In this episode of The Boulos Beat, host Greg Boulos engages in a conversation with Cole Siefer, the CEO of Med Matrix. They delve into the origins of Med Matrix, a cutting-edge medical clinic and med spa with locations in South Portland, ME, and North Conway, NH, and how Sasha Phillips of The Boulos Company helped Med Matrix in its space search. Cole shares how personal experiences shaped the establishment of Med Matrix and discusses the challenges of running a business at a young age, including the dynamics of working with family members. Greg and Cole discuss such topics as exosomes, stem cell treatments, and the array of other services offered by Med Matrix. Additionally, they explore the role of functional medicine in healthcare and outline the model of Med Matrix in the years to come.
In this episode of The Boulos Beat, host Greg Boulos engages in a conversation with Cole Siefer, the CEO of Med Matrix. They delve into the origins of Med Matrix, a cutting-edge medical clinic and med spa with locations in South Portland, ME, and North Conway, NH, and how Sasha Phillips of The Boulos Company helped Med Matrix in its space search.
Cole shares how personal experiences shaped the establishment of Med Matrix and discusses the challenges of running a business at a young age, including the dynamics of working with family members. Greg and Cole discuss such topics as exosomes, stem cell treatments, and the array of other services offered by Med Matrix. Additionally, they explore the role of functional medicine in healthcare and outline the model of Med Matrix in the years to come.
Greg Boulos00:00
I'd like to welcome our listeners to the Boulos beat podcast. I'm your host, Greg Boulos, the Boulos company's northern New England's largest commercial real estate services firm with offices in Portland, Maine as well as Manchester and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We've been selling and leasing real estate in Maine, New Hampshire since 1975. This podcast is designed to provide insight into Maine's leaders, its movers and shakers. And speaking of movers and shakers, I'd like to welcome Cole Siefer, co-founder of Med Matrix, to the bowl of speed. Med Matrix is a functional medicine facility located in South Portland, Maine, with a satellite office in North Conway, New Hampshire, along with telemedicine services, which are available in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York. Med Matrix was founded by Cole and Carrie siefer. Med Matrix aims to help its patients live longer and stronger with cutting edge treatments and a top-notch medical team rooted in functional medicine. Welcome to the bowl of speed. Cole, it's a pleasure to have you. Cole, thanks for coming in. You went to college where I went to college right outside of Orlando, called Rollins. Oh, I know Rollins, sure, yeah. And you didn't last all four years at Rollins, right? Well, what happened?
Cole Seifer01:13
I didn't even last four months. Seriously? Well, I think it was just about four months, yeah, one semester.
Greg Boulos01:20
Get to expand on why you left?
Cole Seifer01:22
Yeah, so I graduated high school and got into real estate, and that was my plan. I wasn't gonna go to college. Just wanted to got a internship, did a what's called an extended learning opportunity when I was 1516, with this Airbnb investor in the area you owned, like 30 props. Properties, and my plan was I was just gonna ride this out, work for him, build up a big Airbnb portfolio. But my dad was on me about going to college, so ended up getting a good offer from Rollins and went had maybe too much fun, but around that time, got into trading stocks. So when I was at college, made some money trading, and then when I was back for the summer in Portland, joined a friend's company trading full time and had some early success with that, which in my mind, gave me grounds to drop out and pursue that company, so I never looked back.
Greg Boulos02:25
And you also created a podcast on trading, right? Yeah, we did, what was that called? And,
Cole Seifer02:32
yeah, it was called the Daily Trader’s podcast. So we pretty much just talked about trading news in the trading market, our strategies, some lifestyle stuff as well. That was fairly big, right? Yeah, we weren't top 25 at one point, top 25 globally for financial education, we're in the top, like single percentiles and for Spotify podcasts, we had 10s of 1000s of subscribers and then millions of followers.
Greg Boulos03:02
So what? No offense, but what did you know about trading stocks to the point where people were following you?
Cole Seifer03:08
I mean, it's a good question. Honestly. I, you know, kind of, we had really good guests on which so I, you know, wasn't a total farce. We asked good questions, and we had, we, the whole thing was, we started, it was, we had an office in the Thomas block building on the fourth floor, right, actually, right under commercial street. Yeah, right under the clock, actually. And we were trading one day, and I looked at my buddy across the room. I said, Hey, we should, you know, we're having this, like, really great conversation around what trades are working, what isn't we should just start a podcast. And that day, we drove to Guitar Center with our media guy, and because we already had some followers on Tiktok, so we thought we could leverage that following to build up the podcast. So we drove to Guitar Center and got two mics and some we already had cameras, and I think later that day, recorded the first episode.
Greg Boulos04:04
Now, you had a lot of followers at some point, right? Yeah. So
Cole Seifer04:07
we already had like a million or so followers on Tiktok from just posting about trading content, and then we made a new account for the podcast, and like, the first video we posted got, I think, three or 4 million views. That's
Greg Boulos04:21
incredible. Yeah, yeah. And then at some point, you had a serious mountain biking accident, which resulted in a brain trauma and other injuries, which took you away from the podcast
Cole Seifer04:33
for a little bit. So at that point, you know, just give you a timeline. It was dropped out of college, or I started my buddy just invited me is, hey, come up to my office when I got back from college, because he knew I was trading and doing all right. So I went up to his office, started training, and I said, Hey, for the summer, can I just get a desk put up in your office? And that's what I'll do. And that's when we started the podcast, and then it became successful. So. I dropped out of college, and then about a week after I dropped out of college, was mountain biking with my dad, and at that point, that's when I got into the bad accident and rode my bike, and just over a year was a little rusty, and he
Greg Boulos05:17
ended up in the hospital. Yeah,
Cole Seifer05:19
I was in Dartmouth Hitchcock for over a day, and then eventually they sent me home, and actually had to move back in with my mom because I could barely feed myself. And I ended up doing some treatments that got me into the whole industry I'm in now, which allowed me to recover. In a month, I think in four weeks, I was actually back on the podcast, just with the pretty bad lisp.
Greg Boulos05:45
So when this accident, what did it do to you, physically? Yeah, how bad were you?
Cole Seifer05:50
It was. My whole face was ripped apart. And just give you context, it was going off a jump, and I my like suspension wasn't tuned correctly. So it's called, like, bucking you forward. So I went forward off my bike doing a big jump in a went over the bars and landed on my face. So I bit my tongue off. And then I had a, it's called a TBI, or a traumatic brain injury, when you're unconscious for an extended period of time. So it was, yeah, it was the mental part that was, it was difficult. So
Greg Boulos06:23
let's talk about the treatments and how it got you into what you're doing now, which is med matrix, yeah.
Cole Seifer06:32
So I, at the time, my mom had an office building in North Conway, New Hampshire, and in that office, she had a functional medical practitioner which did Functional Medicine and stem cells and treatments like ozone therapy. So she was, you know, loving, caring mother, and wanted to help me. So she connected me with this practitioner. I ended up doing stem cells, exosomes and IV ozone or ozone therapy, doing a blood transfusion. And the so ozone is, since it's Oh, three, so it's three molecules of oxygen, and when you put into the bloodstream, the excess oxygen molecule separates and in turn, hyper oxygenates your entire body. And oxygen has all sorts of healing effects. That's why you might hear of people using hyperbaric oxygen therapy to heal. So ozone is a more potent, arguably better therapy than hyperbaric oxygen, because it's quicker and then it also doesn't have the free radicals which are damaging to neuro health. And
Greg Boulos07:38
that's something you offer at Med Matrix. Yeah. We do. So your mom, Carrie, is a co owner of the business with you. What's her role and what's her background?
Cole Seifer07:50
So she owned a med spa for 25 years, and when, when I started the business, it was, you know, at that same time, I had the trading company with my friend and I did these treatments, was back on the show, and all my friends were really impressed with my recovery. I was impressed, and I started looking for these therapies in Portland, and then kind of went down a rabbit hole about corporate practice of medicine. Ended up going to the medical director that did my treatments, and said, Hey, what is, you know, what would it take to start this in Portland, Maine? And, long story short, she said, write a business plan I did and to start it. Big believer in starting small with a low burn rate. So we started out of my mom's office with my mom and I, the kind of deal was, hey, you know, Mom, if you let me use your office rent free and start seeing patients, and she had a whole network of patients, give her some of the business. And this is North Conway. Yeah, this is North Conway. So that's how she started to get involved. And, yeah, that was kind of the origins.
Greg Boulos09:00
So you're in business with your mother. What's the dynamic like?
Cole Seifer09:03
Yeah, she's, I mean, she's a fantastic customer hospitality person. Builds very great connections with clients. And she's, she's got a knack for ordering and supply and getting down cost of goods. She's also got a really good touch on what therapies people want and people like and what's working. So I guess if she, if she had a role at the company, I would call it, like, head of product and then customer service, she kind of keeps it all together. Yeah, yeah. She, she definitely managed, like, she manages all the ordering of medication, and oversees the because we also have an esthetics department admin matrix. So we have a couple treatment rooms and lasers and cool sculpting machine. So we do these Med Spa side too. So she directs that, and we work. She respects me as a business person. So any type of business decision. And you know, there's formalities and making decisions inside the business, but it's pretty much um, she says, All right, if you think this is a good idea for the business, we'll do it. And same thing, if she wants likes a treatment to bring on or some machine that we need, I'm fully supportive. So you guys get along pretty well. We get along great. Yeah,
Greg Boulos10:18
that's because a lot of family businesses, there's a lot of internal strife. Yeah,
Cole Seifer10:22
yeah. Sometimes we'll argue a little bit, but, um, she, yeah, we, we, you know, we have a good dynamics.
Greg Boulos10:33
So Cole, you're, you're not an old man by any chance, by any stretch of the imagination, you're a young guy. But has that given you any challenges in the business world? You know, I'd be,
Cole Seifer10:50
I think so probably, maybe people have, I'd say more so on the client side people, which is interesting. You think it'd be on, you know, I have several doctors who work under the med matrix umbrella and under my direction, and I was actually just at a conference, and had no issue with connecting with physicians and other medical clinic owners and CMOS great selling. I generally tell people I'm 50, I just do stem cells, and I look young, and kind of, yeah, gets a quick laugh and just kind of divert the age question? No, I'd say I let my facial hair grow out a bit look older, and just kind of stay away. I don't, yeah, people generally, if you know your if you know your stuff, and that's
Greg Boulos11:35
what impressed me, a good person. I
Cole Seifer11:36
don't think people really just care too much about what you're talking about,
Greg Boulos11:39
and that makes something different. Thank
Cole Seifer11:42
you. Thank you, Greg. Appreciate it. So
Greg Boulos11:45
tell us again, exactly what does med matrix do? Kind of what's the elevator pitch here? Yeah, right.
Cole Seifer11:57
I like to tell people we do functional medicine, but a lot of people don't know what functional medicine is. And medicine is, and in short, it's treating the root cause of disease. So for example, if you have problems sleeping, as a lot of people do, instead of just giving you a sleep med to knock you out at night, well, actually understand what's happening on physiological process through advanced testing and comprehensive intake form. So looking at family history and genetics, stuff that gets overlooked by conventional medicine, and trying to treat the root cause of disease, as opposed to just when
Greg Boulos12:30
I go to giving you, if I need medication, get an acre of pain, they give me a pill. And rarely do they ask, you know, what's behind the pain? Why do you have the pain? Same with sleeping pills. You know, why can't you sleep? It's like he has a pill. Yeah,
Cole Seifer12:47
right? Well, yeah, I don't want to get too political, but there is what's called the insurance or what's been coined as, like, the insurance agenda. And pretty much practitioners have what's called these ICD codes that are in SOPs on how, you know, let's say a patient comes in in order to get, like, what's called, like, a series four ICD code, you need to bill for, I think, like, two chronic diseases, and then do, like, some medication management, and then the typical vitals and check In. So, the billing structure in conventional medicine is around certain diagnostics, not around actual patient success. So we incentivize our doctors towards patient success, not just getting an ICD code to get $120 check from, you know, Aetna or Medicaid or Medicare or whatever it is for for seven that's why primary care office visits are historically, infamously short and not in depth. Once they get their codes, they got a patient, they got to move on. Yeah, the schedules are, I mean, even like in Maine, it's a big problem where there's the patient to practitioner ratios, like one in 10,000 or something ridiculous, yeah, in Maine, I don't know. I mean, it's, I think people are more professionals are moving to Maine, especially after covid. People want to be a little more isolated post, like being in New York, I really don't know I was that's kind of something we were unpacking at. I was just in Vegas at a the Institute of functional medicine conference, and we were trying to understand, like, what's the issue with Maine? Because I'm, you know, I'm in the middle of recruiting. We're trying to bring on doctors who are partners right now, and it's been a real challenge. We're asking physicians to recollect me from Vegas, just a working lifestyle in Maine, yeah, and I think that's. Why we're seeing increases in population, especially in professionals. So we're hoping to be a small part of that increase demographic.
Greg Boulos15:08
From Med Matrix, typical customer,
Cole Seifer15:17
you'd be surprised how wide it is. I mean, we have patients who are in their 20s, I'd say, opposed to, like, a, you know, physical, like age or income, or, you know, race. Look more at the purpose of why they're coming to us. And it's generally people who, it's kind of two categories of people. It's people who, I'd say a is the people who've gone to conventional medicine, they have some type of chronic disease, and they care about their health, and they've done their own research, and they found that the care they need is out there. It's just not being provided by conventional medicine. They're generally patients come in, they're really frustrated with the attention they're getting. You know, they're waiting six months just to see their specialist for an issue that is very prominent in their lifestyle, quality of life. So, you know, we get patients quick, and we we help them fast. So it's those type of patients who are looking for that care. And that can be, you know, we have patients who are We've had patients that are 12 years old all the way to in their early 90s, late 90s. So that's a wide range. And then you have the B category, which is generally patients from 50 to mid 70s, I'd say. And these are patients who are very in touch with what's going on, I'd say more so in touch with what's going on, healthcare and what's available, and have the disposable income to spend in research into these carers that are extending their life, increasing their quality of life. What
Greg Boulos16:48
typical problems that's where that a person has can be overcome by the therapies that you offer at Med matrix.
Cole Seifer16:57
Well, that's the beauty of functionality. Put ourselves in one box? Well, that's the beauty of functional medicine, is we don't put ourselves in one box of any type of issue or illness. It's really, I mean, you know, we definitely see a lot of symptoms like fatigue and trouble sleeping and brain fog, achy joints. But the philosophy functional medicine is everything's connected, mind, body, you know, all these different physiological processes. So really, by addressing, you know, like a dice, for example, I had a I did some advanced testing, and found out that I had Hashimoto’s, which, in a when Alan is 20s, is really rare. So Hashimotos is a hyperthyroid disorder. So my TS levels were like 500 600 something, which is really high, which was giving me fatigue. And I thought I was just working really hard, and that's why I was fatigued. But, you know, one thyroid supplement and DHEA supplement really turned my fatigue around, helped me sleep better. So if we're able to address like, it's really interesting. If we're able to address like, quote, unquote, the root cause gets thrown out a lot within the patient's health, we're able to fix a lot of the underlying issues and symptoms that they're having
Greg Boulos18:18
in other treatments. I'm sure they vary. But are they expensive? Are they?
Cole Seifer18:22
Yeah, I mean, we try to keep it. We've developed packages and programs to help make care more affordable to patients, but, um, you know, at the end of the day, it is. It's an expensive business to run, too. You know, paying IFM trained doctors and full nursing staff, and you know, with that, you get the luxury of not being thrown in and thrown out. You You know, our physicians take hours to review your work prior your appointment, and spend hours, if needed, with you, getting under, you know, unpacking what's going on on a physiological level, on a medical matrix level. Hence the name.
Greg Boulos19:02
I'm assuming that you don't take insurance, but you could put your insurance, you could apply to insurance for
Cole Seifer19:10
Yeah, we can do what's called a super bill. And essentially, what a super bill is, it's just a receipt with certain codes that, if your insurance would reimburse you for this treatment, they they, if they would reimburse us, they'll reimburse you, and then that just goes directly to you. We're actually so I was just in Vegas at the International functional medicine conference, and, you know, leaders of industry were there. And I'd say about 60% of my time there was about looking into the insurance model. Because the vision of med matrix doesn't stop and start and stop in Portland. It's really, how can we change healthcare? And I think there's just like, you know, Elon Musk with the electric car, the technology was there. He was the one who just put it together and made this, you know, change the entire. Automotive industry. It's, you know, we need, we need the insurance component. We need the practitioner component. We and we need the brand, you know, we need the awareness from a lot of patients don't even know this is accessible. So bringing those all together, really understanding the insurance model is going to be important for growth. So we're looking in 2025 expanding to some type of primary care model incorporating functional medicine. It's just really tough, because when you start taking insurance, you're incentivized by the financial model. So all of a sudden it's, you know, now we we like, we can't have a doctor meet with the patient for two hours and get $120 reimbursed. It's just the work. Yeah, we're gonna go out of business. So how we're gonna make that work is still being worked out, but definitely in the future, we wanna take insurance. Cole,
Greg Boulos20:53
have you found people's confidence in the traditional medical establishment has declined over the past few years? And if so, why?
Cole Seifer20:59
Yeah, definitely. I think it's two part. It's after covid. Some people were a lot of people got sick, and not a lot of people were cared for. If you look at like the hospitals were so overrun generally, with sick covid patients. So diseases like you saw death of death from like heart disease and cancer, increased by 10, 15% so just in like New York, for example. And this was data we were looking at the IFM conference, the life expense expectancy of a male American decreased by 40 years just because of what, how many years? 40 years, four years. Yeah, 40 No, no. Yeah, right, so, and that was seen by the way that health, you know, healthcare system handled covid and the pandemic. And I think the other part is awareness around this type of medicine. You have figures like Mark Hyman, Peter Attia, Tony Robbins, you know, celebrities who are starting to speak out about this medicine, and it is becoming more accessible. Clinics like men matrix are popping up all over the US. So it's the, I think, dissatisfaction that people and if you look at data from like the World Economic Forum, I think it's something like have to look at, I don't this, don't quote me on this, but it's somewhere in the ballpark of 90% of people are, you know, think they could receive, like, 97% of people think they could have better healthcare in America. So, you know, there's a big delta between what people want with their healthcare and what they're getting what they're actually getting. So I think there's a huge opportunity there. But it's like, how are we gonna again with the insurance? And it's, how can we make that model work? Because a lot of people don't want to pay for their healthcare. They want their insurance to pay for their healthcare. So,
Greg Boulos22:52
so if they but if they're not satisfied, they'll seek something else out, if they can afford
Cole Seifer22:56
it. Exactly, yeah, and, you know? And then eventually patients like, we have patients with not, like, you know, very little money, who are paying for treatments because they need, yeah. I mean, health is, health is first. Greg, like, if you're if you're not healthy, doesn't matter how much money you have, how close your family is. It's like, can't get out of bed. What good is it? Yeah, who cares? So, I think people are starting to put their health first. And you know, the American food system is so messed up with, I don't know if you saw the whole thing with like Kellogg's and telling Americans to eat breakfast first or cereal for dinner. And it's, was
Greg Boulos23:36
that an old ad
Cole Seifer23:38
or something? No, no, it was old. It was a big thing in the news where Kellogg's launched this whole marketing campaign telling people, because inflation so high, to eat their captain crunch for for dinner. This like sugary. Some more sugar, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, that's, um, you know what?
Greg Boulos23:55
I noticed I saw her on Instagram. There was a photograph back when movie cameras first came out, and they had a photograph of people walking around New York City, yeah, and there was nobody was overweight in these photos, yeah. You know, they all had the top hats on and the long coats, and the women had the big dresses, but nobody was overweight. And in America now, it's, I mean, the majority of people overweight. It's stunning. This can't be healthy.
Cole Seifer24:22
I remember years ago looking at like some statistics, in 66% of Americans overweight, thinking, wow, two thirds of people. That's a lot, and then now it's like 75 so we're going for 100
Greg Boulos24:36
Can we talk about stem cells? Everybody has heard of them, but what are they and how are they used in your practice?
Cole Seifer24:43
So stem cells is a blanket term that you're thrown around a lot. There's varying types of stem cells. We have our own stem cells in order for our body to heal and regenerate. It utilizes those stem cells to grow new tissue. You know, when you. Cut yourself, grow new skin cells die, you know, repair new cells. So in the in the new celebrities, you might have heard of umbilical cord stem cells. You might have heard of brown fat stem cells, or PRP, which are not, you know, plasma. Yeah. So stem cells can be used for arthritic conditions. They can be used systemically for chronic disease. There's a lot of various applications that you know, sort of having new cells in our body
Greg Boulos25:38
help. But you know, you can take I've had stem cells done, yeah, you and I've talked about this, and I have it done down in Costa Rica, or when I go down there, they have it done once a year, just for really therapeutic reasons, age management reasons, yep, but I started off having stem cells the first time I did it is because I had terrific, terrible neck pain, right? And I did the ibuprofen, I did the massages, I did, the chiropractor, everything, nothing was working. I was really in pain. So I said, What the hell? So I go down there and I have injections into my neck, and within a week, the pain was gone, yeah. And that lasted about six years, and then this last trip down there, I had it redone. So I'm a firm believer, but what I learned is that you can get stem cells taken out of, say, a bone marrow, out of your own body, yeah, but it's better if you can get it out of an umbilical cord. And I know there's a technical name for that, right? Yeah,
Cole Seifer26:33
just go, I mean, like umbilical cord, MSC, stem cells, because
Greg Boulos26:37
the younger the stem cell, the more adaptive. And it's like I always thought, why would you take old stem cells out of an old body? Much better off taking younger stem cells.
Cole Seifer26:47
Yeah, I guess it's kind of like the idea of the old the old stem cell thing is it gets a lot of bash. I think there are some there's a time and place for it. Like, if the joint isn't too deteriorated, it's mostly like, if you can afford the full stem cell treatment, more is better. It's not going to hurt. It's like taking a used car part to fix another a used car. So the part might be okay and might be a little broken already, and you're probably not going to have as much longevity as if you had a younger, healthier cell that's going to be over, that's going to be able to be able to regenerate faster and healthier than, you know, your own. You already have your own stem cells. Your body's already working to fix whatever condition it it has going on. So oftentimes it's just your body is very conscious of just, you know, if you have, like a brew somewhere, your body knows that it's, you know, it's had, like, some type of impact. Or if you break a bone, your body knows it. It starts the healing process. So your body's aware of this neck pain and it's trying to fix it. It just doesn't have the tools, the tools, yeah.
Greg Boulos27:51
And so with stem cells, they get injected in the body, they tend to go where they're needed. Is that so, yeah.
Cole Seifer27:58
So kind of going back to like your body is very conscious of what needs help. So if you inject them into your body, it knows where they are needed. So same thing with like so exosomes are, I think, the biggest medical technological move inside of healthcare. So exosomes are the communicating protein and RNA that pretty much tell our stem cells what to do. So it's the part of the stem cell, right? It's what our cells secrete to tell our stem cells what to do, basically. So this, it's the cellular communication. It's like, imagine, you know, you've grown a large business. A big part of growing a business is the communication between departments and the team, you can have all the best employees fair compensation, but if there's no communication, they're not really going to build much of a business. So think of the exosomes, like the communication. So often when we do stem cell therapy, we like to follow it up with exosomes. And going back to the the conscious awareness of our bodies. There's screening you can do post exosome therapy that can actually track where the cells are going. So someone with this imaging on a patient with who had a traumatic brain injury and an arthritic knee, and you could see in the imaging, majority of the stem cells went to the brain, and then the other went to the knee. They really organized themselves where the problem was, yeah,
Greg Boulos29:27
and the stem cells are different from the exosomes. In that exome is much tinier, right? And those can go through what's called the blood brain barrier, yep. But the stem cells can think, you
Cole Seifer29:37
know, I think the blood brain barrier is like 50 nanometers. Exosomes are around five nanometers. So stem cells cannot be right, cannot cross the blood brain barrier. But like I said, they're different. There are different entities the stem cells. Think of it like the building block, block, and the exosomes are the communicating. It's just like a little it's. Protein, and then this like strand of RNA, which is essentially the message, the code of like, hey, they'll rebuild the cell with this genetic code.
Greg Boulos30:09
So you mentioned arthritis. Can it help with arthritis? Oh, yeah, yeah, big time. Because my significant other, Nayla, who, you know, had a skiing accent 15 years ago, ripped her thumb back, yeah? And now I think she got some arthritis in it, yeah? So love to have her take a look at it. Hope you guys take a look at
Cole Seifer30:27
it. Yeah, we do. And we started doing prolosing therapy too now, which is great. So we want to make sure patients get the best used. You know, they're they're not cheap products. We want to make sure they work for our clients. So we like to look at the joint and what's going on? Because if you have a unhealthy joint that is maybe toxic or your cells aren't methylating you, the cells can actually be killed. So we make sure to prime the joint with therapies like prolosone and ozone therapy, and do look at your overall health, and then once we know that your once your body has the tools, it can actually use it to kind of going back to the company analogy, imagine you, you have the company and the communication, but you have a toxic culture, it's gonna be hard for that business to grow. Yeah,
Greg Boulos31:16
where are the stem cells and the exosomes derived from that matrix uses.
Cole Seifer31:22
So both are taken from the umbilical cord, the stem cells we work with a lab out in Nevada, and they work with mothers only through a natural birth, and harvest the umbilical cord and then, pretty much filter the the umbilical cord, and then cryo, freeze it. And then we order it overnight. We just inject the the regenerative properties directly from there, and then the exosomes, same thing used from a umbilical cord. And then we have a lab down in Miami that the leading exosome producer, and they, what they've done is they've extracted the exosomes from this umbilical cord, which is, again, is all the products we use of the mothers have been tested for blood, genetic, any type of disease that would be transferred through These types of products have all been screened, and then, so they take the exosomes, and then what they do with the exits? It's an interesting science where they pretty much, in basic terms, they like camouflage the proteins. A lot of people ask, like, hey, how am I injecting someone else's cells in my body, and my body isn't fighting and off. So with exosomes, what they do is they pretty much camouflage the proteins, which is like the secret passcode, so it can sneak by our defenses, the defense, yeah, our defense system and start the cellular regenerative
Greg Boulos32:54
processes you mentioned early in the podcast about the blood. Yeah. Do get stem cells from the blood? PMP, do folks do that?
Cole Seifer33:04
Yes, what we do is we draw your blood, we put it in a centrifuge, which spins your blood, adds 1000s of G forces and separates the plasma, the plasma from the fat, from the red blood cells, and then we're from there, able to take the plasma out, and then even wide peptides to it and spin it again to make it really concentrated. And then we can, you know, this system product that is very rich in your own body's growth factors. So sometimes, by injecting them directly into a problem area, we can stimulate the healing process and give the body the tools that it needs. So
Greg Boulos33:41
in general, though, isn't the younger the stem cell, the better,
Cole Seifer33:45
correct? Yeah, because your body already has access to these products, and it's, it's already not working. So we, generally, sometimes we'll try PRP first, if we think it will work, just to, like, help the patient save money and then. But some it's, you know, sometimes PRP can work great for some patients and for others, it's pretty hit or miss.
Greg Boulos34:06
But in general, the PRP, or whatever it's called, is less expensive than, yeah, very much umbilical cord stem cells, yeah. So if you have stem cells put inside you, what keeps those stem cells from, say, turbocharging if you got cancer,
Cole Seifer34:24
there's they actually found that. I don't know too much about the cancer side of stem cells. I do know that if a cancer has a patient has a cancer diagnosis, diagnosis, we generally stay away. There's no hard research that really points to stem cells, like product stem cells creating festering cancer, but hypothetically, it could actually become a problem. So if patients have, like, a family history of cancer and they're at around that age and or they have a diagnosis, we generally stay away. Yeah, yeah.
Greg Boulos34:57
Med Matrix has two locations so far. Yep, they are located in North Conway.
Cole Seifer35:02
Yeah. We have an office in North Conway, where they're all where it was born. And then we have an office in South Portland.
Greg Boulos35:08
Must be a hell of a skier.
Cole Seifer35:12
Well, not as good as you go. And
Greg Boulos35:14
then South Portland, you're at 198 meanwhile, road, which is right next to the planet, fitness facility, correct? Yeah.
Cole Seifer35:22
So you work out in and then some stem cells,
Greg Boulos35:24
yeah? Well, vice versa, right?
Cole Seifer35:27
Well, do the workout first. Actually, you wanna,
Greg Boulos35:29
when you decided to come to Portland, you were looking around. You hired Sasha, yeah, just from the bowlers company. And what was your criteria? What were you looking for?
Cole Seifer35:38
Yeah, Sasha was great. We were actually the second leg. I still had the was part of the trading company at that point. So we were in the Key Bank building on the fourth floor. So I think Boulos was on the fourth floor. Oh, yeah, we Yeah. So I What's his name? Another Boulos guy got us the office space. I can't forget his name. Anyways, he'll come to me later. So I think I reached out to him, and then he connected me with Sasha, or I knew of the Boulos company, because I like seeing you guys around. And then so ended up getting connected with Sasha. And then, yeah, Sasha did a great job connecting me with the agent at who was listing that property over at 198 Yeah, and then we ended up closing pretty I think took like a month to negotiate the lease. And, yeah,
Greg Boulos36:31
that's actually fairly quick. Looking forward your crystal ball, yeah, five to 10 years from now, where do you see mid med matrix? What's it gonna look like,
Cole Seifer36:40
yeah, so there's a big it's funny, you know, I met, like, I said a couple times, was in at this conference, and where this new type of healthcare is being born and growing really fast. And there's a lot of, I'd say the like, what's happening is, there's all these practitioners in conventional medicine that are seeing the patients, because it's frustrating for the practitioners too. They're not. They don't, you know, a lot of them don't want to be pushing patients in and out. It's there. They just have to. So they're breaking away. They're going through other types of accreditation, like the IFM or a 4m and learning about internal, more holistic medicine and functional medicine, and opening up their own clinics. So there's all these like small family offices all over the US that are all just full and honestly, poorly run because it's the practitioner. They're the practitioner and the business person, the provider has a different skill set, completely different skill set. So what we're working on right now is really building out our models and SOPs and, you know, learning how is more business less medical. You know, how new new clients are financing new client acquisition, so structuring the financials in a way that we're able to scale with very strategic marketing, opposed to, like, more soft marketing skills like networking and partnerships and getting involved in the community, because that's hard to really scale. So we're investing in this type of, like, repeatable business model that incorporates Functional Medicine and then licensing this model, partnering with these institutions, like the func, IFM a form, and then providing these models to practitioners so they can successfully grow their offices. And alongside that, creating other parts of the business, like media production that will allow us to recruit, spread the word, train new practitioners, franchise model, no, I'd say it's like a licensing model, yeah, because, you know, we might move into franchising, but we, I think we can scale licensing a lot faster. And we, you know, we might just do it like a they pay us one big chunk of money at the beginning, and then we go in, we send out an operator, we optimize their business, do all the hiring, give them like I'm investing 10s of 1000s of dollars right now into Like a really slick website and patient onboarding systems, so giving that model to other offices so they can scale their
Greg Boulos39:26
operation, yeah? So they don't have to go through the whole process. Yeah, it's
Cole Seifer39:29
hard. I mean, yeah,
Greg Boulos39:31
it's painful.
Cole Seifer39:32
It's not easy. Last
Greg Boulos39:33
question for you, Cole, do you see Med Matrix as having multiple clinics throughout the United States, or through the model that you talked about, or
Cole Seifer39:42
100% I mean, we still have to decide if we want to maintain the the brand and the naming rights with these clinics we're licensing, or we'll let them continue using their own name. But, um, you know, it's kind of businesses and operating in a land of known and unknowns, and what we know is that there's a. A big need for this type of healthcare providers who are willing to do it, but they don't have this business experience. So that's what we're working towards. What the model looks like in two, three years, whether we're franchising, whether, whether we're just opening up a whole of our own clinics and doing some fundraising, or just licensing. The model, that has yet to be determined, but definitely, my goal is to have a big impact and changing health care for the better in the US.
Greg Boulos40:29
Well, I'm putting a big bet on you, because it's going to happen. You're an amazing guy. Cole,
Cole Seifer40:35
Yeah, you too. I appreciate it.
Greg Boulos40:36
Thank you for coming in, Cole, thank you for being our guest today on the Boulos beat, the Boulos company podcast, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. You can learn more about Med Matrix at the company's website, which is Med Matrix usa.com on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, at Med Matrix USA on Tiktok at Med Matrix. And if you'd like to learn more about the Boulos company, please be sure to visit us@Boulos.com you can also find us at the Boulos company on Facebook and LinkedIn, and at the Boulos CO on Instagram and Twitter. And lastly, if you want to know the secret to owning real estate, it's pretty simple, just be sure to outlive your debt.