Dan Pardi On The 5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Health and Wellness Industry

An Interview With Luke Kervin

Find ways to step away. One of the hardest things for successful people to work on is stepping away from work. If you’re passionate about what you do, then it won’t be hard to always have work circulating in your thoughts. I’ve found, however, that truly shifting my mind out of work allows for better work and idea flow when I step back into the action. This one is hard for me, but I’m aware of the benefit and attend to the notion.

The global health and wellness market is worth more than 1.5 trillion dollars. So many people are looking to improve their physical, mental, and emotional wellness. At the same time, so many people are needed to help provide these services. What does it take to create a highly successful career in the health and wellness industry?

In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Health and Wellness Industry” we are talking to health and wellness professionals who can share insights and stories from their experiences.

In this particular interview, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dan Pardi, MS, PhD.

Dan Pardi MS, PhD has been committed to the field of health and wellness for over twenty years. In that time, he has had the opportunity to lead organizations in everything from successfully petitioning the FDA to update research policy, to sitting on the board of a non-profit designed to help children be more active in schools. He has presented his work in large industry leading events like Stanford Medicine X and Health 2.0 to keynote presentations at Venture Firm conferences and even the Navy Seals. Currently, he is the Chief Health Architect of the fastest growing chain in the US, Restore Hyper Wellness, where he oversees the Product and Health Sciences Department.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you grew up?

I had a very happy upbringing in Marin County, California. I lived in a somewhat rural spot. Because I had less opportunity to play with others, I entertained myself perfecting different sport skills on my driveway in a borderline obsessive way. I was quite competitive with myself. I would judge a performance not by whether we’d win or lose, but rather how well I lived up to my expectations for myself. Interestingly, I didn’t have this attitude in school. I was highly engaged in class, always participating more than anyone else, but I wasn’t concerned with grades. Stubbornly, I would rather answer questions in a way I wanted, rather than trying to get the right answer for the test.

Was there a particular person or event that inspired you to live a wellness-focused lifestyle? Can you tell us about your main motivation to go all in?

Yes, my father. He had a lot of family pressure to work from a young age, so he missed his youth.

He became a workaholic. That was his training. By the time he became an adult, he didn’t know how to turn it off. Instead, he lived variously through me in some ways. He was invested in and supportive of my endeavors. It was joyful for him to see me, for instance, play soccer, and it encouraged me to want to shine. I could have the worst game of my life, but he would still be happy just seeing me have the chance to play.

He passed away from cancer at the age of 59. At that time, I was doing diet research on cancer through the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). I tried to help him, but it was hard for him to implement new ideas, especially during such a scary time. When he passed away, I knew that if I wanted to my career in health to matter, I needed to understand human behavior and behavior change.

Most people with a wellbeing centered lifestyle have a “go-to” activity, exercise, beverage, or food that is part of their routine. What is yours and can you tell us how it helps you?

I have a very clear answer to this question. My go-to activity is walking outside. Low intensity physical activity like walking is more valuable than is often discussed. Can you think of a physical activity you’d prefer to sustain in your life over walking? It’s foundational to the human experience. It’s also something that is easy to engineer into life. You don’t need special clothes or even special shoes, you can simply step outside and go for a walk, and I try to do this 3-to-4 times a day.

It’s not just physical activity. It’s sunshine, its temperature variation, it’s time to think or not think, it’s allowing yourself distance vision and greenery exposure, and more.

To live a wellness-focused life is one thing, but how did it become your career? How did it all start?

It started when I sprained my ankle playing soccer in high school. I needed to figure out how to get back onto the playing field, so I started reading about the human body, including everything from healing to performance optimization. That interest and curiosity never ended and still excites me today.

Can you share a story about the biggest challenges you faced when you were first starting? How did you resolve that? What are the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

At my first research job, I tried to learn a new software program. I was typically comfortable learning various software programs so I thought I could muscle my way through the learning curve and figure it out. Instead, I wallowed and wasted time. I was trying to figure it out on my own, and the more I wallowed, the more I didn’t want anyone to know of my struggles. I realized at the end of that journey, that I never needed to go at it by myself. From that moment on, I’ve eagerly sought out expertise to expedite my learning. It was a good lesson.

Can you share with us how the work you are doing is helping to make a bigger impact in the world? Can you share a story that illustrates that?

The needs in health are tremendous, which is no surprise to any of us. Every day, we are exposed to daunting statistics to the current and declining health of the population. Poor health is no longer just an issue of modern society, it’s a characteristic of modern society. And yet, being healthy today remains entirely possible. I believe the biggest issue we are facing with chronic health is the way we go about addressing it. We cannot solve health issues by waiting for them to occur then, at best, hoping to slow their decline. We need an entirely new way to conceive supporting human health that breaks current societal standards and arms a population with the skills and tools to live a more effective health lifestyle well before the first appearance of disease.

We do need to start with children and think about how we are shaping their behaviors in school from a young age. Our greatest opportunity to affect health in a positive direction, from a societal perspective, is to better arm children with knowledge and skills that help them understand how to take better care of themselves in the context of modern life. My work with Stand Up Kids, where we helped get standing desks into schools, was one example of a way we can help. In the future, I plan to dedicate more time to shaping the curriculum and environment of schools so that real health skill is a fundamental part of the education process.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

With my colleague, Josh Turknett, MD, I’m co-authoring a book designed to deeply explore the meaning of health, the issues and opportunities of healthcare, and ways for individuals to approach their health that allows for an effective but personalized expression of health for that person. It’s difficult to win the game of health when you don’t have a clear understanding of the game you’re playing. A main goal of the book is to generate many ‘a-ha moments’ for the reader and inspire confidence that, with the right knowledge and framework, anyone can take good care of their health across life.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. Hard work: Better yet, deep investment. The work will be challenging at times, but I can truly say that it’s never grueling. I am grateful for what I do because it matters and I am passionate about the subject. You have to put in the work to make an impact. I have no special gifts but I am truly engaged in the work. I recognized this when I was in graduate school. Nearly all challenges could be tackled but the journey to something meaningful always requires a lot of work.
2. Break up big projects into little projects: The only way to accomplish hard things is to identify the many little projects that build up to the large accomplishment. Clearly identifying the little projects, then tackling them one by one, is how big things get done.
3. Meta-cognitive thinking: I’ve found, thinking about your thinking is very useful. This is what mindfulness practices can instill. It’s shifting into different mindsets to view a convoluted challenged from different angles. I try to solve issues exclusively from one perspective at a time rather than solve the entire challenge once the different perspectives are clear.

OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition of terms so that all of us are on the same page. Wellness is an incredibly broad topic. How would you define the term “Wellness”? Can you explain what you mean?

Providing an undisputable definition of health and wellness has been a challenge for millennium, even today. Wellness is a subtopic or perspective of health. Some conceive wellness as any activity one does, from relaxation techniques to reading food labels, to wellness-oriented activities. Thus, wellness is conceived as the efforts one makes to sustain or improve health.

As an expert, this might be intuitive to you, but it will be instructive to expressly articulate this. Can you please share a few reasons with our readers about why focusing on our wellness should be a priority in our lives?

Everyone needs to focus on their health, even those who currently don’t show signs of disease. Why is this? Because living in modern times requires that we make special efforts to nurture a disease-free condition across life. Our environment and our pattern of living, which is totally normal to society, doesn’t automatically confer the behavioral and environmental signals needed to support optimal health.

Aside from avoiding health impairing conditions from poor health, taking care of health augments life performance. It bolsters energy and vitality levels, which contributes to a fuller expression of who you are as a person. In fact, I believe that the pursuit of health is best attended to when we see it as an opportunity to be our best selves than just a way to avoid future issues.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increasingly growing understanding of the necessity for companies to be mindful of the wellness of their employees. For the sake of inspiring others, can you share steps or initiatives that companies have taken to help improve or optimize their employees’ mental and physical wellness?

The silver lining of the pandemic is the increased awareness of mental health issues and the support that this has garnered. It’s now more acceptable to acknowledge mental health concerns in the workplace and there are more resources that are both preventative and healing for mental health. Digital solutions are helping to broaden access to self-help tools and also professionals that can guide your care journey.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Health and Wellness Industry”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.

1. Keep the people you serve clear in your mind. As discussed previously, the journey of a successful career requires hard work, but the grit needed to do that work comes from knowing that you’re helping people at the end of the day. I’ve learned to fully attend to the emails and interactions with those who have been touched by my work in a positive way. I keep those people in mind when I sit down to start my day. It’s an honor to be of service to those who will be helped by the efforts we make.
2. Articulate the vision. To get done what needs to get done to help the people you serve, you need good people to contribute to the mission. Like you, these people need to feel they are a part of something meaningful. Work on sharing the vision in a manner that gets people excited to contribute.
3. Figure out your own productivity method. My goals is to identify real ways to improve my productivity year by year. This means I need to try things that don’t work on the path to identify methods that do. But I’ve found that the effort of trying new tools and ideas is worth it for when you find something that is helpful, the compounding interest of greater effectiveness and efficiency of effort is well worth it.
4. Cultivate your conversation circle. Find people who know the field you are in and regularly discuss ideas with them. There is something especially effective at helping your own understanding of something when you attempt to discuss it with someone else who is knowledgeable about the subject. Not only can you learn from these people, but you also learn what you really know when you are sharing knowledge with them, too.
5. Find ways to step away. One of the hardest things for successful people to work on is stepping away from work. If you’re passionate about what you do, then it won’t be hard to always have work circulating in your thoughts. I’ve found, however, that truly shifting my mind out of work allows for better work and idea flow when I step back into the action. This one is hard for me, but I’m aware of the benefit and attend to the notion.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would promote the most wellness to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Everyone would undergo six months of coach-guided health training. We cannot solve health with a silver bullet and one health behavior is not more important than another. We need to take care of the whole of us and it’s totally possible. It’s not possible if we don’t give it adequate time and space to understand all the pieces that matter and how they fit together.

We can train a human to fly a helicopter, thus we can train humans to do complex things under challenging circumstances even with deadly consequences. But in order to successfully fly that helicopter, one needs enough training to be successful. We are not giving people enough training to be successful with health and the consequences of that are apparent.

I’m happy to be working on solutions that enable individuals to gift themselves this period and then enjoy the benefits of clarity and good health for the rest of their lives.

We are blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

At the moment, the person who inspires me most is Steph Curry from the Golden State Warriors. Most people simply enjoy the brilliance of his mastery, but when I see him make an astounding play, I see the 100 times he practices that move before the game so that he makes it look easy. I recognize the effort he put in to achieve his level. He also exudes both seriousness and joy towards his craft. It’s a perfect combination. He’s a special person. I’d like to buy him a coffee sometime.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can follow me at Twitter at @humanOS_me.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!