IAM1836 – Podcast Host and Author Helps Clients Fix Digestion and Activate Awesome Health

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Wade T. Lightheart Teaser 00:00

Then they go see their doctor and they get on a proton pump or something like that. I ran into those problems. Once I figured out how to solve them, I realized, okay, here are the early indicators of where someone is going off course how you correct that before you run into a major disease or dysfunction.

Intro 00:17

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:42

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we've hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners, just like you, what I like to call the CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month, we are focusing on CEO Hacks and CEO Nuggets. This is by far one of my favorite questions I asked on the show. In other words, I asked, what are the apps, books, and habits that make you more effective and efficient. Those were the CEO hacks. Then I asked for a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or something that you might tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine. Those were the CEO nuggets. That's what we'll focus on this month and some of this top ones that can instantly impact your business.

I love all the questions, but with every episode, I thought I would walk away with something I could look at and implement rigt there to save the precious resources, time and money. Or I would also learn about the advice, tips and tidbits or tools of the trade on how to level up our organization. So you'll hear some of these this month. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Wade Lightheart of the Awesome Health Podcast and co-founder of BiOptimizers. Wade, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Wade T. Lightheart 02:19

Great to be here, Gresh. Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 02:22

No problem. I appreciate having you on Wade. What I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about you so people can hear about all the awesome things that you're doing.

Wade T. Lightheart, host of the Awesome Health Podcast, is a three-time All Natural National Bodybuilding Champion, Advisor to the American Anti Cancer Institute, and Director of Education at BiOptimizers Nutrition, one of the world's most innovative nutrition centers supplement companies. He is also the author of several books, including the best-selling book, Staying Alive in a Toxic World and The Wealthy Backpacker.

Wade, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Wade T. Lightheart 02:55

Sure I am.

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Gresham Harkless 02:56

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question that I had for you was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Wade T. Lightheart 03:04

I think I was unemployable, but by the time I hit the age of 25 or 26 years old, I had kicked around a bunch of different jobs, mostly, everything from manual labor to working in stores to warehouses and all this sort of stuff, being a doorman, a bartender.

I realized that I was really more of an independent thinker and those types of situations just didn't work well for me. I decided to strike out on my own and start my own company and never looked back ever since.

Gresham Harkless 03:31

Nice. Yeah. So you decide to blaze your own trail and create your own path.

Wade T. Lightheart 03:33

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 03:34

Awesome. Now I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear a little bit more about what you're doing with BiOptimizers and your podcast.

Wade T. Lightheart 03:40

Basically our company, we fix digestion. That's our tagline. And our bottom line is our mission is to end physical suffering and activate awesome health. My co-founder and I Matt Gallant. We were both personal trainers. We do it. That's where I got into the industry of my own kind of CEO. My own company started just as a company of one where I was a personal trainer and I ended up serving a lot of CEOs, was very good and a great insight that paved the way for the future.

But what we found is that about 12% of the hospital visits right now are gastrointestinal-based conditions and many of the pharmaceutical treatments don't actually address the fundamental foundational problems. These conditions are growing rapidly across the population, and it's having a huge impact. I think last year it cost over 150 billion gastrointestinal-related diseases. I had my own gastrointestinal problem and in 2003 I competed in the Mr Universe contest. After that, I gained 42 pounds of fat and water in 11 weeks. I'd really blown out my digestion on following a performance-based diet as to a lot of CEOs who push hard mentally, but will often suffer physically.

That was humbling. Fortunately, I found a doctor that helped me rebuild my body from the inside out and it was so effective. I recaptured my health and my performance within six months, but I went to a new level. We coached over 15, 000 people from our online business. After that, we started an online business simultaneously. From there, we realized that there are a lot of people are suffering from this problem. Ultimately, we moved into becoming a company that solves digestive health-related issues, which are so common.

Gresham Harkless 05:06

Exactly. Exactly. That makes perfect sense. And how do people understand that they have these issues? Like you mentioned, the digestion issues. Is that something that you can just see? Or does it take place after the fact that you realize that I have an issue?

Wade T. Lightheart 05:18

It starts out relatively simply, starts out with feeling bloated after you eat or it starts with acid reflux or constipation or feeling sluggish in the morning, waking up with brain fog. These are how these things start and then maybe excessive weight gain or trouble sleeping or all sorts of these kinds of tiny side effects that people will take some tums for, or they'll take some Pepto Bismol because their stomach is upset, or they have heartburn, or then they go see their doctor and they get on a proton pump or something like that.

I ran into those problems and once I figured out how to solve them, I realized, okay, here are the early indicators of where someone is going off course and how do you correct that before you run into a major disease or dysfunction.

Gresham Harkless 06:03

Exactly. Exactly. And it is always said that your health is your biggest wealth. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. You might have already touched on this, but what do you feel makes you or your organization unique?

Wade T. Lightheart 06:12

One thing is we're a digitally based company. In other words, we were one of the first pioneer companies. We started in 2004 and all our staff literally work all around the world. We connect using functions like Zoom and Skype and we built digital communication platforms and management and tracking systems. One of the big, I think secret sauces was a course that you can take called Traction. It's a book, get a grip on your business. It was a great way to develop a way of bringing together all these people from around the world into a cohesive unit that we could track and grow our business.

That was a big advantage for us. I think something that people, particularly those who are living in this new world economy, where you can actually get high-quality talent, maybe outside of high-income parameters. In other words, you can pay a person, maybe half to three-quarters of what you would pay them, and say, working in a major city, and then they can have a better quality of life by working in a jurisdiction, which is more economical. They can work from home and you can connect them in a way that allows them to feel part of something just the same as you were coming into an office without all the extra overhead.

So you can use that extra money to drive the business forward at a faster rate than you could if you were going through maybe a more traditional brick and mortar setup, even though we produce physical products, we don't have to maintain the overhead costs that many of our competitors need to. I think that's the range of where we're going in the future with companies.

Gresham Harkless 07:36

Yeah, I definitely would agree with that. Now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. You might have touched on this, but this is an app, a book or a habit that you have, but it's something that you feel like makes you more effective and efficient as a CEO.

Wade T. Lightheart 07:48

Definitely Traction. We also use a hiring process that leverages a system called predictive index, and that's helping people get in the right seats. Oftentimes you'll have very talented people who might be successful in one area of the business, but they might be working in an area where their talents aren't actually going to shine. Or they're particularly good at one area and you automatically assume that they're going to be able to take those abilities into another area as the company grows. Oftentimes that sets people up to failure.

So with these types of assessment tools. You can quickly profile what kind of candidate you would need for a position, and not waste a lot of time of where you would try and find out. Can you get an A talent? Because at the end of the day, the quality of the people that you bring into your company is going to determine how well that company performs over the long run, especially as the company grows simply because there are so many moving parts in any corporation that a talent is going to ultimately determine talent and culture. Creating a culture, I think that allows the talent to shine and creates an autonomous environment where they get the advantages of working almost like a solo entrepreneur, but they're part of a bigger microcosm as a business unit.

That's what we offer as a company and I think a lot of people who are caught in the commuting world, caught in the kind of corporate rat race that was maybe popular in the eighties. are recognizing, hey, this is a better way to build a company. It's better for the company. It creates a better lifestyle and you have the ability to find out those kinds of nuances in a person's psychology that would allow them to be successful using those tools and methodologies.

Now because of online communications, to me, it makes no sense to drag everybody into an office commuting and wasting hours of their life when they can just open up their laptop and be at work instantaneously and when they're done, they can close it off and get back to their regular lives. I think people really appreciate that in our company and in opportunities that they have with other companies to do that.

Gresham Harkless 09:46

Yeah, I can definitely imagine that. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business?

Wade T. Lightheart 09:57

I would say the cultivation of a great customer experience, particularly now that we're living in a digital world where I think online retail is now outperforming traditional retail. The companies that I think that are going to dominate the market and have the most success in the market are the digital-based companies, which reduce overhead, but increase customer experience so that customer instead of talking to a digital answering machine speaks to a real person. That person is trained and is knowledgeable and passionate about the products or services that you offer and can communicate in a way that makes that person feel valued, feel respectful, and also feels that they're talking to a real person.

Because I think the more digital that we go, or the more technologically advanced we become, the more we crave communication and connection with other human beings. And in this kind of race to technological advancement, I think that's an oversight that a lot of companies make. There's nothing more frustrating than saying as a customer of a company calling and getting an answering machine that you have to punch 15 different buttons in an automated system to eventually hold for an operator. It's lovely when you either don't have enough staff to answer that call that they could just leave a quick message and then a real person calls them back at a time that's convenient for them or chats with them or text with them and responds to their requests urgently.

I think also removing the obstacles about the fear, for example, by offering really good guarantees on your products, like we do 365-day guarantees in case people want to return that product. There are no questions asked. We also try to look at ways to plus that. For example, let's say someone bought one of our products and it didn't work for them for whatever reason. We do a little bit of investigation. We talked to them and realized they actually bought the product and that they needed another one of our products, we'll send them that product. People are absolutely blown away that our commitment for our company is we fix your digestion and if we can't, you get all your money back.

So we're committed to that mission above and beyond what they might have experienced from another company. That has built brand loyalty with us that I think other companies, maybe they provide a good product or service, but the problem is they don't create that connection and interaction. I think if you can do that as a company in today's world, it makes you stand out amongst the kind of digital faceless corporations that people get so frustrated with.

Gresham Harkless 12:24

Yeah, I would definitely agree with you on that. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition for what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on this show. So Wade, I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Wade T. Lightheart 12:36

There's a couple of different things. I think that being a CEO means number one that we have everybody read in their company is a book by Jocko Willink, which is called Extreme Accountability. At the end of the day, the CEO is the ultimate accountability person inside a corporation, both from a legal standpoint, but also about setting the direction, the action processes, the culture of a company. If you don't set that culture or those processes in the company, they emerge anyway and if they're not successful, chances are they won't be as good as they could be. That's on you the CEO. At the end of the day, the buck stops here.

I think the other thing about being a CEO, it's an opportunity to serve. Maybe in the eighties, it was all about how much money you can make, and that's one thing. As the social psychologists have demonstrated recently, Dr. Daniel Conman shared that people after 150,000 a year, the marginal increases in happiness are almost negligible. Where people find their value, their purpose, their mission, and their joy is about being able to serve people in a way that creates that connection and creates legacy and serves a greater mission for the greater good.

I think as a CEO, if you can connect with your mission, your reason why, and able to communicate a serviceable experience to people in a way that they feel good about, that ultimately translates into joy, happiness and that extra owns that you need often to compete in a competitive world. So I think if you're going to be a CEO, you better be passionate about what you're doing, why you're doing it and who you're serving, because if you're not, you're going to end up maybe financially successful, but you're going to run into physical, psychological, or emotional distress that isn't going to be worth whatever you gained on one side of the coin.

Gresham Harkless 14:24

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And it's a great perspective to keep in mind because we're all trying to showcase our talents and our abilities and our calling and try to manifest that self in our work and everything that we're doing.

So Wade, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, and see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know and how best they can get ahold of you. And of course, subscribe to your podcast and get copies of your book.

Wade T. Lightheart 14:49

Yeah. So, If you guys listening are interested in finding more information about what we do or how we do it, you can go to bioptimizers.com/IAMCEO Inside of that, one of the things that we've done uniquely as a company is we're very education-dominant. So, I created an 84-day awesome health course. Basically, it's what I've compiled over 30 years of the experts that I've gone to systematize and summarize a complete health system that allows you to perform at your highest level. We give that away to people.

They can be 5 to 15-minute videos where I give you the synopsis and summary of literally 30 years experience and you can dive deeper into it or you can just take the nuggets and apply them in your life. Because at the end of the day, you cannot perform at your best and you certainly cannot perform for an extended period of time if you do not have your health in order.

So taking time, investing in that, doing it in a systematized way, I think is a great investment for anyone. And of course, with the high-stress lifestyles that CEOs tend to experience, digestive-related illnesses that lead to greater disease is something that needs to be addressed early on in order to prevent those big, big, life-threatening situations from coming down the road. So we're here to provide that, we're here to help out and feel free to connect with us. bioptimizers.com/IAMCEO and I will be happy to share what we can do for you.

Gresham Harkless 16:05

Awesome. Truly appreciate that Wade. We'll make sure to have those links in the show notes so that people can follow up with you, but again, I appreciate you obviously for taking some time out and all the awesome things that you're doing and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Wade T. Lightheart 16:17

Thanks so much, Gresh, really appreciate it.

Outro 16:19

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

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Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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