Drive the Standard: Jimmy St. Louis on Building Trust Shore Employee: Anderson Williams

Michael Burcham: Welcome to Microcap Moments, a podcast from Shore Capital Partners that highlights the stories of founders, investors, and leaders who have taken on the challenge of transforming ideas and small companies into high-growth organizations. The journey of building and scaling a business takes one down many unexpected paths. 

It’s a journey where we learn from our mistakes, fall down often, but have the entrepreneurial grit to pick ourselves up and persevere. Within this series, we will share these stories of success and failure, of the challenges and the rewards faced by those who dare to dream big. And through their lessons learned, we hope to inspire others who are on a similar journey of becoming, growing, and leading. 

Anderson Williams: In this episode, I catch up with Jimmy St. Louis, the CEO of Agentis Longevity, for the third conversation in an annual series that began in the platform’s first year. Agentis is a national brand of longevity centers working to reverse the chronic disease epidemic by making preventive healthcare accessible and affordable. 

Year one in our series was about vision. Year two was about lessons learned. Year three, in Jimmy’s words, is about driving the standard. Longevity healthcare currently has no standard of care, and Jimmy and his team are working to change that. From a world-class physician advisory board to appearances before Congress and the FDA to the creation of the Longevity Quotient, a fifteen-minute assessment that distills five clinical tests and sixty-five blood markers into a single health score tied directly to treatment protocols across every one of their clinics. 

Jimmy explains why the company’s vision hinges on one deliberately chosen word and why constant motion has become part of the organization’s DNA. He closes with direct advice for consumers navigating the current Wild West of longevity. First, make sure you start with robust blood work. Second, ask the clinic where their products come from. 

And third, make sure your care plan ties back to your labs. Well, welcome back, Jimmy. Really appreciate you being back here. And for those who don’t know, this is the third interview we’ve done with you, one in your first year with Agentis, and then the second year, and we’re picking up here with the third. 

But for anybody who hasn’t heard those, will you just introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do? 

Jimmy St. Louis: Of course. Yeah. And thanks for having me as well. So I am the CEO of Agentis Longevity. We are a national brand for longevity centers. Our objective with what we’re building is to, through acquisitions first, to really drive the standard of care in longevity healthcare. 

And oftentimes when you think about longevity healthcare, you think about these more innovative but expensive services, and we are really fighting to try to reverse the chronic disease epidemic here in America by helping people get out in front of their health issues. And in order to do that, we have to make sure that these types of treatments are accessible and, and are affordable to them. 

Anderson Williams: And when you think about this, just for someone who, again, hasn’t necessarily heard the previous episodes, what types of treatments? Tell me more about what that is real world. What are we talking about in longevity? 

Jimmy St. Louis: Sure. So we have a core service offering, and then within our honeycomb of services, we have other adjacent services that help support it. 

So within our core service offering, we believe that everybody should have access to blood work to just understand what’s going on with their body. So good access to information to inform their treatment journey, which typically looks like hormone optimization therapy, peptide therapies, some form of weight management and nutrition, and then supporting supplementation. 

And we believe that everybody should have access to that type of world-class care. And then additionally, after that, as you’ve started to realize that, hey, you know, I’m performing optimally, but I really want to get to that true optimal, optimal state, we have other types of treatments, stem cell treatment. 

We have advanced therapeutics such as ozone therapy, plasma exchange, as well as some of those modalities that people may have heard about like sauna, red light, cryotherapy, hyperbaric oxygen. So our objective and our goal here is to really create this streamlined patient journey where they step through those core four treatments first, and then they have the opportunity to embark on more advanced therapies. 

Anderson Williams: And when you, you mentioned something earlier that I think is important, talk about standard of care. I know that’s something that’s really important to your vision from our first episode together in launching this platform. Will you just give a little context to what that means and why that’s so important to you? 

Jimmy St. Louis: Sure. So our vision is to drive the standard of care by being the trusted transformative provider in longevity, and a standard does not exist. We are doing so many different things to drive this standard, whether we are acquiring clinics that do certain things best in class and then sharing those best practices, whether we are recruiting new members to our advisory board. 

We have this incredible world-class advisory board full of lots of knowledge and world-class, relatively well-known physicians to help us drive the standard to create those protocols. We’ve introduced a technology called the Longevity Quotient that helps to create commonality amongst the patient’s onboarding experience within each of our clinics. 

And in addition to all those things, we also are doing a fair bit of regulatory work to drive the standard for the industry. We are really working to pave a path for organizations and clinics like ours to give patients access to this type of care, create physician and patient autonomy, create this trusted environment where they can trust the treatments that they’re getting, but also give regulators and policymakers a framework to be able to help build trust with general consumers. 

Anderson Williams: I love that ’cause I think it’s an important message. I mean, this market is pretty nascent, and so the standard isn’t there. But for the market to grow and to achieve your vision, there have to be standards. And because the market’s so nascent, I mean, you’re doing a lot of work, like you said, even at the policy level, even at the federal policy level, trying to turn this into less of the Wild West and more of a proper wellness, longevity, healthcare part of that system. 

Jimmy St. Louis: That’s right. We, we do believe that if we can create the framework at the highest level and then disseminate that amongst the industry and give people this framework and a playbook to work off of, that will also separate the great players from maybe those that are more willing to cut corners. 

Therefore, you can then empower the consumers with the ability to know the questions to ask and where to point to so now they know what legitimate, good, high-quality care looks like. 

Anderson Williams: Yeah. 

Jimmy St. Louis: So we believe if we can build that framework and then be the poster child to activate that framework, that’s going to position Agentis to be able to really drive that standard and continue to be looked at as best in class. 

Anderson Williams: Yeah. So if we go back to our first conversation a couple of years ago in episode one with you, we talked a lot about vision and what it looked like for you as a CEO founding this platform. Last year, we did a bit of reflection on what we learned in year one, what you learned as a leader in year one, what you learned as a business leader, what you learned about the market, and so forth. 

If you had to describe sort of the theme of this, our third episode, what is it? 

Jimmy St. Louis: I think it’s a perfect segue from our– just the conversation we were just having. I, I believe that the title is Drive the Standard. We have built a platform now where we are looked at amongst all the stakeholders in the community, truly. 

Regulators, policymakers, physicians, sellers, operators, and we are really working to bridge that to the consumers as well. They’re watching, and they’re saying, “What are they really doing now to fulfill that portion of their vision of driving the standard?” In our first strategy session with the team at Shore, we were very, very particular about the words that went into this vision statement. 

And I do remember there was this detailed conversation around saying set versus drive. And I don’t actually know that the entire board and those in the strategy session understood the positive implications that was gonna come from that one single word. And for us, drive means that we’re constantly in a state of motion. 

We are continuing to innovate. We are pushing the limits, but we are doing so in a quality manner that allows people to look at it and say, “Okay, wow, that’s really a group that knows how to drive the standard.” So that word has had really great positive implications for us. 

Anderson Williams: I absolutely love that level of nuance and detail and think so much that we live into the language we choose. 

And so I love that distinction. I’m curious for you on the leadership side of this, you’re being more than a CEO, you’re being a standard-bearer for the market. How in year three is that stretching you or growing you as a leader in ways that you couldn’t have really imagined, even when you were making that distinction between set versus drive? 

Jimmy St. Louis: I believe that for us, that vision has become so important to the DNA of our organization that that is also what is highly motivating for our team. We have now, for two years in a row, been selected as a great place to work through our surveys, and we’re very proud of that because we know the team is looking at this saying, “We believe.” 

That same thing is happening with potential partners and sellers, uh, as well, where they’re saying, “That’s a platform I wanna be a part of. How can I be a part of an organization that’s going to drive a new standard?” And for us, we’re seeing that we can help them fulfill their dreams, their passion, the reason they got into this market as well. 

For me, it’s created this ability for me to drive this beautiful culture that we’ve created, to be able to have tentacles out into the community where people aren’t just watching us, but they’re asking us for advice. And so it’s made it easy for me to network with all those key stakeholders I’ve spoken about, to be able to have a seat at the table to drive those standards. 

Now, that does come with time allocation as well. So I really have had to focus this year on prioritization, prioritization, prioritization, to the point now that every single person in our company knows the four big rocks for this quarter. And that has been so important because we’re doing so many different things. 

It can feel like which one’s the priority, but now we’re– we’ve really, really honed in. Now, to answer your question simply, driving that standard has stretched me, but not to full capacity yet. I still feel like there’s still a lot of juice left there, and I also hope that, that my teammates are highly motivated by that as well. 

They understand that, that we are driving a change. They see us speak in front of Congress. They see us go and testify to the FDA. They see that be so well-received that we do believe that’s– I hope that’s highly motivating to them as well. So it, it comes with us really spending a lot more time than you– maybe even in a typical startup. 

But that’s okay for us. We are really creating a legacy here, and we believe that we’re paving a path for better healthcare. 

Anderson Williams: Well, and I just think, I mean, a, a credit to you and the whole team, we talked about the team you were building in the last episode, but to be able to do all of that, balance all of that, building not just a business, building a, an industry and a standard and driving toward all of that, while also achieving a great place to work is a really powerful message. 

Like, you– it’s not just we’re early stage, we’ve got a dynamic leader, and we’re all just trying to hold on for dear life. Like, you’re clearly building something that’s meaningful and valuable that people not only want to be a part of, but once they’re a part of, they’re contributing to and feeling some ownership of. 

I just think it’s a really powerful thing and didn’t want that to pass ’cause it’s not easy to get great places to work designation. 

Jimmy St. Louis: Thank you. Yes, and of course, independent surveys and lots of detailed questions. I want every single person who has the opportunity to work within the Agentis ecosystem to be extremely proud about their career and to be proud about what we’re creating and to not just be behind the treatments, but to understand that we are serving a much bigger purpose here. 

And I would like for them to look backwards in ten years and say, “Wow, I had a big hand in creating something that changed the path for healthcare for our country and created a blueprint to help reverse this chronic disease epidemic.” And I, I believe that we can do that, and having the teammates understand that they play such a critical role in that and for them to have that pride in what we’re doing is a wonderful thing. 

Anderson Williams: Yeah, and, and I wanna come back to something you hit on before and learn a little bit more about it, and, uh, I think it very much ties into the driving the standard as well as this purpose that you’re describing. Talk about the longevity quotient and what that is and why it matters to your business, to your clients, and so forth. 

Jimmy St. Louis: So what the Longevity Quotient is, it’s a fifteen-minute onboarding assessment for patients where they answer a couple key questionnaires that are scientifically validated and clinically tested around emotional well-being, and then we get into some family health history to feed into the first assessment, which is called a COSEK seventeen. 

It’s a cardiometabolic assessment. It basically gives you your five-year risk of a cardiac event happening, and so we’re able to quickly get this heart health score as piece one. The next one is you go through a cognitive function test. Takes about five minutes to go through and measures things like response time, reaction time, executive function, so we’re able to flag if there’s any type of cognitive decline or if you’re performing at an optimal level. 

That’s test two. Test three is a body composition test, takes about ninety seconds to go through. We’re able to look at your body composition, visceral fat, things like that, that are indicators for either chronic disease or frankly, nutrition change that should take place. There’s actually a fourth test that’s just a grip strength test. 

Believe it or not, grip strength is the most tested, trusted indicator for your longevity, and here’s why. If you have strong grip strength, you typically have strong quads, and if you have strong quads, you have good posture. If you have good posture, you typically have good lung health, and if you have good lung health, you typically have good cardiovascular fitness. 

Then as you begin to age, if you maintain that grip strength, you can maintain that good posture. It typically stops you from slip and falls. It allows you to be more functional and utilitarian, if you will. And so that is a key test for us. Of course, it takes five seconds to do. And then the last test is a comprehensive series of blood markers. 

We take sixty-five different markers. Now, we take all this information, so we take those five tests, and we break them out into eight different domains that feed up into a single composite score. So now you have this composite health score, a scoreboard for your health. You can look at it and you can say, “Okay, am I moving the needle with my treatments?” 

But this is why it’s such a beautiful thing for us. It breaks out into these eight different domains around organ health, hormone health, nutrition, cognitive function, cardiometabolic function, and then we actually tie our treatment protocols back to each of those eight domains. So now you have a single composite score, you have eight domains, and you will have treatment plans associated with those different domains. 

What this does is this allows us to create operational consistency amongst all of our clinics. If every patient onboards through the Longevity Quotient, we can automate their care plans, and now all of our clinicians are singing from that same sheet of music. So that’s a beautiful thing. We’ve just launched it in a couple of our clinics. 

We’re getting ready for an enterprise rollout of it. There’s a portion of it that’s available through telemedicine, and the more robust is done through the clinics. Very, very excited about it. It’s been extremely well-received, and we think it’s gonna be transformative for this industry. 

Anderson Williams: One of the questions I had as I listened to you as you listed off all those things, there’s part of me that’s like, “Ooh, that’s really exciting.” 

And then there’s another side of me as a potential customer that’s like, “Oh man, do I really wanna know all of that?” How do you think about the part of your market that’s running toward these kinds of things and the message to those who are like, “God, that’s really compelling, but I’m a little hesitant”? 

How do you think about your customer base as you continue to set the standard? 

Jimmy St. Louis: I believe it boils down to one thing, and that’s trust. People that understand that there’s a problem will go and attack that problem if they also know that there’s a solution that they can trust. So from our perspective, oftentimes healthcare consumers don’t want that information because they do not know what to do with it. 

For us, in driving the standard, in creating protocols that are trusted, that are effective, that are accessible, that are affordable, to me, that’s the recipe for success here. 

Anderson Williams: So when you think about that and you think about the larger market, part of how you’re growing is looking for new partners and new acquisitions in the market. 

And this is kind of a question we’ve asked each year. At year three, where you are, how you’ve evolved, how your current partners fit together. Last year you talked a bit about the puzzle. How are you thinking about that today, and how is it the same as maybe it was a year ago? Or how is it different than a year ago when you’re looking at the landscape of potential partners and who’s the right fit for you? 

Jimmy St. Louis: A year ago, we believed in our honeycomb of services, and we still do. The difference is now we have so much more clarity around the core service offering and then those adjacent services that not every clinic has to do. So I think prior there was this question around, are we going to make this a one-size-fits-all model? 

Our new North Star on this has been what is the blueprint for success so we can go and start to build out clinics of our own, AKA de novos, but we have to be able to identify what is that blueprint first. So what we have identified is back to that four-course service offering. Every clinic does those exactly the same. 

They leverage the longevity quotient, and that standard of care is spread amongst the entire enterprise. However, some clinics, due to size or modalities or customer base, may have different services. Some may do stem cell treatment, some may have hyperbaric oxygen, some may do plasma exchange, some may do ozone therapy, some may have IVs. 

And that’s okay because that all does fit well within the consumer or the customer journey for longevity healthcare, and it fits within our honeycomb of services. But we also realize that not every clinic’s going to be doing those things. So we create standards for each of these different care models, but we have a single standard for those four core service offerings. 

Anderson Williams: And how has that played out, like, in your conversations when you’re out on the sort of corporate development front and talking to potential partners? Just curious, because even as you describe the longevity quotient, that’s a massive step in the structure and organizing and messaging of your business that I suspect most of the market hasn’t moved nearly as quickly as you have on that. 

How’s the market? How are the sellers you’re– potential sellers you’re talking to responding to what you’ve described? 

Jimmy St. Louis: Every one of them responds very well to the vision, driving the standard. And then when they see that in action, then they really, really believe it. Whether that’s they’re seeing the social clips, they’re seeing us, you know, speak up in DC, or they’re seeing us publicize new technology or new partnerships. 

They see that in action and that builds that level of trust where the majority of organizations do have a desire to work with us. Some are at different phases of their growth and whatnot, and sometimes the timing just isn’t right. But there is a widespread strong desire to work within the Agentis platform. 

Then the question on how is it being received as we operationalize things like this. I believe there’s a high level of trust because of the medical providers that we have included in our business that are on the advisory board. These are world-class leaders. These are trusted leaders. Some of them are physicians that perhaps a seller partner may not have had access to before, and we are providing that access. 

And then we create this world of collaboration as well. We know that we don’t have all the answers. We know that we have some of the answers. And as we bring on new partners, we expect that collaboration between them and our advisory board to where these partners, especially early stage, have the opportunity to continue to influence how we practice medicine. 

Anderson Williams: I’ll ask you to see into the future a bit, so hopefully we’re sitting down here again a year from now as we have the last couple of years. What do you think is gonna be different based on this investment that you’re making and this infrastructure? What do you imagine? What’s the next year look like for you as you look forward? 

Jimmy St. Louis: I believe that the theme could be consistency a year from now. 

Anderson Williams: Mm. 

Jimmy St. Louis: And I believe what that really means is that we have truly defined what the blueprint for the ideal longevity clinic looks like. And looking into the future, my hope, desire, aspiration, and what I believe is a likelihood, is that we have this wonderful onboarding experience through the Longevity Quotient. 

We have each of our clinics executing with precision and commonality with our four core services. We have metrics in place for success that allows us to have a scoreboard for how each of the clinics are performing. You have to have commonality to do that, or you’re just comparing apples to oranges, and so creating commonality from that perspective. 

And I also believe that because of those things and because of the work that we’re doing with the various stakeholders, that we are looked at as that trusted, transformative provider, and we’re seeing organic growth really continue to accelerate. 

Anderson Williams: Let’s stretch that timeline a little bit. Let’s look two years, three years out. 

What do you see, given your drive and your influence, not just in the business, but in the broader industry? What does this look like further out? Let’s go two or three years. 

Jimmy St. Louis: I believe that, one, Agentis will continue to be looked at as the industry leader, driving the standard as a trusted transformative provider. 

That will happen. That is happening. I believe that two years from now as well, from a, a macro view perspective, that a lot of these treatments, because organizations like ours are driving the standard, will be widely accepted, they’ll be trusted, they’ll be adopted, and there will be standards of care around them. 

That is so critical, where some of these services, I mean, there’s people who are non-licensed providers out there selling them, and it’s the Wild West, and I think that we’re gonna start to see that hone in. There’s such a hyper-focus now in the market around, “How do I know what’s good? How do I know what’s not good?” 

There’s regulatory work being done. There’s state-level work with physician-patient autonomy as well. And so, in summary, I would say that the longevity industry two years from now can be considered a, a trusted industry. These types of services will be accessible and affordable. They’ll be largely mainstream, and I do believe that we will see a shift in how healthcare consumers are behaving, where they will work hard to invest in getting out in front of their health issues before they become healthcare issues. 

Anderson Williams: Yeah, that r-raises a question for me, and I would just love– this is sort of an advice to a consumer who may be listening. If I’m intrigued by this space today, just as Anderson Williams consumer, and I’m in a place where Agentis doesn’t exist, but there’s a longevity clinic somewhere, and you’re talking about standardization and some people practicing without licensure, whatever those things may be, what advice do you give directly to the consumer today for figuring out the right place to go for my needs, not just for what I hope to accomplish, but for my safety, for all of those things? 

What would you say directly to a consumer? 

Jimmy St. Louis: I think I can simplify this as well, that every longevity patient journey should begin with blood work. It should begin with robust blood work. So make sure that they’re taking a more robust panel than just a couple basic points of information. You typically have to request that. 

So gaining education as to what those markers should be is one. Two is when they provide their care plan, you should be armed with information as follows One is, who is the pharmacy that you are using? Do they have certification? Do they third-party test their product, batch test it for sterility and sustainability? 

Those are questions that most consumers are not asking, and that information is widely available. And then, do you tie my care plan back to my blood work? And can you show me why this is relevant within my blood work? So in summary, robust blood work, understand where your product comes from, and make sure that the care plan ties back to that blood work. 

Anderson Williams: If you enjoyed this episode, check out our other Microcap Moments episodes at shorecp.university/podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts. Here, you will also find our Bigger, Stronger, Faster and Everyday Heroes series, each highlighting the people and stories that make investing in the lower middle market unique. 

You will also find our latest video podcast series, Raw Talent. This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners with story and narration by Anderson Williams, story editing and recording by Austin Johnson, editing by Reel Audiobooks, sound design, mixing and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks. 

Special thanks to Jimmy St. Louis. This podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the terms of use page on the Shore Capital website for other important information