#126 Saad Alam of Hone: My Favorite Books, Tools, Habits and More | 20 Minute Playbook

About Saad Alam

“I think that people that don't believe you can do it all, I think it's a load. And I think you just have to really sit down and engineer your day and your life a little bit more.” – Saad Alam

Saad Alam is Founder and CEO of Hone, which is creating an entirely new type of healthcare company initially focused on helping men with low testosterone. Saad describes it as helping men age with confidence. Saad is a serial entrepreneur who founded two companies before he founded home. He's completely focused on building mission-driven companies that solve problems that have directly affected him. And he's probably one of the fittest guests I've ever had on the show. His daily routine, from his morning meditation to the way he works out, how he changes the personal trainer he uses every quarter, how he uses everything from an infrared sauna to hyperbaric chamber, is the most intense of anyone I've ever interviewed.

In it, we cover Saad's daily health and fitness regimen, from drinking water directly after he wakes up to meditating 10 minutes, two times per day. We talk through all of the equipment he uses, from his infrared sauna to an at home hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Saad shares why he writes down three things he's grateful for every single morning and how that practice shows up when he's burnt out and tired at the end of the day, and being able to remind himself about why he's doing what he's doing.

For more, explore the transcript of this episode.

Chapters

In this episode, we deconstruct Saad Alam’s peak performance playbook—from their favorite book to the tiny habit that's had the biggest impact on their life. In it we cover:

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:09 – Fixing healthcare and defining the soul
00:03:47 – Radical transparency and playing in the dirt
00:06:38 – Big swings vs. base hits
00:08:09 – Priorities and daily gratitude
00:10:43 – Confessions of an Economic Hitman
00:12:41 – Understanding markets and emotional intelligence
00:14:28 – Believing in what you do
00:17:59 – An obsession with wellness
00:24:52 – Constructing a purposeful life

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Castbox, Pocket Casts, Player FM, Podcast Addict, iHeartRadio, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

An Idea Worth Trying

Saad swears by his daily gratitude practice as a way to better connect with and appreciate others. He uses the Five Minute Journal, which is available in both book and app format.

Our Favorite Quotes

Here are a few ideas we'll be thinking about weeks and months from now:

“The question you ask yourself all the time as a founder is how can I get the rest of my employees to believe the mission and almost feel like religion or gospel to them to a certain extent, right? There's no one that's going to work as hard as the founder. And the reality is you have to do something that brings people together and they have to believe it in a way, which almost makes it feel like this is what they're putting their life's work towards.”
“At the end of the day, the way that you make progress is by failing.”
“There are times for big swings and there are times for base hits. So I would say that when we are thinking strategically about what's the best way to get this done, theoretically, we like a lot of big swings. But when we're talking about how to optimize a very specific process, it's easier to say take these small adjustments and improve them a little bit more.”
“It took me a while to understand that all of the structures and the laws that we live within are created by a bunch of people. And honestly, most of those people aren't that smart, right? The people that actually make the laws and pass them. So I think it took me a while to understand that just because it's a law, or because someone says, 'it's this way,' the beauty of it is you don't have to do it that way. You actually have this thing called free will. And if you can come up with a better way that's not illegal or hurting anyone or yourself, you should be completely free to go ahead and work in a system that's in large part, been prefabricated for everyone's safety.”