Transcript of The Wake-Up Call That Changed Stacey Kay's Health, Career, and Life

You dealt with addiction in your 20s? I did. Alcohol? Drugs. Drugs, wow.

I was having heart palpitations. My arm went numb. I basically thought I was having a heart attack. That was a big wake-up call that I needed to slow down. I wasn't happy doing what I was doing. The stress was getting too much. I was having these outbursts, and I just wasn't mentally fit or healthy. I had a moment where I just had a meltdown in front of my daughter and my husband, and that's when I realized I had to do something for me. Yeah. The only person I could blame was myself.

Let's talk about what's in my arm.

You are hooked up to what's called a lactated Ringer bag, an isotonic bag of fluids. It's exactly what's in your body. I have more conversations with people about their stress level when their IV is dripping than nutrition. It saved my life, Sean. I feel younger and better right now than I did in my 30s.

What's up, guys? We're back here with Stacey K, the founder and owner of Hydrate, a concierge mobile IV and hydration company. As you guys can see, I'm hooked up on a lot of stuff right now, and we're going to go through, and she's going to talk about what she has me on. There's some specific reasons why I asked for a certain ingredient in this. But before we get to that, Stacey, welcome to the show, girl.

Thank you.

It's been so long since I've seen you.

I know. I'm very happy to be here. Thank you.

I'm very happy to have you here. We've been talking about this for quite some time. I think I saw you about a year ago. I think it was at G's graduation party, right around this. It wasn't even a year ago.

Was it?

No, it wasn't. Gosh, time flies. Time flies. Sometimes I think it's been a year, but it's only been a year.

Before that, it was Halloween with your kids.

Oh, my God. Yes, that was a long time ago.

Right, before all of this, Sean. I know before all of this. I'm so proud of you. Thank you.

And by the way. I appreciate you. It's been a long road, right? I think I might have been with paychecks when- Yes. Then I got into medical.

We were talking about our corporate jobs and the sales grind.

Yeah, sales grind. That's a real grind, man. It's so difficult.

If you let it get away from you, which I did, it can really physically burden your body. It can bring you to your knees.

I'll tell you I'm going to blame it all on Dan. He put me through a lot of stress at paychecks. I love it. But no, it was a very high-paced, high-volume, high-touch job. With that, your health can struggle. When I started at Paychex, I was in decent shape. Then as the years went on, that's when I really started to struggle again with my weight because I was always pouring. I was in and out of the car, eating on the go. We always pride ourselves in sales. To never have breakfast or never eat lunch alone, you want to be in front of somebody. Then you're constantly eating out, and it can wreak havoc on you. The stress, and it's hard to enjoy the holidays when you're completely stressed out over sales. But for you, let's touch on that real quick. Well, no, actually, let's talk about what's in my arm. Sure.

You are hooked up to what's called a lactated Ringer bag, and that has some additional electrolytes normal than just normal sailing, which is typically what they'll hook you up with if you go into the emergency room in the hospital, which is an isotonic bag of fluids. It's exactly what's in your body. This has some additional potassium and calcium chloride in it. We give these to our clients who have food poisoning, who have been maybe had vomiting for three days, hangover bags, just because it's extra hydrating, UTIs, those sorts of things. Then I added a B to this, amino acids because your workout routine, so synthesizing that muscle. Then we added some magnesiumium, which magnesiumium is responsible for over 300 processes in our body. Our brains, our heart, our muscles all need magnesium, and we just don't get enough of it in our diets anymore.

What are some foods that do contain magnesium?

Leafy greens, nuts, seeds, all wholefoods.

You lost me at leafy greens. I know. I'm like, I'm out.

Try to drink. Could you drink your leafy greens?

Because that's an alternative. Yeah. No. Again, I eat what I need to eat. But to get the volume that you need, you just can't find it in a bunch of romaine or broccoli. A lot of times you do need a supplement, especially if you're super active. Sure. The other thing with the magnesium, it really helps you sleep better.

Absolutely. Magnesium glycinate is the one that you want to lean on if you need to sleep better. That helps, again, relax those muscles. There's eight different magnesium. What's the name of that one? It's biooptimizers. It has a really good powder that has all eight of the magnesium in it. I'll go to a powder. But anything ingested, like a supplement, which I'm a fan of supplements, I partner with two high-quality vitamin groups. You're getting 20% of that absorbed. Today, Sean, you're getting 100% of those vitamins absorbed.

See, that's interesting. I want to tell you a funny story. The audience might get a kick out of this one. I went to I think, a vitamin shop and got some magnesium glycinate, and it was a powdered form. That night, I made the mistake of not mixing it with electrolytes or something. I put it just in there with water. It was It was- Bad? God awful. Now, but I did go down there and I threw some essential amino acids in because I don't think I had any electrolytes in it, and it made it taste better. But a 20% absorption versus 100% absorption. That's a mass differential there.

It is. That's why we always think we're ahead of the game when we're really behind it, because we think, Okay, we're eating right, we're taking our supplements, but the absorption rate is so low that we need to support and augment. I always say with this company, We're not here to fix and cure. We're here to support and augment because you have to be doing things on your end. Diet, exercise, sleep, sunlight, stress levels is huge. I'm a big fan of meditation. We'll go into that, too. But we have to have our mind and body synced up. We don't do IVs on healthy people every week. I've got people asking me for them, but I don't think it's healthy or natural. I like the once a month maintenance if you have a good plan that you're doing on the back end.

That's great because that was the next question I was going to ask you. For somebody like me who's active, how often would I need to have something like this done? I mean, if it's once a month, that's a pretty easy lift. You come, I mean, Holly, we're at the studio right now and I'm hooked up on a bag.

It's pretty cool.

100% mobile. How often do you see people doing regular maintenance or do they use it as a reactionary supplement?

All of the above, really. I think a good maintenance plan. I do once a month because I have a pretty healthy lifestyle on the back end. If something's going on or I'm fighting something because I see a lot of sick people, too. If I've had a round of flu people, I might increase it. I've been doing some high-dose IV vitamin C, which helps with basically any viruses that are in your body. We have a lot of cancer clients that are on that as well because it's really good for the body as far as not disrupting the healthy cells like the chemo does, but it can enhance the positive cells and disrupt the senescent cells or the cancer cells. But I think a good plan for a healthy individual is once a month. Unless you're training for something, like we see marathon runners, and they lose just through breathing, through sweating, they're losing a ton of magnesium and electrolytes. We'll see once a week while they're training or once every other week. Wow. Yeah.

Well, that's pretty cool. Yeah.

You're starting to slow down just a little bit, Sean. Can I check this real quick for you?

Yeah, go ahead. We have a live adjustment, ladies and gentlemen. Live adjustment. Walk me through. Again, I mentioned earlier that you were in medical field and in sales. There's a lot of people listening and watching right now that are in a certain field, but they also have this passion. They have this business that they want to start. Walk me through your transition, why you transitioned, and some of the pitfalls, right? Some of the struggle that you had to go through in order to build this company.

I've been in healthcare sales in Southwest Florida for over 20 years. Different, Okay. Yeah. Okay. Different venues. I was in facility sales, mostly prescription-driven things. Home health was the last 12 years of my life.

See- That's a tough one.

You can ask any Home health rep right now, and it's because there's 60 competitors on your back. We were all vying for the same business, for the same doctors to write for us and refer to us, and it was a grueling grind. With the same company for 12 years. We were in the senior population, so the 65 and up was what I was used to. So calling on doctors, calling on CEOs of hospitals. You either have competitive sales ability in you or you don't. I always had competitiveness in me. So I thrived in it. It was great. I was great at it, and it was fun until it wasn't. Just waking up, being strategic, trying to beat everyone else out of the referral, just that hunter and gatherer approach every day. I remember being in this account. Well, first, I just remember sitting in my car towards the end of my on the street sales career and just trying to muster up all the energy I had to go into the account or doing those drive-bys where you never go in.

Oh, dude, those, man.

Where you pull in and then you're like, I just don't have the energy today.

Fuck this. I'm out.

Peace out.

Yeah, I did a lot of that. I've done a lot of that. I'm glad you mentioned that because that is something that a lot of elite salespeople don't mention. They like to claim that they don't ever do that. I'm going to call bullshit.

Yeah.

Because there's many times, right? I mean, there's emotions, there's real life that you're going through. And there's also this certain intuition that I felt that I had, that if I pulled up somewhere and I'm like, You know what? I don't know how I'm going to approach this because there's too many factors here that I'm working against. I may pull in and be like, you know what? I'm going to come back to this and I'm going to move on. But that was very few and far between. The times where I just reversed out of that parking spot was just when I just wasn't feeling it because it is heavy.

Yes. You have to come to the account with something to say, an action behind it, a request, information. I always I wanted to... I always wanted to go to nursing school when I was in sales, not necessarily to nurse, but to be able to sell better. It was always in me. I just discovered it much later in life. But there were plenty of times where I backed out of the parking lot. But you know what was interesting? Those times that I did on a whim, just go in and not want to, but said, basically, fuck it, let's go in and do it, were some of my sales calls. I bet. It was on a whim, right? Yeah. Just grinding every day, getting that sale, getting these huge commission checks. The home health world started to change. There started to be some reimbursement cuts, so it was pivoting to a different model. Our company had sold to a larger conglomerate, and I wasn't feeling it anymore. I remember going into one of my largest accounts, and I ate my sandwich in the car, and I was just like, All right, let's do this, and just negative attitude.

I went in, and I was talking with a lady in there, and she looked at me. She goes, Are you okay? I go, I don't feel good. Turned white. Where I had this account that was always coming in, treating the people, the EMS was coming in, the EMS was being called on me. I was having heart palpitations. My arm went numb. Oh, shit. I basically thought I was having a heart attack. They came in, they did EKGs. I have all these people around me. Usually, again, it was for the client that I was going to see, but then they were being called for me. That was a big wake-up call that I needed to slow down. Just bringing the work home, right? Your family gets the brunt of your stressors. I had a moment where I just had a meltdown in front of my daughter and my husband. It was almost an out-of-body experience where I remember looking up at them in the middle of this episode, let's call it, and their faces. We locked eyes, and their faces were just in disbelief. That's when I realized I had to do something for me.

This was the same instance. This is the same situation.

Same year, where things were just piling up. I I wasn't happy doing what I was doing. The stress was getting too much. I was having these outbursts, and I just wasn't mentally fit or healthy. Wow.

What type of outburst would you say you were having?

Anger. A lot of anger. Yeah.

That's the pressure, right? I don't think enough salespeople really talk about that. For me, it was always happening.

Yeah.

Short Other short views. I'm stressed. I don't have any more room emotionally or in my mind to deal with bullshit.

I don't know about you, Sean, at that time, but I was the breadwinner of the family. I was bringing, and I loved the money. Don't get me wrong. I mean, those paychecks, I wanted them to go higher each month. I was inducing it on myself. That meltdown made me see that I need to do something for me.

Hey, guys, we're going to take a quick break, and we're going to slide into our recovery segment brought to you by Therabody. What an amazing technology that Therabody has. It was founded on a really cool story by Dr. Jason Worshlin. It was founded on pain. He got into an accident and had this extreme pain in his arm and found that percussive therapy really helped. So he created the very first version of the TheraGun with a makita drill just to pilot and test to see if his pain could be relieved by percussive therapy overall. And surely it was. So now, birth to the TheraGun, and now Therabody, who has a multitude of products to help you recover emotionally and physically. And some of the products even help with stress, meditation, and better sleep, and just overall better wellness. And when I had Dr. J on the show earlier in 2025, it really spoke to me because his platform was founded out of physical pain, and the Determined Society was founded out of emotional pain. And so it felt natural for us to partner up. So here we are, an official partnership with Therabody. And I want to talk to you about some of the products today that I've been enjoying that I think you need to understand and know more about so you could potentially implement them into your life.

And I'm not going to get into a big deep dive of the actual science and everything like that. I'm just going to give you some anecdotal information based on the products that I'm using and that my wife is actually using, too, that is helping us out a great deal at home. Because the great thing about these products, guys, is you can use them anywhere. You can use them in the gym, you can use them at home, in your bed, in your living room. Hell, you can even drive with the Theragun Pro Plus in your car and use it on your quads, use it on your arms, whatever that is. The first I want to talk about is the Theragun Pro Plus. I bring that in my gym bag every day to the gym, and when I'm warming up, I use it to warm up. I put it on my arms. Whatever body part I'm using that day, I activate those muscles. And what I find is I'm able to move my body a lot quicker, and I'm a lot stronger on those days that I do actually bring it and utilize it. I just think it's a great way to understand your body and the connection between your strength and your muscles and being warm and being able to perform.

Because it's one thing to go work out, but it's another thing to perform while you're doing it. And the Theragun Pro Plus helps me do that. Another thing that I really truly enjoy is the Jet Boots Pro Plus. These things are wire-free, There's no hassle. There's no cords. There's infrared LED light. There's that compression therapy. And I've been having bad pains in my ankles, both of them actually, for about a year, and I don't understand where it's coming from. But when I started using the boots, religiously after a leg day or after a cardio session, I throw those boots on and I find myself a lot looser afterwards. I find myself lighter. And then the next day, there's no pain in my lower extremity, like my feet. The other thing that I really enjoy is that product really helps me recover a lot quicker. And let's face it, that's the most important thing when we're trying to move our bodies or we're trying to succeed see it in life is we want quick recovery, emotionally and physically. These products help me do that, and they can help you do that as well. One of the other things that I really want to go into because it's helping my wife out a ton with headaches and being able to distract from the noise in our mind.

And honestly, it helps me with that too, is a smart goggles. Whenever we feel a slight headache coming on or things are getting really heavy, just in our minds, just thinking about all the stressors, all the things out there that we can't control, we throw the goggles on, get in a quiet place, and there's different cycles on there and different intensities of vibrations and massaging that you can either turn it up or turn it down. And what I really enjoy is it allows me to focus on what's going on with just me and I think about things. And the massaging with the smart goggles relieves either headaches and it relaxes me and relaxes my wife to a point where we can fall asleep better. We are preparing to downshift and shut down and slow down for the evening. So I heavily recommend them. The other thing it's really good for is just creating a peaceful time in your day. And what I found since using the smart goggles and then the other products is it works for me, it works for my family, and I know it can work for you too. So I want you guys to think about things that you are struggling with.

If it's lower back pain or you wake up in the morning, your neck is tight, I'm going to tell you, the Theragun Pro Plus will help that out. They have cold therapy on it, hot therapy. I mean, think about that. When I opened that box and realized that I could have heat therapy and cold therapy and a theragun, changed everything for me. Also, really made the thing that I hate doing the most is warm up. Made that very easy for me just by applying it to the muscle group that I'm going to use before I do it and in between sets, which promotes quicker recovery between sets. If you're looking to go high volume or to lift heavy weights, I strongly consider that. All these products are there to help you move along in your day with less pain and recover quicker. Go check it out because now, like I said, the official partnership has begun. From now until the end of March, in your first order, you get 15% off your first order, not every order. If you're going to buy some stuff, load up there in that car for that first time and you get 15% off, go to therabody.

Com. At checkout, The code is determined. Let me know how you guys like it. Until then, stay determined. What that day when they came in and hooked you up to the EKGs, what did they determine it was? Was it just anxiety? Yeah. Yeah. That right there, I feel like... I've had people tell me, I don't believe in anxiety. I'm like, Well, you don't have to. If you don't have it, then you're a unicorn. But for me, I battle anxiety constantly. For me, the only way that I can circumvent those feelings is to execute everything that I say I was going to execute. If I leave one thing that I was supposed to do that I didn't that cranks up the dial of anxiety to me so freaking high. I'm talking like even getting very granular with it. Let's say I'm at the gym. I say, Okay, I'm doing chest today. I need to do three chest exercises. I'm going to do some lateral raises, some frontal raises from my shoulders, and then two sets, and two exercises of some triceps, and I'm going to burn out on abs. I'll get down to the end of the workout and not want to do one or two of those things.

The times that I I do them, I don't have any anxiety the rest of the day. But if I just do six out of the seven, and that's a pretty good percentage, that's winning. What happens is, later on in the day, if I'm supposed to do something to help my wife or to help the kids. There may be certain tasks that I just don't do. And then all that stuff compounds. I was six for seven, but now, after the end of the day, I'm six for 10, and that's only 60%. So I go to bed feeling very unaccomplished. I have to hit every single thing that I say I'm going to do. And I also have to learn to scale it back. Maybe I can only put five things on my plate that day. How do you deal with anxiety?

So that was more situational, but I'll tell you exactly how I dealt. And really, it saved my life, Sean. And so many perspectives. But after that incident happened, I discovered meditation. The TV was on one day. Nobody was watching it. It was one of those weekends where we're just doing chores. The TV was on, and we were probably watching something, but then another program had come on. There was a gentleman on there talking about the narrative that's happening in our heads all the time that we're aware of. It's subconsciously happening. His name is Michael Singer. He doesn't do very many interviews. He's from Florida. He lives in the Gainesville area. He was talking about his book that he read, I mean, that he wrote, Excuse me, The Untethered Soul. It was just the way that he was explaining we can either deal with the task at hand or we can avoid it. The avoiding of whatever is disturbing us inside is where the fear and the anxiety comes from because it's too painful for us to go there. We want to try to avoid pain and avoid the hard conversations with ourselves about what we need to do to get healthier and better because they're scary.

They're fearful. I lost my dad at 27 instantly, and he was my rock, and I never dealt with the sadness from that. I think that just ran into my life because behind sadness, there's anger there, or behind anger is sadness. If you just carry those from decade to decade and job to job and relationship to relationship, you're constantly fighting it. He put it in a way where we have to sit, get comfortable with it, and learn how to gracefully accept and then let it go. So He took me down this trajectory of TM, Transcendental Meditation, which I got trained. You okay? Yeah, I'm good. Okay. Trained, and it saved my life. For three years, I removed myself from my social marketing. I was still working, right? I was still in it, but I knew the problem was me after that incident with my husband and my daughter. I said, I need to work on myself. I had never healed from anything. I was a competitive gymnast early on, and there were body image issues that were constantly brought up back in the '80s.

I didn't know you were a gymnast.

Oh, yeah. Competitive. That's freaking awesome. Yeah. Nationally. Wow. Holy shit.

Damn.

Big emphasis on body fat and composition. I was a muscular, shorter stature, so I had to work at it a little bit harder. But I remember seeing pictures of myself at my eighth grade birthday, or excuse me, 8-year-old birthday, and I have a T-shirt over my bathing suit. I look at that little body, and I'm like, It's so fit and great. But I didn't like it even then. Meditation, for those three years, I sat with myself. I learned to love myself. I learned to be patient with my choices. I learned to trust myself. I didn't trust any of my decisions in my 20s. My whole 20s were spent partying and goof off.

Yeah, it was like my 30s, too.

And goofing off.

Yeah, it was a freaking mess, dude.

Yeah, broken, a mess, addictive personality, partying. It took me nine years to get through college.

Oh, you beat me. I think it took me six. My dad was always like, You should have your doctorate by now. I beat you. Yeah, he did.

Congratulations. That's awesome. Thank you. Yeah, I worked really hard at it. Yeah, for sure. I went to five different colleges. I just couldn't get it together. Damn.

The mental health aspect, right? I want to touch on the body image thing. I'm sitting here in this conversation. There's so many valuable points that you're making and educational things that the audience can pick up on. I'm sorry. I think, and again, this isn't a study I've done, but from everybody that I know, deals with some type of body image issue. And I do as well. I still have it. And no matter what I do, I don't see myself for what maybe you see or Kyle and Dan see. I see that old Sean, right? And I'm constantly fighting myself to heal from that and to tell myself, you're not that dude anymore. You don't even look like that. And what people that may not deal with body image don't understand is every time you walk out of the freaking house, you're worried about what everybody thinks you look like. That is a lot to deal with. Sure.

Yeah. Especially in our professions that we were in, you have to look the part. We're entertaining doctors. We're out late at night. We're eating, we're drinking. It truly is, and you always hear about it, but it truly is an inside job. Those three years, I paused and I was like, You're going to have to freaking like it or love it. You got to get comfortable in your own skin, Stacey, and not worry about what anybody's saying and the gossip and the noise and that voice that I learned that's always happening, that narrative. I fed into it all those years, and it was negative. So naturally, it was guiding my life in a negative way. And I just bought into it until Michael Singer came along and taught me there's another way. And so TM teaches you to focus on a mantra word so you can quiet the noise, quiet the brain, and then not be so reactive. And it's a daily reprieve. It doesn't just you sit down and do it. I mean, one minute felt like an hour.

Oh, I bet. I'm listening to you. I'm like, transidental meditation. I cannot be left alone with my own thoughts for more than a minute. When I'm trying to be quiet about it. Sure. Now, so continue to walk me through TM and the audience through TM, because I think there's a lesson here for the audience, because some people meditate in different ways. I firmly believe in active meditation. For me, if I'm moving my body, I go so deep on myself. I have that, people would say, bitch face in the gym. I'm the nicest guy ever. If I see somebody and you come in to contact, I'll smile. But if you see me across, I'm just locked in, and it almost looks like I'm pissed off, but I'm not. I'm really- Focused. Yes, I'm focused on me. How do I feel physically? How do I feel emotionally? Okay, if I feel down emotionally, what did I do the night before? Where is this coming from? What am I worrying about that's outside of my control? For me, the active meditation, if I'm not in the gym, then I'm not a person you want to be around. So how did you get from one minute, seemed like a year, to being able to practice it consistently and then heal from some of these past traumas?

Same way. Someone asked me how I trained for my half marathons. I literally did it one foot in front of the other. And I live my life by this motto from Picasso. It's a quote. I ingrained it in my daughter so much that she's got it tattooed on her body now. No way. So she has to live up it. It's action is the foundational key to all success because it truly, truly is. I've had ideas. We got the driveway where we're going up in parking in the parking lot and we're going to We're going to go in to see the sales guy, and we don't. We turn around. We're not going to get anything accomplished if there's no action. I was holding myself accountable at that moment with my daughter and my husband that this is a me problem, and I need to fix me, and I need to get comfortable with me, and I need to love me because I haven't loved me or trusted me. I just knew I had to do the work. I was at such an emotionally drained time that the only person I could blame was myself. Things just started to align, right?

Like the message that day with Michael Singer. I just am very spiritual, very religious, and the timing, God will just plop things in your life when he needs you to wake up. That's what happened that day was... Because I could have been walking past it and not been alert to it, but I was and I laser-focused. Probably like you being in sales, when we do something, We go all in. That's what that three years was for, was sitting and getting comfortable and taking those pieces of Stacey that caused so much self-destruction in the past and saying, Okay, I see you. I hear you. You're a part of me, but I'm going to take over from here.

Very interesting. I agree 100 billion % on this. That time frame of the three years, what years was that?

I was still in sales. That was prior to COVID. 15, 16, 17. Yes, 15, 16, 17. Yeah. About 10 years ago.

Okay, good. How often are you still doing TM?

It's easy to get off. I've noticed little I'll get off with eating, with anything. You've realized that you're off track a little bit because you're short fused or you're edgy or you're not happy. My husband will look at me and say, I think you need to start meditating again.

It'll marco. I need to tell you what's up.

Yes, I know. He will. He's actually grounded me so much just from being so different than me. He was also divinement plopped into my life at the time when I needed it. But I try to get up every morning, and I give myself grace. I think we need to give ourselves grace. I love to walk five miles, but if I only have time to walk two, at least I walked two. Exactly. On those times where I was like, Oh, I only walk two. No, Stacey, you walk two, and that's great. Go on with your day. Yeah. I try to incorporate at least 5 to 10 minutes a morning.

It's interesting because you're talking about a process and a standard. I think a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of human beings, just in general, will not go deep enough to understand that a standard is something that they do not break. You cannot break a standard. For you, the standard is keeping up on this, because if you don't keep up on this, you're not taking action. You're going to throughout the years. I mean, that was 10 years ago. Now you might have different triggers, you might have different traumas, you might have different worries and concerns. But if you're not sitting quietly with yourself, then you cannot identify what those things are.

Correct.

One of the biggest things that you mentioned is accountability. You really, without saying it, or maybe you did say that word accountability, but when you dive into yourself and you know that it's 100% you, that's what you said. This is 100% a me thing that I need to fix. That's a very powerful statement because I think a lot of times people get it twisted. Extreme accountability, I think, is very healthy. I'll fight it tooth and nail. People can tell me that's not healthy. No, I think it really is because you can either lie to yourself or you can tell the truth to yourself. If there's things that we need to fix, then being honest with you is very important. But I will take it a step further. You have to be very careful not to shame yourself in the process. So throughout the years, for me, struggling with weight, I was always trying to get in better shape. I wanted to be shredded. I want veins popping out of my arm. I want to look like a threat. I'm still on that grind. I want to look like a threat. I have two daughters. I want people to be scared of me.

A lot of work to go. People are looking at me like, I'm not scared of you.

You've got great veins. Well, yeah.

It's starting, right? But I think for me, in the past, it was always done out of shame. Sure. I hate myself. Because for the audience watching and listening, I can openly say it wasn't until last December, I started truly loving who I am and understanding what I need to do to get back to myself. My wife always told me, which obviously, you know, Jackie, she was like, You have this reservoir that is empty. I'm like, What are you talking about? It's confidence. I was like, No, I'm confident. She goes, No, you are on the surface. But deep down, there's a reservoir that has a very small level of confidence. Over the last five years, I have filled that bucket. There's no longer a void. But it was three steps forward, 100 steps back. It wasn't until last year that I took complete control with my friend Jeff Delaney, and he helped me get back on track. He helped me understand what I put in my body matters, what I supplement with as far as hormones. All this stuff matters. I was able to then take full accountability with love. With love, I'm doing this because I love myself.

Now I feel much better about who I am. Sure.

When you have those, that's awesome. I mean, it's so in line with how I felt, too. I think it's not an uncommon story. We're all dealing with this. We all have the insecurities. We all have the pressures of the family and the job. But you just have to get to that point where you're loving yourself and you're giving yourself what you need. I always lead right now with intention. I know if I'm skimming, and I know when I'm not, and I know when my intentions are good and when they're not. When they're not, I don't move forward with it. It It has to have good intentions like this. It has to have safety first because we're dealing with people's lives and blood and nutrition. But I'll be honest with you, I have more conversations with people about their stress level when their IV is dripping than nutrition.

I bet.

People are riddled with anxiety these days, and I want them to get to a point where they can take control of that, understand where it's coming from, go right through the process and deal with it so they can live this beautiful, self-secured, successful life. Because if you don't have that in order, you're not going to move forward and advance and evolve. It saddens me when I see people in their 70s with no direction like that.

It's hard because I look at these two words that come up a lot nowadays. We have a mental health problem. Social media constant comparison. Am I up to snuff with that person, or am I doing enough to get ahead? But anxiety and depression. Obviously, depression, you're worried consistently about problems that are rooted in the past. If we are living in constant state of anxiety, we are worried about things that have not happened yet. We are projecting or creating a narrative about something bad that might could happen that probably won't. All the things that I worry about happening, I would say maybe less than 1% of them actually do.

Absolutely.

But for me, and again, I always touch on this, and it's almost like I'm a broken record, but different people listen every single week, so I like to go over it, is I live in the past or I live in the future, so depression or anxiety, if I'm not taking care of myself. If I'm out being active, very little anxiety. But when it hits, it hits so fucking hard. Last week, I took my middle daughter to gymnastics. I texted my wife. I go, I am so anxious right now. I think I'm going to throw up. Out of nowhere. I think what's important is that these things are going to come up. You're not going to be 100% cured of these things, but how we respond and how we move through those emotions intentionally mean everything.

Staying present. You've mentioned the past and the future, which is really where everyone lives, in the state in the past, with depression, anxiety in the future. Through the meditation and the teachers that I listen to and the people that I get my information from and my strategies and protocols, basically, when that's happening, I work on grounding techniques. So touch, feel, smell. You work on your senses and the grounding techniques, but also Staying present. There's nothing... We're as young as we're ever going to be right now, Sean. Right now. We're in a present environment. And yes, we have families and we have jobs and we have to cultivate and we have to think about. But ultimately, whenever I get anxious or whenever I'm in a situation uncomfortable, that's how you grow, first of all, which is why I try to seek them out. But staying present really helps me stay focused and being grounded, feeling the ground under your feet. You see those techniques with the fingers. It just keeps people grounded. Those are some of the conversations I'll have with people about stress levels and, of course, meditation.

Well, I think what's It's cool. It's like when you're having conversations, when people are hooked up to your bags and they're getting the nutrients, there's a sense of calm. Because at that point, they're taking care of their self, and they're more open. I would imagine there's a lot of great conversations with some of your clients that you go to their house and you probably leave them much better than when you found them. They attribute not just the treatment to them feeling better, but also talking The conversations.

It's amazing that I'm able on some of my clients who are struggling with addiction to be able to have some of those conversations. It comes full circle for me as a struggling addict in my 20s. I almost get an out-of-body experience talking with them because I'm able to give them some advice or education or be able to relate to them. I want to help them. But you're right, from a physical standpoint and a mental standpoint, it's really cool.

You dealt with addiction in your 20s? I did. Alcohol, drugs. Drugs. Wow. I asked that because I actually love that. I think it's a prerequisite, right? Because if you did not have those experiences, the things that you're doing now with your business and identifying those types of clients when they open up to you, they're looking They're looking for more than just fluids. They want to talk to somebody. The fact that you've been through it, you're able to help that person. I think it's super important to give back.

Absolutely. It's on purpose and mission-focused, and I couldn't be happier with the decision I made to do this.

Walk us through it. Okay, building a business is not easy. I thought this was a business, and it It wasn't until 2025, really. Then massive explosion of growth since then. But building something doesn't matter what it is. It always comes with worry, anxiety, and now it's all on your ass. You don't have that salary, you don't have those benefits. Walk the audience through the building of this company and the brand and acquiring clients and some of the things that you may have to counsel yourself through in order to do so.

Well, so by the time I decided to do this and go back to school, I was a regional sales manager at that time. So I had a team It was a nice transition for me from the grind on the street to then being able to mentor and teach a group, which I loved. I was in a corporate environment, but it wasn't a really bad corporate environment. It was just the numbers, right? They grow every year. They grow every quarter.

And your comps, strengths.

Yes. So the stressor is there. But just with the evolution of myself on the meditation journey and the nutrition journey and loving myself. My job and the character didn't align with my purpose and where I was mentally. So COVID happened. I had gotten IVs before. That was when they were just getting going. I have been always into nutrition before. My last 12 years, like I said, was in home health, and I always noticed a gap in care. Always, there was a gap in care of the non-emergent needs, having to go to the ER that clogs up the ER. It triages a little bit differently. You need to have room to get your high emergency clients in. People would just go on a bag of fluids. They'd run some tests for dehydration, and then they'd get a $2,000 bill, and they were on their way home, and it was a non-emergent need. I always noticed that gap, again, in the 65 and up population, because that's what I was in. And how they didn't drink water and dehydration. But my daughter, in that meantime, was hospitalized for, at the time, it was a confusional migraine episode and a small seizure.

Shit. Yeah. One of the triggers was dehydration. That really took me down the rabbit hole of what happens to the body when electrolytes are not in balance. So sick of the job, right? Grined every day, felt like I was on a hamster wheel, just not evolving, right? Just internally, I knew I was meant for something different. The thing happened with my daughter. I said, I'm not in a nursing school. I I want to know what's happening in the body. I've put it off for 10 years. Let's do it. I'm not happy in my career. I jumped off with both feet from a great corporate job, making great money. I went to nursing school. I was in this classroom with 20-year-olds. I'm in my 40s. It was humbling.

You're like, Shit, I don't belong. It was humbling, but I wanted to feel it.

I wanted to go through it. I wanted to scrub down and go into these accounts that I'd been in clicking around in high heels and makeup and hair done, and then go in and scrubs. It was such a great experience. I talked with attorneys and I developed a business plan and said, I can do this. I didn't take a dime from anyone. There's no investors. So I took my savings from health care and I said, I can do this. This is good. This is what I want to do.

Was it scary? So fucking scary.

So scary. And my first year out, I had other nurses that contract with me out doing the IVs because I was getting my degrees and getting IV certifications. And my first year out, I would practice on all my friends and anyone who wasn't going to sue me, and I could do six pokes on. I loved it. It was great. But better yet, just being able to be responsible for the outcomes because it was mine. I loved nutrition. I loved hydration. I It was a personal story. I was stuck in my job. This was a way for me to get out of that and build it. I remember a year and a half in before we knew patterns in history as far as this industry, one of my nurses looked at me in the summer, which was a slower time for us, and she goes, Man, I hope it was all worth it. I looked at her and there was a fleeting moment, those moments you get. I looked at her, I go, This is the exact moment where people give up. I'm not willing to do that.

You mentioned something that I thought was very interesting. When you were sitting there wanting to go back to nursing school, so you can understand all these things and create something. At that point, when you're in a room with 20-year-olds and you're thinking, well, wow, do I belong here? Here I am, a grown-ass adult, but I'm committed to this. There's a certain level of becoming a lifelong learner that I think that people really need to embrace a lot more is understanding that we're never done learning. That's what you did, and you created something pretty special out that.

Yes. In fact, I'm going back next year to advance the nursing degree. I just feel that I don't want to stop learning. I don't want to stop growing. I don't want to stop evolving. I want to perfect this business, and if it leads into other things, fantastic. But I feel like I wasted, and no regrets, but I feel like I wasted a lot of time when I was younger, that I'm just trying to embrace every moment I can now by doing something positive for me, for my family, for my body, for my mind. I mean, I was a pack a day smoker.

Were you really? Yes. That shit ain't good, huh?

No, it's terrible. I really try to be really good to my body now because I did so much damage to it early on. But yeah, I'm going back to the classroom.

See, like lifelong learner. It's funny because I hear this a lot. I hear, I want to do this, but I can't because I'm too old or because I have children, because I have responsibilities. I want to encourage the audience that if they're feeling a pull in a certain direction, that they want to start something or create something that they always can. They may not be able to go all in right away and leave what they're doing, but do what you don't want to do so that one day you can do what you want to do. What advice would you give the audience that is sitting there telling themselves a story like, I just can't do this. I'm too old or it's too late. I don't have much time.

Being down this path of mental health and physical health has, for me, given me the... Just loving myself, has given me the confidence that need to advance. I feel 50s are young. I feel younger and better right now than I did in my 30s. Each decade has such an important message, an important time in our life. The 40s, for me, was just a great year or decade to grow in self-love and find out what I really want. I think the 50s are just, go get it. That's awesome. Don't stop. Why would I? I want to age appropriately, but our parents age terribly. They just didn't have the resources and the information and knowledge that we have these days. So as long as my brain is working and I'm clear, I want to continue to work it because I think sedentary lifestyle is the new cancer, mentally and physically. We have to move, but we also have to use our brains. Listen, I just dropped my daughter off at college this year. We're empty nesters. I have the to do it. This is what I want to do.

Empty nest or how's that going? It's good. You're going to live with a boy now.

It took some transitioning time. Her and I are very close, and it did. It took a lot of transitioning and I found myself coloring and doing puzzles because I wasn't- That's some old lady shit, dude.

Diving into it.

But it took me a few months, and now I'm good. There's a whole different level of worry that you have when your kids leave the home. Did they listen to all the safety tips that we gave them? Are they okay and safe? But I have the time and I'm where I'm enjoying the freedom. I just want to keep evolving and moving forward and advancing.

That's really freaking awesome, dude. That's really awesome because I just truly believe that what you said about as we age, when I look at my 40s, I think they're better than my 30s, and specifically the latter half of my 40s. When I was 42, I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. It's this. I had the purpose and I had the passion. Even though I was really bad at it for a very long time, I looked back at some of the episodes and I thought, Wow, dude, you're it, man. I'm like, Holy hell, no wonder. You were at where you were at because you just weren't ready. But I stayed delusionally optimistic about my abilities to have conversations. I remember when I first started, I would literally be talking to somebody and they would go off on a 2-5 minute monolog, and I'm like, Oh, shit.

Got to reel this in.

What are we talking about? I had to get so good at it, right? Because in conversations, there's conversations that flow very nicely like this. But then there's conversations that I have to reach in and and carry the whole time. It took a lot of work. It took a lot of skill. My whole point of this is the skill that I had to refine, obviously. I think that I was born a good conversationalist, and then learning how to continue to enhance that and make that better and turn the dial up is what I really had to get good at. But the reason I'm saying this right now is that if you're in your 40s or in your 50s and you're still searching for something, it's not too late. You can still pivot. You can still have the next great big idea. In worst case, at least you're doing something that you love.

Absolutely. I think when people are pushing too hard or they're pulling too hard in a direction that's not meant for them, they're going to be met with resistance and challenge, not like overcoming obstacles, obviously. If it's a true passion of theirs, they'll continue forward. But I feel like if it's meant to be in my situation, it just flowed naturally. It didn't mean that it wasn't hard when I started. It was very hard, and I blew through quite a bit of money getting it going.

I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing because I get it.

Yeah. But it meant something to me, and I had the support of my family. Yeah, it was scary as hell. But But I was determined to make it work. I'll continue to advance and do what I'm doing that makes me happy now. I've got a great clientele base. In five years, it moves on to something else, and it moves on to something else. But I'll go with the flow and be flexible and pivot when I need to.

That's great. What was the hardest thing that you went through when you were building this? The one thing that you look back and you're like, I don't know how I got through that.

In the sales world, it was like, go constantly and go fast and go hard. This was the first time in my life that I had to slow down and get outcomes. I'm very outcome-driven, but I was responsible for the outcome, so it was great. The service component of it. The One of the hardest things for me, aside from the financial component of it, which is- That's another animal. Oh, yeah. Because it's scary. The hardest part was to slow that sales cycle down. And slowly is the quickest way to get to where you want to go. And I heard that one time, and I'm like, No, that's BS. No, it's fast, but it really isn't. I went fast in my 20s, I went fast in my 30s, and look where it got me. So just learning how to slow down, become very mindful of my actions, and then get the outcomes, and then just go hit the next one and the next one. So referrals, word of mouth. I love that. I'm still growing.

No, absolutely. If we're not growing, we're dying. You really need to be growing all the time. One of the things that I started focusing on, and my partner in the business, Pat, always, he said this thing one time, and it stuck with me. It was, focus on making this the best show we can.

That's it.

It's so basic, but really what it means for me and for people listening is focus on the thing that matters the most. All the other things will come. I did that, and now all the other things are coming. Now, again, we still have issues I mean, this is a company. It's always hard. Sure. It's never a lot. There's lighter days, right? That usually means I'm just not recording.

Right.

But there's still things going on in my mind. But thankfully, I have an amazing team now that is insulated around me, like Dan, to go do things that I could only trust somebody like him to do. Like, transparently, I have to have him in that position because he knows me like the back of his hand. He helped build me.

I think it's so cool. Isn't it cool? It's awesome. Yeah. I tell him that all the time.

It's a blessing, you ugly bastard.

I love it. People are in your life for a reason, whether to teach you something, to learn, to grow, to overcome hatred. I remember I had some difficulties with a couple of adults in the last couple of decades, and I just couldn't shake it. I'm like, I have to get rid of this. When I was going through all of my meditation journey, I was like, I need to start praying for them. Just to even mention their name in a prayer was like...

Yeah, I get that.

The 19-year-old kid that pulled out in front of my dad and ended up in an accident that was fatal.

Is that how you ask for that?

In a motorcycle accident. Oh, Jesus. In two seconds, he was ripped from life. I had to pray for that 19-year-old kid. It took me a lot of energy and effort and compassion to know that we all make mistakes, but I had to pray for him because it was healing me. I always knew I had to heal myself from it.

Forgiveness is always for you. Always. It's never for somebody else. I think that's something that people really need to dive into. We don't forgive for them. We forgive so we can release that. Yes. It was super important for me to have a team that I could trust, that I could bring along to keep me in check. Again, going back to that statement, focus on making the show the best it possibly can be. Every single time we record, every episode, I get with Kyle, I get with production, I get with Dana, how was it? What do I need to do better? There's times where like, Hey, there's nothing I could have done. But I think there's a healthy aspect of always searching for ways ways to get better, and I think that's being a true professional.

Well, I'm just taking accountability for your actions and intentions throughout the day. We're not perfect, but we have to give ourselves grace, too. We're not very good at that at times. We're very hard on ourselves.

Why do you think that is?

I think it's from just... For me, I made a lot of bad decisions, and so I feel like I make up for that, or I feel like I have to do it perfectly because I didn't do it perfectly for so long. We're hard on ourselves because I think we know our capability and we know our potential, and we don't live it out. Action is the foundational key to all success.

Potential is a funny word. It's like either myself or you have all this potential or whomever. But if we don't take the action and we don't tap into that potential, then it's wasted. I truly feel like the potential that we were giving, the gifts that we were given from God, we have to use them. Because if you don't, it's the ultimate act of disrespect. Absolutely. For me, I can just imagine when I give my kids a gift and they don't use it, or they break it, or they don't value it, it really upsets me. Think about what the big guy feels if he gave you a gift. If I wasn't using my gift of conversation, I'm wasting what I'm put here for.

There is a bigger purpose to everything and everyone. When you find that, you'll do it. People are like, Would you do this if you won the lottery? I say, Yes, because I know this is what I'm meant to do. This is my passion and purpose, and I'm meant to make people feel better than when I found them and to have some of those hard conversations along the way about nutrition and lifestyle. People are eating so much negative food and wondering why they feel like shit. Most people don't want to do the work, though. That's what I'm finding.

Yeah. They're eating the food that was made in a lab by men. It's man-made food. Going to actual Whole Foods and eating real food is simple. It's not easy. People go, Well, I don't have time for that. Yeah, you really do. If you have to go to Chick-fil Filet, then you can get the salad with the grilled chicken. You can get the grilled chicken sandwich. You can get the grilled chicken nuggets. But people, they say they go to their default. If I go here, I'm going to get this, and it's always the fried chicken or whatever. My buddy Matthew hadn't told me this one time. You need to have contingency plans. If you're out and about and you go to... If this, then that. If I'm at Chick-filet, then I'm going to have this. I created systems in my life, whether it's nutrition or within the frameworks of my show, and I'm sure you have it within your business, that if this happens, this is my default. If my kids say, I want Chick-fil-A, then I know, okay, great. I don't have stress now because I go, okay, I know what they're going to get.

I'm going to get this grilled chicken salad. I'm going to ask them to add extra chicken on it. Now I'm hitting my protein and now I'm getting my leafy my vegetables and some tomatoes and some fruits in there. But I set those guardrails for myself. I think that ultimately helps me. It helps me in my business. It helps me in everything.

Sure.

I don't know. It's not rocket science, right?

It's so basic, and we have to just check in with ourselves every once in a while. How are you feeling? Well, if something's off, then let's take a deeper dive. Maybe if we did a drip on someone it made them too anxious, then let's rework the... We always lab work is really what we go to to see where people are deficient or not. It's customized. Not always, but a lot of times if we want to take deep dives or maybe we did it too late and it kept them up and disturbed their sleep. So check in with your body. Check in with your mind. What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Let's switch it up.

I'm a big fan of that. We forget to do that. It struck a thought. I know we're coming down to the end here, But there's times where before the last year, if I was feeling tired, I was feeling a certain way, I was ingrained in this hustle culture, where no matter what, just keep going. Burn yourself out. There was a couple of weeks ago where I had five episodes scheduled in a week. It's a lot. It's only five hours of work, but the lift is so heavy because you're different different energies, different conversation. It's a big lift. I didn't feel good on that Friday. I rescheduled that show because I know now you're about to hit a tipping point, Sean. If you do this episode, you are going to take so much from yourself because it was something that I started thinking, I don't even know where to go with this right now. I don't even know. I know what I'm supposed to be talking about, but I can't set the framework in my mind because I'm so overwhelmed. I'm like, Okay, let's move this. I think understanding yourself, that's also part of determination. See, determination isn't the sexy thing where you're constantly grinding.

It's gritty, It's a thousand miles an hour, 24/7, 365. It's also knowing when to lay off. It's also when to know, like you said earlier, one foot in front of the other, and to continue to do the things when you don't want to do them emotionally at that time. That's why I started this platform, because I wanted to bring those stories to people. What is your definition of determination?

Determination for me is never giving up on something that's so important and so passionate. It's looking at or feeling the obstacles and challenges ahead of you and going and moving forward anyway to get past it and through it. Just to never give up and to continue doing things that make you happy and that you're on purpose with. That moment with that nurse that I have a year and a half, and her saying that I hope it's worth it. Nobody's going to take your business as serious as you. No. So That determination and drive is in you, and only you know what that is, and you know how to feed that, and you know whether you're skimming or not. I think I have to check in with myself every once in a while and just make sure that I'm in check.

I think it's smart. There's times where I'll sit there and I'll go, All right, dude, what are you actually doing? If I'm not recording that day, I say to myself, What are you actually doing today? Sometimes it'll be like, No, I'm just going to I think those are important days, too.

Balance.

Yeah.

Balance is key, mentally, physically. Give yourself some grace, just checking in with your body, checking in with your mind, and just doing the best job that you can.

I love it. This has been amazing.

Awesome.

Where can the audience find you?

I am on Instagram @hydrategirl, with a period after the R, and website ivyhydratelLC. Com for all the drip information.

I love it. Audience, and we're going to put that website in the show notes. You people here locally, go ahead and click on that, get some treatment from Stacey, and really skim her website. There's so many different modalities that you have from glutathione drips to detox the liver to the Myers cocktail for immunity support. But you also do a lot of different things that I think not a lot of these concierge services is actually do. When you go check her out, guys, look at everything that they do and give her a chance here if you're local, because I tell you what, that was a good one. Nice little coolness the whole time through, and I feel great. Good. I appreciate you. I appreciate you. It was so good to see you.

You, too.

This has been an amazing and impactful conversation. The thing that I love most about it, we went deep. We went really deep. The audience got to learn a little bit about you, of what you went through, and you were very successful in sales, but money isn't everything. No. That's a very stressful business. A lot of times we have to pivot and work for ourselves because I tell everybody, I just became unemployment. I just didn't give a fuck anymore. I'm like, You're not going to call me and ask me where I'm at. That was more in my medical days. I'm performing. I was like, No, you're not going to call me and ask me where I'm at. That's when I noticed there needs to pivot in my life. I think you gave a peek behind the curtain in your own journey for the audience to decode and marinate on what they're dealing with right now and be able to move forward in their passions and their dreams. Thank you for that. Thank you, Sean. Absolutely. Now, for you guys, for the audience, just like every single time, I need you to share this episode with somebody you know, love and trust.

Let me know what you loved about it. If you're in the area, go check her out. Click the link in the show notes and schedule your concierge service at your home, at your office, wherever the hell you're at in your podcast studio. Until next time, guys, stay determined.