Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Dr. Josh Axe: From Healing My Mom of Cancer to Building a Multi-Million-Dollar Health Brand | E118

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

Dr. Josh Axe’s passion for health and wellness began when his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis led to chronic health issues after chemotherapy. Inspired by this, Josh pursued natural medicine, which helped her make a remarkable recovery when cancer returned. Years later, Josh faced a spinal infection that left him unable to walk. Doctors predicted permanent disability, but using the same healing mindset and natural methods that saved his mom, he defied the odds. In this episode, Josh joins Ilana to discuss the transformative power of belief, the keys to true health and success, and the secrets behind building a powerful personal brand. Dr. Josh Axe is a physician, entrepreneur, and leadership expert passionate about helping individuals use food and natural remedies to achieve optimal health and wellness. He is the founder of DrAxe.com and The Health Institute and the co-founder of Ancient Nutrition. In this episode, Ilana and Josh will discuss: (00:00) Introduction  (02:06) The Cancer Battle That Sparked His Health Mission (05:29) The Role of Belief in Healing, Growth, and Success (14:34) Building DrAxe.com into a Digital Health Powerhouse (20:55) The Scary Moment He Almost Lost Everything (24:05) Overcoming the Fear of Charging What You’re Worth (26:06) Josh’s Strategies for Building a Scalable Brand (31:12) Simple Habits for Total Health Transformation (34:37) From Bedridden to Healed: The Power of Belief (42:38) Why Character Beats Accomplishments Dr. Josh Axe is a physician, entrepreneur, and leadership expert passionate about helping individuals use food and natural remedies to achieve optimal health and wellness. He is the founder of DrAxe.com and The Health Institute and the co-founder of Ancient Nutrition. His businesses have ranked among the Inc. 500’s fastest-growing companies. Josh is the host of The Dr. Josh Axe Show and the bestselling author of Eat Dirt, The Keto Diet, and Think This, Not That. Connect with Josh: Josh’s Website: draxe.com  Josh’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joshaxe  Resources Mentioned: Josh’s Book, Think This, Not That: 12 Mindshifts to Breakthrough Limiting Beliefs and Become Who You Were Born to Be: https://www.amazon.com/Think-This-Not-That-Breakthrough/dp/1400337844  Josh’s Podcast, The Dr. Josh Axe Show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dr-josh-axe-show/id1700689487  The Health Institute: thehealthinstitute.com  Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't by Jim Collins: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996  Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW way for professionals to Advance Their Careers & Make 5-6 figures of EXTRA INCOME in Record Time. Check out our free training today at leapacademy.com/training

Wow, this show is going to be incredible. So buckle up and I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. But before we get started, I want to ask you for a favor. See, it's really, really important for me to help millions of people elevate their career, fast-track to leadership, land dream roles, jump to entrepreneurship or create portfolio careers. And this podcast is all about enabling this for millions of people to see a map of what it actually takes for big leaders to reach success.

So subscribe and download so you never miss it. Plus, it really, really helps me continue to bring amazing guests. Okay? So let's dive in. I had saw my mom reverse what the doctor said was an irreversible condition. I went from having a doctor tell me you're going to be permanently disabled. And today now I'm back and lifting weights, zero surgery, nothing like that at all.

Dr. Josh Axe, he's the founder of DrAxe.com, one of the most visited natural health platform in the world. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through chemo. She seemed worse than she did before she went through. I remember her just vomiting in a bucket, being so sick. And that's what motivated me to become a doctor, focusing on natural medicine.

I get a call from my mom right before I graduated. She said, I've been diagnosed with cancer again. We felt really led to take care of her all naturally. Nine months later, she was in complete remission. And so today my mom's in her 70s and the best shape of her life. I've built five multimillion dollar businesses and helped a lot of people heal as well.

And it's because the two things I focus on most are, and when you do those two things, your business just absolutely starts to snowball and grow very, very quickly. For people who want to get healthier, what should they do if they're listening to this? I think a few things. One. Dr. Josh Axe is a doctor of natural medicine, cure factor and clinical nutrition. He's the founder of DrAxe.com, one of the most visited natural health platform in the world and co-founder of Ancient Nutrition,

a company rooted in whole food functional solutions. He's also a multiple time bestselling author of books like Eat Dirt, Keto Diet, Ancient Remedies, and most recently Think This, Not That, where he explores the powerful connection between mindset and healing. This is going to be a really, really interesting episode about different career paths and how he created this really impactful brand.

Josh, thank you for coming to the show. Well, Ilana, thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here. Your journey into health wellness started with a personal story way back. Can I take you back to your childhood and what drove that passion for health and wellness? Well, for starters, I'll say, I find this a lot with entrepreneurs

and people that have a successful career is that there is some sort of fuel and why behind what they do, right? And oftentimes it's birthed out of pain. And for me, it's a very similar story. When I was in junior high, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. And it was sort of shocking to our family

because my mom was physically very fit and active. She was a PE teacher. She was a swim instructor. She looked really fit herself. And we exercised a lot as a family, but we didn't know anything about nutrition or holistic medicine. And when my mom got her breast cancer diagnosis,

she went through rounds and rounds of chemotherapy. And the chemotherapy back then was even more severe than today. I mean, she lost all of her hair. I remember her just vomiting in a bucket, being so sick and almost dying. Actually, my grandmother came in at one point and said, say goodbye to your mom,

because we thought she was gonna pass. And praise God, she made it through the treatments and she was diagnosed as being cancer-free and healthy. But the shocking thing after going through the conventional medical system was after she went through chemo, she seemed worse than she did before she went through. My mom developed chronic fatigue syndrome, hypothyroidism, digestive issues, chronic constipation, clinical depression and anxiety. She got put on multiple drugs, including antidepressants. My mom was sick and tired all the time growing up. And that's what motivated me to become a doctor.

I remember thinking to myself, I wanna help people like my mom. And I also thought to myself, there's gotta be a better way of actually helping treat issues and get people healthy. Well, I went in and I was about to open my functional medicine clinic because I was working on my doctorate and focusing on natural medicine. And I get a call from my mom right before I graduated and she's in tears, she's sobbing. And I said, what's wrong,

mom? She said, I've been diagnosed with cancer again. This time it's on my lungs. She said, what do I do? And I said, mom, I'll be home. I flew home. We sat down, we felt really led to take care of her all naturally. We just changed everything and her doctors were saying we want you to go do radiation and surgery in three days And we said listen We want you to give us three months to do a natural protocol And so we did a mixture of something called a Gershwin protocol and Budwig therapy and other cancer Forms of therapy and we juice vegetables a lot of vegetables was probably 70% of her diet We did some berries did wild caught fish like salmon, lots of herbs, turmeric, reishi mushroom, and also really focused on prayer

and healing herself spiritually and emotionally. And we did this program for about three to four months and went back into the CT scan. And I remember we got a call from the doctor a couple days later and they said, what have you been doing? We shared with them what we've been doing. Her female oncologist said, hmm, this is highly unusual. We don't typically see this, but your tumors have shrunk by more than half. They said, come back again in nine months. We want to redo a CT scan, see where you're at.

Did it then nine months later. And she was in complete remission. And so today my mom's in her seventies and the best shape of her life, has great health. But it's really that experience that drew me into and led me into functional medicine and really teaching my patients how to use food and lifestyle medicine to heal themselves.

So I should have met you about a decade ago when my mom passed from lung cancer. So you're taking this passion that fuels you, which is an incredible story. And I think also in school, you saw firsthand the power of limiting belief that changed how you grew up. What is the power of limiting belief and belief overall? Because again, I think that plays also a big role in this. A few references and ideas here.

One, I truly believe our beliefs are one of the most critical aspects for our identity, for us being successful in anything, whether it's healing successfully, overcoming condition, or building a successful business, or being a great parent. So our beliefs are very, very important. One of the reasons I knew this was actually via the Bible.

Growing up, I read a lot of the Bible, and Jesus never says anything like, take this supplement or this medication or this thing to heal. He says, your belief or your faith, that will heal you. And so when he talks about your belief will help you move mountains. So there are a lot of things there, I think in terms of success, that belief is very important. And most people have beliefs about themselves, about the world, about others, about God, that is crushing their ability to be successful. And I'll give you an example of this. When I was freshman year high school, this is the year after my mom battled cancer. And I had a teacher, my English professor, a teacher in freshman

year of high school said, Josh, can you stay after class? I stayed after class, and she said, Josh, what do you wanna do after high school? And I said, I wanna be a doctor. She literally laughed out loud at me, and she said, listen, you'll never be a doctor with your GPA. She said, my daughter had a 3.8 GPA, and she barely got into med school.

She said, you got an F on this paper, which is why I wanted you to stay after. You're getting a D minus in my class. You'll be lucky to graduate. And that was all she said, you've got an F on this paper, which is why I wanted you to stay after. You're getting a D minus in my class. You'll be lucky to graduate. And that was all she said. And I walked out of there feeling pretty defeated. And then two weeks later, I went to see a doctor with my mom.

And the doctor spoke to my mom like I wasn't in the room. And he said, listen, your son has severe ADHD. He has a learning disability. And that's what I took away was, oh, I have a learning disability. So I felt like walking out of there, like I was medically not smart. So because of that, I just believed I wasn't smart.

I barely graduated high school. I mean, I graduated with like a 2.0 GPA. I mean, like bottom of the bottom, barely graduated. The only reason I graduated was I knew my dad would just be irate if I didn't graduate. And I applied to a bunch of colleges, didn't really get into most, but there was one I wanted to go to.

And they sent me a letter back and it said something like this. It said, you're not in, but if you come and take summer school, an average above a 3.0, we'll let you in. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna really try. So I went there, I tried.

The first class I had to take was English 101. The first thing I had to do was write a paper. So I wrote a paper, I felt really good about it, turned it in. And a few days later, Ms. Williams, as teacher said, Josh, can you stay after class? And my stomach sunk, I thought. Oh my God, not again.

Oh no, not this, yeah. And she said, what's your major? And I said, Ms. Williams, I haven't chosen a major yet, I'm not sure. She said, well, I think you should consider being an English major, a journalism major, because you're a really talented writer. She said, you got the highest grade in consider being an English major, a journalism major, cause you're really talented writer. She said,

you got the highest grade in the class of 40 kids. You got an A on the paper. Just wanted to let you know, great job. And for me, Ilana, it was like, I'll call it a memory transplant. My belief about myself was, I'm not smart, I'm not capable, I'm not good at school with something else I thought about.

And after that, it totally changed my confidence. I literally felt like, you know what, after doing pretty well my first year, I changed back to pre-med and started taking all my biology courses in chemistry and did great. You know, I averaged about a 3.0 there. And then eventually, this is much later on, but I went to Johns Hopkins University. I know, which is insane. And I graduated there with a, yeah, with a master's, with a 3.9 GPA. And then, you know, had successful businesses and a number of things.

I don't say any of that to boast, but I just say it to say, there are a lot of people out there who have a false belief about themselves. I'm not good at business, I'm not good at sales, I don't have the credential behind my name. And because of it, this belief, they're not successful. Versus if they created a new empowering belief and replaced it with what the truth is, there are people I know, this belief, they're not successful. Versus if they created a new empowering belief

and replaced it with what the truth is, there are people I know, for instance, in the health field that have zero degrees that are massively successful. There's a friend of mine, his name's Max Lugavere, I think about Ben Greenfield, there's several others. They don't have doctorates, but they make millions of dollars, they help transform the lives of millions of people, and they don't have a credential.

So the reality is, is that your belief about yourself and others in the world, it's so critical. So for most people, they need to create new, empowering beliefs if they wanna succeed. It's so easy to wrap yourself up in a very limiting belief of this is my cap, this is all I get. And I think part of the mission of Leap Academy is to open this up. So I'm so excited we are talking about it.

And I want to take it also back to your mom a little bit, because I think there's also a belief that needs to happen with health as well. She needed to believe that this can work as well. So I think no matter where, it's all over. That belief is not just for career, it's for everything. The other thing about belief is it helps with follow through. If you don't believe it's going to work, you don't go at it the same way.

You don't take those risks, you don't take those steps, you don't go the extra mile. So yeah, my mom believed that she was going to heal from cancer. I think that's really important that you think and know. One, of course, there's the placebo effect. I mean, this is something I write about know. One, of course, there's the placebo effect. I mean, this is something I write about in my book, Think This, Not That, is you want to incorporate and use the placebo effect to your advantage.

And there's something, the opposite of the placebo effect called the nocebo effect, which for instance, there are a few case studies of this. And by the way, this has happened millions of times, but there is a patient who is diagnosed with liver cancer. And they told him he had three months to live as a oncologist. He died about three and a half months later.

When they wanted to do the biopsy on him, they realized, oh, we misdiagnosed him. He had a small benign lump on the side of his tumor, non-cancerous, not an issue, and the man died. And by the way, this is a real medical case. There are many other medical cases just like this. And you know, the placebo effect came true during one of the world wars.

There was a practicing physician who when a soldier had a major injury, they gave them the drug morphine. We all know morphine is an incredibly powerful pain killing drug. Well, they ran out of morphine. So the doctor told the nurse, listen, we have to give these soldiers something.

So just fill up that vial with saltwater, with saline, and inject it in them. The crazy part was 40% of them said they experienced the same level of pain relief as if they were getting morphine. Think about that, your body can create the same neurochemicals in order to relieve pain like a drug morphine. And the same happens with healing. There are plenty of studies showing if you believe you're going to be healed, you are way, way more likely to be healed because your body biochemically, like your nervous system, it's called your neuroendocrine system, your nervous system will start creating hormones

to be released that then allow your body to rejuvenate and heal. And there was another study I read on, you can amplify the placebo effect for your own healing. And here's what they said. They said, one, you need to know what you want and you will know it best if you can picture it. With my mom, I said, mom, what do you want your future to look like? What does the perfect future look like for you?

One year from now, 20 years from now. And my mom was a big Disney fan. And so she's like, I wanna bring my grandkids to Disney World. I'm like, what are you doing? I'm going on Space Mountain. We're going to Character Breakfast. We're doing these things.

I'm holding their hand. You're a three-year-old's hand, all this stuff. She pictured it, what she wanted. The second thing the study showed was, you wanna be able to feel the emotions of what that's gonna feel like in the future, but feel it now. And there's something neurochemically that happens when you experience an emotion related to that. So I said, what are's gonna feel like in the future, but feel it now. And there's something neurochemically that happens

when you experience an emotion related to that. So I said, what are you gonna experience? She's like, excitement, joy, happiness. I'm like, feel that right now. And then the third part of the placebo effect, amplifying it is this, is that you need to strategize how this will happen. Because sometimes your nervous system doesn't believe you.

I don't know if we have anyone here who used to watch Saturday Night Live, SNL from years ago. They had this skit and the guy's name was Stuart Smalley. And he would say, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me. That doesn't always work. Like a lot of people try and do affirmations and tell themselves, I'm amazing, I'm wonderful. I'm perfect.

Yeah, but then you don't believe in it. So it doesn't work, right? Then you don't believe it. So what they found in the study was, if you have a plan and you can prove to yourself this will work. So with my mom, I said, listen, mom, here's how you're gonna heal.

Think about this. We're doing beetroot juice. We're doing a hyperbaric chamber. We're flooding your body with oxygen. We're doing this green vegetable juice that alkalizes your body. And I would explain and educate my mom on the exact diet plan, all the therapy she was doing

and why it was reversing and healing cancer. And she believed it. And followed through with the plan. So you get the evidence and the belief that it works basically. It reinforced and strengthened the belief, yes. And the beautiful thing again, we're talking about health, this is true for careers,

this is true for everything. I mean, Ford says, right, whether you think you can, you think you can't, you're right. And we see it in a career all the time. Like if somebody believes that this is not gonna work for them, it's not gonna work for them, no matter you can't, you're right. And we see it in a career all the time. Like if somebody believes that this is not going to work for them, it's not going to work for them, no matter what they do, right? And if they think they will, it will. But I want to take you for a second.

You decide to study chiropractic care when, in natural medicine, when it was far from mainstream. Was it a scary decision or was it part of that passion anyway? Or where did that take you, Josh? When I was in school, I knew I wanted to go a little bit more natural. So I thought about being a medical doctor, an MD, and I thought, I knew that it was basically

pill pushing drugs and that's not really the path I wanted to take because my mom had been there. I saw it didn't create the life we wanted. So then I was looking between becoming an osteopath or a nutritionist. And then I had looking between becoming an osteopath or a nutritionist. And then I had no idea what chiropractic was. I ended up at my dad's water ski with a friend who had a clinic. And he said, why don't you come visit my practice? I said, okay. And the thing I loved about his practice was he did some chiropractic, but really it was predominantly

nutrition. So he did a lot of something called kinesiology, did a lot of nutritional counseling, a lot of vitamins and supplements. He did chiropractic. He worked with a lot of something called kinesiology, did a lot of nutritional counseling, a lot of vitamins and supplements. He did chiropractic. He worked with a lot of professional athletes. So I was really impressed going in there and I thought, well, this is great. I didn't know with this degree, I could do nutrition, I can do physical therapy, I can do chiropractic, I can do all kinds of things. So that's why I chose to go to chiropractic school and also chiropractic school really focused a lot more on root causes. I had nutrition classes, you get zero of those in medical school.

And really I took the same amount of hours and learned a lot more about anatomy and physiology. I learned a lot less about pharmaceuticals, of course. Only had one class on pharmaceuticals, but I learned a lot about nutrition. In chiropractic people don't realize there's a fair amount of that in that college. So for me, it was a really great degree

for doing what I wanted to do in the future. If you're feeling stuck, underpaid or unappreciated, or you're simply ready to take your career and life to the next level, I have the perfect solution for you. We have a program that helps you fast track and leap your reputation and career. Become the best version of yourself. Get the dream role you'll deserve.

Move up to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship, or even build a portfolio career. This program helps hundreds a year, and it will help you gain the income, influence, and impact that will transform the second part of your life. Watch our free training today at leapacademy.com slash free hyphen training. The link is in the show notes. Now back to the show. So I want to take you because at that point, or maybe later, but you started one of the most visited

natural health websites, DrEx.com. And again, I think it was before content was such a big model. Today it's easy. You have, I don't know, you drag and drop a few things with Wix, but it's hard to make it popular. But you did that when it wasn't even a thing. What made you bet on education and digital

when everybody else was building clinics? What was it, Josh? I think for myself, if something changes my life, I wanna be able to then use that to change someone else's life. I mean, the thing that allowed me to learn the most was I was reading other people's newsletters. You know, there's Dr. David Williams,

there's Andrew Weil, Joe Mercola, all kinds of different sort of health news. And I would read these, I was a consumer of content, I loved reading, and so I would read these newsletters every day, and I would learn so much from them. And then when I started my own practice, I started doing newsletters for patients and I was big on education because I really found

and discovered that I could tell somebody to take this supplement. But they saw the biggest and greatest results when I said, hey, when I would do educational workshops, when I would do shopping classes, I used to go to Whole Foods Market and I would go up and down the aisles with big group. And sometimes it was funny

because I would have my patients come, but then people in the store would just randomly just start joining. So we'd have 40 or 50 people, I'd be like yelling. And so I'd show them, buy this meat at Whole Foods, buy the grass fed, buy this extra virgin olive oil, eat this, not that, right? So I started doing that a lot.

And I just found that education helped transform my life. It was more effective at transforming my patients' lives and sometimes even doing treatments on them. And so I thought, well, actually here's what happened. I had a newsletter that I would give to people physically. And then I had somebody saying, hey, I would really like to send this to my father-in-law in North Carolina because he's got high blood pressure. Because I would write things like, here's the top five supplements for high blood pressure, the top 10 foods you should eat,

that sort of thing. And maybe have a recipe on there. And I would give that to patients. And I said, Okay, well, I can give you an extra copy. They're like, well, could you put it online? And I thought, well, yeah, I can put it online. And my assistant, I said, Hey, your husband's a web designer, right? She's like, yeah, this is, could I hire him? And then could you start posting this articles that I write online? And then it just took off. It was crazy.

All of a sudden, somebody's like, you have a hundred thousand visitors a month. And I had people start coming into my practice, like calling from like different states saying, hey, can I come see you? And I'm like, well, how'd you even hear about me? And it was via this newsletter. I didn't start this website thinking I'm going to become the most visited natural health website in the world.

And that wasn't my intent, but that's what eventually happened. And what year is that? Do you remember roughly? Yeah, that would have been in 2008. Probably. That's incredible. And a few months ago we had Craig from Craigslist and he has a similar story. So it was just really funny.

And I love that, right? Because when you start something big, we have this notion of this overnight success that just happened, right? But it doesn't start as an overnight success. It starts as a newsletter or it starts by helping yourself, helping others, you know, helping a small group and slowly growing. And I think that's really an important distinction for people to listen.

Well, I would say this too, like my businesses have been successful. And by the way, I never say this just to prove the point there. Like I've built five multimillion dollar businesses and helped a lot of people heal as well. And it's because the two things I focus on most are why and who, why do I do what I do?

What's the mission behind it? It was to help people like my mom heal of cancer. It was to help people heal and reverse autoimmune disease. For me, if people weren't healing, I wouldn't do it. I don't care how much money I would make. I have a really big why and powerful purpose. The second thing is I really focus on who are the best of the best people,

high integrity, high character, great work ethic, super skilled in their area, and I'm going to hire the best and also train them and pour into them. And when you do those two things, your business just absolutely launches. And it tends to grow slowly at first, but at some point you have this sort of hockey stick moment where it really, really starts to snowball and grow very, very quickly. And I do believe that mission-driven businesses will always be more successful because I think you can always go back to your mission and to your own why, to motivate yourself and to push forward and to push through the hard moments. But in business, there's never a clear hockey stick.

There's some terrifying moments, especially when you start hiring and there's cash issues and need to lay off lead teams, operations, manufacturing. There's always things. Can you talk a little bit about some of the terrifying moment that you're like, oh my God, will this work? Because I came from this mission of saving lives, but now I'm marketing and sales and finance, like I'm doing all these things.

So when I was running my functional medicine clinic, eventually I realized I want to go and do things online. And I had a friend of mine, Jordan Rubin, he was starting a food company. It was called Beyond Organic. And I thought, okay, I want to do this. And so my associate had actually asked if he could have ownership of the practice.

And I said, well, why don't you take over the full practice? Okay, and I sold my portion of the clinic to him He took it over and I went from having you know, making a really great income to almost nothing because dr Axe dot com was not monetized. I was afraid to sell to people and So like the only thing I had was a cookbook. You cannot make money Selling a hardback full-color cookbook. Okay, and then I did a fitness video There was actually a physical DVD and you can't make money selling a hardback full color cookbook. Okay. And then I had a fitness video. There was actually a physical DVD and you can't make money selling those either.

Okay. So I was losing money every month on the website. And then I started this business with Jordan and I took all my money and put it into it that I'd saved. And the business failed because like we were the first company doing like raw kefir, kombucha, frozen grass-fed beef, but like in the summers it would all thaw and it was just a disaster.

So I lost everything. And Dr. Axelikon wasn't doing that well. And so what happened was I had gone from doing really well to having $10,000 left in the bank total. My wife and I were like, how are we gonna pay two months from now if we don't make a lot of money? Like, I don't know what we're gonna do.

And I had a friend of mine tell me, he said, how big is your email list? I said, we've got about 33,000. He said, I heard from somebody at a recent seminar, for every email you have, that should be worth a dollar a month. I'm like, so you're telling me I should be making $33,000 a month

because of the size of my email list? He said, yeah. And this was back years ago. And I said, well, how do I learn how to monetize an email list and that sort of thing? He said, well, go to this coaching group out in California and go to their conference. So I went and I heard somebody talk about starting a program.

And I thought, oh, I can do a program. So I went back and thought about what's a program I can create. I'm like, well, I like detoxification. So I created a program in like six weeks. And we called it the Dr. Axe detox program. And we launched it in eight weeks. And I made more in one launch than I had

in the whole history of DrAxe.com. We made like $300,000 in one launch. And people's lives transformed too. I mean, it was really an amazing thing. And this is why I'm a big believer like mastermind groups or just having other people you rely on because if my friend would have not told me that, I don't know how I would have made money.

And that's really what launched doctorax.com success because we finally had a product attached to it that could be part of that as well. Thank you first of all for sharing Josh. I think this is critical because I think there's a few things here. First of all, Leap Academy would not be what it is today without a ton of coaches and masterminds and people by my side.

There's no way that I would know what to do. And every time you stand on the shoulders of what you achieved and you aim higher, I truly believe that that's the fastest way. But I would also say what you mentioned about being afraid of charging, I think is something that I want to drill a little bit into because I think that is so common. Like we feel like we need to do good in the world, so we need to always donate it.

And the truth is you can't create a machine that changes lives if you want to always donate. Plus when people pay, they pay more attention. And I want to talk a little bit about that change for you, because I think most of our listeners are like, yeah, but I'm giving this thing for free and I wanna do this, and everybody's always calling me for free.

So how do you change? I just had to have a change of perspective and think about it like this. One, I can reach more people when I run a profitable business. I mean, that's the reality. And also you have to have a level of identity and confidence of knowing what your services are worth

in the marketplace. You know, I thought about this with my mom. My mom, when we went through all her therapies, all the things we did, like the nutrition plan, all the stuff that I went with her, if another doctor would have charged my mom for it, I don't know, I mean, it would have probably been $5,000 or something for the consultations, all those things.

Now I did it, it was my mom for free, but I kind of had to look at that and say, okay, when I take what saved my mom's life and I now offer that same service, what do I need to charge for it? And I think at first I was surprised that people would pay that much for it, but the thing about it was I was like,

well, I would have paid that much for myself. I would have paid that much for my mom, my sister, my wife, anyone I knew that I would support financially in going through something like this. So, and the other thing I really did realize is I can really reach more people when I run and own a profitable business. I can give more.

My wife and I are big believers in giving to charities and nonprofits, tithing to the church, all those things. And so we sat down and wrote down, okay, what are we gonna do with the money we make? And it's a combination of number one, giving to God and people in need, taking care of our own needs and also helping grow and fuel the businesses to help more people.

So I think when you are able to really sit down and think about it logically, that's helpful. Yeah, yeah. But then I think it ties really well to the fact that you built a very, very strong brand that A, actually works, right? It needs to work, right? And I think that creates A, you can reach more people, people believe you more, people can pay you more, right?

Like it's all very, very tied together. What do you think contributed to that really strong brand? I think some of it is the fact that it worked. So I'm sure word of mouth is part of it. The newsletter, what else? What do you think are some of the things that you've done? Because that is key. Some of the brands have been a part of starting.

DrAxe.com, Ancient Nutrition, of course, is a pretty big brand. The Health Institute is another big brand I have right now. I have a new one called the Longevity Clinic. I still see, I mean, mostly via my health coaches, but I still do the weekly education for all patients. So I have a virtual clinic where we have people come in and that's that. So anyways, I've started quite a few

and actually several others. So I have brands I've started, but what I always do is I go through the exercise of thinking about who needs this and what is it they're looking for. And I want the brand to say and represent something. So drax.com, the tagline was always food is medicine. You know, and really thinking about

I wanted the brand to stand for that. Food is medicine and passion and purpose and my why. So I would do exercises like what are the right colors? And what are colors also I like, but also my demographic would like. By the way, my demographic on Instagram is probably like 85% female. A lot of Gen X is probably my dominance. I mean, there's some millennials and baby boomers too, but it's definitely predominantly that. Now YouTube, there's a lot more men than on Instagram, but still I have a pretty heavy female audience. My point there is, is we did this exercise in

ancient nutrition. We called her Gen X and we use like Jennifer Aniston as an example, because she's a Jen Xer. What would she be drawn to? What would she love? Because people follow her. So what does the leader of this group of women that really would admire her, what do they love? We also thought about Candace Cameron Burr, because we have a big faith based audience. So think about Jennifer Aniston, Candace Cameron Buray, what are the things that they love? And we thought about that and we thought, where do they shop at? They shop at Whole Foods. They probably at the time, maybe not anymore, but shopped at Lululemon. What are the colors they would like? Well, they want things to feel very high class, the absolute top of the line, premium.

So we did that exercise. and then what words describe that? So we did some good quality branding exercises of really looking at how do we best serve and reach our people that need this the most. Because for myself, right now, my practice, we deal with a lot of hormonal issues, a lot of hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's, menopause, infertility, PCOS, low testosterone, diabetes.

And so like we knew the demographic of people and what we are treating, even today, this is what I treat at the Health Institute at that clinic. But again, knowing your audience, I think is so important. What you just shared is so important. I wanna make sure the listeners get it because I think when you're looking not at the audience as a million people, but you're looking

at a very specific persona. Where does she buy? What does she do? What would speak to her? Whatever it is. So when you can speak to that one person, that becomes the millions, right? Am I understanding it? That's correct. And I think there's a second thing though. You also need to be authentic to who you are. And I'll share this with myself. If anybody watches my podcasts, they'll know I talk a lot about health. But I also talk about other things I like, like personal growth and leadership.

And I also talk about faith because that's who I am. This is a big part of my life and I'm not ashamed of it. And I'm excited and thrilled to talk about it. So I think there's also a magnetism that happens and an attraction when somebody is authentically sharing things that change their own life. Like my business partner at Jordan Rubin, he founded a company called Garden of Life in the past, really successful entrepreneur. And I asked him, I said, hey, how did you build

that business and how did you have so much success? And here's what he told me. He said, I told my story for him. He had Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, almost died. And he healed himself with a biblical diet using food as medicine, and with probiotics, essentially. And he said, I just told my story over and over and over again. He's like, that's how I built my entire business, this business that's now worth over a billion dollars. He's like, I just told my story. And that's what I learned to do. I told my mom's story, and then I created products and programs to help people get similar results to my mom. And that's it. That's the core, you know, that's the core.

And I agree a thousand percent, you know, in Leap Academy, I just share my story. I share my story of being stuck in my career or sharing, you know, losing my clarity or getting kicked out of my own startup and starting to think what's next, right? And it's like, am I the only crazy person that, you know, there's this land of opportunity and I don't know what's next, right? And it's like, am I the only crazy person that there's this land of opportunity and I don't know what's next for me

and I don't know what will get me excited. And it's really interesting how bad career will actually impact or when you're feeling bad about yourself in your career, it will impact the health, it will impact your relationship, it will impact everything, right? So I agree, once you're more aligned with yourself

and you share your own story, it's just really, really impactful. So for people who want to get healthier, do better, feel better, because again, it's all related. Like you can't be the best version of yourself if your health is deteriorating, right? There's this saying, you can have a thousand problems, but if you have a health problem, you have one problem.

So share with me for a second, first of all, in terms of health, what should they do if they're listening to this and they wanna feel better? I think a few things. One, have a plan. And also know that you're a unique individual. I think that's an important concept and I'll talk about that more at the end.

But I would say start with diet, even just start with breakfast. Let's say you're not a healthy eater. And if you just change breakfast, that's one third of your diet, that's a great improvement. I think for a lot of people doing a superfood smoothie, here's the thing though, the way that I do smoothies and recommend them

are different than other people. Doing ice cold smoothies all the time is actually kind of hard on your digestive system. So I would recommend sweet potato or applesauce or room temperature blueberries or strawberries, something like that, about maybe a half to three-fourths a cup. You could do water or something like coconut milk. That's a fat that's pretty healthy for your cells. And then I would do 40 grams of protein powder. I would do about 20 to 30 grams of like a plant-based or high quality protein and another 10 to 20 grams of a collagen protein.

You can do vanilla flavor, chocolate flavor, use sweeteners like monk fruit or stevia, but put that in there. That's a great way to get healthy and then focus on organic meat and vegetables for lunch and for dinner. And if somebody could follow a diet like that, they'll tend to see really good results.

So I said, number one is diet. Number two is just movement. And walking is tremendous. If you go to a gym, that's fantastic. If you do Peloton, that's wonderful. If you swim, if you cycle, do those things if you can. But at the very least, walk an hour a day and walk around your meals.

Walk 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes around lunch, 20 minutes in the evening, or 30 and 30. Or do what you can, even if it's 30 minutes. But walk and move regularly, get more time outside. Those two things will do tremendous things for your health, and unless blue light at night. Listen to an audio book, read a book an hour before bed, shut the TV off an hour before bed,

and you should be in bed by 10 p.m., ideally. So shut it off at nine. And if you do those things, it'll make a big difference. And here's the other thing, if you've got a condition, make sure you seek out the top 1% of doctors. Because I mean, I hate to say this, there are so many doctors that have not looked at the latest research and they don't know what they should,

they're not doing a good job. If you go to a doctor and you have diabetes and they just put you on metformin or insulin, that's a bad doctor. We know today that if you just changed your diet, you can reverse diabetes in most cases. If you have hypothyroidism and then just prescribing synthroid, that's a bad doctor.

They're just giving you a drug that's gonna cause another deficiency, and you're gonna have another problem later on, and it's not getting you to the root of the problem. So you need to make sure you're seeing a doctor that's gonna help you with diet, help you with lifestyle, help you with holistic treatments, with vitamin supplements, those sort of things.

And one, you can find a functional medicine doctor in your area. If you do need help, I have some amazing practitioners that I have trained at the Health Institute. You go to thehealthinstitute.com. So that's one option. If you have an issue and you want somebody to create a plan for what to eat for every meal,

breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the exact supplements you should be on, that's personalized for you. So again, find a good practitioner if that's something that you really want to have a big change with. But overall, again, I think people can really move the needle with just eating more real food, especially more vegetables and organic meat. I love that. And I think I do want to go back for a second to your book, Think This, Not That. It's your latest book, because you wrote it in a very specific time in your life. Can I take you there for a second?

I've always written health books. I've written a lot of books on health, ancient remedies, keto diet, a number of things. And one of the things I noticed in patients is, is that the patients that got the best results had the best mindset. I remember some of my first patients coming in, I realized very quickly if they would see results or not. The people that tended to not see as good a result,

so what I would do their first day, they would come in, I'd have them fill out a diet diary of typically what they eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner. And it was a lot of like bagels and cream cheese and loads of coffee and then processed cereal with skim milk, stuff that's just not good. And sometimes donuts, just bad, not good stuff. And I would say, listen,

we're gonna go over an advanced diet next time for you, but between now and then, between now and next week, I want you to just change breakfast and start doing the superfood smoothie. Very similar recipe I just shared with you. And it tastes great. It's like a strawberry smoothie or a sweet potato, I mean, you know, vanilla protein or chocolate protein,

but it tastes great. But I'd get one of two reactions. One was, oh no, I can't do my bagel and cream cheese every morning. And they would feel like they were so deprived. Then they just had a bad attitude about it. And the others, some group that tended to see the better results were like, well, this is great.

I mean, they were really committed. They were actually excited. They were willing and dedicated to doing the work and they would tend to get better results. So when writing this book, I mean, they were really committed. They were actually excited. They were willing and dedicated to doing the work and they would tend to get better results. So when writing this book, I thought, I want to write a book about mindset medicine of how do you live the best life possible? And so that's really what inspired the book.

Now, what was crazy is the day before I started writing the book, I went to get a stem cell treatment. I had injured my back doing CrossFit and doing some heavy weight training. And I herniated two discs in my back and I had got my back doing CrossFit and doing some heavy weight training. And I herniated two discs in my back. And I had got stem cell done once and I thought, okay, it was a really amazing results.

And I thought, I'm gonna get this done one more time. Well, something happened where when they went in, my discs got infected. I didn't know this. And over the course of months, I felt worse and worse and worse. Finally, I woke up one day and I could not walk. In my family and I, we were in Puerto Rico at the time.

And I had to have an ambulance come pick me up. They drove me into this hospital in Puerto Rico. They took an MRI and the results came back that I had an infection. And it wasn't only in my disc, it had gotten to my bone and abscess growing around my spinal cord. And I had to take a medical flight.

Like they put me on a gurney, put me in a medical plane, flew me to Florida, met with an infectious disease specialist who said, Josh, listen, this infection is really serious. It could kill you. He said, your best case scenario is you're going to have chronic pain the rest of your life. He said, the worst case scenario is, listen, I think we're going to save your life here, but there's a good likelihood you're going to be permanently disabled. We're going to have to put in rods in your spine and screws. And this was three years ago, about two and a half. And listen, it was go crazy, Ilana,

because I went from, I mean, I was like able to do triathlons. I was like squatting, deadlifting, and the best day of my life throwing my two-year-old daughter five, 10 feet up in the air in the pool. And I went from having a doctor tell me, you're gonna be permanently disabled physically. And I honestly, for 48 hours, I was like a wreck. I felt like my life was over,

and then I spent some time in prayer and I just felt like the peace of God and I just really felt like, you know what? All I can do is my best and I'm gonna do everything I can to heal my body. And I really felt like God said, you're gonna be healed. Just this consciousness and I thought, okay. So I did everything I could.

And they were recommending three months of antibiotics. I was able to cut it down to one month because I got in a hyperbaric chamber every day. That oxygen helps kill an infection and drives the healing deeper. I did a hyperbaric chamber like for three months straight. I did a lot of vitamin IVs, methylene blue, silver, Myers cocktails.

I ate perfectly just meat, vegetables, and berries for the most part. I was taking super high dose probiotics of one trillion daily, a lot of mitochondrial supplements, all this stuff. It took me a full year to walk again, well 10 months. And then I was on a walker for two. So a full year before I could walk on my own.

But then I got better and better and better. And today now I'm back and lifting weights, carrying my daughters. I'd say I'm about 90, 95% back. We just went on a snow ski trip. I went and skied every day for a couple weeks in Park City. So, and I don't have pain. And so all that being said, I learned so much through the process. And I think because of it, I'm a better doctor. You know, there's something in the Bible that says God uses all things for good for those who love him and for those who are called according to his purposes.

So for me, I really believed and leaned into that, that this pain would be turned into purpose. And now I really learned how to help heal a lot of irreversible conditions. You know, I learned a lot about these advanced therapies, everything from ozone to hyperbaric, to plasma exchange, to a lot of certain herbs and supplements that can really, really help transform somebody's health and how to do that.

So now when I see a patient with cancer or somebody with autoimmune disease or hormone and conditions, I really have very powerful protocols, even more powerful than before and how to reverse these conditions. I think like maybe nobody else probably has, but it was because of my own experience and healing. And so anyways, I could say more about that, but overall two years ago,

I was just starting to walk again from this month we're recording this. That's incredible. And eventually they didn't need to operate? No, zero surgery, nothing like that at all. Amazing. And you literally wrote the book from bed, if I'm remembering correctly, right? The whole thing was written from being bedridden, yeah. So take me just for a second for that shift in belief in those 48 hours. You did allude a lot of it to faith,

but I think one of the things that we see is that, again, people are spiraling down, like they got a layoff or they have something in health or something happened. And instead of being able to shift it around and to believe again, and then they can, whatever, leap again, again in my can, whatever, leap again, again in my world, in your world that's different, but how do you create that shift?

I think there's a couple things. One, my belief wasn't 100% immediately overnight, right? But it was strengthened in knowing God works miracles. So that was big for me. I had saw my mom reverse what the doctor said was an irreversible condition. I'd help patients reverse MS and other irreversible conditions. So for me, there was a level of faith and belief in knowing irreversible conditions and bad diagnoses can be reversed. And here's what I'll

tell you too. The thing that actually concreted for me that I could 100% completely heal was I'd met a doctor whose daughter had a spinal infection like I had, and his daughter had fully recovered. Now I knew another doctor, though I wanna say this, another doctor who had what I had, and he had to have metal rods put in his spine, and he ended up having like major issues. So I had two people where one was fully healed,

and others had what I had, and they literally had that scenario that the doctor told me I would have. But I chose to believe this one, that I would be 100% completely healed. Fix your eyes on the right thing. I mean, I could have sat thinking about all the bad things and all the worst possible scenarios. First off, people have to understand that doesn't serve them.

If you think I can never heal this, my body isn't good at healing, the doctor's probably right. How is that taking you to their goal? Yeah, if I asked the person, do you want to heal? And they say yes. Well, then the first thing I'll tell them was don't believe that then, that's going to be the biggest thing

that's going to keep you from healing. You need to believe and study and move forward with this. And I'm not saying you have to believe 100% right now. Maybe your belief is there's a 10% chance, but let's build that up over time by reading the right things, meditating on the right things, and moving forward the right way with the right plan. So I think that belief is strengthened over time.

Sometimes I give this example on a bike, if you're looking at the path and you're looking at a rock on the path, if this is where your eyesight is, you're going down on that rock. And I tried that many times. But if you're gonna look around, the bike will just take you there, right?

And I think it's the same with everything. So Josh, looking back on your career, on your life, what would be some things that you wish somebody told you earlier? I do think the who before how principle is really important. I mean, if you read Jim Collins' book, Good to Great, he just says, get the right people on the bus. And I've done that in my career,

but you could always do it better. And so I think being committed to having a why and sharing your why and making sure it's virtuous. And here's the other thing is, try and focus on becoming a better person. The chapter two in my book is about this. Focus on becoming before accomplishing. If your goal is to accomplish big things in the world,

that's fine, but that should be the secondary thing to becoming a great person. The Bible never talks about you're called to accomplish great things. No, it says you're called to become like Jesus, a person that's loving, a person that's sacrificial, a person that's compassionate, a person that's truly good and does good in the world.

There are people that have done great things in the world. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Marx, these people that destroyed, society, they did great things. It's the people that were becoming good people and using their skill for good and their character for good, like Mother Teresa, Michelangelo, the artist, these people that have actually done lasting good in the world and focused on becoming. So one of the things I think that for most people,

like a person who taught me this pretty early on was John Maxwell. I've read loads of John Maxwell books because I wanted to learn how to be a truly virtuous leader. I wanted to sacrifice for my team. I wanted to do things not for myself, but for others even more so. And I think that gets lost in society today

that's very individualistic. I think that if you truly wanna be happy, it should be about serving others and making others dreams come true. You wanna have a great marriage? Don't focus on trying to make yourself happy. Focus on trying to serve and love and bless your spouse. What does your wife love to do?

What does your husband love to do? What does your husband love to do? Go and serve them in that way, be their biggest cheerleader, their encourager, try and connect with them. And so I think that for most people, focusing on building your character is much more important than focusing on growing your skill, but you wanna do both.

If you wanna become your best self, you should be growing your character and your skill to the highest level possible. I love becoming before our accomplishment. I think it's so true because I can, you can't accomplish what you're not becoming. And I think that's so smart. I used to be a big Lance Armstrong fan

because I was a triathlon college. Me too. And after for 10 years. And I was so disappointed. I was so disappointed when he was doping and lying and all those things. And it's like, there's a Bible verse about this and it's what good is gaining the world

but losing your soul? And then I thought about my grandfather. I had a grandfather that lived to be 96 years old. I was at his funeral. And there was a moment where the pastor said, does anyone have any final words about Howard? He was an amazing man, World War II veteran in the Navy. And the man next to me stood up in tears, just sobbing, and he said, Howard was my best friend.

And it was funny as I looked at him, I thought, you're not my grandfather's best friend, because that's my Uncle Don and Alan. But then I felt a little guilty. I thought, you know what? I'm sure my grandfather was this person's best friend. Like there's 150 people here, and they probably all feel like my grandfather was their best friend. And people were standing up saying, Howard saved my marriage. He led me to the Lord. And he gave me money when I didn't have it. It was really amazing.

And I thought to myself, this is what success is. Like nobody gets to the end of their life and it's like, you're successful because you built a big business. The people, your family and your real friends, they're saying, this was this sort of person, this sort of person you were. If people focus on that,

they'll be much more fulfilled with their life and actually even more successful. That's incredible. Oh, I love that example. Josh, if somebody needs to reach you, if they have a problem, if they wanna consult, what is the best way to reach out? If somebody needs help with their health,

it's at my functional medicine clinic online with my practitioners, it's called the Health Institute. You can go on there. We typically have like videos to watch to really understand the way we practice. We call it personalized cellular medicine, but the way that we practice this form of nutrition and healing, but watch the video

or try and set up a consultation with one of my health advisors or practitioners to work with you. You know, a lot of times we do some pretty advanced, incredible blood work with people to find out how their cellular and organ health is. We have this incredible test for organ age, where we can actually test the age

of everyone's different organ to be able to tell what it is and that allows us to know and how to dial in what supplements for healing people. Like for instance, a lot of people, if somebody has hypothyroidism, they think it's their thyroid. Most cases, it's their gut or their adrenal glands that really need healing,

and then that'll fix the thyroid. So anyway, sorry, that's a little bit of a tangent, but go to the thehealthinstitute.com or look up Dr. Josh Ack's clinic or the health institute and see me on there. And that's probably a great place if people want help with their health. Then also see my podcast and YouTube videos. So if you look up the Dr. Josh Axe show, I cover a lot of in-depth health content, a lot on

YouTube as well, Instagram, but those are probably the best places to find me, Ilana. Josh, this was so impactful. Thank you so much for sharing your story and all these incredible tips. I know I took a lot of notes. I hope your listeners had a brilliant time. Thank you, Josh. Thanks so much for having me. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. If you did, please share it with friends. Now, also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch this 30-minute free training at leapacademy.com slash training. That's leapacademy.com slash training.

See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy with Ilana Golanchov.