Greg Macpherson: Founder of SRW Laboratories & Pharmacy Direct
Join Paul Spain for a conversation with Greg Macpherson, founder of Pharmacy Direct and SRW Laboratories and a pioneering figure in New Zealand’s pharmacy, supplement, and longevity sectors. From building Pharmacy One and pioneering online pharmacy ventures to advancing biotech innovation and longevity research, Greg shares lessons from decades of business growth, disruption, and reinvention. Learn how he identified emerging opportunities, navigated setbacks, built science-backed brands, and stayed ahead of changing consumer trends.
Greg also explores the future of health, wellness, and longevity, and what it means for business leaders, investors, and consumers.Packed with practical leadership lessons and strategic insights, this episode offers valuable takeaways for anyone interested in building resilient, future-focused businesses.
Special thanks to our show partners One New Zealand, Outrun Global and Gorilla Technology.
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Paul Spain – CEO, Business & Tech Commentator, Futurist
You can keep current with our latest NZ Business Podcast updates via Twitter @NZ_Business, the NZ Business Podcast website.
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Paul Spain:
I’m Paul Spain, futurist and chief executive at Gorilla Technology. I love contributing to the success of individuals and their organizations. The New Zealand Business Podcast is all about this through helping you learn from our most incredible leaders. In this episode, I’m joined by Greg Macpherson, founder of Pharmacy Direct and SRW Laboratories. An author, biotech entrepreneur and pioneer in healthy aging, Greg has spent more than 30 years building businesses and at the intersection of healthcare technology and science. From launching New Zealand’s first online pharmacies to leading biotech ventures tackling one of humanity’s biggest challenges, ageing itself.
Paul Spain:
New Zealand Business Podcast is proudly brought to you by One New Zealand alongside Gorilla Technology, making tech enablement and cybersecurity easy for mid size and smaller businesses and by Outrun Global remote staffing to help your local teams work smarter, not harder.
Paul Spain:
Greg Macpherson, great to have you on the New Zealand Business Podcast. How are you today?
Greg Macpherson:
Doing great, Paul. Great to be here.
Paul Spain:
Fantastic. Well, always like to start at the beginning. So tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what life was like in your childhood years.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, so I grew up in Otaki, which is on the Kapiti coast, small town. I think There were about 3,000 people there when we were growing up and it was an amazing small town with the Tararuas on our doorstep. So we would spend a lot of time playing up in those mountains. And yeah, we went to Otaki College, a fantastic institution if you will. And then at 18, packed my bags and went down to Dunedin University.
Paul Spain:
Fantastic. Now, looking back on those childhood days, any particular things that sort of stand out, that shaped you, that you really enjoyed and you can maybe see sort of connections to the rest of life.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, definitely. I guess the entrepreneurial streak was there right from the beginning. I think we would. In fact, even when I was. We spent three years while in Christchurch around five to seven, four to seven. And I remember my father had a magazine that he published, Good Wings magazine. And you know, any of the spare copies, I’d rustle up and take them down to school and sell them.
Paul Spain:
Oh, really?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, yeah. So and then there’s.
Paul Spain:
Did he know about that?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, he knew. He was, he was Complicit, but it was a no cost of goods and all the pocket money for me, so it was good. And then do recall down at the local dump in Otaki there was a banana, banana passion fruit was growing wild and we packed that up and sell that. Yeah, dubious quality, of course. And I do recall going around all the shops in Otaki and those that had accounts with people. I said to them, basically, I’ll take your accounts and deliver them. And so I would go around on the 20th or the beginning of the month and collect all of their invoices and then sort them all out, jump on my push bike and spend a day off school earning a little extra pocket money.
Paul Spain:
How old were you?
Greg Macpherson:
15. Plus mates.
Paul Spain:
And what do you think gave you that idea? Is that something you had sort of seen in family business or you’d been aware that that was maybe a challenge for.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, no. Look, I’m not quite sure what strange genetic influence caused that or drove me to do it, but I’ve just always been really interested in, I guess, ideas and business and stitching it all together.
Paul Spain:
So how did that play out when you went to university?
Greg Macpherson:
Actually had quite a reasonable amount of money while I was at university. So I actually just probably spent, didn’t have to raise any money. So yeah, I just enjoyed study and the social life.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. Okay. What was the, the thing that, you know, caught your attention from a study perspective? How did you, how did you, you know, decide, you know, what to study?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, so I’ve always, I guess, been good at science and I’ve always wanted to help people and within my, I guess, environment, within Otaki the pharmacist looks like a pretty interesting thing that I could do both those things and that was apply science, talk about it and help people. So that really drove the, the decision to head down to Dunedin and apply for pharmacy school and, and really it’s been a mix of business and pharmacy ever since.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. Okay. And you know, how did you find university since you were, you know, I guess you had your entrepreneurial kind of leanings there in the background. But you enjoy the social times. How did you balance the sort of study and the social?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, look, I think at times it was more towards social than study, but applied myself where I needed to and I mean, I still had, I guess, commercial ideas sitting around in my mind, but they were very, very early and not particularly well formed.
Paul Spain:
This was the sort of late 80s you started studying.
Greg Macpherson:
That’s right. 88. I was at Dunedin and therefore, I guess for four years doing the pharmacy degree and then stayed there for an extra year as an intern, which is required before you qualify as a pharmacist, and then stayed on for a few more years. I had a couple of brothers that came down to Dunedin as well, so just enjoyed hanging out with them and having a role and some actual money at the time. But no, it was, it was a. You know, every time I go to Dunedin it feels like coming home. It was just such a great experience and such a great town with a whole bunch of like minded people.
Paul Spain:
And what were the first things that you, you got stuck into in terms of initial work before you ultimately started your own thing?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, yeah. So I qualified and spent a couple of years as I said and then I went home for a year. My father wasn’t particularly well so I went home and was the local pharmacist there. My wife’s a pharmacist and so. But a couple of years behind me so she completed her internship in Hamilton and then we went and tried to get jobs in the same parts of the country and so we, we’d go to Nelson and we’d both apply. I’d get something she didn’t or we’d go somewhere else and she get it, I wouldn’t. And so Auckland was the natural place to come just because of the nature of the bigger market. And I was here for around about nine months before settling on an idea and starting a business.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. So walk us through starting your first business.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, so it was a business associated with starting providing services to residential care, so hospitals and people like IHC in the community and mental health patients. So it’s about delivering our customised service for high need patients and it was about how do we improve the safety for these clients. So we were early adopters of Medeco Pack which is a blister pack people may have seen that some people get with their medicines. Now these days it’s mainly robotics that will pack your medicine. But back in the day we would go and talk to a rest home. We delivered a very, very bespoke specialized service and generally would pick up that business. So we built that business, it was called Pharmacy One. Up to the largest dispensing pharmacy in New Zealand over a decade.
Greg Macpherson:
Brought in robotics for the first time and eventually sold that to Greencross which is a large pharmacy group. And in parallel I started Pharmacy Direct and that was a kind of a designed initially because Viagra, which just come on the market and it was a little embarrassing and brown paper bag sort of stuff and a Lot of people preferred to post in a script and get it delivered by courier rather than perhaps pick it up at the local pharmacy where you might be playing tennis with. Whereas I guess these days the stigma around it is a lot less. But in our heyday, if you will, as we can talk about, but we were selling about 60,000 tablets a month.
Paul Spain:
Wow. So looking at the pharmacy, one business there, that was what, 96 that you started that. Did both you and your wife go into the business? I mean, how did you work out the right way to resource that and to get it established? Obviously, know there was, there was considerable success there to, you know, get, get to a point where you were able to, you know, sell that, sell it on. And there was that interest. But, you know, what, what was the, what was the journey like? Was it all roses?
Greg Macpherson:
A lot of. Not at all. A lot of, a lot of naivety, Paul, and, and, and, and that, and, and started well underfunded. And so it meant many, many hours where I was working both in the business and on it, and a very challenging business as well, especially because when you’re delivering blister packs into rest homes and you only need to get one tablet wrong and those blister packs and it’s a problem. So that’s a very complex business in respect to that.
Paul Spain:
And you talked about safety being one of the opportunities that you were solving. I mean, what was that safety
Paul Spain:
risk
Paul Spain:
in reality out there?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, well, before the PACs came along, the nurses on the ward essentially would be giving medicines out of bottles for each patient, and there’s a huge opportunity to get things wrong in that environment. So the step change was that we were dispensing it and putting extreme checks across it, but it was also significant time saving for those, for those nurses as well. So they were to get around, perhaps done in half the time. And so that’s a big unlock for a facility who’s with a lot of patients, and so they could improve their care as well. So it was a business built around systems and processes, but challenging because, you know, I think we, we got up to a team of perhaps 12, 15 pharmacists, and if one of those people had a bad day, then I’d get the phone call and it was on me if something was wrong. So robotics were a huge advance on top of the blister packing.
Paul Spain:
Right. So tell us what would go wrong. An example of what was the worst phone call that you took?
Greg Macpherson:
The worst phone call we took was a delivery driver who gave a wrong pack of medicines to A mental health patient. And he took those medicines and didn’t react very well for them to them and became quite violent and fortunately no one was hurt, but it was just absolutely horrible. Quite an unbelievable story as well in that we were having a meeting with the family about it and, and the father took me aside after and said, we’re not going to take any action. And weirdly, about six months before, if you don’t remember the old inorganic waste we used to put out once a year, well, this particular chapter drove past our place and I waved him down and says, I’ve got a heater and a dryer and a. The garage and would you like it? And that was the dad crazy. He remembered me from, from that. It was, it was quite, quite bizarre. But, but anyway, needless to say that that was an extreme version of what can go wrong.
Greg Macpherson:
And it was, it was absolutely horrible.
Paul Spain:
And, and how, how did you deal with, you know, with that situation and, and others like it? Did that make you feel like you didn’t want to be in business or did it, you know.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, look, definitely there were days where you’re sitting there and just going, why am I doing this? Absolutely. You just have to deal with the situation and deal with it the best you can. And generally it’s about fronting up, taking responsibility and reviewing what went wrong so that it doesn’t happen again. And so that’s. And yeah, we got good at systems because of some of those issues.
Paul Spain:
So was that a labeling type issue that. That had gone wrong or was it.
Greg Macpherson:
It was the driver literally just got it wrong. And so, and so with that we, we built a delivery platform, if you will, that meant that there was less chance of that happening.
Paul Spain:
Right, so you had your own, your own drivers as part of that?
Greg Macpherson:
Yes, yeah, that’s right. Well, it was a relief when we sold the business for sure. It was a very complex business. And so on retrospect, you know, simple is probably better in business. And that was a very complex, challenging.
Paul Spain:
And so you walked away with what, 10 mil, 100 mil? Tell us the how that played out financially.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, look, it didn’t play out.
Paul Spain:
Sorry.
Greg Macpherson:
That’s okay. No, we sold it and we. It was a very difficult time because we actually sold it and still owed a million dollars. So it was challenging. And what caused that was an accountant, which wasn’t. Who wasn’t particularly helpful. And also some changes to the dhp, the way they funded medicines at the time. So it was, when I say it was an exit, it was probably more force than and then an excellent outcome and pretty hard because, you know, work 15 years and that’s not the result that you anticipate at all.
Greg Macpherson:
So. No, I guess pretty disheartening, but you learn a lot through that sort of thing. And we were left with Pharmacy Direct, which was, has had basically paid that back and more over the, over the last decade or so.
Paul Spain:
Yeah.
Greg Macpherson:
More recently been challenging, of course, with Chemist Warehouse coming to town. A lot of pharmacists are feeling the pain of that. But it’s been, it’s looked after as well.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. Yeah. And how did the two sit side by side, Pharmacy One and Pharmacy Direct? Because Pharmacy Direct came along, what, a year or so into. Into the Pharmacy one journey.
Greg Macpherson:
That’s correct. Yeah. So we, I guess film. I’ve never been able to just get bored. I guess that’s the. Is the answer. Right. So it’s about, you know, what else can we do to diversify and build.
Greg Macpherson:
So 1997 it came along. So we were 30 years next year. And we, we, we, it was, we did it in parallel essentially. And we used the infrastructure of the pharmacy. We had an online, sorry, a store in Penrose that was at the front of the rest home, closed pharmacy, and we ran them separately, but together.
Paul Spain:
And how strong were the synergies? How well did that work versus if you’d had two completely different businesses and different spaces and so on?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah. So the Internet was fairly nascent at that point. So it was really, really early and probably too early in terms of the business. So we having Pharmacy One allowed us to build Pharmacy Direct, essentially. And there were, you know, days where it was an exciting because we got an order. Right. So there’s just no way we could have done that independently. So we just grew organically.
Greg Macpherson:
And it was extremely slow to start. We didn’t have copious amounts of capital to throw at marketing. So we just, we grinded it grounded out.
Paul Spain:
And how did that story change over time as the online world, you know, really became the norm? E Commerce, you know, became a lot more, A lot more commonplace.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, it was a, it was a thing of beauty, Paul. Like it, it just grew and grew and grew. So we, we, when we sold the pharmacy, we, we, we had another. We had two pharmacies, one in the, on the North Shore, one in Penrose, the residential care one sold. We shifted everything up to the North Shore and just about every other. On every quarter we would take another store worth of room and grew it quite significantly over a period of time. And that came from actually the singular focus of just the online and getting particularly good at it.
Paul Spain:
And you talked about systems and processes technology. How did all of that fit together? Do you have robotics continued through and in that business also?
Greg Macpherson:
No, no. So we never got quite to the scale of robotics back in the day, but certainly we’re talking thousands of orders a day and it was manually picked, packed, stocked, etc. But the Internet was ascendant, if you will, and so we certainly rode the back of that. And, you know, there was a reasonable bit of competition as well. Pharmacy typically is relatively competitive, but over time certainly created a lot of space between us and players number two and three.
Paul Spain:
And why do you think that was? What were you doing differently?
Greg Macpherson:
We were working a lot with suppliers, we were starting to invest in the platform and we were extremely focused. So I think those are the things that allowed us to arrive.
Paul Spain:
And did that focus sort of dramatically change when you exited from Pharmacy One? Did that give you a lot more time to just double down and, you know.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, exactly that, yeah, yeah. And I wasn’t working full time in the business at that point. I had a business partner who was. And when we sold Pharmacy One, we, we didn’t. The Pharmacy Direct wasn’t big enough for both of us, if you will, in terms of both drawing a reasonable living from the business. So that’s when I. Well, we both said, look, let’s just go and see what’s out there and whoever gets a role first, we’ll take that and whoever doesn’t takes the leadership of Pharmacy Direct. And I picked up a consultancy role with Mito Q that was about six weeks after, and we’d sold Pharmacy One and so I started working there part time for the first year and then full time as CEO.
Paul Spain:
So tell us a little bit about that business.
Greg Macpherson:
So MitoQ is a super interesting business. It came from a discovery at Otago University where a couple of scientists worked out how to target molecules to mitochondria. And mitochondria are your cellular batteries and they generate all the energy that your cells need to operate. And when they don’t work so well, then it’s associated with certain health problems. So Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, all sorts of problems. And it can be either that the mitochondria cause a problem first or the disease causes some problems with the mitochondria. So the. This was roundabout.
Greg Macpherson:
When I was at university, actually, it was a little after, it was the turn of the century, just 1919, late 1990s. And so this discovery was quite groundbreaking. They discovered this molecule, we’ll call it Mitoquinol, which is a, essentially an antioxidant that’s targeted to mitochondria and set about investigating what utility it might have, because it topped up the antioxidants inside your mitochondria and kind of got the batteries tuned up a little bit better, which meant more energy for your cells. Fantastic. And so they, they, I wasn’t involved then, but they raised around 30 million US and they did a clinical trial for Parkinson’s disease. And unfortunately that, that trial didn’t work. And I think, you know, if it was this molecule was discovered today, they might not have chosen Parkinson’s. Because when you develop Parkinson’s, all the damage is already done.
Greg Macpherson:
You need to be working perhaps 15 years before the disease manifests to protect yourself from it. So that business got an injection of capital and decided to repurpose themselves as a supplement company. That’s when I got involved and was essentially employee number one and spent the next pretty close to seven years building that brand, building the team and building awareness around the benefits of looking after your mitochondria. And that was a lot of fun.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah. And where did that take you? What were the highlights for you of that time and what were the challenges? Because this wasn’t your business. Right. So this is a little bit different. You’re taking your entrepreneurial capabilities into, into something else. Were your shareholder at all or no skin in the game other than, you know, what, what you got as, as the chief executive?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah. So I had a, a small clause in my contract around a carve out if they’d solved a business while I was there, but that, that didn’t happen. Highlights, I think, is this the travel. Right. Getting to conferences, meeting interesting people, talking about what we were doing, raising awareness and just the community of people that would feed back to us. I’m quite driven on how much I can help people. And we were getting some amazing stories back from people who had reasonably significant illnesses and reporting back that they were having huge benefits. Multiple sclerosis is one.
Greg Macpherson:
We had one chap who was in, in Scotland who had family out here. He had multiple sclerosis so badly that he was pretty much bed bound and he was able to, through Mitoquinol, get on a plane and come and visit his cousins. And he made it, he made a point of coming to see us and when we first saw him, he came in with a little joystick wheelchair and the next time I saw him, he walked in and yeah, it was incredible. And so that’s why I get out of bed is to have that impact. And it’s, and yeah, those are the highlights. What was tough, getting a brand started is really tough and we had a pretty challenging board who was certainly very focused and possibly didn’t speak the same business language that I spoke. So that was definitely a challenge. But you know, we persisted, got it sorted and overall had a very successful time and that brand has gone on to do some really great things.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. Touching on the board side, what did you learn there in terms of, you know, how you would, how you would steer things differently in future, how, how you would, you know, get, get the less, less painful experience.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, so, so health has got its own vocabulary, it’s got its own, I guess, drivers and that can be quite different to perhaps an accounting or a business driver. And they do need to marry up beautifully for a business to work well. And so the balance was probably there with someone who could understand and translate health and consumer benefit and working with some fairly well experienced board and finance experts. What I’ve learned, well, I mean it was I guess an MBA in how to start a brand and, and, and, and build one. And so you’re incredibly grateful for that experience and all of the, the challenges were really learning opportunities for sure.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah. And, and any, any, any tips on how to, you know, make the, make the most of your board relationship, your relationship with the board and, and you know, make that work in both directions.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, look, I think it’s just communication. Right. I think and, and I’m a, I guess there’s a difference between I guess an entrepreneur and I guess the seasoned campaigners who have been in large businesses before. So there’s got to be some good alignment there, otherwise you will run into troubles. But no, certainly they taught me a bunch.
Paul Spain:
Yep. And you did some work with the warehouse as well.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, that’s right. That was way back with pharmacy one in the days and the warehouse was interested in adding pharmacies to the big red shed, if you will. They saw that as an opportunity. So yeah, we pitched for I guess a contract to work with them and I guess set them up and guided them and grew those businesses and I guess co owned the pharmacies with them and we, I guess gave it a really good bash. But in the end it just wasn’t the right place for a pharmacy to sit at that point in I guess, the retail history, if you will. And I think nowadays again, possibly it could be, and the chemist warehouse is a great example of that. They’ve done it particularly well, and of course, you’ll see your pharmacy in the supermarket now. So that was what we were set out to achieve and we were perhaps a little early.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah. When you look at. Look at that, you know, I guess, yeah, there were, there were, you know, a number of different aspects to that business. But this was, what, a joint venture with Pharmacy Direct.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, pharmacy. It was called the warehouse pharmacy or Pharmacy at the Warehouse. So we didn’t have any branding as such. It was a standalone. Yeah. Worked with a gentleman called John Genet who’s, I think, still working or has been or is part time with the Warehouse. And it was really, again, another learning experience as we looked at how you would build out the corporate structure for a pharmacy business.
Paul Spain:
And what would you say are the takeaways in terms of partnering and other aspects of that time?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, look, I think I’ve. Over the years, I’ve looked really hard at that question. I think what I’ve learned is that with any vertical, there is some big fish and there’s a lot of little fish and you really should be looking at wherever you’re interested at understanding where the value chain lies and who’s making the most money out of that vertical and. And possibly retail pharmacies. It’s more of the smaller fish side, which is absolutely perfectly fine. But if your ambition is perhaps slightly more, then you would spend more time looking at how you can fit into that sector and playing at perhaps a higher level, which has driven, I guess, where I’ve got to now. But I’m a slow learner and it took me a wee while to fully understand that. So rather than going for scale and with perhaps challenging retail margins, it’s possibly, well, it depends who you are.
Greg Macpherson:
But for me, a better place to place within more of a brand or an ownership of a supplement or a pharmaceutical. And that’s a lot of. That was my learnings from Mito Q.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, definitely some, Some great takeaways there. Now, you exited Mito Q, what Was that, about 2019?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, that’s right.
Paul Spain:
Walk us through that.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah. So I got fired, which was not expected. I wandered in to catch up with the, the, the chap I reported to and he just said, yes, Greg, it’s time for you to go. So that was a bit of a shock to the system because I thought that I was doing a reasonable job. We’ve got some great results. But I do understand, on reflection, businesses change and I’d got it to a point, perhaps needed a new skill set to come in and take it to the next level. So that’s how it rolled, essentially. So, yeah, good company and a bit of a very short, sharp breakup, if you will.
Greg Macpherson:
But again, really grateful for the opportunity to work with them and, and great to see what they’re doing now as well.
Paul Spain:
So how, how did you deal with that at, at the time? I mean, you know, any. When you, you know, when you’ve got your own business and you lose a client, you know, that can, that can hit you. But you know, when, when you get, when you get kind of kicked to the curb from an entire role, you know, what did that do for you in terms of headspace and so on?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, I just didn’t know what I was going to experience. I thought perhaps I was going to get depressed or like, what was. I just didn’t know. Right. It was like, okay, I’m gonna. Whatever this is, I’m going to experience. And the first month was, you know, like, what the heck has just happened? And just being busy, running around, doing odd jobs around the house that I hadn’t got to for the. The longest time.
Greg Macpherson:
And by month two, I’d sort of gone fishing a couple of times and played a bit of golf. And that was like. I was kind of like, hey, this is okay. I’m kind of. I’ll work things out in month three. I suggested to my wife, she earns a little more so I could keep doing this.
Paul Spain:
And what was the response?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, that wasn’t. Didn’t go down particularly well. So, yeah, Paul, we was really where the idea of saw kind of popped front and centre. I was in the background looking at what was happening offshore around longevity and health and looking at the trends and spending time in the longevity chat rooms with all of the biohackers and so on, really just starting to understand what was happening because I, I kind of knew the language and I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I just knew that there was something that was going to materialize. So I stumbled upon a paper called the Hallmarks of Aging. And this is quite a breakthrough paper because it set out a framework of what drives aging at a cellular level. And, and I guess with my pharmacist and what I just learned with Mariq, I kind of synthesized it and went, well, these aren’t just drivers of aging. These are targets that we might be able to put molecules in to intervene or change the speed at which they decline.
Greg Macpherson:
And that was the insight really that created the next business. And it was really about looking up all I’d focused on for the previous seven years were just these cellular engines like mitochondria, day and night for seven years. And looking up, it was like, wait a second, there’s more to just the engine. So if you took your car in for a service, all they did was sort your engine out and didn’t look at your brakes or your window wipers or the lubrication, whatever, then you wouldn’t be very happy. So we really do need to look at cellular health at I guess a 40,000 foot level. And understanding using that framework was really important. And the best analogy I have is back in the 100 years ago, 150 years ago, if you got sick, it was because you had bad morals or you hadn’t given the right gift to the right God or whatever. And then someone kind of cracked the code and went, wait a second, it’s these little bugs that are causing the problem.
Greg Macpherson:
And so that triggered a different. That’s a framework that then allowed the invention of penicillin and then antibiotics. So this framework is very similar. It’s almost like the germ theory of aging. And that framework is being developed as we speak and we’ve built products around it. And when you do target the hallmarks, you can slow the aging process down.
Paul Spain:
So during that window from exiting MitoQ, what else did you get up to? Sort of before I guess formally kicking off sr, SRW did some other bits and pieces. You written a book in there? That’s right, yeah. Just tell, tell us a little bit about that.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, so the best way to learn something is to write about it because you’re forced to go and dig deeper. And so that I wrote something called Harnessing the nine hallmarks of aging to live your healthiest life. Because there are so many insights in that paper that everybody can benefit from. And you know, there’s so many things you can do from a lifestyle perspective. There are supplements that you can take. And it was, I guess, an attempt to diffuse that information out in a much more consumer friendly manner. And so that’s. And in the process of that really crystallize what, what this, what I was trying to do and what sparked the idea and then crystallized what, what the next venture was.
Greg Macpherson:
And so incredibly painful, but good process to go through. And, and from it came SRW Laboratories. And in our first products, we’re very much targeting the hallmarks of aging. And I was looking in the periphery and there were drug companies out there and they’re all working on this as we speak, but they were typically focusing on just one lever and the most common one that we’re seeing right now is something called senescent cells. These are zombie cells. And what they do is you have a cell has a certain amount of divisions it can do before it’s kind of done its job. And what it does typically is it releases inflammatory molecules and the immune system comes in and kind of recycles that cell and replaces it with a fresh one. But as we get older, we’ve got more and more cells that are kind of running out of steam, pumping inflammatory gunk into our body.
Greg Macpherson:
And the immune system at the same time is getting a bit tired and it doesn’t just can’t keep up. So typically as we age we get more inflammation and that’s part of the reason, that’s what drives it. And it turns out these senescent cells can actually be identified. And there are molecular switches that you can trigger which cause them to self destruct, if you will. So you can actually, through drugs and lifestyle and a few other things, actually lower that burden of senescent cells. And there’s a lot of companies out there looking at that because it looks like one of the easier pathways to slow aging. But you really can’t just rely on that because at the same time your mitochondria are running out of gas and meanwhile your telomeres, which are part of your DNA, is shrinking and so on. So really what you’ve got to do is step back and look at all of it and see what you can do from a multi target perspective to actually modulate the aging process.
Paul Spain:
Right, right. So when we look at this sort of, you know, I guess dying of old age, that it can really fall into all sorts of different categories in terms of what that actually looks like.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, it’s a systems problem, if you will. And it’s like if you look at a shiny new factory which is equivalent of a cell, it’s got energy inputs, it’s got outputs and it’s got things that break and things that rubbish that build up and it’s got people to manage and all that sort of thing. Well, a cell is basically that. And then if you look at a factory in disrepair, well, that’s kind of what’s quietly happening. And so the beautiful thing is that we can tweak a few levers and that will, that gives us a bit more energy or a bit less zombie cells. And that actually just means that factory can last longer and be productive. And so with lifestyle, because you can’t out supplement or out drag a lifestyle, rock and roll lifestyle so you’ve got to.
Paul Spain:
Not forever.
Greg Macpherson:
Not forever, no. But, you know, so your foundation needs to be good. And then on top of that, and I think with, you know, lifestyle and with supplements, we’re learning about, we, you know, we should be getting an extra 10 years of health span. So which is the amount of time we spend healthy versus lifespan, which is the difference is the disease span, if you will, which is that gradual decline which is associated with older age. But. And there’s new science coming which will possibly shift that again. But for now, that’s kind of what we’ve got accessible to us in terms of being able to extend healthy years. And what’s neat about it is that it doesn’t matter where you start.
Greg Macpherson:
You can be someone who struggles to get to the letterbox or you can get someone who’s. Can run 50 miles. Um, doesn’t matter what you do, you can age better by just applying the lifestyle aspects and then supplementing.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, it’s so interesting, I guess, that, that opportunity to. What was the terminology used? You’ve got sort of lifespan and health.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah.
Paul Spain:
Health span. Yep.
Greg Macpherson:
And disease span, if you will.
Paul Spain:
Right, right.
Paul Spain:
Yeah.
Paul Spain:
So the, the, I mean, let’s, let’s, let’s say. I don’t know whether you can or can’t have much, much impact on, on lifespan, but if you, if you can’t, if you improve that, the health span, then you gotta, you’ve got a better, a better life while you are around.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah. I mean, the idea is, I presume
Paul Spain:
both of these get, you know, ultimately get pushed out in a, in an ideal scenario, Right, Absolutely.
Greg Macpherson:
And if you can square the curve where you, you know, you, you kind of running and then you, I guess, drop dead, if you will, but you, you’re healthy until that happens, that’s an ideal scenario. Better than 15 years of, of poor health and multiple conditions and dementia and the joys of incontinence. All these things which are ahead of everybody essentially. But so the idea is ultimately like, how can we be, I think 63 is the general health span at which you start to then accumulate conditions. If we could push that to 73. The benefits for individuals, for families, for countries, productivity, for everything, it just flows. And it’s something like, I think it’s literally a trillion dollars a year for every year that we can expand health span. Because you’re not a drain on the hospital system, you’re productive, there’s all sorts of benefits.
Greg Macpherson:
And that’s why there is a mad rush at the moment to working out whether we can solve these problems and humans, we put our mind to something we achieve, it generally might take longer than we expect, but it’s happening. So yeah, there’s some really interesting work happening that will all going well in our lifetimes. We should be able to radically extend healthspan and lifespan. And I say that because there are animals in nature that live for hundreds of years and they’re mammals just like us and if they can do it, there’s no reason we can’t. So we just got to unpack exactly what’s causing it and driving it and they’re making great progress on that.
Paul Spain:
Fascinating.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah.
Paul Spain:
Now I, I had a call with, with my, my father a few days back and it was his 87th birthday. So I was, you know, ringing to wish him a happy birthday and as I was chatting he just told me he was out on a, on an hour long walk and then he was gonna, you know, catch a bus somewhere. So I was of course, you know, very impressed and telling everybody how, you know, how fit and healthy my 87 year old father was. And then I later on in the week ended up being able to get a stopover in Christchurch where he lives and he agreed to meet me at the airport. We juggled around sometimes so I could meet up with someone else.
Paul Spain:
And he said, oh, it was really
Paul Spain:
good that you did that. And I said, oh, why is that? And he said I’ve just walked here and it was a three hour walk for him to get.
Greg Macpherson:
Phenomenal.
Paul Spain:
How important is the exercise component and the diet sort of component in the overall picture? Because that’s something that we all need to think about as well as obviously the pharmaceutical opportunities, right?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean exercise is the best intervention that you can do for longevity. And it’s really about, you look back, as we’ve evolved as a species, we were exercising all the time. So our biology is actually designed for it. So the modern lifestyle where we’re changing chairs and we’ve got access to Uber Eats and we don’t have to chase for food or generally, it’s just, it’s not suiting our biology. Maybe in a thousand years getting up and moving to your chair is going to be the optimal biology because it’s adapted to it. But right now if we’re not moving, we’re not aging well.
Paul Spain:
So Uber Eats should be delivered by a greyhound that goes straight past your door.
Greg Macpherson:
That’s right.
Paul Spain:
And you’ve got to chase it down the street if you want the meal, you got it.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, precisely that. So exercise, you’ve got to be really mindful about what you eat. Mediterranean diet has got the biggest signals at the moment, is the best longevity diet. Being hungry though, is important because these days for most of us we are fed, well fed, and actually back in the day there were particular molecular patterns in our pathways, in our bodies which said, if you can’t get food, I need to go into longevity mode so I can get the time to get the food. And these patterns started from mice, but we’ve got those programs and it makes sense, you know, you shift there and so it’s. So being hungry occasionally is really important. Sleep, absolutely. Like non negotiable.
Greg Macpherson:
I remember at university it was, I’ll sleep when I’m dead, so to speak. Well, it turns out you will be dead if you don’t sleep. It’s so, so important. And it’s where you do all your cellular repair and so on. Stress management, incredibly important. Again, acute stress, no drama. But if it’s consistent, it’s a real problem. And you can just literally see it and read it in any of the longevity diagnostics.
Greg Macpherson:
And then the last thing is social connections. We’re social animals and if we’re lonely, again, you can read it in the actual stress. And essentially what it is is stress molecules that are, I guess you feel stress, you generate stress molecules and they hammer your cells. And so again, if you’ve got ongoing chronic stress, you want to step back and go, okay, how do I manage it? And really it’s not about the stress, it’s about how you manage it. Some people go fishing, some people do mindfulness, some people mow the lawns, whatever, but find your thing. And those are the five main things you can do. And if you do that, it’s all free and you give yourself a good chance at a healthy life.
Paul Spain:
That’s fantastic. Well, let’s dive in and discuss SRW Science Research Wellness Laboratories. Keen to hear about that.
Greg Macpherson:
When I was working with Mariq, we were working with a company that was taking New Zealand and Australian brands into China and were extremely good at it. And so Mitochu had got the benefit of that and we had a really great relationship with them. And when I left mitiq, I just and had spent a bit of time with this spark of an idea around SRW and the hallmarks of aging and so on. So I just popped and I knew I had a problem with that, as in you can have a good idea, but if you don’t have customers and you don’t have capital that it’s going Nowhere. So I jumped on a plane with the core of the idea, went and saw those partners and they liked the idea. They took 70% equity in the business take got. But that helped me because I didn’t have the capital at the level that you need to start a supplement brand. So they, I guess crudely solved the money problem and the people problem in terms of their channel was really significant.
Greg Macpherson:
So that’s, I guess from the financial business side of it, we spent a year building the brand and doing the Persona, mapping and developing the full pathway and really just the core of what we were trying to do as a company. And that purpose is to challenge the way that people think about and experience aging as. It’s not just about the pills, it’s about educating people on what they can do around healthy lifestyles. And launched in the middle of COVID effectively and it was just an incredible start. This company has and works with hundreds of thousands of Chinese consumers and they embraced what we brought. And it was something like in the first 18 months at GMV level, which is the full retail price, it was around about $140 million worth of sales, which was just beyond my wildest dreams, if you will. And so it hasn’t stayed that high because there’s a certain amount of consumer fatigue and so on with products and so on. But it’s still a substantial business in that channel and really been beyond what I could have anticipated.
Greg Macpherson:
And of course, with that level of growth, all sorts of challenges as you pull that together logistically and float it across water to get to another market and so on. But we’ve had an amazing team that we put together and built and that’s been the only way we could have done it.
Paul Spain:
So the product supplement did just go into the Chinese market back then?
Greg Macpherson:
Yes.
Paul Spain:
What was the thinking on that? Was that because of the partnership that you could, you know, get the. The best results in the shortest space of time?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, absolutely. It was just around access to the market and working with very seasoned campaigners who really understood how to communicate the benefits to the consumer. I typically get stuck in the weeds, which you might have worked out from this conversation, but they were very good at like explaining what we do. But we did focus on the New Zealand Pharmacy channel because that’s the perfect place for us to hang out. And we have built that, the distribution into the Middle east. So we’ve got distribution partners there and currently talking with a couple of other regions as well. So we’re less reliant on China, which is what every brand really needs to do. But in terms of it giving us a platform and the ability and the, the road, if you will, to build in time to build out those other markets that took a lot of pressure off.
Greg Macpherson:
So it was both a challenge and a tremendous opportunity.
Paul Spain:
Now with sales like the numbers you mentioned, I’m picking that you would have had significant overheads too, to be able to get this sort of scale at pace. So it wasn’t that you were, you know, you know, completely overflowing with. With profitability. But I mean, walk us through how, how it sort of, you know, looked from that perspective.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, so it’s always. No one knew. Obviously you kick something off and you don’t know. So you, you know, we, we spent a couple of million dollars on building and launching, if you will, and, and very quickly ran out of cash because we needed to fill the channel. And so the other, the benefit of this, the group I was working with, was that they, they loaned us. So I think it was another $6 million that we would have had to do another round to finance. But we were fortunate that they were happy to. To loan us that.
Greg Macpherson:
So. So that got paid back quite quickly. But it, but yeah, it’s been a very capital, intense business in that respect. So growth has been challenged. But I’ve kind of been fortunate that I’ve been sheltered with it because we’ve got partners who have not been aggressive in saying, all right, well, we want the other 30% for this. They’ve been willing to loan it, which is possibly quite unique. So they didn’t use their position to peel me out of the business, so to speak. But possibly in a different situation at a different time, I might not have the 30% that I’ve got today.
Greg Macpherson:
So, yeah, that’s been very generous in that respect.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. Oh, that’s great. The next step on SRW.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah. So we’ve. Things go in a circular way, Paul. And the patent came off mitoquinol, which was the molecular MitoQ some time ago. And so I really didn’t set out to do that, but I figured someone’s going to and it may as well be me. So we have, I guess, got a chemical engineering company essentially to help us find a way to synthesize it. So we’ve just launched three new products which are, I guess, the first generic mitaquinol products, and quite excited about them because I guess it’s the opportunity to reinvent and reimagine what this molecule could be doing. And so we’ve actually got, I think, one of the first, most recent new patents on the molecule.
Greg Macpherson:
We’ve built a stem cell product. And this product supports, I guess, the full lifestyle of stem cells. And stem cells are your, your cellular bank account. They hang out in your bone marrow, and that’s where most of your immune and blood cells come from, but they hang out in different parts of your body and they get tired as we age. And they’re really important because when a cell disappears or gets injured, that’s what replenishes that cell. And so when we put it together, we’re testing it and the results were quite remarkable. And that was patentable because it was unexpected. And so, so that product is quietly diffusing itself into the world.
Greg Macpherson:
And, and, and we’ll just continue to work with that and probably not, probably we will expand the range. And I am. Got it for my, I guess, like create a bit of work for myself, but I’ve decided to start a pharmaceutical company and, and take the learnings, I guess, you know, over the last 31 years and package it into a, into a new and novel drug use case.
Paul Spain:
Right, so that’s something that
Greg Macpherson:
will run
Paul Spain:
sort of concurrently with other things you’re involved in.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, that’s right. So, so we’ve licensed some technology out of ucla and it’s a, it’s a broad spectrum antiviral. So it’s really interesting. It works on the human cells rather than on viruses, and it effectively stops viruses from getting into. Well, it doesn’t stop as far as getting into your cell, but it prevents them from getting the energy that they need to kick off replication. So quite novel. And it means that it works across multiple viruses as opposed to, you know, you take Paxlovid for two, just for Covid or Tamiflu, just for influenza. This will actually has application across multiple different viral families.
Greg Macpherson:
So at the moment that’s very much on a research phase. So there’s not much work that I’m doing on it. It’s really just funding the research, getting the intellectual property locked down, building new patents, et cetera. And I’m just about to go through the pain, if you will, of a capital raise to accelerate that.
Paul Spain:
This is Viriom, Is that the company?
Greg Macpherson:
That’s right, Viriom Pharmaceutical. So it’s really. Not many people know it, but we actually accumulate viruses as we age. Right. So, you know, people have chickenpox and they get shingles, they get, you know, a cold sore. They might get something called Epstein Barr virus that most of us have. There’s a whole raft that we get that just sit there quietly and really don’t cause us that many problems until we have. Until we get older.
Greg Macpherson:
And what they’re doing is they tire out our immune system earlier than we need to. So an example is Shingrix, which is a vaccine for shingles. There’s recent research that’s come out that you get that injection and so you vaccinate yourself against shingles, but you reduce your risk of getting dementia from between 20 and 50%, which is huge. It’s like almost incredible discovery and it’s just indicative of the stress that this little virus just sits there in your brain and just irritates it. And just quietly, you don’t notice it, but your immune system’s really busy keeping a foot on its collar, if you will. But eventually the immune system gets tired. And at the same time, your immune system spends so much time on that virus that it kind of doesn’t have the capacity to deal with anything new coming in. And they think maybe it’s why with the COVID pandemic that’s rolling through, why we’re seeing more things like long Covid and more cancers potentially, possibly because the immune system is getting a bit tied up and a bit tired, and it’s just allowing these things to kind of rear their head, whereas normally the body would keep them under control.
Greg Macpherson:
So the purpose of the company is essentially to lower that burden. And it turns out it works across a number of viruses. So that is going to be a focus for the next wee while.
Paul Spain:
Fantastic. So at what point are you going to have all the products, all the knowledge aligned so that we can just turn the dial and, you know, wind up our lifespans?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, so I think we 50%. Yeah, definitely. So I don’t think it’ll be us that does that. It’ll be a very, very well funded drug company. What we can do, we’ve done a clinical trial with the SRW products and what we were able to do was to, I guess, walk the body back. And physiologically, the people that were in the study came out lighter and stronger and slimmer. So that was physically what was happening. But at the biological level, there are ways we can measure its impact on cells.
Greg Macpherson:
And we reversed the biological aging of those cells so that we were acting younger. So we were, you know, it had beneficial effects for stem cells and for just generally supported cells. So I think, you know, really we were the first company to do that and do the clinical trial around it. And I say, like, you know, it’s not. We’re not the first penicillin. But we’re, we’re kind of starting to understand that these interventions do work and modulate aging. We will continue to revise what we’re offering with the new knowledge that comes out all the time. So these, you know, we do a version 2 of this product and really that’s, you know, when the first real longevity products come through, which are, you know, talking 10, 20, 30 years worth of age extension, they’re going to be really expensive.
Greg Macpherson:
So what we’re doing is really making it accessible for everybody and maybe with a focus on lifestyle as well as that, you get your 10 years, which is enough time for the price of these other therapies to come down and everybody will get the benefit of that. And potentially with this work we’re doing with the lowering of viral burden, that may give your immune system a bit more Runway as well. So these will add up to years and years of extra health. That’s fundamentally what we’re aiming to do.
Paul Spain:
That’s exciting. Yeah, yeah. Now, there was another book you’ve released as well. I don’t think we mentioned Ageless or Ageless. Where does, where does that fit in?
Greg Macpherson:
So that was really a, you know, the first books always, you know, you look at it and go, that’s. The quality is appalling. Right. So you go back and have another go and attempt to tidy it up. So this was really an evolution of the first book. I got the opportunity to travel around the world and, and sat down and captured interviews with leading experts and really just to get their view of what’s happening in the industry and also just to say, what are you doing today about longevity? So these are all accessible things that we can all use. So within that book there are QR codes that you can scan and it’ll give you a video and it’ll have Eric Verdon, who’s the head of the Buck Institute or near Bazali, who’s the head of, who’s just an incredible longevity researcher and just a pleasure to talk with these guys. But that book gave me the opportunity to at least learn again and, and build something which hopefully people can read and again, just learn what’s going on at a, at a consumer level and adapt their lifestyles and what they do take, etc.
Greg Macpherson:
And also giving people a sneak peek of what I think is around the corner in terms of radical life extension, which is just a matter of time.
Paul Spain:
So living forever is probably not quite on the cards from what you’re seeing.
Greg Macpherson:
No, I think the longest living mammals 200 years.
Paul Spain:
What lives for 200 years?
Greg Macpherson:
Well, it’s a bowhead whale, so and then the Greenland shark can live four to 500 years. Not, not a mammal. But you know, but what the, what my take on all of this is that, and it’s, is that we’ve program is aging, is programmed. And there’s, there’s some amazing mathematicians that looked at animals that don’t age, which are crocodiles and various reptiles. And there are animals that do age. And the animals that have aged have actually been much more successful evolutionarily. And what they think is that by aging quickly, reproducing quickly, and maybe having a shorter lifespan enabled us to populate niches and environments much easier. And so mammals essentially and other animals that have certain lifespans, that was the program which actually worked way back when.
Greg Macpherson:
And we have inherited that program. And what you can program, you can un program or you can do something with. And this is what’s happening at the forefront of the research now. David Sinclair is a well known name in the research community and he’s worked out that you can actually reprogram it. And, and so we have technology now which enables us to measure biological age. And this is essentially patterns of molecules on your DNA and those patterns drift and change as we age. And you can look at them and take a snapshot and say, well that looks like someone who’s 40 or 60 or 80.
Paul Spain:
Right. This is what Brian Johnson’s sort of known for working to turn the clock back.
Greg Macpherson:
That’s right. And all those foundational things we talked about move the clock backwards. Certain supplements move it backwards clocks, but they’ve getting really close to actually the master switch, which actually you can for want of a better word, in probably about 20 years time, go and have a cellular car wash and reprogram those patterns back to a youthful pattern. And then all of a sudden your cells start acting youthfully again. It’s really interesting. So there’s, there’s, there’s a really good chance that we can choose the age we want to be at and stay there for a reasonable amount of time. So you know, it’s going to get quite weird when that happens of course,
Paul Spain:
because you’ll be, I could turn back the clock on my graying beard, 100. Gray hair.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, you got it. Yeah, yeah, totally. And you’ll be, you know, socializing with your grandchildren’s mates and you know, it’s going to be just kind of, kind of weird on many levels. But the future philosophers will work all that out. But in the Meantime, you know, if you spoke to someone in the 1800s and said, look, instead of, you know, Average age was 35 lifespan and here we are at 73 or 80 in developed world, if you said, you know, you could have 40 more years of healthy living, you’d grab it with both hands. And so in theory we will get to a point where we can offer that. And it doesn’t mean you’re 120 and are just stuck in a rest home. It’s 120 and living in a 40 year old body.
Greg Macpherson:
So that’s potentially where it’s at. So obviously that’s a big leap from where we are. But the breadcrumbs are starting to appear that that’s likely, that’s what we’ll be able to achieve.
Paul Spain:
Anything else on your business story that you’d like to share?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, well, look, I think Pharmacy Direct’s an interesting one because we really worked hard to establish that and then Chemist Warehouse came to town and that’s been a massive challenge for the sector. We’re half the size we were and so that’s been, you know, there’s good stress in business and bad stress. Good stress is when you’re growing. Bad stress is when you’re having to right. Size things because customers have got a new channel that they can get lower cost products with it. So we’re, you know, we’re, you know, we’re having to pivot and diversify the business and we’re doing that and sorting it out. But that’s been, you know, it’s just, that’s, you know, another chapter in the pharmacy story, if you will, that’s still evolving and we are, you know, we’ve got a strategic plan we’ve mapped out. We’re slowly ticking all the boxes and I think Pharmacy Direct will, you know, we’ll start to claw back, if you will, some of those losses as we build a business with extra services and so on that will benefit people around their health.
Greg Macpherson:
But no, I think that’s the journey.
Paul Spain:
Now. What, what would be, you know, maybe from, from your, your journey, one or, one or two bits of advice you’d have for, for others sort of you know, key, key learnings from your, your story. Yeah, that, that you think maybe, maybe don’t get applied enough or others aren’t, aren’t aware of.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, look, I, look, I don’t know my, I guess like I was saying, I’m a slow learning really. We’re, I’ve got a friend, Hartley Atkinson, who owns AFG Pharmaceuticals and He’s done an extremely amazing job, and I’ve spent the same amount of time as he has on his business, and I think his business is worth about 300 million. And mine is serious, you know, points of that. Less. Like it’s. It’s almost the comparison is. You can’t make the comparison, essentially. So my learning really is okay.
Greg Macpherson:
If you’re looking at a sector that you’re in, it’s about really examining where the money is and either navigating there through entrepreneurship or, if that’s not your deal, really looking at the companies that are in that area and applying your skill set in making yourself attractive to those companies, because they’re typically less sensitive around how much they pay. And typically you’ll earn more on those companies if you’re an employee. So that’s definitely something I’m, I guess, pointing my kids towards in terms of really looking quite consciously around that. So that. Because you can spend the same amount of time in a role that pays you a living wage as a role that pays you twice as much. So it’s about like, okay, how do you find your way into those sectors and niches that are doing really well? And then I think the other thing is to really be quite conscious and thoughtful about, I guess, what you’re doing. I think in the early days, I was more attracted about being in business than actually being good in business. So it’s about actually taking a breath and looking quite carefully at what you apply your time to.
Greg Macpherson:
Because again, you can spend 20, 30 years building an online pharmacy or a pharmaceutical company, probably the same amount of effort, and the returns are really, really different. So it’s consciously designing that.
Paul Spain:
Yeah. And a different level of impact, too, right?
Greg Macpherson:
Yes, yeah, very much so. The more people you can help, the more impact you have, the more rewarding.
Paul Spain:
Yeah.
Greg Macpherson:
Life can be. Yeah.
Paul Spain:
Oh, that’s great. And any sum up on tips for, you know, longevity of health?
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, no, it’s. Look, it’s a. It’s really. It’s just. It’s exercise, diet, sleep, stress, and friends. Just get that, right. If you’re not a people person, get a pet. If you’re not a pet person, you know, there’s a community out there that, you know that, that resonates with you.
Greg Macpherson:
Just get involved and get out there. And certainly there are supplements that have benefit and there’ll be more and more of them, but just don’t get sucked in with just the one molecule, because it’s not one thing. Does all you’ve got to be quite holistic. Around how you approach it and again quite conscious. And that’s really where sow is focused on is how do we curate all of this? So and test it so that you’re taking something which has got reasonable evidence of effect.
Paul Spain:
And so for yourself, what do you take?
Greg Macpherson:
So I actually take everything that I make. It’s sometimes a bit of a chore in the morning because there’s quite a few pills in the stack if you will. But I swim every second day. I took the leap and bought a sauna a year and a bit ago. So I peer a sauna spathe after a swim and I do some time restricted eating. So try and eat within an eight hour window. Not always successful at that. But that just generally as a rule just gives you time, your body time to go from fed into fasting mode.
Greg Macpherson:
And there are things that the body does in terms of if it’s a bit hungry when you’re fasting, it’s got no food to access. So it might go and it sees a cell, it’s not operating particularly well, it’ll actually go and grab that and use it and a stem cell will pop up in its place. So it’s a nice way for the body to kind of keep the housekeeping going. And I do. I’ve got Crohn’s disease, which is an autoimmune condition and it’s kind of like arthritis for your guts I guess is the best way to describe it. So I actually do a four day fast every quarter. It gives my stomach a break. But there are really significant benefits in terms of that whole longevity pathway switch.
Greg Macpherson:
And it’s just a water fast. I drink a cup of tea and cup of coffee and water but I do that for four days and it just gives me a bit of a reset, gives my tummy a bit of a break if you will, but. And you’ve got to do it under medical supervision because some people shouldn’t do it. Some people with certain health conditions and, and some people possibly like don’t have not carrying enough weight that they can get through that time. But ultimately it creates metabolic flexibility and it’s good for you and there’s lots of research around it and yeah, I’ve got some amazing friends and I’ve got a purpose and if you got all of those lined up, you’re golden.
Paul Spain:
Excellent, excellent. Thank you very much. Greg Macpherson, it’s, it’s been a privilege. Thank you for your time.
Greg Macpherson:
Yeah, and it’s, it’s good to see you. Paul used to look after our Pharmacy one computers back in the day. So it’s quite neat to catch up with you again.
Paul Spain:
Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Thank you Greg.
Greg Macpherson:
Thank you.
Paul Spain:
Cheers.
Paul Spain:
Wow, what a fascinating chat with Greg Macpherson. I trust you have some great takeaways from this episode. New Zealand Business Podcast has been brought to you by One New Zealand alongside Gorilla Technology, making tech enablement and cybersecurity easy for for mid size and smaller businesses and by Outrun Global remote Staffing to help your local teams work smarter, not harder. Be sure to listen in to our other episodes featuring many of New Zealand’s most successful leaders, including Brooke Roberts of Sharesies, Sir Peter Beck of Rocket Lab, Cecilia Robinson of MyFoodbag, Sir Stephen Tindall and many more. And be sure to share this episode with a friend or colleague who you
Paul Spain:
think will benefit from it.
Paul Spain:
Now I have a question. How seamless and proactively is technology managed in your organization? The reason I ask is because recently a Chief Financial Officer alerted me that the tech onboarding he recently received from my team at Gorilla Technology was the best he had ever received. That’s because the Gorilla team care about the individual and delivering technology solutions and capabilities that work for you. So when a new team member starts at a guerrilla client, we give them a personalized introduction to how to get the best out of their technology and how to be aware of risks from the likes of cybersecurity and AI governance. Get in touch if you would like that level of personal care and attention. Hey, thanks for listening in. This is Paul Spain signing out. I will catch you on the next episode.
