Shownotes
This episode is packed with inspiration and practical advice for entrepreneurs ready to invest in their well-being and become the best version of themselves.
Welcome to another episode of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast! In this edition, hosts Glenn Harper and Julie Smith sit down with Dr. Will Haas, the founder and CEO of VIVE Wellness. Dr. Haas is no ordinary physician—he brings a unique blend of expertise with both an MD and an MBA, combining deep medical knowledge with sharp business acumen.
With a dynamic background as a competitive athlete and a relentless curiosity for optimizing human health, Dr. Haas has dedicated his career to treating the root causes of illness rather than just addressing symptoms. Growing up watching Olympic heroes and learning the value of hard work from his academic parents, he forged his own path—one that challenges the norms of traditional Western medicine.
In this conversation, Dr. Haas shares his entrepreneurial journey, from personal training and athletic coaching in college to pivoting away from conventional medicine’s “treat the symptom” approach. He explains his bio regenesis method and how he tailors cutting-edge wellness strategies for high-performing entrepreneurs whose drive and energy often come at the expense of their health.
Moments
03:05 Body Fat Increase Warning Signals
07:58 Balancing School, Work, and Athletics
12:40 "Discovering a Passion for Wellness"
16:51 Triathlete Turned Trainer Insights
19:19 Cycling: Clarity and Peace Time
23:01 "Holistic Approach to Helping Others"
26:28 Disenchantment with Conventional Medicine
28:07 "Balancing Success and Well-being"
33:39 "Achieving Pain Relief and Performance"
36:12 "Relentless Curiosity for Optimization"
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Here are 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS for anyone looking to drive both their business and personal wellness:
- Treat the Cause, Not the Symptom: Dr. Haas explains how most issues stem from underlying cellular dysfunctions, emphasizing the importance of advanced testing and a personalized approach.
- Don’t Ignore the Foundation: Entrepreneurs often chase flashy wellness trends (like peptides or high-tech therapies) but overlook basic detox and repair systems. According to Dr. Haas, true health optimization starts here.
- Success Requires Self-Maintenance: One of the biggest traps for high achievers? Sacrificing healthy habits as things grow. Maintaining structure with nutrition, recovery, and mindset is crucial not just for business, but for lifelong energy and fulfillment.
Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.
Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.
Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for success
Our clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.
Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.
Glenn Harper, CPA, is the Owner and Managing Partner of Harper & Company CPAs Plus, a top 10 Managing Partner in the country (Accounting Today's 2022 MP Elite). His firm won the 2021 Luca Award for Firm of the Year.
An entrepreneur and speaker, Glenn transformed his firm into an advisory-focused practice, doubling revenue and profit in two years. He teaches entrepreneurs to build financial and operational excellence, speaks nationwide to CPA firm owners about running their businesses like entrepreneurs, and consults with firms across the country. Glenn enjoys golfing, fishing, hiking, cooking, and spending time with his family.
Julie Smith, MBA, is a serial entrepreneur in the public accounting space. She is the Founder of EmpowerCPA™, Founder of PureTax, LLC, COO for Harper & Company CPAs Plus, and Co-host of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast.
Named CPA.com's 2021 Innovative Practitioner of Year, Julie led Harper & Company's transition to an advisory-focused firm, doubling revenue and profit in two years. She now empowers other CPA firm owners nationwide through consulting and speaking, teaching them how to run their businesses like entrepreneurs. Julie lives in Columbus, OH with her family and enjoys travel, coaching basketball, sporting events, and the occasional shopping spree.
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Copyright 2026 Glenn Harper
Transcripts
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. I'm Glenn Harper.
Julie Smith [:Julie Smith.
Glenn Harper [:Well, we have got a really special treat today. We're really looking forward to talking to this guy. I'd like to introduce Dr. Will Haas, founder and CEO of VIVE Wellness. He is not only a real medical doctor, but he also has an mba, which means he knows the numbers and medical stuff. VIVE Wellness is a place that anyone who is burning the candle at 47 ends, has brain fog or is in Joe versus the volcano and who was diagnosed with a fatal brain cloud or just plain not feeling well should go to get this situation reversed so one can regain their health and feel their best. We have all been there. Slowly deteriorating to the point that we don't even remember what it feels like to feel good and accepting the inevitable trend that we are just going to sit and decompose without even trying to figure out why we are not healthy.
Glenn Harper [:This happens to all of us at some point. Will's an elite athlete. He used to compete in thumb wrestling competitions worldwide. He then thought it would be easier to be a triathlete and get and competing at the highest level. While in med school, he had his aha moment that no one talks about, especially if Alexa is listening, that traditional western medicine is not about the healing, is about the money. He pivoted hard and did his MBA to learn about the business side of the medicine. Life happened. He went back to finish his medical training.
Glenn Harper [:So here he is, an odd duck, an outcast in the traditional medical world as he is trying to treat the cause, not the symptoms. Bravo. He has made it his mission to do his best to heal his patients in a way that they have never been exposed to before. The success of VIVE Wellness is directly related to his patients becoming the best versions of themselves. Growing up in the inner city of Detroit, he knew they had to run fast to surVYVE. Watching the Olympics on a black and white tv, he saw Michael Johnson running fast and he said, I want to do that. Despite his love of greater than 8% coca content dark chocolate, he was able to get himself into shape. The epiphany and work ethic is what drives him today.
Glenn Harper [:Being able to help others and like he helped himself is his mission. I have a strange feeling that his new client bookings will pick up after this podcast today. Thanks, Phil, for being on our show.
Dr. Will Haas [:It's an honor. Pleasure. And that was probably the best introduction I've ever had.
Julie Smith [:Well, I watched your body language though, and you were. You were very stoic. I Kept waiting to see, like, the thumb war thing, you know, kind of gotcha.
Dr. Will Haas [:But I was trying not to break out in laughter. But that was probably the best intro I've ever had.
Glenn Harper [:Well, I. I really think it's probably. Everything in there is probably true, except maybe the thumb wrestling, but I think you're probably good at that. Well, we like, you know, we love to stalk our guests and get to know them a little bit, because it's trying to set the tone of how does one become an entrepreneur and what's that journey look like? Because everybody's struggling on their some phase of that journey. And, you know, the first thing I thought, which is odd for an elite athlete, it says on your website that you're holding at a 22% body fat. Is that good to have at your age?
Dr. Will Haas [:Ooh. I mean, it all depends on you. Let me start by saying it depends. Yes. A wise attending physician of mine once said, if you want to sound intellig, say it depends. You want to sound really intelligent, like, have a reason behind why you say it depends. So for most of us, it's in the context of body fat, visceral body fat and muscle mass. So you really have to take in the whole body composition.
Dr. Will Haas [:So for me, 22%, when I'm accustomed to sitting below 10%, was a pretty big change for me. And that was clearly a sign and a symptom and a signal to my body that. That things metabolically were not going well. Then for that system to keep climbing despite doing all the right things, which is something that I see, entrepreneurs come to me all the time saying, I'm doing all the right things and I'm just not getting the results right. So for me, that was clearly a symptom of, hey, I have body fat percent creeping up and up and up and up, despite doing those right things, even though by a lot of people's standards, 22% is not bad, knowing that the optimal range for most guys is between 10 and 20%. So I have to kind of put the whole picture into context. But for me, not so good.
Glenn Harper [:I was, yeah, I was looking at more like saying, you know, like, you see some of these people, who was the best body fat person? Was it they ever like it at? Was it like Eddie George or something? Was like at a 7% body fat at his prime, which sounds insane. So I was thinking, well, just a normal person might be at like 15 or 20. I was just making 22 because athletes take that stuff seriously.
Julie Smith [:He didn't take your bait, really?
Glenn Harper [:No. No, he didn't. I was just joking. I was throwing. I should have said 40% but no, it's, it's all good.
Dr. Will Haas [:You know, actually I had a gentleman. The lowest I ever kind of saw was a patient of mine, you know, really locked in, dead set on trying to improve body composition. You know, he started with a BMI of 40. Just classic, you know, individual who just poured years and years and years into their business and kind of woke up one day and realized they kind of their body paid the price for doing that and just made it his mission and got down to a 4.5% body fat on a DEXA scan. You know, the best, most accurate way of checking body fat. That's probably the most impressive change I've seen.
Glenn Harper [:Did that, did that guy feel like amazing or was it he was too tight because he was like so. So no little body fat at all. Like.
Dr. Will Haas [:Yeah, we didn't keep him there very long.
Glenn Harper [:Just got him there to see that.
Dr. Will Haas [:Was a goal admission of him mission of his. You know, we kind of then quickly worked on kind of rebalancing things out. I think in a steady state it's around 12% now and is kind of very happy with the balance of the lean muscle mass. There's definitely a sacrifice of lean muscle mass that happens when you get that lean, which then can have an impact on things that we'll probably end up talking about today, which is mitochondrial health and energy.
Glenn Harper [:You got it. Well, where'd you grow up? In Detroit? Is that true?
Dr. Will Haas [:I think that along with your thumb wrestling might have been a little bit of creative liberties. I was born and raised in, in Asheville, North Carolina where it was like a really cool town. Maybe that's where I kind of drew a little bit from my interest in integrative medicine and kind of thinking outside the the box.
Glenn Harper [:Gotcha. And siblings, parents, did your parents, were they entrepreneurs? Did they have real jobs? How did that look?
Dr. Will Haas [:Yeah, so, you know, I think my dad's biggest wish for my, for, for me and my brother was just we, we ended up kind of going farther in our kind of professional careers than they accomplished. My dad was a PhD in sociology, so very interested into kind of how people think and kind of show up. And then my mother was a PhD in nursing, so before you kind of went on to standard nurse practitioner school. So definitely kind of impressed in a little bit of the medical side upon upon me. But most of my curiosity for medicine kind of came out from the story you shared around kind of watching Michael Johnson kind of Crush the Atlanta Olympics and just really intrigued with the body's ability to kind of heal, repair, and achieve pretty amazing feats.
Glenn Harper [:So when you're. When your parents, they were. They weren't entrepreneurs, they worked for somebody, but they're both doctors. And so you got to see what that lifestyle looks like and what it is. At what point, you know, when you were a kid, did you go to work with their offices with them? Did you take them work? Did you work on your own somewhere? Do you like, you know, hustle, paper route or anything like that? Or what was your upbringing like?
Dr. Will Haas [:Yeah, so, I mean, I spent pretty much every afternoon at my dad's office there. Probably just causing more trouble roaming around a college campus as a kid. But I definitely saw parents who worked very hard to kind of progress. My mom did a lot of writing and publishing, a lot of traveling and lecturing. And so just was. They were always both wired to just constantly learn. And so I think that was kind of one of the things that I picked up. You know, I think the, maybe the first kind of entrepreneurial or at least kind of instilling that hard work ethic was, you know, when they basically kind of said, okay, like, we supported you.
Dr. Will Haas [:Now you're in high school and you need to. You need to get a job, you know, if you want to, you know, drive your car and also continue to kind of play in your athletics. So they kind of really forced on me to make a decision of, hey, if you want to be able to continue to. I was big track runner, cross country runner. So they said, if you want to continue to do your athletics right, you know, you have to find a job to be able to support yourself, to get around to do all that. And so from there is really just kind of a hustle mentality kind of started to grow of, okay, like, I have to figure this out. And so I ended up kind of finding a landscaping position that allowed me to kind of work on the weekends. I log in 10 hours a day on Saturday and Sunday, and then I had the time I needed to.
Dr. Will Haas [:To enjoy the athletics.
Glenn Harper [:Isn't that funny? Some parents, like, okay, you're either going to work, you're going to do sports. Your parents are like, you got to do both. And, and, you know, nobody looks at, when you end up today, where you sit today, they're like, oh, how hard was it be? You had an easy upbringing. Both your doctor, your parents were doctors. You had a silver spoon in your mouth. It isn't like that at all. I mean, your parents sound like they were hardcore, like, go figure it out.
Dr. Will Haas [:Yeah. They really wanted to make sure that we had the quite the opposite experience, that we had to show up for ourselves, we had to figure things out. And that had a pretty big impact on the rest of the trajectory of my life and career. And.
Glenn Harper [:Go ahead, you want.
Julie Smith [:Well, so what does your brother do? I'm just curious.
Dr. Will Haas [:I. I joke. My brother is my older, younger brother, you know, so he's two years younger than, than I am. We're a lot alike. Except that he just kind of went directly off onto his own path. He went right from college and got his first job working for IBM. He is totally different field. Know, he's into technology, but he, you know, got his first car, got his first house, got married, had kids, everything before I did, while I was busy, you know, going to medical school, going to business school, doing residency.
Dr. Will Haas [:So I kind of joke that he's my younger older brother.
Glenn Harper [:When. How did you decide what college to pick was? And I can't even find out where you even went.
Dr. Will Haas [:Yeah, you're hitting on some good stories here. So my dad, as I mentioned, very much valued. My parents very much valued education. And so I remember to this day, sitting at the kitchen table, they pulled out the US News and World Report. They opened up the page to say, here are the top 10 liberal arts colleges in the country. Pick one, you're gonna go.
Glenn Harper [:Wow.
Dr. Will Haas [:So I picked the one closest to home, which happened to be Davidson College and just outside Charlotte.
Glenn Harper [:Wow.
Julie Smith [:Where did you. Can I ask for your. Did he. Was he, you know, subject to the same kind of pressure too?
Dr. Will Haas [:He was. He applied to come to Davidson, but he ended up getting into Furman in Greenville, South Carolina. Also not too far from Asheville as well.
Glenn Harper [:Davidson isn't like a strong lacrosse or they have a. I mean, I know some people in Ohio that have went there and I don't.
Dr. Will Haas [:I think from a sports standpoint, it's not really a sports school. Right. You know, you're talking about a school that's known for its academics. You know, 1600 students only. I think what kind of put Davidson on the kind of the national map in terms of people knowing it would be Steph Curry and basketball.
Glenn Harper [:There you go. So here you're at Davidson, you're doing the thing. You're in. You got it. You know, you got your 12 year ordeal of college to go.
Julie Smith [:Wait, did you know at this point where you were going and what you were doing? Like, did you have your journey mapped out like firstborn type A Just, just, just making a guess here. Did you know, like, this is exactly what I'm going to do or did you go into it like, I'm going to figure this out.
Dr. Will Haas [:There was, let's say, a small degree of pressure to be pre med. You know, I had a roommate to this day, one of my closest friends that was like, hey, you really should think about going into economics or business. You just seem to have a mind wired for that. I was just like tunnel vision pre med and you, who knows how life would have changed if I could kind of listen to that. But I was very much kind of heads down a lot of time. Library, pre med.
Glenn Harper [:So and you're in school and you're doing the thing and you're learning the pre med stuff and then at some point again you're working, doing the thing and you're like, wait a minute, there's something I'm missing here. There's the money side of the medicine, there's. What they're teaching us is to treat the symptoms. But, but nobody's treating us, teaching us how to do the cure or like, what's the real cause? When did you put that together and say, wait a minute, I gotta blow this up and start, start over?
Dr. Will Haas [:I think the first light bulb that kind of went off my head and one of the few times I kind of took my eye off that kind of pre med track was I got really into personal training, athletic training, and went down in college and kind of went down the road of getting certifications for personal training. Picked up my first certification then, and then also got a certification to be a strength coach. Spent a lot of my free time actually working in the gym and then working with some of the athletes at Davidson. And that was kind of the first time I was like, okay, like here's where I kind of have this kind of other interest and passion of optimizing health. And I didn't quite fully realize until getting to medical school that's not what this was about. But I didn't at that time realize that I would have to have a different language and understand how to run a business if I was going to pull together a lot of different pieces for health optimization. Because even at that time I had this dream of building a wellness center that incorporated conventional medicine and that had a gym in it and massage therapy. And what VIVE is today is not quite what I had envisioned then, but that's when the kind of, the first light bulb kind of went off is in college when I was kind of working to get Those athletic training degrees.
Julie Smith [:And then was your roommate's like, voice in the back of your head of like, you have a really good business sense. Why are you not chasing this? Did that keep, like, coming to the forefront as you're going through your journey?
Dr. Will Haas [:Probably not. Again, until I hit med school, when we kind of had that, you know, kind of slap in the face moment where you're like, whoa. It became very evident that medicine was about treating disease, not optimizing health. And that was very much the wake up call. I was like, okay, I'm going to need to figure out how I'm going to be able to create my own system to be able to work in. And there's a kind of story around how I had to sit in front of a committee in medical school and convince them to let me take two years off to get my MBA and do some additional research and kind of, you know, explore this. And, you know, it wasn't something like, oh, yeah, go ahead and do it, like, sat from a committee and had to argue and justify that why this was important and that, yes, I would come back and finish my medical degree.
Glenn Harper [:It's so weird. Like the, the, the system is so set up to comply and do it this way that if you're doing it somewhere different, it just blows it all up. And again, you were able to recognize that if I'm going to do this, I literally have to learn all the skills to come over here and do my own thing. Which that takes serious kahunas to be able to do that. Because your path is set. If you go the traditional way, you're golden, right? You're plugged in, you're good, you can do whatever they tell you to do and you're gonna be just fine. But like, no, no, you know, Will's like, I wanna do it a hard way, I wanna do it my way. That takes something special.
Glenn Harper [:Is it something that was just this drive that you felt there was this need in the marketplace to do it, or is it a need that you wanted to help people? It couldn't be for the money because you're going to make money either way. What was the driving force? Is it to change the system or help the people?
Dr. Will Haas [:Help the people, right. You know, I, I've always meet, you know, marched to the beat of my own drum, but it was really of, you know, how can I, you know, help? Individuals are kind of stuck and trapped in this, this system and that. And it sounds they're stuck and trapped in the system from the sense of the system Just doesn't expose these other avenues and other mechanisms for optimizing health. Right. In medical school, wasn't taught about nutrition. Right. Was told that supplements create expensive pee. Right.
Dr. Will Haas [:And all these things were kind of actually looked down upon in the medical training. So it's, how do I just expose other individuals to this information, not just individuals who are trying to seek it out, but how do we get this in the hands of people who don't even know it's a thing?
Julie Smith [:So those two years that you go for your mba, do you just have a ton of light bulb moments and then do you find it somewhat difficult to go back to med school to finish?
Dr. Will Haas [:Yeah, interesting story there. So part of doing that two years off was also to race competitively as a semi professional triathlete. I afforded a lot of more time to, to do some, some training and I think a lot more of my thought processes of, you know, what my future practice could look like came out during that time. You know, I ended up during that period of time working at a, as a personal trainer in a local studio and just really kind of learned about how do we work on nutrition to kind of help optimize kind of body composition, how do we structure appropriate kind of exercise training programs, Just kind of learning some of these other elements that weren't taught in medical school. And so there were some kind of like aha moments going on. And to be honest, I was enjoying that part of my life so much more and, you know, definitely had more thoughts in my head of like, do I want to go back and finish? Right. There was a lot of doubt on whether I actually would complete my medical degree at that time because I just really was enjoying what I was doing. And.
Dr. Will Haas [:And then my dad fell ill. He got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and one of his dying wishes was that I go back and finish my medical degree. And so I honored that wish and so I went back and completed my last two years. And that was probably one of the more challenging periods in my life to go back and do that.
Glenn Harper [:You know, it's one of the things as elite athletes like yourself, the training regimen, if you're not listening to ghetto rap while you're doing it or easy listening music, whatever, you're just alone in your head thinking that training of eight hours a day for triathlete, right. That gives you a lot of time in your head to think. Most people don't have that kind of time to think that long. So it probably gave you some sort, I'm guessing it gave you Some sort of advantage over everybody else because you carved out time to do this thing, but it was actually another thing that was giving you time to have your thoughts and put them together, which, I mean, who has time to do that?
Julie Smith [:I think he listened to ghetto rap for eight hours.
Glenn Harper [:He probably. I mean, he's from Detroit. No, I was just wondering how there is some validity to the fact of when you have time and free space to think about things, you can really come up with some good solutions. And I suspect you had a lot of that.
Dr. Will Haas [:So one of the things I love about running and cycling, you know, is it gives you that time and space. And to your point, yes, at that point in time of my life, I was afforded the ability to jump on my bike for six hours just on a Sunday. Right. And there is a lot of peace and a lot of clarity during those time periods where, you know, sometimes I just go out and ride myself for, you know, six hours, 120 miles. Right. And just a lot of time to kind of think and just let your. Your mind. And it's one of the few times where, as an entrepreneur, I'm able to kind of quiet my mind and kind of calm my mind.
Dr. Will Haas [:And so you're not always thinking about, oh, what's the next thing? Or have I done this? And trying to, you know, kind of in that kind of stress cycle of trying to accomplish something and just kind of thinking about what things could be.
Julie Smith [:So. So walk me through. So you get through med school, you've got your mba, you're. You're holding these degrees. What do you do upon completion?
Dr. Will Haas [:Plot thickens. I approach the time period where you're gonna end medical school, and we have to do make a decision of what residency program we're going to enter in. And at that point in time, I was like, I just promised my dad that I was going to finish. I didn't say I was going to go be a doctor. Right. So I actually started interviewing Boston Consulting Group, BCG and McKinsey and started actually looking. Going down the consulting path. And I was like, yeah, I'm just not going to actually do anything with this degree.
Dr. Will Haas [:And actually hit stumbled upon my very last rotation in family practice. And I think what I enjoyed about family practice was kind of this, like, jack of all trades, which I think overlaps with kind of the entrepreneurial spirit, where I spent six weeks with a family physician in rural North Carolina. And he just. He could do everything right. He delivered a baby, he sutured, you know, somebody's hand when it was lacerated. You know, he treated a kid with, you know, strep throat. And we just kind of got to see all these things. And it was before you had emrs and he was just scribbling on notes and just having a grand old time and could kind of do everything.
Dr. Will Haas [:And I thought to myself, hey, if I'm going to go finish this whole thing out, you know, I think family practice would be a good foundation of additional knowledge for me to be able to learn from and do other things. And one of those other things that I was looking at at the time still that I hadn't kind of turned my back on was integrative medicine. This, you know, field emerging field of evidence based complementary alternative medicine modalities.
Julie Smith [:Oh, we are, we are way into that.
Glenn Harper [:We love it.
Dr. Will Haas [:Yeah, yeah. And I was doing, I was kind of interested in exploring that at a time when my attending physician said, like, that's quackery. Like it's never going to go anywhere. It's a dead end for you. And so even then I was having to fight against resistance and people kind of really not supporting that. And that's where I kind of had this moment of like, okay, like, I think I can maybe see this, the next stage out. I can go to residency. Let me pick a residency and family practice that incorporates integrative medicine.
Dr. Will Haas [:So I chose a residency program in Charlotte, North Carolina, that actually took Andrew Wilde's integrative medicine curriculum, wove it in to the residency practice, which then kind of further cultivated that strong interest and desire and led me to then do a fellowship in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where. Where Andrew Weil kind of founded that program and kind of just really strengthens and solidified my interest there.
Glenn Harper [:So you were like doc Hollywood before it was the movie, right, with Michael J. Fox. Like, you're in the small country doctor. They can fix everything. So one of the things as now you're at this point where you're like, okay, I put this all together, this is what I want to do. A typical person, you're trying to figure out how to help them. And an entrepreneur is a good choice because they usually have some free time, they have some flexibility, they may not have some money, and they're probably at a point where it's cool to go figure this stuff out. You know, when we look at this stuff with other guests and yourself, you know, there's the mind component, there's what you're eating component, there's what you're consuming component, like how do you evaluate somebody from the get go? Where do you start? Because whoever comes to see you is probably a hot mess in every aspect of those things.
Glenn Harper [:How do you determine what's the number one thing you see that you start with that it will affect everything and make everything else kind of flow.
Dr. Will Haas [:Yeah. So there's a framework in which I operate from. And you're always trying to identify what's the biggest mess in that hot mess or what's driving what's fueling that hot mess the most. And that's where you kind of start. And that's my bio regenesis method methodology where you're looking at detoxification, redox and repair systems. Right. And it all kind of focuses on cellular health and which area of cellular health has kind of gone off the rails. And then we kind of start there.
Dr. Will Haas [:We'll typically use a battery of advanced testing that looks at all those areas. But even that aside, I think one of the things that I see trip up entrepreneurs who start down this journey of getting interested in optimizing their health and get exposed to biohacking or functional medicine is they kind of jump sometimes to some of the sexier things out there, right. Like ooh, hyperbaric oxygen or peptides or stem cells. And we forget this foundation of you can't repair cellular health if it's built on a poor foundation, meaning the system's flooded with toxins. Right. So if there's going to be one area that I'm going to start with, it's going to be looking at things like environmental toxins. Right. You know, we know that, you know, the average individual is exposed to almost 100 synthetic chemicals from personal care products before you even walk out the door that day.
Dr. Will Haas [:Right. And that those compound over time. Right. And we didn't know most of the even office spaces that we reside in affected by water damage and then have mold. Right. And so all these things take a damage on your cells and, and if you don't address those underlying issues, there's no ability to kind of completely repair that cell or have that cell generate more energy. And so you just kind of stacking these things on a rusty foundation.
Glenn Harper [:So you in normal, when you go get your blood, they run 20 tests, I assume you do like a thousand tests. You do the genetic thing to see what your it can do. You do the hair test, you do all the minerals, you do a full write up. Where most traditional docs, they just do a couple things like ah, take this pill, you're fine. Like how do you get People to believe that there's something more than this traditional thing. I mean, they're there for a reason, but they're like, I got to do all this. And you're like, yeah, we got to do all this.
Dr. Will Haas [:I think the beauty about being in this, this field of medicine long enough now is there is this disenchantment with conventional medicine that's becoming very real and palpable, Right? Because everyone's tired of going to the conventional medical doctor and told like, they're fine and their labs look normal. Right. And if you hear that often enough and you feel anything but fine, especially as an entrepreneur when like, you're wired and like driven for success and achieving and accomplishing and you start hitting the wall and your regular doctor says, yeah, you're fine, or here's an antidepressant or stop working as much, that's just not gonna fly for us. No, you're not accepting that answer. So fortunately, when people come to me, I don't have to do a lot of kind of convincing or like, hey, we really need to do these battery of tests. They're like, I want to know what the root cause of why my brain is foggy. I'm tired at 2pm despite espressos and energy drinks. Like, why am I gaining weight despite eating clean and still doing my workouts? All of those things, right? They know something's very wrong, even if the conventional labs are, quote, normal.
Julie Smith [:So what do you find with, and I'm just curious with entrepreneurs, when they come through your door, what is the one thing. And again, you probably won't be able to quantify it in regards to that, but like this one thing that's always off with them.
Dr. Will Haas [:I can answer that two ways.
Julie Smith [:I think it depends. No, I'm just.
Glenn Harper [:Because they're psychos. Because they're all psychos and entrepreneurs. We're crazy.
Dr. Will Haas [:I can answer kind of on the medical side, but then I can answer it more kind of on the business philosophical side. Right. I think the one trap, if you will, that I see entrepreneurs fall into at a non cellular level is they get too confident when things are going well, right. So they hit this growth phase, they feel great, and they start to slowly let go of some of these habits that made them feel unstoppable in the first place. Right? So the consistent recovery, the structure of nutrition, sleep discipline, and the time for themselves, Right. We talked about the time that I had at an earlier time in my career to just have a lot of focus, time for myself to kind of really think, right? So from a philosophical standpoint, that's where I see people get tripped up. And then that will then, on a cellular level kind of impact one big area, which is mitochondrial health, right? These little powerhouse cells that produce ATP or the currency of energy in our body, right? And when those cells aren't working well, it doesn't matter what's happening. You know, it's.
Dr. Will Haas [:It's no longer a motivational issue. It's a mitochondrial issue of why you're not able to continue pushing your body.
Julie Smith [:I would have guessed that. I'm glad you answered it that way.
Glenn Harper [:Is there like, is there a universal electric shock or just a jumpstart that can make the mitochondria go from like to like, wham, we're rolling again. What is there, like a one thing that does that?
Julie Smith [:You have to go see him to.
Glenn Harper [:Understand there's a system and a system, but maybe there's a. Like this. This always works. It's going to be a supplement, it's going to be a dietary change, it's going to be a red light therapy. Is there something that we're going to incorporate this no matter what?
Dr. Will Haas [:It depends.
Glenn Harper [:It depends. What's the most common one?
Dr. Will Haas [:I will answer with it depends. Now, if I had to look at some core, core tools, right? So I'm very much less focused, as you've already heard me talk about, like, jumping to like, what are the tools, right? We need to figure out what's going on underneath the surface and why the cells are dysfunctional. And that truly does depend for every individual, right? Is it because you've been eating microwaved TV dinners and just flooding your system with plastics and toxins?
Glenn Harper [:No, that can't be it. That can't be it.
Dr. Will Haas [:That could be a potential reason why you're struggling. It could be the fact that cortisol levels are just spiked and inflammation levels are spiked and hormones are completely dropped. Where I'm going to have to start targeting kind of depends. But if we wanted to narrow back down into some great common tools for mitochondrial optimization, right? I'm thinking things like ozone therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, red light, and maybe even some selective targeted mitochondrial peptides that kind of help recharge and reboot the mitochondria.
Glenn Harper [:So what you're saying is you got this incredible toolbox that you will customize for people and it's really about treating the cause, not the symptom. Is that correct? A fair statement?
Dr. Will Haas [:100%. And that cause can be different for every individual. You see patterns, but what pattern is quite different for every individual.
Julie Smith [:Do you see as these entrepreneurs go through their journey with you, that. And again, we've been on this journey long enough to know. So it's like you get this foundation and you rebuild and then you're constantly doing things to optimize, to continue to. I don't want to say get to the. But you know what I mean? Like, you're continuously finding, I'm guessing your clients are lifelong clients, right? Like, because you are able to evolve with them and as they go through things, you're able to make sure that they can succeed.
Dr. Will Haas [:I mean, that's the beauty about being an entrepreneur, right? Is you're just always looking for, for that next thing, that, that next edge, right. Then the next little improvement. It makes me think of a 38 year old financial planner who kind of first came to see me and the main focus was he was constantly getting sick, right. Multiple, you know, two, three times a month. You know, he did have some young kids at home, you know, and that was impacting his ability to show up for his existing clients and have meetings with new clients. Right. And get new business in and try to grow his financial career practice. Right.
Dr. Will Haas [:And we first kind of, you pull back layers on you. In this case, this was about optimizing gut health. Like his gut health was totally wrecked. And that's where a lot of your immunoglobulins, like the cells that kind of fight infections, are built in your gut. Right. And that was the first underlying root cause that we had to address. He also struggled with add, Right. And so that was kind of.
Dr. Will Haas [:Once we optimized the, his immune function as a result of gut dysbiosis, then we're able to then turn our attention back and then focus on, okay, now you're only getting sick once a year instead of one to two, three times a month. What's the next thing we need to do? Focus on. It's like, hey, I really want to be kind of more locked in, dialed and concentrated. So then we worked on that. Next we used neurofeedback therapy to kind of optimize cognitive performance and concentration focus. So there was just like always this kind of next level we went to, right. And then he was like, hey, I've, you know, I've never thought about asking you about this. You know, I've struggled with chronic shoulder pain most of all of my life from an earlier injury that I accomplished.
Dr. Will Haas [:Nobody's ever really been able to kind of help it. I do adjustments with the chiropractor once a week. And I just. I live with it. And, you know, so then we kind of tackled that with some peptides, hyperbaric oxygen stem cells. And he's like, for the first time, I'm waking up and not having pain, and I have to kind of stop and realize that. So there's. There's kind of always these little adjustments that we kind of accomplished, but we do kind of that 80, 20 approach, which is like, I'm gonna hone in on that one thing for that individual that I know is going to have the biggest impact on their performance, because if I can move the needle there and get them to perform 80% better with making one change, then there is a little bit more trust in that process, and then they're open and they want to do more.
Glenn Harper [:I'm telling you, how great of a job do you have when you can literally transform people's lives, and instead of them just working like a dog, prison rules. They feel good. They are good. They make a bigger impact on their clients, their families, their employees. I mean, how cool is that job that you do?
Dr. Will Haas [:I love it. It's very, very touching. It can be challenging at times, right? Like, you know, those stories require a lot of dedication on the part of the patients that I'm working with, right? So, but when you see them put in the work and we have a plan that works, and they, you know, tell me, like, hey, like, I'm able to show up better for my family, right? You know, my business is growing and taking off, and my favorite is I feel 10 to 20 years younger, right? When I have people in their 40s and sissies say, I feel better than I did in my 20s, right? Like, that reminds me, like, why I went through everything I went through, why I didn't listen to the naysayers, why I'm glad I kept up. You know, my father's my promise that made it all worth it.
Julie Smith [:So I could talk to you for hours, but we know that you need to go see your patient. So I have one more question for you, and that is, what is your end game?
Dr. Will Haas [:Interesting question. I don't think I've asked that one before. That is a very good one. I might actually have to think about that for. For one second.
Glenn Harper [:It's a trick question. Just so you know. I'll give you a hint.
Dr. Will Haas [:Yeah, I mean, I don't really have an Necessarily an end game, and I think that's what the people closest to me around me will know, which is I just have this unsatiable curiosity for the human body. And how to optimize its performance. And we know it a small fraction of how this system works. Right. And there's always something more to learn. And the thing that I, one of the things I love about my medical practice, Vibe Wellness, is it is kind of a little bit of my playground to figure that out and use my business mind, my entrepreneurial mind to be like, okay, I'm going to draw some new connections here. We've learned some more things in cellular medicine. We have these other new tools and modalities and I'm going to try this kind of next cutting edge thing to kind of push the limit.
Dr. Will Haas [:One of the new things I'm really excited about here in 26 is kind of further taking that cognitive performance with neurofeedback and combining it with trans magnetic stimulation. So that's like a new foray end game to me. I wouldn't.
Julie Smith [:It's okay. You answered it perfectly. You get an A plus.
Glenn Harper [:Okay, A plus, you win.
Julie Smith [:There is no end game. You have too much curiosity, you have too much knowledge and you have too much passion to help your patients and achieve greatness. So you answered it perfectly.
Glenn Harper [:You're like a mad scientist. You got the lab, you got all the stuff coming, you're curious, you want to help. Why would you ever stop doing that? I mean, what would you rather be doing? I mean, you still have balance in your time doing all the stuff with your family. But my God, I'd love to get.
Dr. Will Haas [:Back to those six hour bike rides every now and then and then good luck. Maybe, you know, see my son want to do the same thing and jump on a, you know, long bike ride one day with him. So every entrepreneur kind of, you know, is always doing that balance between, you know, family life, work life commitments. Right.
Glenn Harper [:So well, will really appreciate you having the show. How does one get a hold of your clinic? Could you do. I mean, obviously it's, you have to be local to go or do you have offices throughout the country or how does that work?
Dr. Will Haas [:Yeah, so we do have a single office in Charlotte, North Carolina. I do work with entrepreneurs and individuals nation and worldwide. You know, have some patients that fly in from Costa Rica as well and then have patients in Texas, New York, California, all over. So, you know, usually everything kind of kicks off with a bit of a discovery call. If you are curious a little bit more about understanding maybe what your cellular blind spot is, we do have a free kind of assessment you can find online@vibewellness.com get started. You can either kind of immediately book discovery call. But if you're kind of wanting to know a little bit more about this bioregenesis methodology and where you may be kind of getting stuck on that detox redox repair pathway, that cellular aging blind spot quiz is a great first start.
Glenn Harper [:Well, I tell you, we appreciate it. It's so refreshing. You go see a doc and you're in there for like 18 to 30 seconds and you don't even know what the hell happened. I mean, it sounds like when you go into cu, it's going to be a process where you really are going to take the time to try to figure it out and try to bring a solution, which is very appreciated, I think, by our clients. Well, appreciate you having the show. Another great episode of the Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast. I'm Glenn Harper.
Julie Smith [:Julie Smith.
