is more driven towards what is the best possible quality that you can extract from this singular goal or your long-term vision, and how can I service that specifically? How can I just be an agent of that goal? It's a very different. Ultimately, the roads might lead to the same place, but it's a very different way of navigating it, and I think that people respond much better to the latter.

Marcus Arredondo: 8:51

Yeah Well, especially when you can't build businesses by yourself, you can come up with the idea, but ultimately, I think what drives success in those circumstances is getting the best out of the people that are on the same path right, that are working with you and for you, and how you do that is really a read on them. I mean you have to read them and determine. You know, it might be a certain path that you take to get the best out of you, but that may not be the same thing to get the best out of them, absolutely. Yeah Well, I want to talk about Augie Health. I mean cause I think it's relevant to that path that you were on. I mean, for the benefit of the audience, can you share what AugiHealth is, and then we can dive in.

Cameron Moulène: 9:36

Yeah, I mean so. So the origin story of AugiHealth you know my, my son's mom passed away from suicide and that was a long time battle with mental illness and she wasn't able to get care that she wanted. And that was kind of a secondary component. The primary component for me, starting it, was my son was diagnosed with autism when he was two and he was non-verbal and I had just kind of winded down a last thing that I was doing and you know I had time and I had some resources and so I decided I wanted to do every throw everything I could at trying to give my son the best chances, because I knew how important early intervention was. And so, you know, over the course of about six months I got my son into nine different providers who he was seeing. They were all using different EHRs, electronic health records or EMRs. None of these, the provider, the team, was incredible, right, like he had a top tier clinical team, but none of them were communicating and I thought that that was, you know, a silly, non-optimized way to manage a very complex data set. So what I did was, you know, very nascent model I fine-tuned to and it was trained on, you know, denver projects like ABA clinical research, duke's clinical research, ucla Semmel Institute's clinical research and then just general data around autism, speech therapy and all the different approaches. And then I took all of his medical records, which I demanded from his providers, and cross-pollinated and unified those all in this model and output a singular protocol that I shared back with his provider and I said this is the game plan. It's informed by every other specialist vector as well. We need to be a unified front in servicing my son and within six months, what was probably a couple of words became almost completely verbal and within a year and a half he's now high, functioning and doing incredible and is on track to go back into just a regular school track or accelerated. So that was a really compelling case study. Then, coupled with what happened with his mom and her inability to get adequate care around her you know the mental battle that she was fighting, the mental illness battle she was fighting. Yeah, I went to a buddy at Google and I said look, I think that I fine-tuned a few models. Now I just had this case study with my son. That was really successful.

Cameron Moulène: 12:10

Help me to automate this so that a lot of these big problems in healthcare where data is siloed and it's incredibly frustrating and the HIPAA should really be short for HIPAA critical because of all the backwards logic behind it and despite good intention, right, these bureaucratic policies are very good.

Cameron Moulène: 12:31

So our whole goal was to kind of refine what the big problems were and we settled on self-sovereignty and ownership of your medical records is the first step towards returning dignity to patients and also giving them an arsenal that they can arm themselves with and also arm their providers with.

Cameron Moulène: 12:48

So what we do is, broadly speaking, custom AI models will unify your wearable data so agnostically, any wearable Oura Ring, apple Watch, so on It'll take all of your medical records and it will take any lab results and then real-time daily feedback and unify that into a singular health record that the patient, the individual, owns and then they can self-direct that record across a list of providers.

Cameron Moulène: 13:14

We also build in AI coach protocols in the app where you can begin to take actionable steps within a protocol that's personalized for you on your own and really have self-agency in that. And we build it for individuals, we don't build it for providers. That's. The other huge issue is that all of these big software platforms are built with the provider in mind and you have to keep the provider in mind. You got to make it easy for doctors to care, doctors to care, but their whole monetization strategy is patient attribution or practice subscription, whereas we're an individual subscription focused on the best possible experience for the user. And so those are the two big shifts that we're trying to build in essentially a self-owned health record.

Marcus Arredondo: 14:04

I have very limited exposure to the healthcare industry until my son was born and since then it's been jaw-dropping in what I've discovered in terms of accessing his medical records themselves, how uncohesive, incohesive those all are. So there seems to be a really strong demand on this. What I've encountered is resistance in a number of different respects from the medical system. Have you encountered that as it relates to integrating these?

Cameron Moulène: 14:34

Oh, I mean, it was a battle Certain EMRs. So an EMR is, generally speaking, something that a broader institution will use as opposed to an EHR, and the records are far less interoperable. They're really a closed loop within the system. They wouldn't give you digital records of your own labs, right, and so I quite literally had hundreds of pages of labs, diagnostics, analyses that I had to scan myself, self-upload to get into this model I built, and that was the first frustration angle, which was I don't even feel like I own these things.

Cameron Moulène: 15:12

These are tons of medical records and I don't even feel like I'm getting adequate access to them, let alone valuable insight, actionable insight, because it's all intentionally structured and verbiage.

Cameron Moulène: 15:25

That is for medical professional and that's all fine and well.

Cameron Moulène: 15:29

But if you really want to, I believe if you really want to instill behavior change, if you really want to foster a platform that can motivate protocol and actual behavior change, you need to empower people with meaningful insights, and if they don't understand what they're looking at, they're not going to be able to act on it or respond to it. So those are some of the big hurdles that we went into while unifying all this stuff is A you got to get it all and fortunately there are quite a few federal laws TEFCA and the Cures Act, namely over the last eight years, each TEFCA more recently, cures Act namely over the last eight years, each TEFCA more recently that force interoperability of these EHRs. So these records need to be shared digitally. They're shared in FHIR, which is a healthcare code, and there are complexities in that too, but they need to be shared. They're required to be federally required to be shared, and so that's a great leverage point for a company like us that's trying to make it really easy for people to aggregate these things that are so scattered.

Marcus Arredondo: 16:33

So I want to. I think we should come back to Augie Health and sort of how it's playing out but I want to bring in something that can't be overlooked, which is your acting career. Yeah, and that was not for an insignificant amount of time. Are you acting any longer? I am, I'm still, you're open.

Cameron Moulène: 16:48

Yeah, you guys can hit up William Morris, if you ever want to book me for something.

Marcus Arredondo: 16:54

I'm just curious how that evolved, because I'm going to do, I'm going to. I'm going to name a couple of things that I found in researching. But you studied in London, correct? Yeah, I went to both at the London School of Economics and the London School of Dramatic Arts Royal.

Marcus Arredondo: 17:10

Academy of Dramatic Arts. Yeah, okay. So I mean you're pedigreed, right. I mean you've got an education of substance, at least you know from an outsider's perspective. Well, and I also read something, which is that you've always considered yourself an extrovert, which, having met you once, seems accurate. Is that fair?

Cameron Moulène: 17:34

Yeah, I have no issue communicating with people.

Marcus Arredondo: 17:38

Okay. So, and you know, on that note, I'm actually just curious how did that? How was being an extrovert as a father to a nonverbal child?

Cameron Moulène: 17:49

That's a great question. It was tough to be honest with you, Not in the way I mean, maybe in the way you might think, I don't know. You know, the hardest thing is and I would say this to my son's care team early on was all I care about really is that my son has this, you know this. He's now on a course, thankfully, that like this is, without a doubt, through now, but at two you find out. Okay, there's, there's something different about my kid. I don't want to say wrong, but different. He's not talking to me. Is this forever? Is this a permanent thing? Is he going to be able to be a self-reliant adult?

Cameron Moulène: 18:41

The goal is really simple I want my kid to have a girlfriend when he's a teenager. I'd like him to do all the fun things that teenagers do. I want him to be a self-reliant adult and I want him to be a contributing member of society. That doesn't need me when my time comes. And that's what we're working towards here. What the road looks like to get there, I'm kind of agnostic to let's just throw everything in the kitchen sink and try our best to get him there. But yeah, I mean just on an emotional level.

Cameron Moulène: 19:16

Yeah, even today, like look, my son is unbelievably bright. The first couple words that he would say, besides mama, dada, he was non-communicative, but you could show him any dinosaur and he'd go Pachycephalosaurus, Pteranodon, and he knew all that. And so you'd go okay, it's literally all in there. It's just a question of how you're looking through the files, right, Like the files are just structured differently than a normal brain. And so even today, like he is unbelievably bright and now his receptive language and sequential thinking sequential thinking is is getting stronger and stronger, but he doesn't talk the way that a normal or a neurotypical four and a half year old does.

Cameron Moulène: 19:56

And so there's this. There is always like this part of me, that's like I wish, or I look forward to the day when we can like have a conversation about your ideas, Like I can really get a look into your mind by you just sharing, like, hey, I had this thought today, you know, like that's still we're not there yet, but I'm excited for it. And when I didn't think he was going to speak, I was. There was probably a period of mourning, it preemptively right, Feeling like, oh, this might never happen and luckily, again, we're all pretty confident that he's going to get there and far beyond, but yeah.

Marcus Arredondo: 20:34

In anticipation of this conversation, I had been thinking a lot about you because my son just recently turned two and he's engaging more than he used to and with each stage of engagement I find and you know, I sometimes wonder if this is just a shortfall in me or something that I may be being superficial on. But it has been extraordinarily helpful in bonding with him to get that reciprocation, to get that feedback, and it sort of compounds. You know, I don't want to say the love, the love's always been there, but it compounds the, uh, the bond, you know, I think is the simplest way to put it, and I I don't know if this is a tough question, but, um, you know, have you found, as his communication has improved, that the, the bond, has changed in any way or thickened?

Cameron Moulène: 21:28

oh yeah, I think I think I love my kid more every day. I don't look I. I had a very unique early year with my son where he was primarily in my custody for the first like six months, and so I got to experience something that most dads just don't, which is like I did all the bottles like I was. I was in the early yeah maybe state, oh yeah. You can't help but have a really strong bond with anything when you're that involved and, it's sure, super early development. But I think, yeah, I think.

Cameron Moulène: 22:08

I think I grow closer to my kid every day. It's at this age they just change so much that it's amazing to watch. But I also, what I'd say, you know, you make me think about it is the despite the fear and the mourning of my own, you know self-created anxiety. My son has always had a really good sense of humor, you know, and so when I'm being myself, which is generally a pretty extroverted, and with him especially, like really goofy dad, he's always found it funny, and so I've always been able to get that like that positive feedback, feedback of him just laughing at me or doing a bit, and so that was always a huge silver lining. It was like maybe we're not having philosophical conversations yet, but I can make a good fart joke and you're going to fall on the floor laughing, so I always had that.

Marcus Arredondo: 23:06

Laughter goes a long way, man. When Miles started laughing, that's it was so I always had that. Laughter goes a long way, man.

Cameron Moulène: 23:07

That when, when uh miles started laughing, that was a whole game changer, oh yeah man, I mean when you get a little guy or girl like in stitches over something goofy, for sure, where it is the best feeling, it sure is man um, okay, so go back to the, the, the question that I was I was going at before, which is your acting career, you know I'm I look, I want to sort of leave it open.

Marcus Arredondo: 23:32

I mean, because most people don't have, uh, the opportunity to have a, uh, an audience like you did, to experience hollywood in that way, to have access to, uh, you know, parties for sure, uh, but a number of other things as it relates to being on mtv and being in feature films, and it sounds like this is something that you've always, you'd always wanted, right, I mean, you were pursuing it with intention. Absolutely, I mean, I'll, I'll leave it open. There's a number of different directions I'd want to go.

Cameron Moulène: 24:05

I wanted to start acting when I was, I think, 11. My best friend's dad was a very notable actor and kind of became my hero. I just thought he was the coolest guy on the planet and I wanted to be just like him.

Marcus Arredondo: 24:20

Can we share who that is? I think I know who it is from reading it.

Cameron Moulène: 24:24

Robert Downey, yeah, and I idolized him. I still do. I still have a very close relationship with him and he's one of the best people I ever met. So at that age I really wanted to be Robert. I was like I got to be as funny and as quick and talented as this guy and I kind of stumbled into it. I had an acting coach who my mom found for me at 13. And he introduced me to a manager. And look, I look back on my career now and I'm like, wow, you know, you booked 13 pretty notable jobs and you worked pretty consistently over that period and, yeah, statistically it was a great acting career.

Cameron Moulène: 25:03

I always felt like I was very much B-list, you know, like Mr Close, but no Cigar through that career. And RADA was the notable place to go study. I did the single acting school in LA as well. I was at Lee Strasberg, I was at Leslie Kahn, ivana Chubbuck, anthony Mind. I mean I know them all. I've gone to all of them. It was my entire life. I would read a play a day. I'd watch a new film off the AFI list. I've watched that top 100 list probably 10 times.

Cameron Moulène: 25:46

I was a like a cinephile and a and a hardcore thespian and my. The way I defined it back then honestly, was like what was so frustrating is I always felt like I was close but no cigar. You know I was. I was always in the mix. We love him. He's like getting a call back to producers for the big thing that's going to change his career and and then I just wouldn't book it. And so you know I it's.

Cameron Moulène: 26:09

It was just a brutal. It's a brutal industry. It's you got you can. You can be as good as you can be. And I wouldn't even say that I was, because a lot of the time I'd be honestly like hungover or a little stoned. Um, and, and that was a byproduct of, yeah, growing up in LA and just you're surrounded, you're at self-proxy to ultra celebrity and that access it's very little supervision, lots of access to money Not me personally, but around and then drugs and adult behavior, sure, and then you grow up real quick. But I loved acting and I still do. It's one of those things where I go. If you can make a great living at just playing make-believe for fun, do that, like totally do it.

Cameron Moulène: 27:11

I had my son and made a decision which at the time was kind of tough, which was like this can't be my primary thing, like it's not that I don't love it, I definitely have a love-hate relationship with it, but I can't have a year because this was the truth is that some years you'll book an MTV show, or you'll book the lead on another thing or in the mood, and you'll make a good amount of money. Right, you're not making Johnny Depp quote money but you're making enough money like, oh, this is enough to live. But then you'll have one or two years where you do not work. You are Mr Close, but no cigar, and it's hard to get your agent on the phone. And I couldn't do that. I was like if I, if that were the case, I'd I'd be, I'd be putting my son at risk.

Marcus Arredondo: 27:54

So I, you know, I just made a shift and started companies well, I've always thought, uh, I have a few friends that are in the film industry in a variety of roles and one thing I've always found parallel to, especially in real estate, but I would apply it to entrepreneurialism as well. Entrepreneurship is you sort of doing free work, right, you got to go to tryouts. You're getting constant rejection. Yeah, you'll get a pop here and there. If you're fortunate, you get several pops in a row and you can do it consistently. Having a flash in the pan, you know, great, 12 months or 18 months is pretty spectacular.

Marcus Arredondo: 28:36

But for some of these people to do it for 20 years, to string that along, is akin to being, you know, an MVP quarterback in the NFL, or maybe even more challenging than that, yeah, but I guess the reason I bring all that up is do you find any of those I mean? And also I'll do one last thing on that point, which is the rejection the insecurity of that consistent paycheck, I think, builds a form of emotional adaptability, a confidence in you've gone through some failures, whether, however you define it, but a a. Well, I've gone through some failures, whether, however you define it, but a a well, I've gone through some failures and that's a range, right.

Marcus Arredondo: 29:11

I mean, I hesitate to use failure because I think they're no, they're all just sort of learning lessons, right.

Cameron Moulène: 29:16

Just exactly. At least, I see failure as the greatest opportunity life can give you to learn something.

Marcus Arredondo: 29:23

Well, and I just want to hit this, hit this last point, which is uh, is because I do want to go down the Robert Downey Jr questioning for a second, not about him specifically, but I do remember him and even I think it was Joaquin Phoenix, where they both had a fizzle, where they just evaporated.

Marcus Arredondo: 29:38

I think for Joaquin it was when he did his rap movie for a minute and he was sort of persona non grata in Hollywood and I think it was a 60 minutes interview where he said, after he sort of bottomed out, he had lost the fear of failure anymore and as a result, he was able to take on more challenging products. He was able to be confrontational with what fear he may have had before that prevented him from taking some of these chances and as a result, I think similar to Robert Downey Jr, I think, after he became sober and you know, with Iron man obviously being the critical thing, but they became highly profitable they had sort of a resurrection again and I think in many ways that can, at least in part, be attributed to achieving that lesson learned so strong that you sort of can put together a path forward that's meaningful. I'll stop talking, but I'm wondering if you have any comments, as it relates to your experience and then going into the entrepreneurial world, I do I mean?

Cameron Moulène: 30:46

look, the first thing is I never had the luxury of being as successful as either of those guys on the first go around free their bottoms. That said, I yeah, I can't speak for them, I know. I mean, I know Robert's story very well and you know it's story very well and it's the greatest comeback story of all time. Yeah for sure, Case in point, right, it's just the greatest comeback story of all time and I think that it's a testament to how seriously he takes his life and his work and his relationships. For me, what I did have was the luxury of a thousand let's call them failures, but a thousand compounded failures, of no, we're not going to book you for this and I actually think that, if responded to appropriately, what it did for me was it just made me very comfortable with hearing no and saying okay, great, thanks.

Marcus Arredondo: 31:52

Next, like sure, on to the next one no's are better than maybes yeah, oh, absolutely, because you're not sitting around.

Cameron Moulène: 32:00

So my, I, I would say that I'm, I'm. I've got a pretty thick skin to when things don't go the way I want today. I'm always pretty quick to go great, now, what right, you know? Okay, fine, it's like I, I, um, I don't presume to have the answer how things are going to go. All I can do is respond to them the best possible way that I can, and then you're just, you're kind of at the whim of what's going on.

Marcus Arredondo: 32:30

Um, yeah, well, you can only operate on the things that you can control and I think having a child you start to put perspective on how many things are actually outside of your control I had a skewed perception of that. Before a child came around, I thought I had a lot more influence over outcomes than I really did.

Cameron Moulène: 32:49

Oh, I thought I was master of the universe. I thought I was quite literally untouchable, and it took a couple of very sobering events to chip away at the hubris, by the way, and I look at those things today as the best things that ever happened, absolutely. Can you give an example? Yeah, I got arrested in college. I went to syracuse university and I I got arrested for, like you know, I had some drugs in my room but I it got roped into a much broader thing that I actually had nothing to do with. And I spent five nights in jail in New York because I was booked on a Friday and in New York you don't get arraigned until Monday. And there was a moment where I thought I was looking at like five years because I got caught with drugs on a school campus and so that's a minimum of five years in New York, and so that's a minimum of five years in New York.

Cameron Moulène: 33:54

And at the end, the fear and the realization that I was not Hercules right, but also the fear that I had just imploded my entire life off a series of very dumb decisions, was enough of a wake-up call that I went back to LA, I doubled down, I focused, I booked the biggest job I ever had, which was this show Foursome that went for like four seasons.

Cameron Moulène: 34:11

No, no, no, no, no. I booked Happyland, the MTV show that you were talking about, and at the time, happyland ended up not being a big success, but at the time, pre-release, it was meant to be a huge show. They had Neil Maron and Craig Zaid and these guys were like Hollywood legends producing it, and, given that I wasn't involved with the broader situation that you know, the police were actually focused on, they just said, look, this kid was a dual major and booked the lead on a big show. If he doesn't get arrested for a year, like we don't need to press charges. And so it worked out, but it was a it was incredibly humbling event that you know. Had it not happened, I probably would have just repeated that same dumb behavior. Right, yeah.

Marcus Arredondo: 34:57

Well, and I think sometimes those are probably better results. You know, coming to the brink of absolute devastation is probably better than minor slaps on the wrist Cause I'm not sure those slaps really yield behavioral differences.

Cameron Moulène: 35:14

I really believe that the best catalyst for change for a person, like genuine, authentic change often is them hitting their bottom, and whatever the bottom is for you is different than it is for me, is different than it is from the guy next door, but I think that people need to get to a point of internal desperation. It's almost it's a death of self right. You got to be at a point where you go I don't like who I am and I want this version of me to die and I want to move on from it, and I think the mature response to that is not like I want to die, it's I need to change and I want to be somebody else, or I want to be a better version of this guy. Sure, um, and I have had many instances in my life where that's exactly where I got. I got to, okay, I need to, I need to grow, or I'm or I'm going to keep repeating this and this clearly isn't working anymore.

Marcus Arredondo: 36:12

Yeah, that is absolutely a through line, uh, from, I would venture to say, every single guest I've had, which is that a some part of them must die off, and I would suggest that the most accomplished ones tend to have a lot of deaths in some form or another.

Marcus Arredondo: 36:32

And I think that's healthy. I mean, if you look at most, I mean I'm going to wax philosophical here, but you know, if there's no rock or water molecule, that's the same in the river from year one to year seven. Is it the same river Right? The river from year one to year seven, is it the same river right? And our blood, our cells, all are brand new after however many months or years. Uh, why would our identity not also shift in that same capacity? But, um, I include the movement. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So on that note, I guess. Uh, well, two things. The last question will be a launch into our next topic, but before we leave it, I want to ask what's your perspective if augie has interest in going, in acting?

Cameron Moulène: 37:16

oh I, whatever he wants to do, okay, it would be a hilarious turn of events if a once non-verbal child became a required uh, voice puppet production, and I would find that really entertaining. You know, actually there's one component you touched on something that I thought was interesting and it kind of relates back to this, which is you know, in Hollywood you were saying how relationship like these different people, the ones that became really successful and were able to maintain that success, you equated it to like being an NFL quarterback and in hindsight, I actually think that the big through line and similarity between Hollywood, real estate and potentially also entrepreneurship, ultimately is your ability to network. You know that's. I think one of my strong suits as an entrepreneur now is that I'm very good at articulating the vision of my company or someone's company I've invested in and building a really solid team around that idea. I wasn't very good at that in high school and I think that that was because my intent and my and that's when I was an actor my intent and my objective was always very self-seeking. It was always exclusively focused from the paradigm of like cast me, I'm the fucking guy, I'm so cute and I'm funny Versus like how I felt about the project or how I could be involved in it and benefit it, about the project or how I could be involved in it and benefit it.

Cameron Moulène: 38:53

And I think that the people who become the most successful and maintain that success are the ones who build and foster the best network in that field that they're really pursuing. And it's like why people are so critical of like, oh, hollywood is a nepo baby industry. Because they're born into that network. They manage it in a way, right, like stuff to be really good at managing those relationships. But I look back and especially the kids who are now just absolutely crushing it, I feel like their secret sauce outside of just being talented right, because you got to be talented, you got to be good. When you get the opportunity and you're put in front of the camera and Spielberg yells action, you better bring it and you better be really good or you're never going to get it again. But beyond that, because there are millions of good actors like I really think that their talent was their ability to manage and foster relationships. That would be get more work over time and that was something I wasn't good at at all and that was something I wasn't good at at all.

Marcus Arredondo: 39:48

Well, that actually sort of goes to that next question I was going to ask when it's multiple prongs here, and I just want to think that I actually would call that more skilled and talent in one way, just that you can actually learn that behavior.

Marcus Arredondo: 40:01

You can acquire it over time. Some people have it naturally, but you can actually diligently work at that skill set, you can observe it, and I actually that was sort of the question, which is, what skill sets from the acting business have you been able to utilize in the entrepreneur world? But before you answer, let me just sort of add one thing Because another business that you had was non-fungible films, because another business that you had was non fungible films, yep, and that, if you can give sort of a brief overview of what that is, but that seemed to be a transition from just being an actor to actually a storyteller, to being an organizer, to be a collaborator, to being a visionary, and that seems to encapsulate a little bit of an evolution in who you were. Maybe I'm wrong, but I wonder if you have comments on that.

Cameron Moulène: 40:53

Yeah, well, I draw a lot from all of my past experiences, I think, from what I learned. I think, if I were to map it out, as an actor I was completely self-seeking. As a young entrepreneur I was partly self-seeking. As a young entrepreneur, I was partly self-seeking, and today I'd like to think that's reduced more. And so you know, with non-fungible films was my third company and I think at that point I'd been in crypto for a long time, just aware of crypto, and had owned some which I won't get into. But I had this really great idea that I still think is a great idea and unfortunately the business went through what I would equate to a literal odyssey of unfortunate events. Odyssey of unfortunate events, but it was basically to build a bridge between Web3 and traditional Hollywood whereby this nascent IP at the time it was mostly NFTs, now it's mostly meme coins, but early IP could develop with traditional Hollywood mechanisms and structures and build into real brands and building. And then also these very established creators could come into a more decentralized ecosystem and bring value to their thousand biggest fans, 10,000 biggest fans that want to onboard early and support the vision so that that creator could own the majority as opposed to having to share it with some corporate end Right. So there was this very two-way beneficial model, an extensive white paper and how we would structure things.

Cameron Moulène: 42:35

I was always A really worried, especially at that time. This was like 2021, the SEC made it almost impossible to do. We had to be very, very careful about these being commodities and not issuing any kind of securities with promise of return. Today, everyone launches a meme corner. They don't care anymore, but at that time it was very uncertain what the landscape was going to look like. We never wanted to launch any kind of a token and monetize the space, but we did. What I had become really good at at that point was selling the idea, and so we had this incredible idea and we were able to really rally a big community around it in Web3. And then I was able to go and get you know Seth MacFarlane and Downey and all these big names that we were going to have these huge NFT drops around and we were like exploring, doing a production for the board AP art club with like over 120 of the board apes that had signed up to be a part of it, and they were all these amazing budding prospects. And then FTX happened. Yeah, the entire crypto space nuked about 40% a day. Every celebrity went I'm not touching this. I just saw Tom Brady sued for being a part of FTX and then that was really just a slow simmer because we had only raised so much capital and there was no way that I wanted to go and do another NFT sale to get more money in, to go and go, because it just felt like this race to the bottom and NFTs really got out of the zeitgeist interest.

Cameron Moulène: 44:18

And it's also, to be quite honest, I got worn down. Yeah, I got really, really worn down. Building in crypto, building in crypto, like I'd said, I've been in crypto for a very good amount of time, but to build a company where you have, call it, 30,000 community members and those community members all feel like it's their company is a huge opportunity and a huge responsibility. But it's also incredibly stressful because you have all the stress of being an entrepreneur and building a small private startup and all the burden of feeling like it's a publicly traded company and shareholders they're not shareholders, but people that think they're shareholders coming at you being like you're fucking this up. You're a fucking. It's some guy, like whatever in India, who's just mad at you for no reason. You're a fucking.

Cameron Moulène: 45:09

It's some guy, like whatever in india, who's just mad at you for no reason, and it was exhausting, uh, and I got to a point where I was like, look, we, we gave this our best swing. I ended up putting a lot of my own money in to try and keep it going and we built some ai tools that generated, yeah, images and stuff, and I just went I can't, I can't do it anymore and we'd run out of money, so it didn't work. But it didn't work, but it was. There will be I believe at least there will be a company that takes a similar model, probably tokenizing it, and then creates a really interesting incentive for big creators to own their IP but share that strategy with tokens to initial communities. And I think you'll see that probably in the next year and a half, given how this administration seems to be going around crypto. I hope it happens. I hope somebody just does what we tried to do, but does it better.

Marcus Arredondo: 46:04

Well, I think this is the future, regardless of the administration. It's just a matter of time, it's a matter of when, not if, in my opinion. But taking on investors I can relate to, because it's a whole different animal, and I can relate to just being completely burnt out from a really grueling process, especially which I just want to sort of pick on a little bit that you mentioned, which was, you know, I spent in this category, but at the time the future looked very different than it does in hindsight, right.

Marcus Arredondo: 46:42

I mean you didn't know that FTX was going to go down and to a large degree, like the crypto world, is decentralized. Obviously it's something that was marked to be in some ways asymmetrical or uncorrelated to the broader market. Yeah, but as more institutions started to invest in it, that separation became a little more correlated than it once was, and so now, all of a sudden, what shouldn't have been influencing it, like interest rates or other economic factors, they start to get more tethered together than they once were, which is probably not how you viewed it at its inception. I'm saying this as a statement. It's really a question to you, not how you viewed it at its inception. I'm saying this as a statement.

Cameron Moulène: 47:31

It's really a question to you. If you agree with that, take my response. I think is that specifically to that is I think Polymarket is the perfect example, if you're familiar with that business is the perfect example of markets will market.

Marcus Arredondo: 47:43

Can you share that for the audience?

Cameron Moulène: 47:45

Polymarket is just a website in which you can bet on just about anything. Right, and I think that they became notable in the US public zeitgeist because, while the polls were so drastically down, the middle of the last presidential election, polymarket had Trump winning in a landslide, and so it was an interesting indicator for what actual public decision making would have looked like. Beyond that, I think that, ultimately, that's where crypto is going. I agree that the landscape today looks completely different than it did then. My own mistakes as a founder aside, yeah, yeah, they were just a ton of unforeseen. Yeah, I mean we also. You know, you, you run into so many, so many issues in a space where self-custody is a component. You know we were our discord. Along with every other major project. Discord at the time got hacked and that ended up like $170,000 got stolen, and I felt so bad that I paid everybody out myself and I go oh, it wasn't even our fault, by the way, discord had a token issue in which you Right and I paid everybody back, and then all the other founders came to me and they were like you're a moron, these people don't care, and that was Discord's fault. I'm like they own, they clicked the link, they own the thing and I was like, yeah, but I don't know. So it was just. You know, it's just learning curve and how that whole space navigates. It's a.

Cameron Moulène: 49:24

I have a very love-hate relationship with crypto. I think that it is a space of very often very here's what it is. You're dealing with two extremes. I think that space can be defined by some of the most intelligent people in the world who are truly and earnestly trying to decentralize finance for the benefit of humanity as a whole, and there are some very compelling arguments for why that should be done. You also have some of the most base, ignorant, money-hungry lunatics who are just in it for profit and are just. The number goes up, and those two groups live in harmony. On crypto Twitter, you never know who you're going to get on any given day, but they are not necessarily aligned and you have to.

Cameron Moulène: 50:20

As a founder in crypto and I admire some really exceptional ones you've got to be able to balance both. You've got to be able to also communicate with both, and I think one thing I learned about myself is I'm very comfortable, despite being an expert. I am very comfortable talking to any single person or group of people about an idea or a vision, but I don't want to be, and I don't like being, the comms guy who's on 24-7, needing to communicate all the different, because my brain doesn't work that way. I mean, you can't operate at the same time. You're doing that. No, I need time alone to collect my thoughts, and some of these founders it's. It's amazing they're they're running the company while also talking to a hundred thousand people all throughout the day on Twitter, right, you know, and constantly communicating, building in real time, and I just wasn't very good at that. I did not and I hated it too. I just really didn't like it. So I know that we need a great CMO at Augie Health.

Marcus Arredondo: 51:16

So what do you think you bring from those past experiences to AugiHealth and what do you envision for AugiHealth ultimately becoming Well, I think there were a ton of lessons in all of that.

Cameron Moulène: 51:29

Ultimately, my goal with AugiHealth is to really bring dignity back to users when it comes to their health, so that they can have meaningful ownership. 65 and older and chronically ill there are very simple level one behaviors that everyone can start to partake in that, with very few outlier edge cases, make it very hard to become 65 and older and chronically ill for things like heart disease and diabetes Just things that we should look at the way that we look at polio today in 20 years. Right, there's no reason outside of somebody who's being born with a diabetic condition like type two. These are scenarios in which very preventable micro actions throughout the day have a compound interest that make it a non-existent factor and have a radical impact on your life overall, and my goals are to build this company very thoughtfully.

Cameron Moulène: 52:35

I think that a lot of we've talked on it. I think that for me as a founder, the big paradigm shift from how can I be of service to something bigger than myself was the thing I cared most about. Now, and also because this vision had such a big impact on my son, I know that it can have something similar to millions of lives, and that's what drives me to work. Absolutely yeah and undeniably. That's the thing that I get up every day and I'm like no, this. I know that this could be a great thing for humanity, and so I. I will stop at nothing to make this a reality.

Marcus Arredondo: 53:16

So, as we wrap this up, something I'm I'm always sort of interested in, and you just mentioned it getting up every day what, what's your, how do you manage your day typically? What? What is an ideal day look like for Cameron?

Cameron Moulène: 53:28

I mean I on a school day.

Cameron Moulène: 53:30

Especially as a single dad. Yeah, on a school day I'm up probably at around 6 am. I get everything ready for my kiddo, pack the lunch, get everything all lined up, breakfast and such and feed our pup, and then I get him to school and then then I probably work, either hit the gym right after I drop him off or I work until about 12 and then I'll go to the gym when it's empty, but like it best right then. Oh yeah, where else is at lunch, and then work from probably two to five, hang out with my kid for three and a half hours, do all the dad duty things, and then I probably work another hour or two, if there's anything left to do for that day.

Cameron Moulène: 54:13

The work I also want to clarify like I don't, for I structure my work days differently than I think most people do. I don't have a because you're, as a founder, there's not like a, nobody's given me tasks, sure, so I. I break it up into a work sprint, which is a two hour work sprint where all the emails I have to answer, all the small tasks that need to get done, all the subscriptions that need to get done, all those things. There's a research sprint where every day I select like one or two things that I don't think I know enough about, and then I'm just researching and trying to learn as much of those things as I can. And then there's an analysis sprint where it's all about reading over everything that is important or relevant for the next day, and then there's variations to that. But when I break things into blocks where there's one singular focus, I seem to get more done.

Marcus Arredondo: 55:05

Yeah, time blocking is another very common thing, I think, among many of the guests here. Any books, podcasts, films, other sort of media that speaks to you right now, that is moving your needle.

Cameron Moulène: 55:24

I'm reading Beginning of Infinity Really good book, enjoying it. Just started it Otherwise. Otherwise I try to read at least. I mean, when I'm working a ton I don't do this, but I try to read at least a book every two weeks just so that, yeah, my, my non-college finished brain stays sharp. I have to do a little more than everybody else um, all right, well, I I loved this conversation.

Marcus Arredondo: 55:49

Any closing thoughts, uh, from your end?

Cameron Moulène: 55:53

um, no, man, I mean, it's a pleasure being here. It was great that we ran into each other. Yeah, it was great, great being here, and and some great questions too thank you, uh.

Marcus Arredondo: 56:04

What's the best way for people to stay up to date with Augihealth?

Cameron Moulène: 56:09

follow us on all the socials we're launching in 2025.

Marcus Arredondo: 56:14

We'll include it. Today is 2025, sir.

Cameron Moulène: 56:17

I know we're launching in Q1 of this year AugiHealth.

Marcus Arredondo: 56:21

AugiHealth. And if somebody wants to get a hold of you or follow you, what's the best We'll include it in the show notes too.

Cameron Moulène: 56:30

Yeah, my name Cameron Mulan. I'm on all the socials.

Marcus Arredondo: 56:33

Thank you so much. Thank you, man. It's great having you on. Yeah, likewise.