[00:00:01] Speaker A: Want to protect your business. The time is near. You've given it heart, now get it in gear. It's passage to profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm Richard Gerhardt, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. Not an attorney, but I work at Gearhart Law doing the marketing. And I have my own startups.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Welcome to passage to profit, everyone.
[00:00:27] Speaker D: The road to entrepreneurship, where we talk.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: With startups, small businesses, and discuss the intellectual property that helps them flourish.
[00:00:35] Speaker C: And we have Mamie Bio, and we have TJ Shaw with Vital IV infusion. I will say it's in our hometown of Chatham, New Jersey. It's an amazing business. Tell everybody what you guys are doing, please.
[00:00:48] Speaker E: So we have an infusion clinic in Chatham, New Jersey. So it's where holistic meets medicine. So it's basically a wellness clinic that we have. We do IV hydrations, hangover remedies, IV vitamins, Nad ketamine, and we do weight loss. So array of different products we have at the clinic.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: So there are a lot of hangover people.
[00:01:13] Speaker D: Hangovers.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Does it work?
[00:01:18] Speaker E: Like a million bucks.
[00:01:25] Speaker C: So, TJ, you were actually giving these infusions at an event at the mall at Short Hills, but in a co working space, people were actually coming in and I got a vitamin infusion when I was there, and I did feel better.
[00:01:37] Speaker F: All the vitamins and supplements we take via the stores, et cetera, they don't really readily get absorbed in our GI system. So say you take a B complex pill in the morning, you're probably going to get 40% of that at best. Only thing you may get a higher percentage is vitamin C, maybe get 60%. But when we infuse it through the IV, you're bypassing all that acid in your stomach, and you're getting 100% of everything that vitamin should be doing. So that instant aspect of the IV and the benefits from the vitamin is why you feel great quickly and last a little bit longer.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: So you're really sticking needles in people, right. So this is intravenous, like when you're in the hospital, right, and you have a bag hanging over you, and then there's this tube.
[00:02:19] Speaker F: We insert a needle in the vein, and then we administer all either the IV vitamins, our NAD therapy or weight loss stuff, or even our ketamine goes straight through the intravenous.
[00:02:30] Speaker C: Can we talk about the ketamine a little bit? I don't know which one of you would like to talk about it. But it's recently been legalized, right? Like in the last couple of years?
[00:02:38] Speaker F: Yeah. Ketamine has been utilized since the. But in hospital settings for IV anesthesia. Just recently, in the last four to five years, FDA approved intranasal therapy for treatment resistant depression and suicidal idolation. IV therapy has been off label use for those aspects for about ten years or so.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: Now it's gaining popularity.
[00:02:59] Speaker F: Now we have IV vitamin therapy, so we do a multitudle of IV vitamins. So we have vitamin C, different forms of B vitamins. We also do different forms of magnesium therapy. And then for our athletes, and just in general, we do a lot of amino acid therapy as well. We do a combination and curate to the person's needs. That's sort of our greatest thing is, I think we make it more of a subjective thing to the person, and instead of it just being like, you pick off the menu, which you can do, but we sort of like to mix and match things for the person and their lifestyle and their age, everything to that extent.
[00:03:32] Speaker E: Our most popular drip is the Myers cocktail. That has a broad range of IV vitamins. And sometimes people come in if they lack energy. You just feel, like, burnt out, or maybe you come from working out extensively or you come from traveling. So a lot of people will Google or look up like, IV hydration to basically replenish yourself. NAD is a new thing also that's been pretty popular. Sometimes you'll even hear about it with the Kardashians.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: What is Nad?
[00:04:03] Speaker E: So NAD is a natural coenzyme that we have in our bodies, but it gets depleted over time from just an aging process, working out too extensively, not working out enough, not getting enough sunlight. Sometimes when you're fatigued, it boosts your metabolism. So, like, the first day is like a detox, you might feel fatigued the first day, then you get that burst of energy afterwards.
[00:04:26] Speaker G: Well, I could do that.
[00:04:29] Speaker E: And that is all natural. And it does help with mild anxiety, mild depression, because it naturally increases your serotonin levels.
[00:04:37] Speaker G: What are the, I guess, long term benefits of going on a program with you versus people taking, like, psychotropic drugs or things like that to stay in a good place mentally.
[00:04:47] Speaker F: For us with the ketamine, it's more of a control thing. So when I administer an IV, and to that extent, I know the exact dosage I'm giving you, whereas with the psychotropic stuff, the studies are great, but there's no dosing. There's still studying everything. As far as IV, I know how much systemically got absorbed, and then we can maintain. So after a person finishes a series with us, we keep them on a chronic maintenance aspect as well, in addition to everything they're doing. But it's for that aspect of things. And the ketamine is a little different than the pilocybin or MDMA in terms of just the receptors that it works on. So it works a little differently than.
[00:05:23] Speaker H: Those aspects, I can say. I know several people who've done it, including some people who are very close to me, and the results were really incredible, and they had tried a lot. One person I know had been depressed his whole life, and he did a whole series, and he's like, it's a miracle. I am really a changed person. So I think the integration process after is also important, but I'm a big believer of it. I've seen the results firsthand, numerous times.
[00:05:53] Speaker E: I will add to that. So I had a family member suffering through postpartum that led to major depression, even suicide ideation. So on the other end, sometimes they feel helpless, you feel hopeless in helping them, and sometimes the pill form is just not enough, or it has side effects of weight gain and different things that turned you off from even maintaining consistency with it. SO that was part of why we started it. And me and TJ and our other partner, we were in the front line during COVID with the ICUS and everything. So we give ketamine as anesthetic during surgeries. So seeing afterwards, it helped a lot.
[00:06:39] Speaker G: So in terms of the affordability factor, because obviously, the more consistent you are with something like this, the better the results are going to be. How do people who may have a misconception that this is not affordable for them fit into what you have to offer?
[00:06:52] Speaker F: In terms of the ketamine therapy, insurance companies have been more and more open to reimbursement. So when we first opened a year and a half ago to two years ago, people were getting about 15% reimbursement as far as their whole series. And now from our patients, we've had about almost 60% reimbursement, and some have even been fully reimbursed. But it's so subjective to the insurance company. I think our pricing, our first meeting when we opened was like, it has to be accessible. That's our biggest thing. And if you can't come to us, there's no point of us even considering wellness, because how can someone afford $1,000 infusion? So we try to be the most.
[00:07:28] Speaker G: Accessible, and I think even in our communities, and I'll make this point really quick. In communities of color especially, it doesn't seem affordable, and it's not really part of our culture. And one of the things that I've been working on is just making sure that we're creating accessibility when it comes to mental health resources. So I love that you have that mindset.
[00:07:46] Speaker F: And our biggest thing is that in education, and I think a lot of it's knowing, because in our communities, it's the unknown. They don't know why they feel a certain way. They don't know why they're waking up angry or why they're leaning towards alcoholism or drugs or whatever it may be. It's a level of understanding.
[00:08:03] Speaker C: What are your plans for expansion? Because I think that this could help a lot of people in a lot of places.
[00:08:08] Speaker F: We're ready. We're getting there. We have the office fully staffed now. It's running on its own. With our ability to do the consults, like remotely, and still in office, we're ready to expand. We're looking to franchising. We're looking into all those aspects of things and opening different clinics in different areas. We've advised a few people already. One of our patients, he was a former vet, he actually just opened his clinic in Tampa. And we assisted and consulted them through the whole process. And they're up and running and they're working with vets hand in hand.
[00:08:34] Speaker E: Mental health and even hydration or taking vitamins is such a taboo, and sometimes it's a lot of education. And we do want broad accessibility, so that's also why we offer the IV ketamine. We also are now accredited for the vets because they've been on the front line, and then they come back to civilian life and need help. But also for those who don't have the resources for IV ketamine, we also have Spravato, which is covered through insurance, Medicaid, Medicare. So we offer help broadly, and we just want as much outreach as we can.
[00:09:15] Speaker C: Mamie Bio and TJ Shaw with the Vitaliv infusion, and you can find
[email protected] they have a nice facility in Chatham. I think it's a really good setup they have. And you are listening to passage to profit, the road to entrepreneurship.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Before we go, I'd like to thank.
[00:09:35] Speaker D: The passage to Profit team.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: Noah Fleischmann, our producer. Alicia Morrissey, our program director.
[00:09:41] Speaker D: Our podcast can be found tomorrow anywhere.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: You find your podcast. Just look for the passage to profit show. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and Instagram. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first.
[00:10:00] Speaker D: Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care, everybody.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Thanks for listening.
[00:10:09] Speaker D: And we'll be back next week.
