Ep 45. The Real Risk After an Exit Isn’t Financial with Steve Adams
Building a business is hard.
Keeping your health intact while doing it is even harder.
In this episode of Legacy Branding, Steve Adams gets candid about the real risk founders face before and after an exit, and it’s not financial.
After decades of high-pressure leadership, multiple successful exits, and relentless performance, Steve hit a wall. He wasn’t “sick,” but his body was breaking down. That wake-up call led him to redefine success, rebuild his health from the cellular level, and ultimately found Tiger Medical Institute, a personalized medicine company helping founders over 45 restore energy, clarity, and control.
This conversation goes beyond health advice. It’s about what happens when success outpaces sustainability, and how founders can design a next chapter that includes vitality, purpose, and presence.
You’ll learn:
Why the real risk after an exit isn’t financial, it’s your health.
The gap between lifespan and healthspan most founders ignore.
Why “not sick” doesn’t mean you’re actually well.
How burnout and stress show up after the deal closes.
Why losing purpose accelerates decline.
How redefining success beyond money protects your legacy.
This is a grounded, eye-opening conversation for founders who want to enjoy what they’ve built, and stay healthy enough to live their next chapter on their own terms.
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Steve Adams is an entrepreneur, author, and the founder of Tiger Medical Institute, a personalized medicine company helping high-performing professionals, especially founders over 45, restore energy, clarity, and control.
After decades in corporate banking and entrepreneurship, including building and exiting multiple successful companies, Steve shifted his focus to health optimization following a personal health crisis. His work now centers on extending healthspan through data-driven, cellular-level medicine tailored to the needs of busy leaders.
Steve is also a published author and the founder of a nonprofit organization supporting entrepreneurship in developing countries. His mission is rooted in human flourishing, helping people live with vitality, purpose, and impact into their next chapter.
Connect with Steve:
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00:00 – Welcome & Episode Framing
02:00 – Steve’s Background: From Banking to Entrepreneurship
04:30 – The High Cost of High Performance
07:00 – Hitting the Wall: Burnout, Insomnia, and Health Decline
10:30 – Why Traditional Medicine Misses Founders’ Health Issues
13:30 – Lifespan vs. Healthspan: A Founder Wake-Up Call
16:30 – The Biggest Risk After an Exit Isn’t Money
19:00 – Rebuilding Health: A Data-Driven, Personalized Approach
22:30 – Purpose, Identity, and the Post-Exit Crisis
26:00 – Defining Success, Legacy, and Human Flourishing
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Their biggest risk when they exit is not money and lifestyle. Mostly, it's gonna be whether or not their health stays well. That's what could take 'em off the chess board.
Welcome to the Legacy Branding Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Beauparlant, here to guide you through the journey of selling your business, and building a personal brand that leaves a lasting impact. On the show, we'll explore real life founder stories, expert insights, and actionable strategies to help you navigate the transition, avoid post sale crisis, and create your impact driven legacy brand. Whether you're thinking of selling, building to sell, or already on the other side, this podcast is your go to resource for making your next evolution, your best one yet. Let's dive in.
Today on the Legacy Branding Podcast, I'm joined by Steve Adams. He's an entrepreneur, author, and founder of Tiger Medical Institute, a personalized medicine company helping high performing professionals restore energy, clarity and control. Steve's journey spans decades in both corporate banking and entrepreneurship, and after building and exiting multiple successful ventures, he turned his focus to health optimization, especially for founders over 45, navigating transition or preparing for exit.
His work helps leaders reclaim vitality so they can lead with purpose into their next chapter. He's also a published author and the founder of a nonprofit supporting entrepreneurship in developing countries. Steve, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. When you say decades, Laura, that means I'm old
Well, you know, that's just your season. You bring experience to the table, and I think there's also a lot that comes with that, the wisdom and the knowledge and the things that you can share.
Yeah. It was funny, I was talking to a guy today and when we're in our thirties, if you were to see it on a piece of paper, we make a million little turns and turns and turns because we can just do things out of sheer raw energy and willpower. When we get older, we can just cut right to the front of the line because we have all that synthesized knowledge and we need it. 'Cause we don't have the energy anymore to do that.
That's true. I think we have to be a little bit more discerning and strategic as we get older.
Yeah.
So I'd love to know what inspired you to launch Tiger Medical. I know we had such a great chat when we first connected. I was like, Oh, I'm so excited for this conversation. So can you share, was there a personal wake up call that led you to really focus on this?
yeah, there was. I had basically a high pressure type role my whole life. I started working at like nine years old, mowed five or six lawns until I was like fourteen. Then I worked in an apple orchard in Michigan where I grew up. And then went in, I was a janitor at a high school all through high school while playing three sports and going to school.
My kids laughed like, how did you do all that? Dad? Then went into college. I had a scholarship to play football, so that was a full-time job on top of going to school. So literally since I've been nine years old, I've just been going hard. When I got into my early fifties one of the concerns I had is everybody in my dad's side of the family passed away before age 60. Cardiovascular and cancer. I was losing energy really fast.
I told people I felt like I was going down a railroad track on my one foot on each track, and it was gradually getting wider and wider and I was just trying to hang on. That was kind of like the metaphor I was using. At that point, our retail chain of Pet Superstore had grown to the point where I was traveling 130 nights a year to visit all the markets around the country and invest in our teams as CEO, and I just hit a wall. I couldn't sleep anymore. I slept for two hours a night for about five years.
Oh wow.
I was in bed, but I didn't sleep. I had severe acid reflux. I had pain throughout my body. A lot of anxiety and fear and what I learned later was it was all connected. The problem was I wasn't classified as having a disease. I wasn't technically sick, and my best friend is a physician, my general practitioner physician, and he said, Steve, we operate in a model of medicine that is sick care. You have to be sick or else I can't treat you. That doesn't make it bad, Laura.
And that's the thing I wanna make sure people hear. They do great work, but for people who are, getting toward the middle of life and they're just not functioning at a level that they're accustomed to and everything is harder, it's gonna be hard to find an answer in that world because you're technically not sick yet, but the last thing I wanna do is wait around until I got sick so I could get help, right?
I mean, you don't think that way if you build companies. Or any kind of vision. So, I ultimately decided to go to my partners and exit the company on that company. I found a naturopathic MD, on the West coast who had a different model that just blew me away. and he talked about doing medicine from a cellular level. He had this acronym, and I have to look at my notes 'cause it was so good. It was provide, protect and promote. And the idea was provide yourselves the fuel they need. Protect them by removing toxins and things or neutralize things that damage yourselves. And then promote an environment around them that fosters very good health. He said, the idea here is if your cells are happy, that was the word he used. And healthy your tissues are. And if your tissues are, your organs are, and if your organs are, your whole body is. And so he said, any approach that doesn't involve going to that level is gonna leave a person in your situation wanting, you're not gonna be satisfied.
So in 2018, I went through a process for a year with him. The contrast was stunning. My primary said, your labs look fine. You're okay. Just rest more, the generic
Yeah, classic.
He's a great guy. He's well intended. Dr. McNamee said to me, you have like 35 things wrong with you. You have systemic inflammation that is off the chart. You have a genetic marker that doesn't metabolize starch. You're short on this enzyme in your stomach, digestive aid. Your microbiome is in what's called dysbiosis. You have both minerals and mold toxin burden. A pre-diabetic and you've got inflammation pathway, genetic markers that are the worst I've seen.
And your sleep score genetically is a D out of D is the worst. he goes, I'm just getting started. But he goes, the good news is, every single thing that I just told you, we can reverse it. I went through that process with him. It took a year to get the first wave of feeling much better, but it took three or four years really of staying with it. it's eight years later. I have, my energy levels are like when I was in my thirties. My markers are better than I was when I was 40. My primary even confirms that. But the big thing is that one of the challenges that we face in the west primarily is our lifespan is 77 to 80 years, but our health spans only 66.
So between 11 and 13 years, people are sick before they die. And the whole vision I had and what Matt has done for me, Laura, as he's compressed that and given me more health span years. I'm not telling people we're gonna get 'em to 156 like David Asprey wants to do, or 180. What we wanna do is help people have really good health for as long as possible before whatever event happens and they die. That's how I got into it. So when he brought me through that, it was like, I don't need money. I want to bring this to the world, and I realize other people are doing it, but what we've done is we've dialed it in for a busy person, a hundred percent virtual in a way that they can do it.
I love it. That idea of lifespan, or a health span.
Yep. Yep.
It's so key. 'cause who wants to live a long time, but the last 20 years or 12 years or whatever it is, you're not well, like that's not something that I would aspire to.
It's not, my inspiration also is my father. He is 84 and he got chronically ill at age 53. And he's been sick for, what is that, 31 years. He's been sick,
Oh wow.
He can't do a lot of things. He's got a great attitude. I love the guy. He's such a great mindset guy, but he said, I've been sick for 31 years and I've not been able to do the things I wanted to do in retirement because of that.
And that's been partly my inspiration is I wanted to change the narrative. I still have the same genetics he does, but my genes are not expressing the ways his did because I changed what went inside me everybody else is that's listening to this, whether you work with me or my company or somebody else, you are, you have the power, you have the empowerment to do that yourself.
Yeah. And I think, you said it that you've now, I believe, outlived the male relatives on your side of the family.
Right? Yeah. And most all of them were dead. Well, all of them except my dad. He was a family of six kids, died 46 to 55.
So that's a testament to the work that you've done and the work that you now do for others,
It is. And some of the downline things are I have a grandson who's almost three and a granddaughter who's like four months old, three months old. And I get to engage in their lives. If I, if I died at 59, I never would've met them. So that was partly my motivation too. And when I talk to people, I get a lot of men who had kids a little bit later. They come to me, they're 49 and they have a 5-year-old. And I say, when do you think your son's gonna get?
Or your daughter's gonna get married? Probably 30. I said, all right, so who's showing up to walk her down the aisle when you're 74? And if you don't do anything different. might not be there. And I'm not trying to manipulate, I'm trying to wake 'em up. Guys that exit companies, this is what your podcast is about people that exit. Their biggest risk when they exit is not money and lifestyle. It's mostly, it's gonna be whether or not their health stays well, that's what could take 'em off the chess board. And
wouldn't that be sad if they sold and did all everything right and then they lost it.
Yeah, and I mean, we've heard those stories, whether it's a founder or somebody retiring and dying shortly after, a lot of people put their life on hold for their career or their business, and they're like, I'll start living, once I sell or once I retire. My dad had a friend who in his fifties, died like a couple of weeks before his retirement.
Wow.
And didn't, and he had all these plans that he never got to experience.
There's a reality in medicine so our physicians have talked to me about it that, one of the things that we wanna do with our clients is the worst thing in the world for a human being is to do a full stop retirement because when you're bought, when you lose purpose thats sends decay signals to your cells and your body starts to die. One of the things that I would encourage and this was me. When I thought about exiting my company, I already had something in mind. I knew I was going to do something that would help entrepreneurs with their health.
I didn't know what it was gonna be yet, but I already had purpose. Plus, I have a nonprofit that you mentioned where we do, formation globally. As you prepare for an exit, you need to be thinking about your purpose even before you exit. Because if you exit and you wake up on Monday, and I realize this, you're gonna realize the world goes on and they, without you, so you wanna have purpose.
Yeah, and that's a lot of the work that I do is helping founders separate their identity from the business and figure out what is their bigger purpose, what is the legacy that they wanna create beyond the business? Because, come that Monday after they sell, like their inbox is empty,
Yep.
don't have a desk to go to, a team to run. And entrepreneurs we're kind of a different breed like we are. We're doers, we're big achievers, but a lot of type A personalities. And suddenly you've sold your business, you've got all the money in the world, in the bank, but suddenly your purpose and identity are gone. And I like to say we help people at, prevent or at least mitigate the existential crisis after exit because we wanna help them with that before.
They get to that point and so that it works so beautifully in tandem with the work that you do, because I think health and purpose, especially after a sale of a business, I think in general they're important, but when you sell, you think, ah, I've done it. I've hit the payday, I've achieved this big thing.
Then suddenly you start to wonder like, what next? What's the next chapter? And people can really flounder in that time. And I think you're right, that is when health can take a hit.
Yeah, and it doesn't mean you have to jump right into something. It just means that directionally you have purpose that you're directionally targeting, but it might be good for you to take a year off and recover physically. Do something like what we do or with someone else, just do that, rebuild your, your ability to mount a response.
Because many people come to us with their adrenals just shot and their body literally can't mount a response to a stressor. And stress is good for you. It's not just bad,
With stress of what we have to teach people how to manage it and mitigate it on demand.
But anyway, I don't wanna get ahead of us, so go
Yeah, no, I want to ask like, I think a lot of founders put their health on the back burner. They're like, I'm too busy to work out, prepare meals, spend time with family and friends, like whatever that is. Then they end up very depleted, and I know the exiting process for so many people is a challenging time.
You're, I've heard it described as you're doing two jobs, you are selling a business, which is a full-time job, and you're still leading your company at the same time, so you exit and you're completely burnt out. You haven't been taking care of your health perhaps for years. I'd love to know how you help people recover their energy and their purpose and their ability to perform and do things like walk their kids down the aisle or play with their grandkids, or show up and play pickleball, whatever it might be.
Yeah. Well, the thing that I always start with people is we bring someone into our process, so first of all, what a lot of people are frustrated because they're smart people. So they go out and they research and you find all these conflicting grooves with generic advice and, they don't know your specific data, so it's always dangerous to grab something off a shelf from somebody on a podcast when they're not looking at your labs. Now, I'm not saying it's all bad, there's good stuff out there, but the typical story is I went to my doctor. I didn't get any help. I tried the chiropractor, I tried acupuncture, I tried this, I tried that. I tried all these biohacking things. I threw my hands up. And what I say to people is that what you're gonna do with us is you're gonna enter into a clinically validated organized process very data-driven, very science-driven, hardcore medicine. But the bottom line is we have to know what's going on inside your bio biology. So we're gonna do very comprehensive, advanced testing. So that's gonna involve genetics. It won't be all at once. There's a process to this. we're gonna look at toxin burden. We're gonna look at your hormones.
We're gonna look at all of the key advanced markers around kidney health and autoimmune health and blood sugar regulation and hypertension and cardiovascular, like our cardiovascular markers are superlative compared to what you get at a normal annual physical that your insurance pays for. You establish that baseline and then what it does is it give, and then our doctor does an hour and 15 minute intake call.
Most people are like, I've never gotten an hour and 15 minutes with a physician, and he asks a millions million questions because he said, most of my strategy comes from listening to the patient for an hour and 15 minutes. They give me clues before I even look at the data. So he gets all of that. Then orders the test based off that. And that takes about 90 to 120 days. And all of it's sent to your home. You do it at home. You may go to a LabCorp request locally, but everything else is sent right to your house. As that's, so while all of that's happening, our health coach is working with the person to learn how to mitigate stress on demand. So we have some practices around that. Usually if somebody is consistent to six days a week doing it, and it's not hard we baby step it. We are big believers in micro habit change. Start small and work your way up. Tiny habits. They, in three weeks, they'll start to feel better from just that. We'll get 'em doing a very simple, easy to comply with a daily fasting regimen that's basically just a eating window and a non eating window.
We will start looking at some of the basics of their sleep habits and fixing some of that. So in that first 90 days, if we can get 'em sleeping a little better, get 'em de-stress. Get their metabolic efficiency improving from the fasting. Already getting a win before they even got the first meeting with the doctor. And then what happens is the doctor looks at all of this data and goes, okay, here's where we're gonna start first. And we start in a small, tight ring of the most impactful change. For some people that's around autoimmune. Some people it's sugar, some people it's blood pressure and hypertension. It, wherever it's different for everybody.
Then we just keep recycling that process. The physician meets again. 'Cause basically what he is looking for is, are you at, there's four stages that we evaluate is, are they diseased or are they just which is pre disease, like A1C of 5.7, 5.6. are they functional? Meaning you're within the standard range, or are they optimal? And what we wanna do is move you either from diseased or dysfunctional all the way up to optimal. So average is not our standard. Our standard is optimal. So the process just repeats testing, personalization of a plan. You follow it. You work with your health coach and the doctor. We retest, you get better, and we move on to the next thing. We just keep repeating that cycle for a year. We literally have, I can't say a hundred percent 'cause that wouldn't be true, but we're like in the high nineties of success rate. The reason why is there's nothing magic about it, it's, if you think about cellular medicine and how I explained it, that works every time. It's like an airplane. When you get enough speed, it creates lift and it takes the plane off the ground. It works every time.
📍 So are there things that become lifetime kind of habits or some things that they do for a period of time and then they can stop?
It's both. So we have eight health habits that we train everybody in, and by the end of that year, you're doing all eight. And it's amazing to people. They can't believe they're doing it. The things that we teach around stress management, you're gonna do that the rest of your life.
I've been doing that stuff for 10 years ' cause I started it in 2015. I knew an NFL quarterback right before I exited and he told me about his brain coach and I learned from that guy the stress management protocols we used.
The sleep hygiene and sleep stuff. I do. I've been doing that for eight years. The fasting I'm gonna do the rest of my life. The movement I do every day, I'm gonna do that the rest of my life, but it'll change as I get older. I'll have to do different things, different weight training, different movement. the nutritional thing I have to eat ketogenic. Everybody needs to know this, where you're at on this.
I have something called the M-T-H-F-R gene. 52% of the population has it. It puts you at a significantly elevated risk of cancer. Usually if you have that, you don't make serotonin and dopamine, which puts you at higher risk of mental health disorders. If we know that we can dial in how you eat, put you on a specialized methyl version of vitamin B, and it will self-correct. And I've gone through that process. Well, I have to do that the rest of my life. I have to eat keto. I have to keep my carb count down because carbs create sugar, which is what cancer likes to live in and proliferate and eat. And so I wanna starve any cancer. And you and I both have cancer in our body all the time, and our immune system kills it. And so what I wanna do is daily I wanna starve that cancer so my immune system can kill it. So yeah, my answer is yes to both. Like do things the rest of your life if you're smart, but they will change as you age.
That makes sense. That makes sense for sure. Okay, so I'd love to kind of switch gears a little bit from the health piece, although it's also fascinating and I really love what you're doing, Steve. We'll make sure they can check out your website and learn about how to work with you.
So you've built and sold businesses, you had a corporate career, you've written books, you run a for-profit and a not-for-profit. How do you define success at this stage of your life and career?
Yep. The way I define it is am I living out the values that I ascribe to, number one. Number two, the relationships closest to me. Are they healthy? My wife and I have been married almost 39 years. We met 41 years ago and it's not straight up it's been a lot of this it was pretty rough in 17 when I sold, and we've had a lot of success there. Getting that take corrected. So it is not monetary. I want enough to be able to do the things I wanna do in life, but I am not comparing myself to anyone. I'm not trying to climb anything. I'm not trying to climb socially. The books I wrote were not for self aggrandizement.
They were for a very specific purpose around an audience that I wanted to help. And we have a new one coming out in May. I am really excited about it. I don't even have a title for it yet,
I was just gonna ask, what's the title?
No, I don't have it yet. I'm really excited about it. And , we're bifurcating it. I have a team member that's the director of Women's Health and I'm gonna have her as the main author on that one. And I'm the main author on the other. And then our Dr. McNamee's gonna medically review the whole thing. It's gonna go deep into everything we're talking about today. But the messaging is very different to males and to females.
And so I wanted a female voice for that one. Around perimenopause and menopause. Huge issue.
Yeah, it's very important.
Women are being gaslit on it and all this. But anyway, it really, it's around am I living according to my values? Are my relationships good? Am I stewarding the resources that I have? Well, modeling for my kids how to live with wealth and properly, and just how to work well and also just, am I finishing well, I look at my grandkids and go, what are they gonna remember? And That kind of guides the decision making I make. I wanna show up for them when they're high schoolers and college, if I can live that long. So the kind, that means I'm not gonna be chasing every new idea. I'm gonna stay married to the same woman. I'm not gonna have the fanciest car 'cause what values am I trying to pass on to them? So I think that's how I would define it.
I love it. And this is called the Legacy Branding podcast, and I always ask the question, what does legacy mean to you? But I feel like you've already kind of, you've touched on it, so is there anything else you would add to what is the legacy that you are, you're creating?
Well, I would call it a calling to entrepreneurship and to work help entrepreneurs and so everything that I'm doing now. So I have an organic grocery store and restaurant in Florida. We have the Simple Health and the Tiger Medical businesses. and so everything I'm doing and then International Business' Mission is about helping people in developing nations that live in oppressive regimes or they're poverty stricken, empower them in their own business.
It's all about human flourishing. I just want, when I'm done and I'm laying in my bed and I'm going bye-bye. Can I say I lived according to that calling? That's the legacy I want.
Human flourishing. Oh, that is beautiful.
Yeah. Well, it's not original to me. I just hijacked it. I loved it 'cause it's more than just money. It's, they're flourishing. They're literally thriving in every aspect of their life. And that includes health, that includes money that includes. Work I believe God ordained work and , it's intrinsically valuable. There's nothing bad about it, and we're made to do it. We're not made to sit around and talk about lunch plans
No.
I mean, it's okay to do it, but
Yeah, and I think relationships too, and they need to flourish. I think, as humans, our relationships are so essential.
they are,
And the health of them and to have them flourishing, whether it's your marriage or friendships, family and whatever shape that takes.
Yeah. Not that they're all straight up, it's can you work through them of quit on them? 'cause we live in an era where people just quit on stuff. They don't stick it out.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it is important that we continue to grow and learn and see what are the lessons in every experience, whether it's exiting your business, a health scare a relationship breakdown. It's actually and our power to change that narrative and to not dwell on it and feel sorry for yourself, but go, okay, what am I gonna do now?
What is, what am I gonna do next to change where I am?
Yeah. And it starts with us. You.
A hundred percent?
Yeah. You can't change the other you gotta change you first.
Absolutely. So I've love this conversation. I would love for you to share how people can connect with you, learn more about working with you, your various businesses, and just connect with you, whether it's on social, what's the best way
Well, I have a VA team that runs all my socials, so if you find me there, I'm on everything. Through the Tiger Medical Institute. Or international business' mission, either one of those. But, if you're interested in the just the health aspect just go to Tigermi.com, tiger like the cat, mi like Michigan. So Tiger MI. So Tiger Medical Institute, that's what it stands for, .com. And what you're gonna see when you get there I'll double check just to make sure I'm right. 'Cause sometimes they change stuff and don't tell me. What you wanna do is, oh, it basically, other than wanting your email, you can ignore that, but it just, the headline is Your Health Holding You Back. Find out for it's too late. And basically you can click on this button that says Get My Health Insights. And you can buy a test that's HSA approved and all of that, I think it's 500 bucks and it'll be a comprehensive blood test. I'm always hesitant to let somebody jump into our full one year program. I really would like for them a test, show me that they'll get out of their office and go somewhere and do the work and do the test. Meet with me I've been trained by the doctors. I can go through the labs with them, and now, I'm actually showing them real data that we're gonna use to help them get better, and I can make it real clear to them, this is exactly how we're going to help you. On what I'm seeing now, this is just part of the picture. We don't have genetics, we don't have biome, we don't have a lot of things, but we have a lot, we have 73 markers here that we're looking at, and they're all advanced. That's how I, that's how I start with people is let 'em make a small decision first, get information, and now they're educated because I don't wanna take their money. And then they get in and realize it wasn't a good fit. I'd rather just say, come back when you're ready. So if you go to that website, you're gonna see that right on the top, but you can also, navigate. We have like 350 articles on our website if you wanna go search a topic, doctors, our team, have written about it. And I think on there somewhere, if you just wanna talk to me, you can. You can just book a call and I'll see it and I'll talk to people for 15 minutes and kind of hear where they are. Lab results, I meet with 'em for an hour
Okay.
and we basically create a blueprint for them.
Well, we'll make sure that we have the link in the show notes and I encourage everybody to check out your site, check out some of those resources, the articles, maybe learn something more, maybe discover,, but if you've got some health challenges, if you feel like you've put your health on the back burner, I would definitely recommend, checking out Steve site and thank you so much for being here, Steve.
Thank you for sharing your insights and your own journey.
Laura, thank you. I really appreciate it. Loved how you did the podcast, how you asked good questions, and I appreciate it. Thank you.
My pleasure.
Thanks for tuning into the Legacy Branding podcast. I hope today's episode has inspired and empowered you on your journey to building a brand that truly matters. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with other founders who you think would benefit from listening.
And if you're ready to take the next step in building your legacy brand, visit our website, labcreative.ca to learn more and book a call. Don't forget to join us next time for more conversations that will help you navigate your transition and create your legacy. Until then, I'm Laura Beauparlant.