Kelly Bruno Bio

Kelly Bruno is a Board certified physician in anesthesiology and pain medicine, currently practicing at Yale University. She's also an avid athlete, competing in abled body and para sports since she was 14 years old, in everything from track and field to ultramarathons and Ironmans. Currently she's chasing a record in the marathon. Combining her interest in medicine and sports, she previously co-founded a training company called Complete Human Performance and is now pivoting to longevity and performance medicine.

Intro

Kelly, a woman who was born without a complete leg, shares her journey of overcoming challenges and achieving success. She grew up with a prosthetic leg and faced the realization of being different in middle school. Despite the internal struggles and traumatic experiences, Kelly developed a strong drive to prove herself and be as capable as anyone else. She excelled in sports, including running track and field, and went on to participate in Ironman races and even competed on Survivor Nicaragua. Kelly's determination and resilience have led her to pursue a career in medicine, specializing in anesthesiology and pain medicine. She is now focused on longevity medicine and building a company that promotes health and wellness.

Summary

Jothy Rosenberg interviews Kelly Bruno, a remarkable individual who has turned personal challenges into extraordinary achievements. Born without a complete leg, Kelly's journey began with a childhood marked by surgeries and a growing awareness of her differences. Yet, rather than succumb to adversity, she discovered the power of sports as an outlet for her determination. From participating in track and field to completing Ironman triathlons and ultramarathons, Kelly's grit shines through as she recounts her experiences of navigating life with a disability. Throughout the conversation, Kelly reflects on the internal conversations that fueled her drive—transforming moments of feeling different into an unwavering commitment to excel. The discussion delves into her motivations and how she carved out a unique space for herself in athletics, ultimately earning admiration and inspiration from peers and strangers alike.

The episode also touches upon Kelly's professional life as a physician specializing in anesthesiology and pain medicine at Yale University. Her medical career is intertwined with her athletic pursuits, leading her to co-found Complete Human Performance, a training company focused on optimizing human capabilities. As she pivots toward longevity and performance medicine, Kelly shares her vision for a healthcare system that prioritizes prevention and wellness rather than merely addressing ailments. The conversation is rich with insights into the intersection of health, athleticism, and personal resilience, offering listeners a compelling narrative of empowerment and possibility.

Takeaways

• Kelly Bruno's journey of overcoming challenges began when she was born without a complete leg, shaping her extraordinary resilience and determination.
• Her experiences with sports helped her to redefine her identity and inspire others, transitioning from feeling different to being seen as a role model.
• In medical school, her work with wounded veterans led to her decision to pursue a career in medicine, focusing on pain management and anesthesiology.
• Kelly emphasizes the importance of proving oneself, stating she wanted to be more than just average despite societal expectations.
• She co-founded Complete Human Performance, combining her passion for athletics and medicine to help others achieve their fitness goals.
• With her current focus on longevity and performance medicine, Kelly aims to shift healthcare from treating illness to promoting overall well-being and health.

Sound Bites

"You're like the queen of grit in my opinion."

"I'll show me."

"I hit that transition... I suddenly became... not the impaired one on the sideline."

Links

Kelly’s site: www.kellybrunomd.com

Kelly’s Instagram handle: kellybrunomd

Please leave us a review: https://podchaser.com/DesigningSuccessfulStartups

Tech Startup Toolkit (book): https://www.amazon.com/Tech-Startup-Toolkit-launch-strong/dp/1633438422/

https://www.manning.com/books/tech-startup-toolkit

Site with all podcasts: https://jothyrosenberg.com

Jothy’s non-profit that helps kids with disabilities get into high challenge sports: 

https://whosaysicant.org

Jothy’s TEDx talk about why people with disabilities tend to overachieve: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNtOawXAx5A

Chapters

• 00:03 - Introduction to Kelly Bruno
• 00:10 - Early Life and Overcoming Challenges
• 01:56 - Discovering Grit and Resilience
• 07:09 - The Transition to Sports and Athletics
• 10:11 - From Triathlons to Ironman and Beyond
• 15:15 - Experiences from Survivor
• 20:23 - Medical Journey and Career Path
• 28:00 - Founding Complete Human Performance
• 30:26 - Future Aspirations in Longevity Medicine

Hello, I'm Jati Rosenberg, the host of designing successful startups, where today's guest is Kelly Bruno.

You were born without a complete leg.

I mean, you know, even at a young age, I knew I own, you know, four or five years old, but it wasn't really until I would say, middle school.

And I think that's when really when I started to really notice and not acknowledge the difference.

Kelly Bruno is a board certified physician in anesthesiology and pain medicine, currently practicing at Yale University.

She's also an avid athlete, competing in able bodied and parasports since she was 14 years old in everything from track and field to ultra marathons and ironmans.

Currently, she's chasing a record in the marathon.

Combining her interest in medicine and sports, she previously co founded a training company called Complete Human Performance and is now pivoting to longevity and performance medicine.

And here is Kelly.

Hi.

Thank you for having me.

It's great to have you, and it's been a long time.

You've been a very busy woman.

I always like to start, so everybody kind of gets a little bit of a grounding by asking you, where are you originally from and where do you live now?

Okay, good start.

I actually grew up overseas, so I spent a lot of time living Germany, South Africa, and then the last place I lived was Florida.

And I'm actually in Connecticut now and outside New Haven.

Normally, I talk about grit sort of at the end of a podcast when I'm talking to a startup founder, but there's an obvious reason why I would really like to actually start with where all your grit comes from, because you're like the queen of grit, in my opinion.

First, you were born without a complete leg.

And is that on the left side or the right side?

You don't have an ankle or a foot, but you have your knee.

Your knee works just fine.

And so you grew up, you know, with either going around without a prosthetic leg or very early on, you got a.

You got a little prosthesis, and then it, you know, you had to get new ones each time you grew a little bit.

You didn't.

You, of course, didn't know any different until you started to interact with other kids who noticed that there was something different about you.

When did that really start to affect the way you thought about yourself?

Because before that, it was just how you were.

But suddenly, at some point, people were saying, oh, look, Kelly's different.

When did that start?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, even at a young age, I knew four or five years old, but it wasn't really until I would say, middle school.

And I think that's pretty normal.

When I started to really notice and not acknowledge the difference, I was twelve years old when I had a very nascent surgery.

I had a double osteotomy.

So two wedges of bone were removed, the leg was straightened, and I had an external fixator, which is basically eight pins that came out of my skin and were attached to a rod.

And that was in for about three months to allow the bone to shield.

And in that time, I couldn't wear prosthesis.

And, you know, it was pretty unwieldy device I was wearing, and there was no way to hide it.

And that was, I couldn't walk.

I was on crutches or in a wheelchair.

And that was really when I had a formal acknowledgement or understanding that I was different.

Connect.

What else did kids make fun of you?

Did kids tease you?

Was it traumatic?

Very traumatic.

It's something that I looked back on and it was definitely just had a huge impact on, I think, the direction that my life moved in and also the person that became, I think, even more so than people making fun of me or teasing me.

It was the internal conversation I had.

It was people staring at me and then me wondering what they critiquing, you know, feeling deformed or feeling, you know, different.

And so it almost had.

It almost didn't matter if they were making fun of me verbally or outwardly.

It was, you know, the internal dialogue I had with myself that I was different, that, you know, I kind of assumed everyone was laughing at me or, you know, uncomfortable around it.

And, you know, I would say, I don't have memories of, you know, kids outwardly making fun of me.

I know that.

I have no doubt that there were conversations I was in 7th grade, but I also had a strong email support system.

And so luckily I just kind of.

Was shielded some, but you could have started to feel really beaten down and it could have sent you in one direction, but something in you made you fight back in a way, in a very positive way that made you want to sort of, I'll show them.

Is that the right sentiment?

Does that resonate?

Or was it, do I have it wrong?

I mean, I don't know if it was as much for them as for me.

Was there was, again, it was almost like au show Vieque.

I think it was very internally motivated that I had something to prove to them, but to myself almost more.

You know, I wanted to be more.

I wanted to be as capable.

And so there was, again, this almost internal motivator of, I need to do these things.

I can do these things.

I am not less.

And so rather than get pulled down by that depression or discouragement of not being able to use my leg, a walk, or do these things, you know, I was essentially finding ways to be more active and luckily had outlets for that.

And, again, have always been driven by that personal motivator, that internal voice, kind of pushing myself to prove something to the world.

I think the world, in a way, would have been like, go sit on the sideline.

You deserve it needs, okay?

And I wouldn't take that out.

When you started to discover that sports was an outlet for you to excel and to start proving to yourself, but, of course, you're a normal person surrounded by a bunch of people and who were treating you as different.

But there was a pointed time, partly because of sports, where that flipped, and people started to look at you completely differently and be amazed and inspired.

And when did that start to happen?

When did you feel that amazing shift?

Yeah, I remember back when I was very little, I was put in a swindle flask, and I.

My swim instructor, you know, I think, had no experience with someone with a disability or, you know, a limb loss deficiency or impairment.

And so he said, he told my mom, she will never swim.

She will never be able to swim.

And I, you know, they put me in the water and I would, you know, swim in a circle, basically, because I couldn't be upticked with both legs.

And I, you know, and I can't fault him.

He didn't know what he was doing.

But I remember later kind of learning this and being like, that's not true.

Like, and of course, I doubled down, right?

I'm gonna.

And maybe that was a stupid.

I'm gonna prove this guy well, I'm gonna learn how to swim.

And, you know, many years later, I was doing Iron Mans, and I swam just fine.

So there was that.

But then.

But really, for the transition, for me, it was when I started running track and field, and fortunately, I was able.

I became involved in disabled program at the time for USA, DST, USDST, the US disabled sports team.

And that program really developed athletes with physical disabilities or physical impairment.

And I took that into, I think, once other kids started seeing me, I had a running blade.

And they, you know, they were just.

Was so different, and they got so excited about it.

They thought it was so cool and so interesting, and I suddenly became, you know, not the, like, kind of impaired one on the sideline.

It was suddenly, like, whoa.

Like, we have this really cool, like, blade runner or bionic woman on our team and their girl on her team, because I was, what, maybe 14 at the time, and that was really where I get that transition.

I think the other piece of that was being around other people with similar impairments.

I could never have that before.

So having that kind of like minded, physically similar, just group of people was so motivating to me because I almost had no excuse anymore.

Right?

They were doing it.

I can do it.

They knew the problems I were having, so I could go, you know, I could learn it from them.

Whereas when I was in high school or middle school, none of the other kids knew anything about it.

There was no one to ask.

I was kind of in this.

In this on my own, and that was very troubling and difficult.

When did you transition from, okay, I'm just gonna.

I'm gonna play basketball.

I'm gonna run track and field.

I'm gonna figure out how to swim straight.

I had that same.

I had that same challenge.

But then you went way beyond that.

And when did that start to happen?

That you mentioned Iron man just a minute ago.

But you've actually gone way beyond Iron man, too.

Maybe talk about when did you suddenly realize, oh, wow, I can do way more than just become equivalent?

I think it happened gradually.

It was not something that happened overnight.

Each time I accomplished something or I completed something, there was a little bit of that.

I can do more than this every, you know, I did a triathlon.

You know, my first triathlon was probably a sprint.

I don't really remember anymore, but if, you know, it's a sprint trap one.

And then, you know, I did Olympic distance, and I worked my way up to Iron man.

And, you know, at that point, I was like, well, I've done a marathon, so I guess I can do a marathon.

So then I went, you know, I started running more road running at that point.

That was always been my passion, always did my love, so much physical kind of endeavor.

And then I got into, I think part of it was being motivated by other people, what they were doing.

And I'm like, oh, if they can do it, I should try it, I can do it.

So I would see what other people were doing.

I had some friends that were getting into ultramarathons at the time.

I don't know.

I was working very long hours in the hospital.

I had started, I want to say I just started residency, so I was doing, you know, overnight calls, 24 hours calls in the hospital, and it said, oh, well, if I just did a run at the end of this 24 hours, call it basically, I'd already be tired from working.

It's basically like ultra training.

I could probably do an ultra.

And so I started kind of exploring that.

And then when I asked to sign up for a race, they said, well, you want to get a 50 or 100 and a miler?

And I thought, well, if I'm going to do this training and I'm going to have this race ahead of me, like go big or go home.

And so that's kind of been that mindset of, you know, why not go all in and shoot for the hundred?

And that would be a major accomplishment.

And if I just do the 50, then I just do the 50.

But I felt like I don't want to limit my capacity to achieve by just signing up at 50.

A hundred miles on a bike, where I'm going average of 17 miles an hour, takes almost 8 hours.

How long does a hundred mile run take?

That's a long day.

Days, I should say.

So for that.

Like Uri 100 that I did that year, it was, you got felt fuck with you, beta under 24 hours.

And then the cutoff was around 30 hours.

And I finished that year 26 hours.

You know, it's a walk run, you know, keep moving forward.

The next year I went back and did it under 24.

So that was a huge accomplishment.

I ran in just over 22 hours.

Okay, so I have to ask this.

The skin on one's leg, unlike the skin on the bottom of our feet, is not.

Does it actually develop calluses?

It's a different, I mean, we have different kind of skin on our hands and our feet.

And you, no matter how hard you rub over here, you're never going to get a callus there.

How does your residual limb survive being inside the socket, taking that pounding for 26 or 24 hours?

I mean, it's a, it's a mind body experience in that there's no way to do it without some kind of chafing, blister breakdown, skin breakdown.

And it's just learning how to manage what does come up during the race.

Like you said, there's no calluses.

It never develops that skin hardening, you know, after so many miles of rubbing and wear and tear, it will, you know, you'll develop something somewhere.

It's being proactive, you know, if you start feeling a spot that's rubbing or uncomfortable, it's, you know, kind of managing it before it gets worse.

And it's just a lot of learning.

A lot of learning as you go.

And just knowing that it's probably gonna be uncomfortable.

I finished my first hundred miler.

I was driving a stick at the time.

I could.

I couldn't sit my leg back on.

My leg just didn't.

I couldn't even get my prosthetic leg back on.

After the race, I took it off at the finish line, and there was no putting it back on, so I had to get a ride home.

And then.

So the next two days, I drove stick.

I had to have a workaround because I had trouble getting my prosthesis on.

So it was a lot of learning and that endeavor.

Okay, so I happen to be someone who knows a little, you know, a little secret about you.

You don't even put it in your bio, but how did you happen to get on survivor?

Nicaragua?

So that was during medical school, and it was, I think, after being a fallbarocal US oped, there had been some stories on me about just helping to develop some of the kind of the changing culture in some of these sports.

And that got picked up by the USA Today and the Washington Post.

And so there was some interest from more of a human interest side of having me on survivor.

And so I went and did the interviews, and they loved just my story.

And I, you know, when I picked offer in that, I guess, in that venue, in that, you know, Bigfoot's type of media and.

Yeah.

Yes, I did.

Okay.

Okay.

But tell us about, you went on the show and the other participants in the show didn't know.

You kept it a secret that you had a prosthetic leg.

I guess you weren't wearing a blade.

You were just.

You had your normal prosthetic foot.

And so since it was in a shoe and you wore, like, long pants, you were able to keep it from them, right?

Yeah, as best I could.

Yes.

I mean, I'm surprised that no one noticed, I'll be honest.

Like, looking back, I don't know how you would not have noticed.

I had a custom made blade at the time, so it was like a square foot.

It did not have a foot shell on it.

It was, you know, and I was, like, stuffing it into, like, these dress shoes.

I had to sleep with it at night.

So there were eight of us, no, ten of us, in, like, a very small bamboo frame kind of structure.

And we would squeeze into this very small space to sleep at night, and I couldn't take my leg off.

So I'm, like, trying not to let anyone run into it because they're going to be like, what is this?

What is this metal, like, sticking into my back?

You know, so it was very, very challenging.

They all wanted to go in the ocean at one point, and I had to figure out, like, do I go in or do I not go in because I can't take my pants off because that's going to kind of expose me.

But do I go in with my pants on or do I just say, like, hey, I'm going to hang back.

I'm not going to join you?

It was, yeah, it was a tough, tough, like, day.

I think it was like maybe 24, 48 hours that I didn't share it with everyone so that they can make a first impression of me without that doubting, you know, their decision about who I am, about, you know, cheap abilities, that kind of thing.

I don't.

I've never watched that show.

I know, but I know that the whole idea is that people get pushed out.

You know, they failed at something.

They failed at something.

I get pushed out.

Voted out.

That's it.

Okay.

Voted out, yeah.

Like, how long did you last?

I was on, I was six.

Voted out, 6th on my, on my team.

So I was on the show for about three weeks.

Was it fun?

So not, not too, too long.

It was a great experience.

It was really interesting.

It was fun to do.

You know, it was challenging, but in a very different way than I expected.

I was really prepared to the physical component of it.

You know, having done what I had done, I was training for.

I am like classic at the time.

So I had that kind of physical, you know, stamina.

I thought that's what it was going to be.

It wasn't, though.

It was more emotionally challenging.

It was mentally challenging.

It was sitting there not doing anything all day.

There was a physical piece to it.

You know, you're not eating, you're very lethargic.

So just kind of moving around took a lot of effort.

But it was really the emotional piece.

It was not having the support that I was used to.

Right.

There's no one to lean on.

There's no one to run things by.

There's no one to talk to, or there are, but you can't trust them, right, because everyone's there kind of running to stab you.

You know, they're putting their own interest first.

Hi.

The podcast you are listening to is a companion to my recent book, tech startup how to launch strong and exit big.

This is the book I wish I'd had as I was founding and running eight startups over 35 years.

It's like a memoir of my entrepreneurial journey.

I tell the unvarnished truth about what went right, and especially about what went wrong.

It's for the founder, the CEO, and wannabe founders of tech and non tech startups.

You could get it from all the usual booksellers and also from the publisher@manning.com.

dot.

I hope you like it.

It's a true labor of love.

Now back to the show, and we're going to talk about some of your other non physical, I guess, accomplishments.

But before that, I just wanted to ask, so, knowing what you've accomplished in medicine and everything, you're obviously well endowed with intelligence, and you had to have a lot of drive, go to medical school.

Not everybody can do that.

Do you think that any of the things that you had to overcome with your leg, with your disability, did any of that, you think give you the drive?

Let's just say it.

It's, you know, grit to go to medical school, to then go to residency and become an anesthesiologist.

I think about, like, who I am and the type of person that I become.

And I think a big piece of that is from the experiences I had at a young age, being able to push myself, learning how to push myself, learning how to do things that maybe aren't standard for what you would expect, right?

Most people would not.

They kind of expect almost the bare minimum, right?

Like, hey, you could walk.

That's awesome, you know, but I didn't want to just walk.

I wanted to arrive.

So I never held myself to the standard of, like, kind of average.

I guess.

I always wanted to be above that.

And I think a lot of that was driven by this need and desire to prove myself right, to show everyone else that I was equal.

I think a lot of that was also learned, though, when I was able to prove to myself and to others that I was capable of doing these things, I was able to finish these events, and I was good at them.

It did give me the confidence to then go after other types of polls.

So not just physical ones, career polls, professional goals, those kinds of experiences.

I don't think that I have been deterred by things that seem challenging, like.

How old were you when you pretty much decided that you wanted to go be a doctor?

It was kind of a circuitous path that I took.

So my father was a doctor.

I had, from an early age, kind of been interested in helping people, and I didn't know what that would look like.

And it was in undergrad where I had this decision, and I was pre med, and I said, maybe this isn't maybe being a doctor isn't exactly what I want to do.

And so I actually didn't complete pre med.

I came out and I worked for a few years, and during that time, it was actually when I started working with wounded warrior project and soldier ride.

I had a friend who was an ex arm ranger.

He had started a company and said, hey, Kelly, I'm meeting a lot of these guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

They've lost lens.

Are you able to come and just talk to them and answer questions and help them see that their life's not over?

And that was the point where I said, I can do more, you know, I can help these people in a bigger way.

And so that's when I made that decision to go back to medical school.

I did a pre Bac or a post BACC program, got all my, you know, all the classes that I needed to complete to apply.

And I think at that point, I had more experience, and I just had had a bit.

Sorry.

I was doing Iron Man's at the time, so it was kind of a nice break.

I really.

I started training.

I was in a lot of triathlons.

But then I kind of pivoted my focus more once I started medical school to my studies.

And where did you go to medical school?

I was at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

In Chapel Hill.

But you lived in Durham, right?

I did.

I did.

I was still a dookie.

Yeah.

So we're both dookies, and once a.

Dookie, always a dookie.

When did you pick anesthesiology?

So that was kind of a path through medical school.

I wanted to be in the operating room.

I liked the idea of being operating room.

I didn't want to be a surgeon.

So anesthesiology was kind of a field where there was a lot of physiology.

It was really interesting, and it was really neat.

I don't know, it's just, it seemed like a good combination of things that I wanted, and then I had the opportunity.

I knew at that point.

So a lot of people can go from anesthesiology to pain medicine, and that was really a passion of mine.

I knew pain medicine is kind of a unique field.

It's one of the only fields of medicine where you're not treating an organ system.

Right.

We don't.

Pain is more of an experience.

You know, most fields of medicine are anesthesiology.

I guess that's a little different.

But, like, cardiology, nephrology.

Right.

Endocrinology.

So you're treating systems in the body.

Neurology, pain medicine, is a totally different, like, field.

There's no organ system that creates pain.

Pain is actually the end result, and that's what we're trying to treat, and we don't know where it's coming from.

And so I know a lot of the people that I worked with, these wounded warrior, wounded vets that came out, they had a lot of Santa limb pain, a lot of residual limb pain, and it wasn't being treated well.

And so I did a year fellowship at the University of California, San Diego, looking at some new kind of exploring some new options for treating, sampling pain and residual limb pain.

That's a field that's near and dear to my heart.

That's an important field.

So did you do your residency, all of your residency out in San Diego or just that fellowship?

I did my fellowship there.

I did my residency in anesthesiology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Medical residency there?

Yeah, I did.

And then I wanted to do.

I wanted a little bit different type of program, and UCSD had a different approach to pain medicine that fit what I was looking for.

And then what brought you to Yale?

So that has been a recent transition, and that was mostly worn out of an opportunity to build a new clinic there.

Since I got into pain medicine, my focus has shifted a little bit with the opioid epidemic, and so starting to kind of shift that practice.

One of the newer clinics is called a transitional pain clinic that has been opening up around the country, but really focusing on high risk patients with complex pain who struggle to come off opioids postoperatively.

So looking at ways to treat before, during, and after the surgery to help patients and avoid opioid dependence, will you.

Still be doing anesthesiology in the operating room?

Yes.

Yes, I currently am.

So your staff?

You're on the staff?

I mean, is this your first real job, other than after your fellowship?

Oh, no, no, no.

I was at the Ba in San Diego at NUCSD for five years, and I built.

While I was there, I built a women's pain clinic.

So my focus there was a little different.

There was an initiative to, because it was a VA system, so there's kind of a disparity between men and women.

And so there's a very big focus right now on building kind of women's directed care, because obviously, within the military system, it's not a 50 50 ratio, so that's a majority.

So they just weren't.

They were kind of lumped in with the men.

So that the goal was to say, okay, you know, we can't treat everybody the same.

And so I was the only female pain physician on staff, and so I kind of piloted this women's paint clinic while I was there, which was very interesting.

I've kind of departed from phantom limb pain, but I hope you get back to some of that and some other kind of areas in medicine at this point.

If this wasn't enough, we can't leave out, of course, that while you were still in Durham and you were still training, you helped found, what was it called?

Complete human performance.

What was that startup about?

Yeah, so at the time, my partner and I were both training.

We're both very heavily acted, and I was an endurance athlete.

I had always been a runner, a triathlete.

Those were kind of my focuses.

And he was a lister.

And so I got him into running, he got me into lifting.

And so we kind of had this, what we call hybrid training.

And so a lot of that, our interest became, how do you combine these two?

Because they're so different.

There's the strength component, kind of takes away from the endurance component because you feel muscle, you're heavier, you know, you're not as efficient, and likewise, when you're doing high level endurance training, you're breaking down muscle.

So how do you do these in a way that is synergistic and you gain better at both?

And that became really popular around the time because CrossFit was becoming a really big sport at the time.

Right.

And kind of the lysum.

You need to be good at everything.

You need to be, you know, fast and good feet, but also have endurance.

You need the strength.

So it was, like, perfect for that, and now it's high rocks.

So there's been a number of sports that it's been really important for and really interesting to translate to.

So at the time, I was doing powerlifting and marathons.

So, like, one time I did a powerlifting meet, and the next day I went and ran the Wilmington marathon.

And so it's just kind of showing I could do both, and I could do both well.

And in that, when started this company, complete human performance, really focusing on the science behind this type of training.

I did a lot of the behind the scenes, the kind of operations piece of it in a website developed and, you know, figuring out payment systems and making sure articles were published and all of that.

That was a big piece of my role, like Coo of the company.

You did that for a number of years.

How many years?

Yeah, we did that for about seven, eight years.

I started it in medical school, actually, probably even longer.

Ten years.

I started in medical school, and then I ended up kind of leaving the company right after I started.

I finished my fellowship a few years ago.

Once I started practicing full time, do.

You sort of think about things that you want to, problems you want to solve and have ideas for other startups?

So, yeah, I.

Yeah, I mean, the interest, and one of the big focuses now is longevity medicine, making it longevity performance, and really focusing on lifestyle medicine.

And so I become really interested in that.

I've seen the state of our healthcare systems.

I manage a lot of very sick patients in the operating room and in my cotic pain clinic.

I think that our conventional treatments are limited and we need to start taking a different approach because unfortunately, this trajectory of kind of our societal norm is not on a healthy path.

And being someone who is so active, who is so kind of all about health and wellness, it's kind of frustrating to be in a system that's all about sick care and not healthcare.

So looking at health span and improving health span during lifespan, our lifespan is getting longer, but our health span is not my focus now.

It shifted towards how do we kind of address that and say, we need to take care of people earlier to prevent these problems or reverse them, not just treat them.

And so starting to build on that, I, having the experience I have with starting to complete human performance, I've looked at really kind of translating that and what I learned there into starting a company.

I have a couple of friends in different areas.

Physical therapy, one is more energetic medicine, and looking at building that into just a kind of virtual remote clinic that helps people implement these lifestyle and longevity type treatments that will help in the long run.

Do you think you'll pull the trigger on starting that this year, next year?

What do you think?

My board certification?

Yeah, so I just started my board certification for lifestyle medicine, so I should be board certified in lifestyle medicine by the end of the year.

And that's a framework.

I think we'll get the pieces started because, you know, as you know, it takes, doesn't happen overnight.

So there's a lot of pieces that we need to kind of lay the groundwork for, especially because a lot of the types of studies that we're doing.

So insurance covers some of it, but a lot of it requires, I think we'll be working with companies that have already established protocols and also have some of the lab metrics and working with them to find a way to work together and so kind of building relationships with these companies.

Do you have a name yet?

We do not have a name yet.

We have some brainstorming ideas, but that's still, that's like the hardest decision to make.

It is.

It is, absolutely.

It's so funny how hard that is.

And especially, those are the two, most of my startups, and, you know, and I've done nine.

I made the mistake of having a group of us try to come up with a name.

And then on this one I just said, no, I'm not doing that as a group anymore.

I'm going to come up with a name and they're going to like it.

I think we've covered a bunch of great stuff.

I think it's been wonderful to hear all of this.

I think people will enjoy this.

And I want to thank you for participating in this podcast.

That's my pleasure.

Yeah, it's always interesting to share.

That's a wrap.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of designing successful Startups podcast.

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This is Jothi Rosenberg saying tTFn Tata for now.