In this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sat down with Bill Shufelt, Co-Founder and CEO of Athletic Brewing Company, the largest dedicated non-alcoholic brand in the United States.

Bill's path to Athletic started with a personal decision. He was 30, training for an ultra marathon, thinking about becoming a parent, and realizing alcohol was a ceiling on everything he cared about.

What followed was two years of nights and weekends research, hundreds of conversations to find the right co-founder, and the first brewery and taproom in the country built exclusively for non-alcoholic beer. He talks about how Athletic went from being dismissed by nearly everyone in the industry to becoming the 8th largest craft brewer in the US, why the non-alcoholic category is still barely getting started, and what it actually took to build a brand in a space most people said had no market.

They covered:

🍺 Why Bill believes the TAM for non-alcoholic beer is almost infinite, and why the traditional industry had the math completely backwards on how often people actually want to drink alcohol.

🏃 How Athletic broke out of the penalty box: building a brand people would hold with the label out in a bar, and why that required radical product quality before any marketing could work.

🎽 The grassroots go-to-market strategy: Bill personally showing up to 75 races in year one, bringing a cooler of non-alcoholic beer to events that had never had a sponsor, and building relationships with race directors who put on 50 to 100 events a year.

🏗️ What exponential growth actually costs: building manufacturing ahead of a company growing 20 to 30 percent a month, and why that capital intensity was one of the hardest problems Athletic had to solve.

👥 Bill's leadership lesson on where to spend your time, and why he spent too long on the bottom 20 percent of his team instead of doubling down on the top 20 percent.

📚 The books and brands he's paying closest attention to right now; including Natty Ice Cream, a clean label protein ice cream brand out of Arizona he's been closely tracking, and why early stage brand discovery/mentorship has become a passion of his since building Athletic.

In this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sat down with Robby Sansom, Co-Founder and CEO of Force of Nature Meats, to talk about what it takes to fix the meat industry from the inside out.

Robby traces his path from building Epic Provisions, one of the first brands to bring grass-fed and organ meat products into mainstream grocery, to launching Force of Nature on a simple but challenging premise: the best meat for you is also the best meat for the land, the animal, and the people who raise it.

He gets into why certifications like "organic" and "grass-fed" often fall short of what consumers think they're buying, why Force of Nature chose not to vertically integrate, and how a network of 900 farms and 24 processors across 3.8 million acres is how they're building the food system they want to see.

They covered: 🥩 Why the best place to get your meat is, in order: hunting it yourself, growing it yourself, or buying from a brand like Force of Nature. 🏷️ How food labels have been captured by the big four meat companies and what to actually look for when you're shopping. 💸 How meat is actually less expensive per ounce than a Hershey bar or Ruffles potato chips, and what that says about how we've been conditioned to think about food costs. 🌾 Why Force of Nature intentionally chose a network of independent farms and processors over owning the supply chain, and why that model better serves the mission. 🧠 Robby's personal health adn wellness routine with a two-year-old and a four-year-old at home: resistance training, creatine, five dozen eggs a week, and a nightly family walk after dinner. Enjoy!

In this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sat down with Ian and Margaret Wishingrad, the husband-and-wife co-founders of Three Wishes: the grain-free, low-sugar cereal that's become one of the most interesting better-for-you brands in the grocery aisle.

Ian spent years in advertising before starting his own agency. Margaret came from real estate. When their first son was born, they stood in the cereal aisle of Whole Foods and realized nothing there was actually healthy. Two years of R&D, a food scientist, and dozens of cold calls later, Three Wishes launched in late 2019.

They covered:

🥣 Why cereal was broken and why grain-free, minimal-ingredient, high-protein was the obvious answer that nobody had actually built yet.

📞 The shameless, old-school grind behind retail distribution: tracking down the Northeast Whole Foods buyer at Fancy Food with a Ziploc bag of samples, calling Wegmans for nearly a year straight before landing the account.

💸 The early fundraising reality: why investor rejections were less about the product and more about two first-time product founders who hadn't yet earned the credibility to match their conviction.

🧠 What it's actually like to run a company together as a married couple.

🌍 Margaret's origin story: growing up as an immigrant, being sent solo to China at 19 by her father to source product, and how that forged the "figure it out" mentality she brings to every operational crisis.

🌱 How Three Wishes thinks about the next chapter: evolving the brand from homemade to "big boy," new packaging, and threading the needle between fun and functional without looking like a kids' only product or a diet food.

In this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sat down with Emily McCarthy, Co-Founder and Chief Community Officer of GORUCK.

Emily traces the origins of GORUCK from her time as a CIA case officer operating solo across West Africa, to building an event and community empire around a simple idea: walking with weight. She unpacks how a military-issue bag Jason built her in a rebel-held region of Côte d'Ivoire became the blueprint for the GR1, how GORUCK went from lending out bricks at 1am in New York City to 700+ Ruck Clubs worldwide, and why she believes rucking is on its way to becoming bigger than running.

They covered:

🎒 How rucking was born not in a gym or a startup office, but in the field — Jason training as a Green Beret, Emily rucking through West Africa on Intel operations, both unknowingly building the foundation for a brand.

🧱 The scrappy, absurd early days: Jason showing up to events with Home Depot bricks in a rental car, loaning out bags to prove they wouldn't fail, going from $100K to $12M in just a few years.

🌍 How Emily's CIA tradecraft — spotting, assessing, building community in austere environments — became the direct blueprint for GORUCK's event and Ruck Club model.

💪 Why rucking hits the sweet spot of cardio + strength + community, and how Emily is now focused on making it more accessible to women through initiatives like the Mother Rucker 5K series.

🧫 The pandemic pivot: how Emily opened a Google Drive folder of 100+ city scavenger hunts to the world, and how that moment became one of GORUCK's most powerful community moves.

🏃‍♀️ Where GORUCK is headed — from a Costa Rica Ruck & Flow retreat for women to D-Day events in France, and a bold goal: making rucking bigger than running.

In this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sat down with Jake Muise, founder and CEO of Maui Nui Venison, to explore one of the most unique intersections of nutrition, sustainability, and food systems.

They unpack how an invasive species problem in Hawaii turned into a mission-driven food company, and what it looks like to build a business that simultaneously supports ecological balance, local communities, and human health. Jake shares the 20+ year journey behind Maui Nui: from early exposure to subsistence hunting to building a USDA-approved system that transforms wild deer into one of the most nutrient-dense proteins available today. 

They covered:

🌱 How an invasive deer population in Hawaii became both an ecological challenge and an abundant food resource and why "balance" is the goal, not elimination.

🥩 What makes wild-harvested venison fundamentally different from conventional meat, including how diet, environment, and stress impact both taste and nutrient density.

🚀 The operational complexity of building a completely new supply chain: from harvesting wild animals at night to creating a scalable, USDA-compliant food system.

🌍 Why doing things the "hard way", letting animals live wild until harvest, may actually be better for human health, the animal, and the environment.

🧠 How Jake thinks about long-term impact, including the potential to replicate this model globally across other invasive species and ecosystems.

Mahalo!

In this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sat down with Jonathan (JB) Berent, Founder and CEO of NextSense, to explore the future of sleep and brain health, and how the next wave of wearables may go beyond tracking into real-time intervention.

They unpacked how most sleep technology today gives you data but little direction, and how NextSense is approaching the problem differently: using in-ear hardware and sound-based stimulation to not just measure sleep, but actively improve it.

The conversation also expands into JB's broader vision of building a brain health platform: one that could eventually help people better understand focus, performance, and cognitive states throughout the day.

They also covered:

🎧 How sound (including pink noise) can influence brainwaves in real time to enhance deep sleep.

🚀 The origin story: from a rejected Google pitch to a moonshot project inside Google X, and eventually a venture-backed company.

⚖️ JB's personal experiments with sleep—from polyphasic schedules to sleep debt—and what they reveal about how adaptable the body really is.

On this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sat down with Michael Doney, co-founder of Biograph, to explore the future of preventative health and why the next frontier of medicine may look more like continuous measurement than reactive treatment.

Biograph is built around a simple idea: most diseases develop slowly over time, but the healthcare system typically waits until something is wrong before it acts. By combining advanced diagnostics, data, and longitudinal tracking, Biograph aims to help people understand and improve their health decades before problems emerge.

We cover:

🧬 Why traditional healthcare is reactive by design and why preventative medicine requires a completely different model.

📊 The role of advanced diagnostics, imaging, and biomarker tracking in identifying risks long before symptoms appear.

🧠 How collecting longitudinal health data over years—not one-off tests—can reveal patterns that drive better decisions.

⚖️ The difference between optimizing for lifespan vs. healthspan, and how those goals shape personal health strategies.

🔬 Why measurement, experimentation, and feedback loops are becoming core tools for people serious about improving their health.

🚀 What the future of consumer health could look like as technology, diagnostics, and data make proactive medicine more accessible.

Enjoy!

On this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sits down with Steve Martocci, Co-founder and CEO of SuppCo, to unpack why supplements are one of the most confusing, and least trusted, parts of the health and wellness industry.

Rather than selling supplements or pushing "more is better," SuppCo is building a consumer-first layer of trust: helping people understand what actually works, what's mislabeled, and what's worth taking based on real data.

They covered:

🧠 Steve's personal health journey from lifelong weight struggles to functional medicine, blood work, and building a supplement stack that actually delivered results.

⚖️ Why the supplement industry is fundamentally broken, with incentives that prioritize sales over outcomes and leave consumers overwhelmed and misled.

🔬 How SuppCo evaluates over 200,000 products using objective criteria like manufacturing standards, certifications, and testing; not influencer hype or reviews.

🍬 What independent testing revealed about popular supplements, including why many top-rated creatine gummies contain little to none of the ingredient they claim.

📊 How the TrustScore system works, why it's intentionally non-subjective, and how it's pushing brands to improve transparency and quality.

🧭 Why trust, education, and long-term behavior change matter more than chasing the latest longevity trend—and why sometimes the right answer is taking less, not more.

Enjoy!

On this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sits down with Cory Henderson PhD, Co-founder and CEO of Evolve, to unpack the science, hype, and real opportunity behind GLP-1 supplements—and why the next chapter of preventative health may look very different than pharmaceuticals.

Evolve isn't trying to compete with injectable GLP-1 drugs. Instead, the company is building a new category they calls biomimetics: oral, consumer-accessible products designed to mimic the body's own biology, without harsh side effects or long-lasting interventions.

They cover:

🧬 How Cory's background in genetic engineering and public health led him to rethink GLP-1 for healthy, performance-minded consumers.

💊 Why pharmaceutical GLP-1s behave so differently than natural hormone signaling and how half-life, receptor balance, and delivery method matter.

⚖️ The gap between supplements that don't work and drugs that weren't designed for healthy people.

📉 Early customer feedback around appetite control, energy, metabolic health, and sustainable weight loss.

🧠 Why behavior change, education, and expectation-setting matter more than "magic pills."

🔬 What biomimetics means, how it differs from traditional supplements, and where this category could expand next (longevity, muscle growth, women's health, and more).

🧪 How Evolve designs orally available biologics using natural proteins and why oral delivery changes safety, personalization, and adoption.

📚 How Cory thinks about trust, misinformation, and consumer education in an under-regulated supplement market.

🚀 Why preventative health, not disease treatment, is the real long-term opportunity, and how consumer health products may evolve over the next decade.

🚴 Cory also shares his own experience using Evolve for performance and metabolic health and how personalization plays a role in dosing.

Enjoy!

On this episode of WellBuilt, Jon sat down with Eric Litman, Founder & CEO of Aescape, the first company using robotics to fundamentally reimagine massage. Aescape isn't trying to replace massage therapists. Instead, it's opening the door for the 80% of people who don't get massages today, often due to discomfort, cost, access, or time. By combining precision robotics, personalized pressure mapping, and adaptive software, Aescape delivers consistent, customizable bodywork. They covered: 🩻The spine injury that inspired him to come up with the idea for Aescape. 🤖 Why human-robot touch is one of the hardest problems in robotics and how Aescape solved it. 📊 Why measurability and personalization matter more than mimicking human hands. 🏢 Why Aescape chose a B2B model with gyms, hotels, and wellness centers instead of going direct-to-consumer. 🦾 Eric also shares his personal health practices, thoughts on wellness hype, and where robotics-enabled recovery could expand next. Enjoy!