Heroes in Business - Dan Zavorotny, Cofounder and COO NutriSense wellness company to help achieve your health potential

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

The interview everyone needs to hear. Protect your health through monitoring. Dan Zavorotny, Cofounder and COO NutriSense wellness company to help achieve your health potential in interviewed by David Cogan famous host Heroes Show and founder Eliances entrepreneur community.  

Up in the sky, look, it's captivating, it's energizing, it's Eliance's Heroes. Eliance's is the destination for entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities, and startups, where our heroes in business align. Now, here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. That's right. And I'm back. And thank you again to all of our listeners and viewers out there. Don't forget, we're on over 50 outlets now, including AM, FM, Pandora, which we had the

co-founder of Pandora on, and a gazillion others. So make sure that you continue to stay tuned. And thank you again for the feedback when I had the CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield on. So make sure you check out those past episodes by going to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. It is the only place where entrepreneurs align. And remember, you can also catch our video episodes on many outlets, including YouTube. Just do a Google search under Alliances YouTube and you'll find it.

You're going to want to make sure you stay tuned and listen real closely to the next interview that I have. And our hero today with that, I have with us Dan Zavrnitsky. We'll go right with that. See, Dan Zavrnitsky. One more time, Dan. Zavrnitsky. Zavrotny. We'll run with that. See, Dan Zavarotny. One more time, Dan. Zavarotny. Zavarotny. Dan Zavarotny.

We have with us Dan Zavarotny. He is the co-founder and chief operating officer of NutriSense. And you can reach him at NutriSense.io. Now, what is NutriSense.io. Now, what is NutriSense? You're going to learn about this, and you're going to learn about really the magic behind it. Now, Dan, I want to get right into this. First of all, those of you that are listening, I'm going to have to describe what I'm doing. I'm right now starting to undress in front of Dan, and those of you watching are probably laughing and going, what the heck is going on? So I'm undressing. I just took off my jacket. I might take off my shirt here. We'll see.

But I'm going to show the audience something that I've got. Nobody knows that I even have this. This is the first time that I'm actually revealing it. It's under my arm. And no, it's not a tattoo. Dan, steal the thunder and tell us, what is it that I just showed you? So what you showed us is a continuous glucose monitor. It's a little device that actually penetrates the top of the skin layer, and it tracks your glucose in real time, 24-7, nonstop on your phone. And so what you're able to do in real time is truly understand how your body responds to food, to stress, to sleep, to exercise, all in real time without any guesswork. So whether you eat a banana and want to know how you respond and whether you eat ice cream and want to know how to respond, you're able to find out. I think, and I think, again, I think it's incredible.

First of all is, let me disclose here, is that I am not a diabetic. And I know, you know, a lot of diabetics use your product. You do not have to be a diabetic. There's people that are pre-diabetics. There are people that are not diabetic or pre-diabetic at all that use your system. And this is not a paid advertisement by anybody. You know, it may sound like it is, but it's not. I'm a fan.

I mean, I'm a fan. And Dan, I'm going to share another secret with you. We get over 200 requests a week of people that want to be on the show. You're one of 10 that I actually reached out to be on the show. I appreciate it. I mean, our goal is to help people find value in their health. And we believe we could do that because we find people something they've never experienced before. that because we find people something they've never experienced before you know so dan why would it be somebody let's first step back of why would it be somebody healthy utilizing

nutrisense sure so i mean i think the first part of this is if you think about the u.s population one in three that's that's over 95 million americans are pre-diabetic so it sounds like you know people don't ever think about pre-diabetes as a disease, but it's a state right before the disease of type 2 diabetes. And so if you take a big picture view, no one ever goes from I'm healthy to I'm type 2 diabetic, but it's a transition period for a long, long time. And what happens is a lot of it's caused by lifestyle decisions, whether it's knowingly or unknowingly. And so by wearing neutral sense and wearing this device, you're able to truly understand where are you in the spectrum and how do you prevent disease in the first place? Unfortunately, the one thing we all know

about ourselves as humans is that sooner or later, we all will get older, we will age, we will die. And we believe truly that people should age gracefully and when they're 60 70 years old they feel to play with their grandkids and enjoy life not just sit in a stagnant form because they're unable because they're unhealthy and so the idea is the earlier in life you realize how to control your health effectively the better you can make good decisions longer term and the irony of this is that we have these fad diets. And sometimes you hear someone saying, try the ketogenic diet. It's great. And somebody tries it, and it works really, really well for them. Someone else tries it, and it's really

bad for them. Why is that? There's so much bioindividuality between all of us based on our sex, based on when we are hormonally, based on our ethnic background, based even on something like pollution. It really impacts us dramatically and our lifestyle like stress. And so by having based on when we are hormonally, based on our ethnic background, based even on something like pollution, it really impacts us dramatically and our lifestyle like stress. And so by having this data in real time, it's not you guessing at all. It's not the same feedback you get from your doctor. Doctor says, hey, you need to improve by eating better and working out, but it's too broad. Here, it's super specialized to you. So you know specifically everything about your body in real time when it comes to your glucose, which is a vital symptom and sign of your health.

And that's the thing. Oh, by the way, again, you're listening, watching me, David Kogan, host of the Alliance's Hero Show. We have with us Dan Zerotny. He is the founder, the chief operating officer, co-founder of NutriSense. You can reach him at NutriSense.io for those of you that listening on the radio, N-U-T-R-I-S-E-N-S-E.io. So, Dan, I think that makes it and it's frustrating. What's frustrating is that I could be eating ice cream along with you and yet both of our bodies, we could be the same age, maybe same physical, look similar on the outside. But there's crazy stuff going on inside. Why are we still getting then different results? It's several factors, right? It's one is your microbiome, right? Your microbiome has a dramatic impact of how evolutionary we've changed and how

do we digest different food? Other parts of it is how did you sleep? What kind of stress levels are you on? And so people don't realize, but if you have poor quality sleep, that also impacts the way you respond to food. So you can eat something that's not that bad for you, but if you had poor quality sleep last night, you'll actually respond negatively to it. So it's a double causality of negative impact on your body. And so one is always identify where you are as the baseline. Two is own the data yourself. You don't need someone else telling you broad strokes, you should do this or that. You can understand yourself and you can test yourself.

And I mean, the third piece is just, you know, we just have naturally very different blood types. We have very different information about our backgrounds. And so historically, if you look at ancestral parts of you, some people adapted certain foods better than others. You know, something as easy as a carb like potatoes versus rice. Historically, Europeans adapted better to potatoes versus Asian cultures adapted a little bit better to rice. And so that genetic makeup makes a huge difference. Dan, I think you've done such a phenomenal job with leading the company. And again, your company's blown up. You've got a ton of employees.

You've been very successful. You'll share some of those secrets of how that is. But I think really the meat of what people want to know is your device because it can be used for and for everybody. And you've done plenty of other podcasts and different things out there. This, you know, is already unique. You know, right? First one you saw somebody stripping in front of you. So I think the thing is, is, is that I want to let people know is, is that I'm fearful of needles. I absolutely hate

needles. So Dan, steal the thunder. If I hate needles, how am I able to attach a device to me every two weeks and also simply take it off and attach another one by myself? Yeah. So it is a little scary when you first see it. You see this needle, you're like, oh boy, is that needle going to sit inside of me? Actually, it's not. It's just, there is an applicator that goes on top of the device and that penetrates the skin very slightly, a couple of millimeters, and it doesn't actually even get to your blood level. It gets to your interstitial fluid. And so you almost look at it, and there's a lot of funny videos.

People are afraid, and they're getting ready to be afraid. And then all of a sudden, they touch it, and they don't feel anything, and they're surprised. So the applicator really helps. And so the fear quickly dissipates. But there are devices coming in the future in the market that are not using any needles whatsoever. And they're going to use different kind of pieces of sensing technology to understand this data.

How is that possible? And when will that come? What's your crystal ball say? Yeah, I mean, crystal ball, it says, if we're lucky, five years from now, if we're unlucky, 10. But I do think it's going to happen. And there's different ways to do it. There's ones that look at your sweat. We don't notice we're constantly sweating. There's other ones that look at, they look at basically the lighting

they see through your skin basically. And there's different methodologies as well. I think before we get to that stage, I think that's more complex. I think the earlier stage of, I would say probably 18 months to 36 months is for devices, these think that's more complex. I think the earlier stage of, I would say, probably 18 months to 36 months is for these devices to start tracking more than just glucose in real time. And I'm talking about lactic acid, testosterone, ketones. So these things get very interesting. If you add it to the next level, let's say tracking lactic acid, Olympic athletes right now during practice will poke their ear and test their lactic acid to understand, do I keep going? Do I stop? If you have lactic acid in real time, now you can also get your workouts in perfect order because you're no longer guessing, hey, do I keep working out or am I good?

And that's what we're currently doing. But this will tell you with your body's response. So that's where we're going. And it's going to happen. The question is going to be us or someone else building it, but it is going to happen. Right. Absolutely phenomenal. And again, what this is, is this is is a device you attach it to your arm you

use your phone and you're able to monitor yourself and see what's going on when you're eating something and i've been very shocked and surprised by the results good and bad on me of what i've seen i'm eating something healthy and i think it's healthy. It's got healthy ingredients. Bam. My body reacts to it very different. And so it's important. I'm also a big fan of health bars. Oh, you'd be surprised. Right, Dan? Yeah. I mean, the amount of times, remember we're bombarded constantly by marketing for food companies and they're telling you, drink that orange juice, eat those blueberries and strawberries and bananas. But there's much more to it. It's much more nuanced. You want to make sure that your glucose control is very stable. By having glucose increases by certain types of food,

you then have these ups and downs, and that actually drives a lot of stress in your body. certain types of food, you then have these ups and downs, and that actually drives a lot of stress in your body. And that's why a lot of times we have that afternoon crash. And so the idea is, if you're able to manage your glucose effectively, you're truly able to function in a state of flow and be more effective throughout your day and get rid of your mood swings in many ways. So Dan, there's a lot of other people that are listening that have ideas, things that they want to, you know, create different things along that create different things along that, whatever that may be. Heck, maybe even a food machine that will automatically, based upon your results, say this is what it is and here it is and here's where you order and tie all that together. Maybe a plan for you of tying a food plan directly to it based upon people's results.

Yeah, I mean, we're thinking about it. It's in the pipeline. It's just going to take based upon people's results, right? Yeah. I mean, we're thinking about it. It's in the pipeline. It's going to take a little longer. Please, I'd like to be the beta of that one. But how did you then, from a thought process, an idea process, actually be able to launch it? I mean, even coming up with the product itself takes a miracle, right? And something that's, whether it's digital or physical, yours yours is both like that in itself is two miracles. Yeah. So for ourselves, the story was,

I want, I was in working in healthcare consulting and I was doing really well, you know, healthcare consulting pays well, your job is to optimize profitability for very large organizations in healthcare space. But one of the things I hit a point was, I want to be mission driven, and I want to make a mark in the world where money is no longer something that's the most important driver. When you're young, you have this ambition of making more and more money, you know, paying to travel around the world. And now I hit a point where I'm enjoying life. And now I want to just to bring my skills that I've discovered to help the world. and optimize profitability for big corporations is really not what's driving the world to be better place and so i knew i wanted to do something around health or education um and as i was in

silicon valley i met up with my friends he was actually wearing one of these devices and he asked me hey do you know anything about this and interestingly enough i happen to know a lot both my healthcare industry experience plus my sister's type 1 diabetic. She's been one since she was one years old. So I've seen evolution of the hardware happening. And so he said, hey, let's try my idea. And I'll build the software and you work on trying to do marketing. And I said, sure. Quit my job two weeks later and we started this. I think the difficulty came about when he said, all right, now you got to go figure out how to market this. And I was like, well, you haven't built a software yet. He's like, yeah, yeah,

but you got to get people to get excited and find demand for this topic. And that's the complexity, I think, that we hit where how would you sell and market something that doesn't even exist yet? And so the irony of this i just said okay good old google let me type in how to market on the internet right budget of zero i've never done any marketing or sales my entire background's been a finance strategy and it's really come up with different ideas how do i find people who find value in this i mean i think really if as long as you find people who truly find value in a product and it solves their problem, you know, and people always try to sell stuff you don't know what he needs. But the true value is to find people whose problem you're solving.

It's the jobs to be done framework. What is the job we're doing for you as a receiver of our product, as a customer? And once we've identified that, it became much easier to have a conversation with people and try to explain to them how this can bring value in their life. And I think that as long as you bring value to someone's life and also you're driving a mission forward, it gets really fun to work at a place and also help a lot of people at the same time. And you're wearing a lot of hats. I mean, you even hire even dieticians. By the way, too, he uses app. You have access period.

You can extend your period of how long, how much time for being able to spend with a dieticians by the way too he uses app you have access period you can extend your period of how long how much time for uh being able to spend with a dietician and by the way they're right on your phone and guess what they have access to your reports on NutriSense so Dan you may end up hiring me right I can be a spokesperson here yeah we may have to I mean we have a you know but uh literally you could you you have the app right there and you have instant commu you know communication sometimes you have to wait and all that but they have access to your charts so it's a it's it's just a different level and i think knowing you're knowing what's going on in your body is probably the most important thing because it tells you about mood

swings breakouts all the things like having the access to the engine. How often do we ever check the engine of our car? Rarely. We take it to a mechanic. Well, Dan's invented what is now you, mechanic in your pocket, on your phone. Exactly. I mean, and I think the thing people always forget is you want data in real time, not once a year. And this is currently what happens. You go to a doctor once a year and your annual physical, and they give you data and you're like, okay, great. What do I do with it?

Come back one year from now, let's talk about it again. It's too big of a span. Here you get every 15 minutes, you get a new data point, that's number one. The second piece is the human. You want feedback from a human right away, analysis of your data. You don't want to wait

again a year or six months, make an appointment. Doctor forgets who you are. Like we have a strong belief and we've seen a little bit over COVID where the internet is going to put everyone online. Something like 85% of doctor visits can happen online. However, very few are. And even now we're moving online, people are still struggling even get on zoom calls right and it's the ability to manage the data the usability the uniqueness of each client and how do we scale it so i think both the hardware real-time data the software actually scaling the individual not just a dietitian but a doctor a physical therapist a psychiatrist and crane machine learning models around that, all together integrated, really provides true value longer term. And if you think about our healthcare system is broken,

we all know this, and we know how expensive it is. We spend more than any country in the world on healthcare, yet we're the sickest. How is that possible? You said it's 15 minute increments now. Do you see in the future, there a way to just have it instantaneous?

So it's 15-minute increments because there's a delay between your blood interstitial fluid. So glucose goes from your blood interstitial fluid. There's always a delay by 15 minutes. There is ability for it to go in real time. I think from a value perspective, it's an incremental improvement. I think it doesn't help as much. I think what's interesting is when these things get even smaller. And the new versions, by the way, coming out, they're about three quarters smaller, 75% smaller.

And they're all Bluetooth, too. No scanning anymore either. So making them smaller, making them non-invasive, tracking more data points in real time. I think this is where it gets to be more interesting for the population got it what do you have to say to parents that are out there that have children that pre-diabetic or diabetic and um but beyond just that what could they do to help teach their children of come up with something? Imagine it and you can build it like a handle. I think you have to encourage your kids to fail.

We are taught from a young age that we have to measure everything and you get an A or B or C or D or an F in class. And if you didn't get the A, you failed. I think we should celebrate failure and celebrate attempting again. And I think that is a very big obstacle that we, as a system built, it's about not failing, following the process. If you think about our entire education system, and this is a Western world education system, it is all about teaching people how to be really good process followers and how to be really good employees. As employees, you're taught to stay inside the box. And yet here, we're pushing you to be outside the box.

So as parents, you have to force your kids in some ways, indirectly or directly, to fail and accept failure. I think as long as you have the concept in your mind of like, hey, failure is acceptable, the stress disappears. It's when you think it's unacceptable, that's where you're really stressed out about it. I love it. Well, Dan, it is okay to fail, but thank God you didn't because so many people now are counting on it. You continue to grow. You continue to make a difference on those monitoring the glucose so they can have a better outcomes. That's a hero, Dan Zarvotny. You can reach him at NutriSense.io, N-U-T-R-I-S-E-N-S-E.io. This has been David Kogan with the A Hero Show. Make sure you go to alliances.com and wait to hear who's next. But Dan, you got to dance with me too. That's part of the requirements.

I'm not a good dancer. That's the only problem.