Press Release

Eric Casaburi Of Serotonin Centers On The 5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The Health and Wellness Industry

An Interview With Jake Frankel

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 Eric Casaburi.

Eric Casaburi’s entrepreneurial spirit and love of fitness have flourished since the age of thirteen, beginning with his first job at a local gym. Possessing the courage, energy and fearlessness to fuel a small army, Casaburi opened his first business at the age of 23 and launched his first franchise, Retro Fitness in 2004. He grew that passion for health and well-being into a $150,000,000 a year business giant before setting out on his latest and most exciting venture to create the nation’s first anti-aging treatment franchise, Serotonin Centers.

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’ve always been cognizant of health and wellness. I was a big kid, so I was very active in sports and extracurriculars growing up. And as I got older, rather than phasing those activities out, I only focused more on reaching my peak physical fitness and discovered a unique sense to help others do the same.

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?

There are a lot of people who have played a role in helping guide and inspire me to the point I’m at now. Above all others though, I would say my mother is the reason I became focused on living a wellness-centered lifestyle. She passed away when I was 16 years old, after battling with her own health issues for some time. It instilled a fear in me of what can happen when you don’t take control of your own wellbeing. It highlighted the fear that can quickly consume a person when it becomes too late to turn back and focus on what’s best for you.

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?

This may sound too simple and not exciting, but my go-to beverage of choice is water. As basic a drink as it is, it’s too often overlooked and considered unpopular, even among health enthusiasts. To be fair, I also love a good amino-acid drink, usually for recovery from physical activity.

For exercising, the X3 Bar by Jaquish Biomedical has been a workout tool I’ve been very into lately. It’s a simple resistance-based strength and muscle training system based on biomechanics that’s become the perfect resource for quick, impactful workout sessions throughout the day. It’s very intense, personalized, and affordable. This is a great interval or addition to the days you can’t go the gym.

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

When you’re passionate about realizing your own peak physical potential, it begins to bleed into every facet of how you live your life. As an athlete and being into sports growing up, working out daily became a part of my regular routine. I founded Retro Fitness as a means to make the fitness center exercise experience more accessible to men and women nationwide and have now established Serotonin Centers to help even more people take the reins of their own health, appearance and performance capabilities, while maximizing their potential healthspan.

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?

When anyone first starts a business, the biggest challenge they face is the lack of resources, and moreover, the lack of resourcefulness. Looking back on when I was building my first brand, there wasn’t much at my disposal, financial or otherwise. I had to learn the skill of resourcefulness — sourcing great counsel, advisors, attorneys, capital, etc. — in order to fast-track growth. Learning how to be resourceful and enact such processes was perhaps the greatest difference between launching Retro Fitness and launching Serotonin Centers. With Serotonin, I had better connections, resources, knowledge and confidence in what I could achieve.

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?

As the first franchise brand in the country to enter the anti-aging treatment space, Serotonin Centers was created to give clients a road map for their lifelong health optimization journey, regardless of their current personal health. And in doing so, we’d be able to help improve the overall healthspan for all that partake.

One of the primary services of Serotonin Centers — bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT) — actually stemmed out of a personal situation we were experiencing at home. My first learning experience with BHR was with my wife, who, after having our fourth child at age 40, was beginning to show symptoms of hormone deficiencies. Her current doctors at the time weren’t much help in offering a solution, which wasn’t a response we were willing to accept. We explored possibilities together and discovered hormone replacement therapy and the outcome was life changing.

The centers were created to help ensure others wouldn’t have to endure similar health challenges, especially ones that were avoidable and could proactively be acted upon.

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

As a brand whose first location was opened in 2021, the most exciting projects we have going on are the multi-unit development agreements we’re signing with franchisees to bring Serotonin Centers into new markets throughout the country. The most recent deals include a 5-unit signing in Orlando, Florida and an additional 5-unit signing in Central New Jersey, with more on the way.

The rapid expansion the franchise is experiencing is exciting, as it’s giving us the opportunity to share our services with more people and usher in a new era of personalized health and wellness for men and women everywhere.

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?

Discipline — You can’t rely on motivation because that is something that is realistically not going to be present every day. Make it a habit to get up and do the work that needs to be done, regardless of the day, how you’re feeling, or what’s going on around you, day in and day out. That’s discipline, and that’s been a vital key to much of my success.

Passion — Most entrepreneurs would have pushed the pause button during the pandemic. But I worked harder than ever because I knew the business that was being created was going to be instrumental to the improvement of human healthspan — more so than ever after COVID. I was working seven day a week creating all of the details required to launch the first Serotonin Center.

Perseverance — The ability to mentally and emotionally push through any obstacle, regardless of the circumstance. This is a muscle you need to constantly flex. There are going to be days when nothing seems to be going your way, but you continue moving forward keeping your goals and aspirations in sight.

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?

Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of the term “wellness.” It’s a sick person’s term, and one that has been construed to mean such a variety of things that its professional usage has become tainted. However, I can’t escape the word weaving its way into some of my conversations when speaking about the benefits of Serotonin Centers.

Rather than wellness, I prefer to speak about the health optimization of one’s “healthspan.” This is a better term to describe what people want when they talk about wellness. It’s the quality of your years (healthspan) within the quantity of those years (lifespan). The question that’s then asked is, “how do you maximize your healthspan?” Most people live the final years of their lives in hospitals or nursing homes riddled with disease, poor health, lack of mobility and pain. I would like to optimize those final years by improving their healthspan, so that they can live a more functional, productive, full life to the end.

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?

It’s horribly negligent for people not to focus on something as significant as their own health and wellbeing. It MUST BE a priority in life! The fact of the matter is, eventually, you’ll be forced to focus on it. And by that point, the ball is already rolling down the slope, and getting out from under it will be nearly impossible. That’s why empowering yourself with the knowledge and tools to improve the outcome of your health, instead of leaving it to fate, is something that should be on everyone’s mind.

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?

Several employers have been taking steps to empower their employees to focus on their personal and mental health. Primarily by encouraging them to take advantage of the resources and opportunities that are available to them, such as health education, bloods tests, annual physicals, mental health days, and recommending daily exercise. Studies have even been done showing that employees that were physically and/or mentally fit performed at a far higher caliber than those with poor health that didn’t implement good health habits. So it should really be a no-brainer for companies to make such incentives, programs, memberships, and employment packages available to their employees.

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.

Love What You Do — It’s so much easier to get up and do the work when you love your job and the industry it’s a part of. Stress won’t seep into your daily life nearly as much when your professional motivation is derived from genuine passion. Just as well, the people you connect with, the ideas you develop, and the plans you put in place for continued growth will directly benefit from a love for the field.

Understand the Job at Hand — There’s going to be a pretty substantial time requirement if you want to be successful in this field. Creating the nation’s first anti-aging treatment franchise knew no difference between day or night, weekday or weekend. It was near-constant meetings, phone calls, travel, etc. You need to be willing to put in the time it takes to master your craft.

Take It Seriously — A career in the health and wellness industry can be incredibly rewarding, and it’s becoming more popular than ever to pursue such a profession. It wasn’t that many years ago where this industry wasn’t considered a serious profession. Today that is completely different. It’s now one of the most respected industries for a career, due to its impactfulness on the world.

Be a People Person — You need to have an empathetic ear and understand that human connectivity is a necessity in establishing yourself and building a brand. Growing the Serotonin Centers franchise requires that I speak with countless prospects and franchise partners day in and day out, all with their own set of questions, concerns, and ambitions. Pushing the brand forward requires that I be able to empathize and understand each and every one of them.

Always be Willing to Learn — There’s a constant development of the iteration and advancement of the knowledge within this field. You need to be comfortable as a lifelong learner, willing to accept that you’ll never know everything and will always be educating yourself and researching something new.

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. :-)

Serotonin Centers is a part of its own movement already through a franchise business model promoting the importance and the need for anti-aging services. Our aim is to make the benefits of the brand available to more members of the population than ever before.

As a side note to that growing accessibility, everyone needs to get really comfortable with understanding their own personal health data, as that’s where society is heading quickly. There are plenty of tools and devices already available that people can access to help them utilize that personalized data to impact their daily routines. When you combine that with a membership at Serotonin Centers, you have a well-positioned healthspan.

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.

I’d want to have a conversation with somebody that has the most influence on the trajectory of the health and wellness space. My first thought would be Tim Cook of Apple, since he makes the calls for many of the products and devices that are most popular for people looking to take control of their personal health data.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Readers can learn more and connect with me on LinkedIn, where I share all of the latest updates and developing news for the Serotonin Centers franchise.

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