Subscribe
What you’ll learn in this episode:
What does it really take to keep your brain sharp, healthy, and performing at its best – especially as a busy entrepreneur, leader, or parent?
In this week’s episode of the It’s Your Offer podcast, I sit down with Eric Collett, founder of A Mind For All Seasons, to dive into the science and systems behind optimal brain health. From his 16-year career in assisted living and memory care to co-developing the Enhanced Protocol, Eric has dedicated nearly a decade to helping people prevent decline, regain cognitive function, and unlock their full potential.
Eric shares his personal journey from burnout and overwhelm to building a business with a mission to save one million brains. Along the way, he explains how entrepreneurs, athletes, and everyday people can take charge of their brain health – and why most of us are confusing “common” symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, and memory loss with “normal” aging (they’re not).
If you’ve ever felt like you’re not quite yourself, or you know your brain isn’t firing on all cylinders, this episode will give you both hope and actionable strategies to turn things around.
In this episode, you will learn to:
- Why the brain is your most important “hardware” as an entrepreneur – and how to upgrade it.
- The surprising difference between what’s common and what’s normal when it comes to brain health.
- Why community and trusted guides are essential to navigating the overwhelming world of health information.
- A simple acronym to put brain problems to rest with lifestyle shifts.
💬 Loved this episode? Let’s keep the conversation going—DM me on Instagram (@jessicadioguardimiller) and tell me your biggest takeaway!
Mentioned in this episode:
A Mind for All Seasons Website
Get a free 30-day trial of the AMFAS Membership Site. Enter the promo code ‘Jess’ for 30 days free.
Work/Connect with me:
Meet Eric Collett
Eric Collett is the CEO of A Mind For All Seasons, an innovative company specializing in helping people across the United States to optimize their cognitive and mental health. He is a nationally recognized speaker, consultant and brain health expert, a licensed residential care administrator, a teacher at the College of Western Idaho, and has also taught at Boise State University. Eric passionately believes that lifelong learning is a key to finding powerful new solutions to significant challenges and has been working to change lives through innovative brain health interventions, dementia care techniques, program development, and leadership strategies since 2000.
Jessica Miller (01:01.09)
Welcome to the It’s Your Offer podcast, Eric. I’m so excited to have you here. Welcome to the show. Yeah, this is going be an awesome episode today. I’m so excited to talk about this topic of brain health and cognition and something that’s so important for all of us, I think, as the world gets busier and we get busier and business owners and all the things. For our audience, tell us a little bit about you, how you got to this place with your business, and anything else you want to share with us.
Eric Collett (01:27.34)
Thanks, Jess. It’s great to be here.
Well, thank you. Think, like most people, looking back, it’s a wild ride. It’s totally unpredictable. I remember being a teenager and I was distressed and talking to my mom one day saying, what am I going to do when I grow up? And I’ve done well in my classes. And I was kind of having this freak out moment.
took a deep breath and she looked at me and I will never forget what she said because she said, Eric, I honestly think that the job that you will do one day has never been invented. So just lean into learning. And that’s really fundamental to who I am. I love to learn.
And after college, I stumbled into a career in an assisted living community. became a licensed administrator and I worked in that field doing assisted living and memory care for 16 years. And looking back to about 2015, there was a pivotal moment that really led to everything that I’ve been doing for almost a decade now. And there I was driving the family to the school play. My wife, not too long before that, had been diagnosed with a
an eye disease that robs her peripheral vision. So, she’s down to a 10-degree visual field and she had to quit driving at age 35.
So, we had four little kids, none of whom were driving at the time. And I was stressed beyond belief. I was on call 24 seven, literally dealing with life and death issues as a healthcare administrator. And I felt like I was really struggling to keep up. But this particular night is where it all came to a head because I was driving the family to a school play for one of my little girls. The phone rang, it was the community that I was running. We had a resident who had been on hospice services who wasn’t expected to die for a
Eric Collett (03:12.564)
months and something had flipped that afternoon and she was actively dying. Her family was there in distress and needing support and I had this CNA on the other line who was already stretched thin and busy saying, we need you.
And so, I dropped my family off at the school, literally not knowing how they were going to get home. And I spent the next 15 minutes driving to the community, feeling like the worst husband and father possible. And then I spent the next few hours with that family, feeling like the worst administrator possible, because I honestly was resenting it and I didn’t want to be there. And I came home that night after everybody had gone to bed, looked in the mirror and I realized I was going to die an early death if I kept it up. I was just right at the edge and I was 30 pounds overweight.
had anything in years, I was not doing the things that were really key to who I am and what I need to do to take care of myself. So, I woke up the next morning and I talked to my wife Amy and said, I have to make a change. And I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and I had been seeing opportunities in the marketplace for a long time and talking to my wife saying, I need to do something here, I need to make a change. And that morning she said, what is stopping you? And I said, honey, when am I gonna have time to start a business?
said, have you ever thought that maybe you need to quit your day job so you have time to start a company? And that was that moment where everything opened up and I saw possibilities that I hadn’t seen before. And just a few days later, I did give notice. And I took the flying leap and
Yeah.
Jessica Miller (04:44.568)
Wow.
I don’t know that I fully realized at the time that I was jumping out of the plane without a parachute and I was going to have to sew it on the way down. you know the entrepreneurial journey and that was over nine years ago and it’s been amazing.
Wow, isn’t it so fascinating when I call it, and my husband hates this phrase, but it’s like there’s a forcing function in your life that happens and it just pushes you. It’s like this divine intervention. And then there’s somebody there who can see it and is really supporting you as you’re moving toward it and saying, it’s fine, this is where you’re supposed to be. Go for it.
Absolutely. It’s like I needed permission. Yes. What was keeping me stuck was just the story that I told myself. Yeah. And I needed to change the script. And I never could have predicted how it developed. people listening to this might think, you had a career in assisted living. What does this have to do with me? And along the way, we can talk about the things that I had to learn to drop the 30 pounds to get my cognitive functioning way better than it was in my 30s and to learn how to help other
people, including a lot of business leaders, really have optimal cognitive and mental health. But I couldn’t have predicted what it would take to get there. I saw that there were a lot of opportunities to help people living in memory care and assisted living communities feel better and function better.
Eric Collett (06:12.678)
And I went all in on designing systems and programs to do that. And about a year into it, through really some divine intervention, I ended up joining forces with Randy Vaudry, who became our chief medical officer. He’s done a lot of advanced training in everything from post-concussion syndrome and traumatic brain injuries to how you treat Alzheimer’s. And he’s done fellowships with some of the top neurologists and neuroscientists on the planet. And we developed an organized process
to help people in an assisted living or memory care community identify the root cause issues that were leading to their problems and recommend very personalized solutions that literally in objective ways were helping them improve their cognitive functioning.
So, for example, we had an early client named Marv who had developed dementia. He’d been to three different neurologists. They all diagnosed him with dementia and said, I’m so sorry. There’s nothing really that we can do for you. And so, his wife took care of him for a few years until he went from being happy and gregarious to just rude and abrasive and accusatory and a lot of problems driven by short-term memory loss. And the kid said, well, you can’t.
It’s killing you. And so, she moved him into an assisted living community down in East Mesa, Arizona, where we were piloting what has become known as the enhanced protocol. That’s our signature process. And he went from a score of 15 out of 30 on a standard cognitive test to a score of 30 out of 30 in six months. And he got to move back home with his wife and recorded a tearful video saying, I got my husband back.
you
Eric Collett (08:00.368)
Literally now don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t cured sure he actually still had neurodegenerative disease We were just able to move the needle on how his body functioned so well that he became more independent Mm-hmm, and we were seeing similar kinds of things with other people not everyone improved to a perfect score but we saw stability and improvement and that led their adult children to start coming and saying I had a car accident two years ago
If you can make my mom’s brain that much better, what could you do for me? Yeah. And that just sort of organically led to figuring that out.
Totally. I feel like that phrase is so hallmark, like I just don’t feel like myself. know, something is off. You know that you hear people say that. There’s something going on and they recognize it but they cannot figure out what it is. Or maybe there’s a trauma event or something that they can point to but they still don’t know how to navigate it and they just don’t feel like themselves.
Yeah, I think overall there’s kind of two classes of people that I see. There are those who feel like something happened and maybe they can point to a triggering event and they say, it all started then. I don’t know what’s going on, but it started then. And then there are other people who I think make a fundamental mistake of confusing common with normal.
Yes. Yes.
Eric Collett (09:23.96)
There are a lot of health challenges that are common. That does not make them normal. So, things like brain fog and fatigue and exhaustion and memory loss, those are warning lights on the dashboard of life. But a lot of people are confusing that with just normal aging. Right. Yes. You do something about that. So, I work with lots of business leaders these days who recognize my brain is my tool in this knowledge economy. And I want it to be sharp.
like I’m not doing very well. So, they’re grinding more trying to get stuff done before the wheels fall off the bus. They don’t understand the difference between hardware and software and what is common and what is normal. Once they see what it takes to have a hardware upgrade and get their brain working better.
love this so much. This is amazing. you it’s so funny how this is like a domino effect. Right? You start someplace and then it’s this ripple. And I think that’s so powerful about your work is that it helps the individual, but it also touches every other person in their sphere, who also then has the opportunity to get help if they need it. So, these business owners started to come to you and tell us a little bit, you know, about these different individuals that you work with. It sounds like business owners are one of them. And there’s
several others too, so tell me a little bit more about that.
Yeah. So, as far as kind of ideal clients, yeah, we work with a lot of business leaders, especially those who have a history of cognitive problems in their family. Maybe they’re worried and they’re motivated. They, they want their brains to be as sharp as possible. we also have worked with a lot of professional athletes, either current or especially retired athletes who have really serious problems. Some of our NFL clients have had two to 3000 concussions over the,
Eric Collett (11:21.264)
of course, their career based on what we’re estimating. We also work with husbands and wives who live at home. Maybe they’re a little bit older, 60 to 80 years old, and they’re trying to maintain their independence. And we’ve been really successful in helping people be more independent and avoid long-term care by just staying healthier. And then we’ve got services for the professional side of things. We work with skilled nursing and assisted living in memory care communities.
your audience probably is a lot of business leaders and their families supporting them. Probably would be interested in the key things that we see in those business leaders that actually move the needle. We could talk about some of that, but also discuss the awkwardness of how do you come up with the right offers for these kinds of people? You’re the offer expert and you called out earlier the fact that this organically developed.
But that means that we have to go back and refine it, have to optimize those offers. That’s challenging to do.
Yeah, and it never ends, right? We’re always wanting to grow and we’re always learning new things and those things we’re bringing into our business and then we’re moving it forward. The other thing that never ends is the fact that there’s so many different things pulling at us. And I think for business owners, that is a real thing. It’s a real weight that we carry where we’re trying to like be the father, be the husband, be the business owner, be all the things and…
Like you said, the hardware is getting worn and we’re sensing it. And I think as entrepreneurs, especially, we’re looking for that shiny object. So, it kicks a lot of people into that. Let me find the thing. Let me read the more books. Let me buy the more courses. Let me do all the stuff, which actually I think makes it worse. Although you tell me, but I think it would probably make it worse. And so like, how do we navigate through that? So, yes, I would love to hear a little bit more about, you know, how you’re helping them. What does that look like?
Jessica Miller (13:21.712)
And the enhanced protocol, think this is a really interesting, know, when people can buy something or come into a solution that is packaged in a way that it’s going to help them and it’s easy for them to understand, they could just move through it. Because that’s the other, you know, struggle in medicine. As you know, there are so many things and it’s so hard for people to wade through that and understand it. But when they feel like they’re coming into a trusted space and there’s a solution that makes sense and it’s easy, it just makes everything
Yeah, yeah, there’s so much to do. Yeah, we easily could. Gosh, one of the things that really comes to mind is the fact that humans rarely correct in life, we almost always over-correct. And one of the over-corrections that I’ve observed in the world in the last 25 years in healthcare is that…
I know, we’re gonna be here for two hours.
Eric Collett (14:14.51)
People recognize that as a general rule, Americans are sicker than we’ve ever been. We’re having real challenges with our health outcomes. And I think a lot of people are sick and tired of being sick and tired. And we’re not lacking in information. We’re having a hard time separating signal from noise. So, to your point, Jess, a lot of people are searching, they’re reading more, they’re watching podcasts or listening to podcasts. They’re looking for the ideas that will solve their problem.
So essentially, they’re wanting to be taught how to fish. And everybody knows the old adage, if you teach them to fish, they’ll eat for a lifetime. And so, as a general rule, I think a lot of the public are saying, hey, when it comes to my health, nobody’s ever gonna care about my body as much as I do. So just teach me how to fish for crying out loud. So, they’re watching all this stuff, not sure what’s true, what’s not, how it applies to them, how it doesn’t.
Health is way more complex than fishing. So, I think people need the equivalent of a guided fishing expedition. They need someone they trust that can be with them and help them learn and do as much as possible, but who maybe has broader perspective because not everybody can spend their entire life geeking out over brain science.
Like you get to do.
Yeah, like what actually is legitimate research here. Simplifying things to what you were saying earlier, I think is really important. So maybe if you think it’d be valuable, I can describe the enhanced protocol, how that works. And maybe we could even talk about some actionable things that people could start doing right now to have better cognitive and mental health. So, they have some actionable takeaways here.
Jessica Miller (16:00.206)
This is
So, the enhanced protocol is named that because we’re trying to enhance every aspect of a person’s life.
And I honestly believe that if you get the brain right, everything else falls in line. You can’t make your brain better without making the entire rest of your body function better and without positively impacting your relationships, your success in work. So many people, like you said, are going to the classes, they’re reading the books, they’re doing the things. Years ago, I was working with a business leader out of Atlanta who thought that he needed to
really like read David Allen’s book on productivity for the third time or something to learn how to get more done in the day. But as we worked through the enhanced protocol, as we had our follow-up appointment and we were looking at his successes, he said, man, Eric, I…
I thought that I needed to read more and just get more skills. And now I recognize that’s like software. And the real problem is my hardware wasn’t working very well. I needed a hardware upgrade. And now that my processing speed and my attention and other cognitive measures are objectively 30 % better, I’m just naturally getting three times as much stuff done in a day. So.
Eric Collett (17:22.626)
What does it take to do that? The enhanced protocol can be described in four words. I really like simplicity. Measure, learn, apply, adjust. That’s basically what we’re doing. So, you measure something related to cognitive and mental health.
Me too, I love this.
Eric Collett (17:42.99)
And there are lots of different ways you can measure. You’re always limited by the degree that you measure. stepping on a scale is a type of measurement of one aspect of metabolic health. knowing you’re fasting insulin, you’re A1C, you’re fasting glucose, et cetera, that’s a more nuanced measure and it tells you more. But you measure something, then you learn what the very best current research and understanding has to say about that in the context of you, because it needs to be
personalized. Yes. No one else like you.
then you apply what you’ve learned and you make some changes and then you observe and a few months later you re-measure and you adjust based on what you’ve learned. And if you’re objectively moving the needle, you’re onto something. If your energy’s up, if your cognitive scores are up, if you’re feeling a lot better and the people around you are even noticing the difference, you’re onto something and it’s working. And if not, you’re missing something.
And you change course. Right. Yes. I that.
Basically, the process to get slightly more granular when people participate in the enhanced protocol. We do an advanced cognitive test that Stanford researchers developed about 20 years ago. It’s like a super fine-toothed comb. And we can measure very objectively lots of parts of your cognitive and mental health. And it’s been administered over 20 million times in the last two decades. So, we’ve got a lot of data points to compare to. We do an extensive
Eric Collett (19:18.544)
of panel of blood work that’s way more than people ever get in a primary visit. So, nutrients, hormones, genetics, inflammatory markers, metabolic factors, et cetera.
We collect a health history, then our medical director writes a treatment summary that is personalized and precise to say, here are the holes that are sinking your boat. It’s never about one hole. Here are the 15 things that are here. The 20 things that are affecting you. We have a one-on-one review with someone and we coach them through exactly what to do to apply what we’ve found. And then we provide some options for either individual or group.
coaching after that to help them through the next few months and provide the support that they need and answer the questions along the way. And then we retest and we write a new report and we adjust. And by then most people, especially if they’re a little younger and still out actively working, they’re on course. And we just maintain our relationship and when things shift, when they want to learn more, when something changes in their life, we’re there for them. And they have easy access to it.
Yeah. And knowing that someone, it’s not just a catch and release, like knowing that someone is there for you, they are a resource for you. They’re sort of running alongside you. I think that concept of being a guide, a trusted guide is so important when it comes to your health, because it’s so important, first of all, and so personal and so fluid that it’s not like just one and done and you go, like you are a changing human being and things are happening in your life and in your business.
But you’re on a path and then there’s people there to support you which is awesome that they get to come into a community or they get to work with you one-on-one so that people can you can really meet them where they are And I’m sure being part of something is so powerful as well So staying connected with people if they’re in your community or if they’re in you know If they’re setting up one-on-one calls with you again It’s just keeping them on track and then I think that follow-up is so huge because I mean I think many
Jessica Miller (21:29.104)
many business owners can appreciate this just by how they are built, but data is everything. It is everything. And yes, there are limitations to the data. And yes, you could go into the abyss with data or you could take too little data. But if you’re in that place where you have good information, then you can see, like you said, is this working? Is it not? Where do we need to tweak? Like what’s really going on here? And I think measuring is just, it’s the key to optimizing everything.
Yeah, I have often said data drives behavior. Yes. When I put a continuous glucose monitor in someone’s arm and they track their sugars and it absolutely changes the decisions they make. does. they realize how their actions are leading to outcomes.
my gosh.
Jessica Miller (22:12.022)
And it is eye opening. Yeah, it is. my gosh. I have done that. And I have been eating like my healthy granola bars like the thing is off the hook. And I’m thinking, my goodness. And I think it’s that moment to where it’s like it’s not good or bad. It’s just data. But what you thought it was not what it was. It’s really fascinating.
Sounds like you’ve done that.
Jessica Miller (22:34.528)
And to your point, behavioral altering. Yeah. Yeah. tell us a little bit about, so you have these two arms of your business where everyone’s getting the enhanced protocol. And I think that’s amazing because that, again, you need that data. And then people are coming into either your membership or your community or you’re working with them one on one.
And tell us, did you just come up with that as you were watching people? Like, okay, we’re gonna have sort of a group aspect and we’re gonna have a one-on-one aspect. Or what sort of drove you to come to that place? And how is that really helping people in the best ways by helping them in those offers?
Yeah.
It’s a great question. And looking back, there really was one moment in time where I saw the need for a membership. prior to seeing that, prior to having this moment, I recognized that if people really want to have optimal health, they need two things. They need traditional insurance and a conventional approach for things that are acute or catastrophic. If you get in a car accident and you need microvascular surgery and you got to get, put back together,
absolutely need insurance and you need the best doctors that money can buy and you better be grateful that you’ve got a local emergency department to help you. But in terms of the kinds of diseases that people are often living with for 10, 20, 30 years that are just ruining their quality of life and destroying their ability to do their art and to contribute to this world. Yeah. You have to move upstream. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, one in three seniors
Eric Collett (24:12.016)
dies with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. So, your odds are not great. Right. But the disease itself, the pathology is there 20 or more years before symptoms even show up. So, the very best way to treat a disease like Alzheimer’s or heart disease or type 2 diabetes is to never get them in the first place. And you have to move upstream to do that. And people for years, decades have said you can’t get Americans to be proactive about their health.
They don’t care. They want to just abuse their bodies. And I actually believe that’s a lie. That’s a story that we’ve been telling ourselves culturally. I think you solve it by giving people something that they want right now, which is everybody wants to feel good. Everybody wants to get to the end of the work day and have the gas to get on the floor and play with their kids or grandkids. And if you can give people what they want now and at the same time,
Exactly.
Eric Collett (25:12.097)
really serious problems downstream? That’s when you win. So, I knew that, but getting back to your original question, Jess, of well, what prompted this membership?
I knew that we would live and die by continuing to learn as a team. And so, like seven years ago, we started doing a weekly, we called a book club at first, and then it was lunch and learn because every Friday we just bring our lunches as a team and we’d sit around and share what we’d been studying. And that started leading to more formal presentations were.
Randy or I or someone on the team would say, hey, here’s the latest research study on this thing and let’s pick it apart. Let’s understand this and what’s good about the research. How was the study design off or something like that? After a few years of doing that, exclusively with our team and hearing Randy answer lots of questions where our team would say, hey, such and such client is having this issue. What are we missing here?
workshopping that. I realized eventually that I was learning so much more about my own health from hearing Randy answer hundreds of other people’s questions.
Yes.
Eric Collett (26:29.592)
that I had this aha moment one day sitting there in our lunch and learn going, why are we not doing this for all of our clients? We’re expecting them to learn one-on-one and we’re the experts because we’re learning as a group and learning from other people’s questions. So, we just started broadcasting.
and inviting people to join. And as that caught on, it was like, what else could we do for them? And how are we going to take this to millions of people? And that led to, what if we do online office hours multiple times a week so that someone could come in and maybe they don’t even have blood work done with us yet. But maybe they went to their primary care office, they got a checkup and they had seven minutes with their doctor and they have questions. Couldn’t they come to online
office hours and ask us to explain those things and everybody would learn from answers to their questions. And the answer was, yeah, we could do that. And then I started realizing, well, Costco has built a huge company that’s essentially a membership business.
and we could do that. We could charge people a very nominal fee on a monthly basis to be able to come to online office hours and come to a weekly master class and have hundreds of hours of recordings and we could add course content and we could give them access to ancillary services from other groups that were vetted and curated in the same way that, hey, you go to Costco and some Costco buyer decided that this is a good quality item and we’re going to have a
low margin on it, you’re gonna get a good deal on it because you have a Costco membership. That led to having an Amfast membership.
Eric Collett (28:17.262)
So, we have some people in the community who they just pay $25 a month to have access to curated information where they can come and directly ask questions. And over time, if they decide that they want to get blood work done, they want to participate in the enhanced protocol and really dig deep, then they can purchase that right on the membership site. So, it just sort of organically developed that way.
And I can imagine, and you and I talked about this a little bit too, they’re also coming the other way. Like people know they need help. They’re coming in through the protocol and then they’re being, you’re catching them in the membership. Do you have a sense of how long people, like on average, will stay in the membership? mean, do they stay for a really long time or do you have a sense of like how long they stay in there?
Yeah, the story has yet to be written because we have members that have now been with us for years because what we found is you only have to go through a couple of iterations of blood work and getting roadmap reports, which is our personalized treatment summary. You only have to do those two or three times to really be on a very solid trajectory with your health. But things change so much over time that a lot of our members just want to keep learning.
They want to keep understanding and they want to be able to bring their current health related questions. Yes. And over time I’ve realized that people truly need not only the traditional insurance, but I believe they need an AmFAST membership to deal with all things about proactive health. So, we have people that have been with us for years because if they start getting a little foggy or they get sick with something they like to come and say, is there anything else that I could be doing?
or they like to say, saw a YouTube video with the doctor talking about this new thing that I’ve never heard about. Is that even legitimate? Right. And they just want to talk to someone that they know is going to be straight with them and either say, I don’t know because I haven’t seen that yet. Let me go research it. well, yeah, it is legitimate, but I don’t think it applies to you and here’s why. Or whatever else they need to hear. They need a guide. Yeah. And so, people are staying because of that.
Jessica Miller (30:37.646)
That’s amazing. That’s amazing. I love this so much. know we were like we wanted to talk a little bit about the business growing and you I love you mentioned to me when we were having a conversation that you’re on a mission to save a million brains. Am getting this right? I love this so much. Such a great focused mission and to your point.
it has a lot of legs because so many things not only are affected by a really healthy on point brain, but it’s also there are things that affect your brain, right? And so, there’s so many pieces to that and sort of being that premier place that people know as being trustworthy and having this broad knowledge in the space, but being able to personalize it, I think is fascinating. And the fact that people are staying with you to me,
tells me that it’s working, both from the data perspective, you have people’s data, so you’re like, can objectively see it’s working, but then people are voluntarily staying with us over time. And I think that’s very powerful. And when you have a community like that, that is with you, there’s so many ways that you can access helping them additionally more. What are some of the things that you’re seeing come up for them?
after they’re in the community. So, they’ve gone through the protocol and now they’re in there and they are bringing different things to you it sounds like and asking a lot of questions. Is there any few things that kind of keep coming up that they are always asking questions about or people are bringing or struggling with?
Yeah, that’s a great question, Jess. There are some common things that come up and a lot of them relate to why it’s actually been so hard to figure out how to position this in the marketplace.
Eric Collett (32:26.178)
They often have to do with things that are really brain health problems, but the general public doesn’t know they have a brain health problem. They don’t see it that way. So, think of how many people are dealing with anxiety or depression or insomnia. Well, those are symptoms one way or another of common brain health problems.
But that’s not how most people see it. Right. Or they have brain fog and maybe they think of it as a brain health problem. Maybe they don’t. A lot of people just think, well, you know, I’m stressed. And they think, just got to push through and get to the other side of this project. Right. Totally. And they don’t see that, oh, you’ve got post-concussion syndrome and you have an inflammatory response in your brain that has not calmed down. And when inflammation goes up, energy production drops. Right. And you’re having symptoms of that.
They don’t recognize that their attention deficit issue is a symptom of frontal lobe hypometabolism. Your frontal lobe is not making good energy and that’s the governor. That’s the part of brain that allows you to focus and to concentrate. And so, if your thoughts are bouncing around like ping pong balls and you can’t focus, what’s going on that’s causing your frontal lobe to have issues? So sometimes people will really improve their overall health, their cognitive scores will go up, but they’ll
a symptom like that, it’s a sign that no there’s more work to be done or something new has come up. Maybe they moved and now they’re in a house that maybe they’re unaware that the walls are full of mold and they’re having an illness related to mold and mycotoxins. Sure. Or something else that’s causing their immune system to flare. So those are fairly common things that start coming up.
And so, when people come to the community, what do you do with that information? there a resource that you’re helping them with? Are you connected to someone else? Are you able to somehow help with this next problem?
Eric Collett (34:30.732)
Yeah, we are. And sometimes we help directly. Sometimes we’re connecting them with resources that they might need in their area to deal with those kinds of things. overall, because we understand the science of what is driving their symptoms or potentially driving it, we’re able to do some additional testing or try something. So quick example, we had a young woman come to us, actually father brought her in a few years
She was depressed, diagnosed with major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. She had attempted suicide. Family found her standing on top of a 14-story building. It was a devastating situation. And she comes from a very stable two parent household with great family, no financial issues, very talented student, great athlete. So, we worked through the enhanced protocol and identified she had untreated postpartum
Concussion Syndrome because she played rugby in lacrosse. Yeah, and had never been diagnosed with a concussion but her bell had been rung many times and it showed up in her eye tracking so we went through the whole protocol and assisted her and she went from being depressed and suicidal to a much better place but a year later she was still kind of cycling in and out of weeks that weren’t going so well Yeah, and in a direct consult with our medical director. She said
off, something’s not right. And she said on top of it, I’ve got cold sores. And Randy said, wait a minute. How did I not know you have cold sores? Well, you my dad is a dentist, so he prescribed valsiclovir. And he was like, I didn’t mention it. I think it was a big deal. said, no, that is a big deal. Yeah. Lots of Alzheimer’s patients who die and donate their brains to science are found to have herpes simplex virus living in the brain.
problem.
Eric Collett (36:28.846)
And if you have a damaged blood brain barrier from concussive injuries and that virus has gotten into your brain, then every time it flares, energy production drops and you might have symptoms. well, that was the kind of thing that we could deal with directly through telehealth. And Randy said, we’re going to test drive putting you on valcyclovir for a year, every day for a year. And she’s like, well, is that even safe? And he said, well, yeah, when I work with patients that have
genital herpes, that’s the treatment and it is safe. Well, long story short, her mental health totally leveled out. She met the love of her life, got married, she’s expecting her first child. It totally changed her life.
Absolutely.
Those are the kinds of things where there might be a real individualized symptom that comes up and we can sort through it or we can help them find the resource to do it. if there’s anything that sums up kind of how our team operates, it really bugs us when we haven’t found an answer to something and we will dig and dig and dig until we can figure out what is causing this because I just really enthusiastically believe that the human body works.
well and works as designed when we figure out whatever the root cause issue is that’s affecting it and we can correct that.
Jessica Miller (37:52.344)
Yeah, and.
Having somebody in your corner that cares as much as you do, has the passion for it and has the heart for it is worth its weight in gold. Like that is such a beautiful, amazing thing, especially when it comes to your health. Because let’s face it, some of these things are really scary and they’re catastrophic, like in real life. So, the stakes are high and a lot of us feel like we don’t know where to, know, we’re just trying to find that answer. It can feel really hopeless.
of a company and people that are experts, they’re in it, they’re there with you, they’re not gonna kind of stop till they figure it out is so powerful. And I think for your community and for your, even as you’re working one-on-one with patients,
I think there’s so much opportunity for your business to find that next problem. And you don’t start with every problem, right? Because to your point, there are some of these one-off things that are nuanced. And maybe you uncover them as you get in there deeper with someone. As these kind of hallmark things, though.
kind of show up in many people in your world, it’s like how do we best help them next? What is that next offer that we can provide for them that is going to solve their problem, it’s going to help our business, and it’s going to create, what it’s doing is creating this flywheel because when people get help, what do they do? They stay. And when they stay, what happens? Life happens and something else comes. And then as you understand that ideal client’s journey, you will have the next thing
Jessica Miller (39:28.504)
they need. And maybe at some point, you are like, this is where we want to stop, like we help people to this point. And then we hand them to the next person that’s helping them in whatever capacity that is. And you could have some sort of agreement with those people, whether it’s, you know, like an affiliate or some sort of referral network, where, you know, you’re, you’re taking care of that person by getting them to the next best place.
it doesn’t also mean that they have to leave your community, but maybe at some point, you’re like, we’re really good to this point, and then we’re gonna let them go to the specialist. But I have found that those types of…
programs or offer stacks are so powerful because they take the people that already trust you, they’re already bought in, they believe in you, you’ve helped them, and they keep them coming back. They’re giving them another reason to stay with you or buy an offer or something like that because they don’t want to go someplace else. But if you don’t have something for them, they have to. Do you know what I’m saying? I think it also solves that problem that you were talking about where people may not know
it’s a brain issue or they may not be educated around that. Well, the people in your world, they already are right there bought in, they get it. They’re really warm. So, to get them to solve their next problem with you is so much easier than trying to go out there and educate all the people to see the things that they don’t even know are a problem for them. There’s a place for that too. And that sort of front end of the funnel.
But I think with all the work that you have all done and you’re speaking and you’re very in the community, you’re teaching, that is probably happening. And I know you’re doing different things to get that word out there. You know, it’s working, but then the back-end piece here, like there’s a lot of opportunity there, I think for you. And you’re doing some of it already. So, it’s an easier lift because all those things’ people are probably asking about.
Jessica Miller (41:31.84)
you already know how to help them with that. You’re well versed in those places. So, for you to put together a program or catch them in some way would be probably a very small hurdle because you’re already an expert and you know your clients really well.
Yeah. In a way, Jess, it sounds like you’re describing what I’m currently working on right now. So, I’d love to get your further. Tell me.
Yes, tell the
I mentioned earlier kind of the Costco model and we’re not just trying to copy Costco, but maybe learn from things that have been done in the marketplace. And people maintain a Costco membership because they get so much value from having it. It pays for itself. Absolutely. And people already say, hey, you guys give us access to Fullscript, one of the world’s largest supplement wholesalers, and you just pass along your wholesale discounts to us and we’re saving so much money that it pays for our membership.
And so, I was asking myself, well, what else are people asking for that we could give them access to and what would incentivize those companies or people with those products and services to bring them to the community at a much lower rate than people could get them on the open market. So, imagine like a mold restoration company that is vetted and we know that they do things right. And that service is listed in the marketplace, but AmFAST members get like 20 % off or whatever.
Eric Collett (42:55.376)
Right. What would be a reason for that business owner to put their product or service in our community? one is that it’s a curated group of people that have already put up their hand and said, I want to invest in my health. it’s a targeted market. Yes. But the other thing that we could do is go to that mold company and say, how about you put something on your website that says, AmFAST members get X percent off our services. And if you’re not an AmFAST
member sign up here. And that could be a unique landing page where we give them 50 % of the membership fee, which is about as much as a Costco membership. And we give them something that they would not otherwise have access to, which is monthly recurring revenue. So, if they can incentivize bringing their tribe to AmFAST and collecting more and more people in one place, who all believe in leaving the sick care system and being proactive about their health,
and collecting products and services and things that support that mindset, then I think everybody wins. And whether you’re a mold company or you make red light devices or any of the medical devices that improve health, if you’re doing that, you don’t have access to monthly recurring revenue. That’s true. And you don’t have a compelling enough reason to build your own membership because you’re dealing with such a narrow thing. Right.
But if we give you access to a membership and we share the revenue stream so that everybody wins and we just make the site more and more valuable and members love it, then why not? At least that’s how I’m thinking about it right now. And I’d love to get your impressions of the idea.
Yeah, partnerships are very powerful and you have something that is so valuable to anyone you partner with in a strategic way like that. You have an audience of their ideal client and that is extremely valuable. And you could take that in so many different directions of partnerships or sponsorship opportunities or I mean, even people educating these people in your community with whatever it is their focused expertise,
Jessica Miller (45:13.796)
is I mean you could people could pay to be speakers or there’s a variety of different ways that you can monetize that. So, I’m a huge fan of that and I’m also a huge fan of you know taking that one step further with your current client is like a stratification of service.
bundles or whatever you would call them. So, if it’s somebody like me, I’ll just assume myself as an example. I’m always the 1 % who wants all the things. I want access to you. I want fast answers. I want to be where all the people are. I am that kind of a consumer. And I promise you, I am not the only person. I always joke with people that whenever somebody runs like a Facebook or an Instagram ad, the person on the back end is like, whatever you do, you need to put this in front of Jess Miller’s profile because she will buy.
all of the things. I am 100 % that person and I always want the highest quality thing. So, if I was in your membership community for example and there was an option to be a VIP member that got one one-on-one call a quarter, I would be in.
or maybe I got access to something else that was very sort of exclusive, and I use that term sort of in quotations, but there’s something that differentiates the value and the result for people in that segment of the community I would be in.
And there’s always that one to 2 % of people that are like me. So, I think there’s an opportunity to think about your group of people you have and even segment your group in that way to have that sort of next tier of membership. And as long as the value is there, people will pay for it. So, I think that’s an opportunity. And then if there’s these other sorts of ancillary needs where they’re either around a problem or a topic or a sub,
Jessica Miller (47:05.472)
group, you could always offer those ad hoc. So maybe there’s a course or a live training session, a couple of things for x amount of dollars. And you can make it really reasonable. You’re not going to charge somebody $5,000 for a training course.
But even if you’re doing that at $25 a pop, someone who became a $25 a month, so maybe that’s like a $250, $300 client per year, if they just bought a few $25 things over the year, you’ve just raised your bottom line 25 % without.
really doing much more work. You’re just repackaging what you have and putting it in a way that it’s tailored toward their problems and what they want. And again, they love it. They’re getting what they need. They just stay in. They come back. And they tell everybody else about you. And that’s how that ripple kind of really just gains a lot of steam.
So, I think yes, the partnerships, the offering that value on the back end, all of those things, it’s like that one, two, 3 % you were talking about that just has a huge ROI. And those levers in your business are so powerful. So powerful. I love this. sounds amazing.
We what we didn’t do. We teased people earlier with the idea of some actionable steps. And I’m sitting here going, we haven’t done that yet. Talk about that. maybe I can talk through what people could do. People ask me all the time, hey, what’s the one most important thing that I could do to optimize my brain? And I think the short answer to that is you’ve got to get your blood work done. You’ve got to understand genetics. You’ve got to understand
Jessica Miller (48:33.294)
I was just going to get to that. We’re going to do it right now.
Eric Collett (48:56.888)
What’s literally going on under the surface? So that’s the short answer. But there are essentially two areas that we have to really focus on to help people have a better brain. One is all the stuff that you measure with biomarkers. So that’s why I say get your blood work done. You don’t know what you don’t know and data drives behavior. But the other category is lifestyle factors because there’s all sorts of stuff that have a tremendous impact on how our brain
and our body’s function and you can’t medicate or supplement your way out of them. Right, yeah. So, there’s a short list of really powerful levers to pull and I’ll just I’ll give you the list. We’ll talk through them briefly and if you want to go a little bit deeper in one or two of those areas, we could do that but think of the acronym BEDS. Okay. And we want to put problems to bed. so, B reminds you that brain training matters.
Brain training is not Sudoku, it’s not Crossword Puzzles. New cognitive experiences that force new connections. So, something as simple as brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand or eating with your non-dominant hand actually forces new connections. There are brain training apps that actually work, that are research-based like Brain HQ. Really great app developed by the doctor who literally coined the term neuroplasticity decades ago, Dr. Mike Merzenich.
Too bad.
Eric Collett (50:25.006)
E in beds reminds us that exercise is one of the most phenomenal things that we can do for brain health. You can’t have a better brain without better blood flow and exercise moves blood. It moves lymph. It stimulates a growth hormone for brain cells called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. So, every research study ever done on exercise and brain health says it is critical and phenomenally effective. So, you got to move. D reminds
us that diet matters and we could talk for days about diet. There’s a lot of tribalism about diet. I’m a bigger fan of teaching principles because if anyone thinks that there’s one perfect diet for the human body, they probably don’t understand physiology very well. An 80-year-old that’s been sedentary for the last 40 years and has advanced dementia, which often involves major amounts of insulin resistance, needs to eat very differently than my 16-year-old
Caboose and the family who runs cross country and track and thinks that nothing you go on run 10 miles. Right. They’re not the same metabolic camp. We got to treat it differently. different dietary interventions are tools. But overall, people need to eat real food, not ultra-processed nonsense. Right. If your food was made by a chemist and not by a cook, let’s start there. That’s the problem. And there’s more we could say about that. But whatever you do, you got to control blood sugar because elevated blood sugar damages the tissue of the body.
There’s another D though, and that’s dental health. Lots of people who die with Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease are found to have P. gingivalis bacteria living in their brain. So dental health is huge. It’s an open gateway to an inflammatory response to cause infection.
if we get to the S in beds, sleep is right there on the list because sleep is when the clean cycle of the brain runs. We now know a lot more about that since about 2014, but sleep is literally when the brain takes out the trash. And if you’re not getting seven to eight hours of deep restful sleep, it wreaks havoc long-term. Stress management is another S. You might not be able to deal with all the stressors coming into your life, but are you aware of
Eric Collett (52:48.418)
counterbalances? Are you intentionally doing things to counterbalance that stress and to give yourself an opportunity to rebound from it? And really the other stress or excuse me the other S on the list is socialization. Being social is really good for the brain. There’s plenty of research on that. So that’s a pretty good short list of things that would seriously move the needle for people.
Yeah, I love this so much. as you’re saying this, first of all, I love a good acronym. It’s so smart. You know, I’m just thinking about, you know, these simple things are so powerful. And I’ll just be transparent. As an entrepreneur, it’s really hard to do those things sometimes, right? And
I wish I could sit here and tell you that I get my seven to eight hours of sleep every night, but I don’t. I think there’s something, sometimes I think we think, you know, we need to climb Mount Everest to get to the other side of feeling better. But there are these little things that we can do right now that have such a profound effect on our health. And then going that one step deeper with you and your team to really understand what is going on so that we can take these simple 1 % things and all the
data and make such a difference in our life and our business, it’s just so refreshing to hear that it, and I’m going to say like it’s so simple, right? It’s so simple. And I think that’s just such a breath of fresh air. For your clients who have been entrepreneurs that you’ve worked with, what are some of the things that you’ve seen that they get as results that have been really like just transformative for them?
Yeah.
Eric Collett (54:35.49)
I’ll tell you about a recent case, and this is a man who’s been really public about his experiences. But I want to comment on one thing you said, because I think it’s pertinent to everybody listening. We are all busy. And how do we deal with that? And how do we apply these things? First of all, don’t ever let the desire for perfection be the enemy of a good effort. And we can consistently make a good effort. We can be aware of our non-negotiables in life. And if you’re not getting seven to eight hours of sleep,
just because you’re choosing to do other work. Well, that’s a choice. Sure. And we have to frame it as a choice and know what we’re choosing. Yeah. But when it comes to things like exercise, sometimes we make it harder than it needs to be. If you go to the gym for 45 minutes every morning, that’s awesome. But if you sit the entire rest of the day behind a desk, that just makes you an active couch potato. Yeah. And what would metabolically actually be more helpful is to get up once an hour for three to five minutes and take
exercise snack. Get up and move. Do air squats. I keep a spin bike in my office so I can get up and crank away for just a few minutes once an hour. I have a standing desk. All these things that more and more people are doing. If we’re intentional about it and we track it, we kind of get into a rhythm and we realize I function so much better that the other 55 minutes of the hour I’m getting so much more
done right I get a lot of bang for my buck when I take an exercise snack so coaching as in business makes all the difference it’s helping find those little tweaks
So as far as what people can expect to see, I think of Adam Oaken’s case. I’m using his name because he’s been very public about his experiences. He published a LinkedIn article a few weeks ago. And when we first met Adam and were working with him, his cognitive scores overall were in the 68th percentile, which bugged him because he’s always been above average in life. He’s in his early 40s. He’s the regional practice manager at Epic.
Eric Collett (56:47.16)
insurance brokers out of New York so major commercial insurance thing working a lot of with a lot of great leaders around the country and inwardly he’s feeling like I don’t know how long I have yeah or things keep slipping further I don’t want to go down that road right
And by measuring things that were affecting his brain health and learning something about his genetics and his metabolic health and hormonal levels that were off, we were able to help him make adjustments that in the second retest took him to the 88th percentile. And then by the third retest, he scored in the 99th percentile. Great. And I never get tired of seeing that because talk about getting someone fired up about their future and what they can
my gosh. And I live this myself. I watched myself go from sick and tired and 30 pounds overweight and feeling like death was right around the corner in my 30s to now turning 50 this year and literally feeling way better than I did in my 30s. It’s remarkable. And that just has me excited for the rest of life.
and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Oh my gosh, I love this so much. This has been amazing and I could talk to you about this for the next three hours for sure. I know our listeners are gonna wanna know how to find you. So where can we send them to connect with you?
Eric Collett (58:18.306)
Yeah, if they go to amindforallseasons.com, there’s lots of stuff they could check out. There’s a daily video I’ve done for years. There’s a free newsletter. If anyone wants to test drive our membership, maybe I can offer them something in your good name. Absolutely. that’s okay with you. If you go to amindforallseasons.com forward slash start, you can become a member of a Mind for All Seasons and
It’s $25 a month to have access to all that education to come ask questions directly. But if you at checkout put in the promo code Jess, J-E-S-S, then you get 30 days free. So, you got nothing to lose. Yeah. Come test drive it. I’d love to have anybody come into office hours and bring your questions, bring lab work that you had done from your doctor’s office. Whatever it is that you’ve been doing, let us see if we can take all that good and add just a little bit to it. And if you want to go deeper, we’ll
tell you how to go deeper.
Thank much, Eric. Thank you for being on the show today. This was such a treat, so informative, so valuable. I think you’re going to have a lot of new people showing up on your doorstep. Check that out.
Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be with you.
Jessica Miller (59:31.822)
likewise. And for everyone, have a wonderful week. See you next time.
