Jesse Cannone

What makes me productive is the ability to take a plethora of information, and streamline it in a way that is easy to understand, informative, and engaging.

 

Jesse Cannone wears many professional hats, including author, certified fitness trainer, certified post-rehabilitation specialist, proponent of the uber-successful herbal supplement Heal-n-Soothe, and co-founder and CEO of the Healthy Back Institute. Though these titles differ vastly in scope, their main component, and Jesse’s ultimate motivation, is the notion of helping individuals live healthy, natural, and pain-free lives. Through his professional ventures, Cannone seeks to provide education, alternative medical support, and physical therapy to individuals around the world who utilize his methods to successfully manage their health.

Dismayed by wealth-centric Big Pharma and discouraged by the dangerous side effects of traditional medication and surgery options, Jesse’s own back pain motivated him to seek alternative methods of pain management and long term wellness. After extensive research including conversations with leading researchers and experts from around the world about natural pain remedies, Jesse developed the world’s first self-assessment and self-care company for back pain sufferers, called the Healthy Back Institute. Since inception, Cannone has created a massive amount of literature, information, and content available for self-education, and has put his stamp of approval on a handful of carefully selected all-natural supplements sold under the Healthy Back Institute umbrella, including star systemic enzyme formula Heal-n-Soothe.

Maintaining a finely tuned balance between his professional and personal life, Cannone relishes time spent with his large family. As adventure and love of sport strike his fancy, he is often found mountain biking, engaging in the practice of Muay Thai, or enjoying the great outdoors near his home in Austin, Texas.

Where did the idea for The Healthy Back Institute come from?

As a professional personal trainer, my own back pain, and pain from various previous injuries, began to take a toll on me physically. Eventually, my daily pain began to get to the point where it directly impacted my personal life as well as my livelihood as a personal trainer. In addition to having tendinitis in both arms and lower back pain, I also experienced extremely disruptive knee pain. Exhausted from suffering, I was very close to having knee surgery. Timing was key in my being able to avoid surgery and the possible consequences related to surgery.

Working toward obtaining a Post-Rehabilitation Specialist certification, I attended a continuing education workshop which was geared toward learning about training individuals with various physical injuries. While I was there to amass as much information as possible to help others, I was also curious about potential methods to aid my personal situation. From an expert at the workshop, I was introduced to the theory of muscle balance therapy. He showed me a few stretches that would help to align the muscles in my lower body, and after about two weeks, my pain was gone. Recognizing the vast potential benefits of this alternative method of pain management, I immediately cancelled my surgery and began this huge quest for learning about natural pain relief. After this enlightening moment, I combined my budding interest in business and marketing, with my expanding knowledge of natural pain relief, and parlayed the entire package into The Healthy Back Institute.

What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?

For the most part, between four and six hours daily are spent in meetings. These can be extensive meetings with my teams, educational meetings with researchers, and operational meetings aimed at scaling the business further. Each day, I focus on short-term goals and create plans for the content that will be produced, the customer service that will be performed, and the operational needs that will be delegated. Then, I also focus on the long-term goals needed to continue to succeed, including continuously increasing profitability, increasing our reach, and gaining more influence within the field. Additionally, I spend a great amount of time preparing for conducting interviews with healthcare professionals. When I conduct such an interview, I find it to be a sign of respect to be ready to discuss the interviewee’s professional scope, niche field, and to be able to have meaningful, educational, and conducive conversation, which only comes from amassing knowledge.

How do you bring ideas to life?

When I have an idea, whether for an interview topic, product or educational tool, I try to always do the needed research to gain a full understanding of not only the idea, but the execution of the idea. Knowledge and information alone isn’t always necessarily useful, especially if it is not consumed by individuals seeking said knowledge. For example, before the inception of The Healthy Back Institute, I recognized the lack of information regarding a specific problem I wanted to solve so I conducted research to be able to not only provide the answer to the problem, but to also provide it in a way that would be most helpful to those interested in the topic.

What’s one trend that excites you?

I’m continuously excited about the general public’s growing interest in pursuing homeopathic remedies, exercise science and natural remedies, in lieu of conventional medicine. Though there has always been a niche for these teachings, offerings, and products, the niche was somewhat removed from mainstream consideration. Now, more and more people are turning to natural medicine to gain reprieve from various ailments. As individuals become increasingly frustrated with negative and possibly dangerous side effects associated with traditional medicines and recognize the financially driven motivations of pharmaceutical companies, they are becoming drawn to the notion of achieving the same pain management results without the negative aspects of conventional medicine. For example, within the formula found in Heal-n-Soothe is an herb called Devil’s Claw, which has been used as a natural pain reliever for hundreds of years in Africa. Within studies, it was found to be equally effective in controlling arthritis pain as the most common “traditional” drug on the market. How is that not absolutely exciting?

What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?

While many people are naturally inquisitive, they may not know how to best consolidate the information they gather and turn that information into a productive source of educational content. I am one of those people who constantly seeks information and thrives from garnering new insights about the intricacies involved in the broader spectrum of holistic healing, natural remedies, and pain management. Thus, in my worldwide search for knowledge, I seek out experts, researchers, and leading practitioners within many niche fields and try to learn as much from them as humanly possible.

What makes me productive, however, is the ability to take that plethora of information, and streamline it in a way that is easy to understand, informative, and engaging to subscribers of my podcasts, or who read my content. Essentially, I extract wisdom from the vast amount of information out in the world and present it in the most optimal ways with the goal of being as helpful as possible to readers, viewers and audiences.

What advice would you give your younger self?

They say that youth is lost on the young, but if I could give myself any piece of advice (and my younger self would have actually listened), it would be to continue learning! Though I was always an inquisitive person, I wish I learned more about the mind-body connection, specifically, and amassed this great understanding of the intricate balance of the human existence.

Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.

Though I’m not certain that nobody agrees with me on this topic, I believe in the 80-20 rule when it comes to the requirement of back surgery. While many falsely believe that surgery is the only option to relieve chronic pain, and go through with a surgical procedure without exhausting other options first, I believe that surgery is more often than not an ineffective and potentially detrimental option.

Within the medical industry, surgeons themselves coined the term “failed back surgery syndrome,” which explains the eventual relapse into pain many individuals who previously felt short-term relief after surgery, or continued pain even following surgery. The self-reported back surgery success rate is roughly around 40%. That doesn’t earn my confidence!

As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?

As an entrepreneur who takes a holistic approach to healing the individual, I remind myself to consider the whole instead of the part. For example, when an individual cites wrist pain as a particular problem, I choose to consider various sources culminating in the manifestation of pain, including emotional trauma, diet and nutrition, movement and exercise, etc. By treating one particular ailment as a piece of a larger puzzle, I am able to attack the root of an issue, rather than only masking the effect of the issue. The same can be said for business, and I would certainly recommend implementing this school of thought for entrepreneurs, especially those experiencing a setback. Instead of just looking at the particular setback itself, it often helps to step back and consider what secondary factors may have led to this setback. From there, it will be much easier to consider a wide set of approaches to combat any issue.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business? Please explain how.

I believe that my truly holistic approach to maintaining health, wellbeing, and balance is what sets me apart from competitors. Whereas many specialists tend to focus on one approach, or one localized source of advice, I view many possible factors related to any particular issue. For example, someone who experiences daily lumbar pain and wants to minimize this pain as naturally as possible, a chiropractor will only consider ways in which the spine plays a role in this pain. While a chiropractic alignment may be very helpful in soothing back pain, the adjustment itself will most likely not suffice if the muscles around the spine are not working properly, or if improper diet, stress, lifestyle, and various other factors are involved in the root cause of this pain.

Thus, I take a full-on approach to each ailment. Within this example, I would recommend several stretches and exercises for the individual, including exercises based on the muscle balance theory, as mentioned previously, and would provide the individual with extensive exercise and stretching instructions. I would effectively communicate to discover how stress is related in the example and provide natural remedies for relaxation, meditation, and even suggest oils that aid with relaxation. Finally, I would impose dietary guidelines for maximum effect and employ the use of natural pain management supplements, including Heal-n-Soothe, which combines over a dozen natural pain-fighting herbs and various enzymes to limit chronic inflammation, which is a key force of pain.

This full-on holistic approach, in addition to client empowerment through education, is what I feel makes me successful in what I do. By providing people with alternative tools, with minimal side effects, no known dangers, and effective results, I give them hope, motivation, and re-energized inspiration to live a healthy life. Though I run a business, it is a business based on a lifestyle.

What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?

I wouldn’t necessarily consider it a failure, but in the beginning, I have certainly faced a lot of setbacks. When I started The Healthy Back Institute, I did so on my own dime. Never having taken investor capital, I operated the business from the ground up, initially with a co-founder. Due to this grassroots-style effort, I was responsible for every aspect of the business. Essentially, I was the CEO, the web developer, the researcher, the sometimes customer service specialist, and literally everything in between. Thus, at times, it felt as though my driving force, my mission, and my fire were almost crushed by the weight of having to multitask, and wear so many hats that took me away from my main goal of providing informative content to people.

As an entrepreneur, I recognized this was somewhat what I had signed up for. So I used my passion for consuming knowledge to my advantage and started to look at all of these other factors of business as not only being essential to the survival of my business, but also interesting. When I switched my perspective, it got a lot easier to do all the things that were needed to scale the business appropriately, and eventually free me up to set forth on the education adventures of my dreams.

What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?

I’ve recently found great success with craniosacral therapy, though I have not seen many professionals involved within this niche therapy. Essentially, the therapy is performed by what I consider to be medical intuitives. I won’t completely spoil the concept, so if readers are interested in pursuing natural therapy as a business, there’s a lead!

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?

Though it may have been a tiny bit more expensive than $100, the first thing that comes to mind is also one of the best purchases of a lifetime. I purchased a sensory deprivation floating tank, and it continues to put me in a state of meditative trance. It allows you to completely relax in a way that meditation alone hasn’t allowed me to accomplish quite yet and is a completely valuable tool toward maintaining mental wellbeing.

What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

Cloud-based storage solutions have been an integral part of keeping my entire team on the same page and allowing instant access for all team members involved on various projects. By being able to remotely access information we are able to perform tasks in real-time, often positively affecting things like customer service.

What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?

Well, a particularly inspiring man is Dr. John E. Sarno, a former professor at NYU’s Medical School, and attending physician at NYU’s Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. He has written a handful of very helpful books, including tomes about emotional trauma being the root cause of certain physical ailments. His books are not only informative but provide a comprehensive look at the mind-body connection and provides lessons that can be applied by all readers.

What is your favorite quote?

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” -John Galt (Atlas Shrugged)

Key Learnings:

• By approaching a very specific issue (healthcare related, or otherwise) in a holistic manner, one becomes open to examining the root cause of the issue from several perspectives, and thus, may be more successful in treating the root of the issue.
• When in the beginning stages of business development, one can rely on long-term goals, motivations, and remembering what drives their mission as a way to move forward through adversity.
• Amassing extensive knowledge about the topic surrounding one’s business will not only help bolster the business but maintain passion related to the work being conducted on a lengthy timeline.
• Approach alternative answers with an open mind!

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