Fire Nation in the house, JLD here and welcome episode 1500 and 7 of EO Fire.

Right Shabbat today is most successful entrepreneur, 7 days a week and check out our free

podcasting course Fire Nation so you can create grown monetize your podcast free podcast course.com.

Now let's shout out today's featured guest, Michael Dermur.

Michael, are you prepared to ignite?

Yes, sir.

Well, Michael founded his first company to reward for healthy behavior and after a decade

he watched it almost collapse in the 2008 financial crisis.

Michael not only overcame the struggle to sell his company and become an industry pioneer

but also discovered the lonely entrepreneur methodology to help entrepreneurs with the struggle.

Michael, take a minute, fill in some gaps from that intro and give us a little glimpse of your personal life.

Sure, John, I was a corporate lawyer in New York City and literally stumbled upon a business to reward people for being healthy.

And that was in the early 2000s when not only was that non-existent but it was really almost like witchcraft.

We're really going to reward people who are doing the worst.

And that was as most entrepreneurs know, the beginning of the end, they left a pretty high powered corporate law job to start working in this basement and started building the first company to reward people for healthy behavior.

And that was as we like to say the beginning of the end.

Yeah, well I remember back in 2008, I was working for John Hancock in Boston and every three months we get an email that would say, you know, come on down, get your health assessments and you get a $10 Starbucks gift card.

And I was like, that's all I need, a $10 Starbucks gift card so I had run down there and I get my healthy assessment.

And then first I was just like, whatever, no big deal. But then over like the course of the year, I got competitive.

I'm like, wow, like I'm actually seeing myself improve or get worse, whatever quarter it might have been.

And I want to come back stronger. So like just that act of tracking is powerful.

And Michael, I know you had a huge part in actually starting that trend for companies like John Hancock and other companies to actually start tracking that stuff.

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