In this episode of Success Unleash’d, Zack Ellison and Shawne Merriman sit down with Jim Poole, CEO of NuCalm, to explore their experiences and takeaways in building a revolutionary technology. He looks back to the origins of their all-natural and clinically proven neuroacoustic software that reduces stress, improves sleeping patterns, and optimizes athletic performance.

Success Unleash’d Principles From This Episode

1. Purpose Is the Ultimate Fuel

Jim shares how purpose drove resilience in his life. He embraced the unwavering mission of improving other people’s lives while navigating all kinds of challenges along his path.

2. Innovators And Being “Too Early”

Jim explains how innovators must learn how to handle the gift – and curse – of coming up with something cool and exciting too early.

3. Persistence Outlasts Resistance

Jim’s story proves that persistence and long-term belief in your mission can eventually break through even the toughest resistance.

4. Build Through Data, Not Ego

Instead of selling hype, Jim led with hard science, data, and research. His journey shows what could happen if you let your work speak for itself.

5. Handling the Skepticism of Innovation

Jim shares how he withstood the biggest naysayers and skeptics of his work. He stayed true to his potential breakthroughs instead of giving in to unnecessary clamor.

6. Giving Time to Recover

Jim achieved and sustained his peak performance by giving ample time to restore and reset his body and mind, setting aside the unhealthy grind.

7. Word of Mouth: The Most Powerful Marketing

Jim believes that creating lasting relationships will help make your brand known far and wide. Organic marketing is always the best way to bring yourself out there.

8. Don’t Waste Energy Convincing the Unready

Jim stresses to not take it personally when people say no or disagree with you. Simply move on and find the next open door.

9. Evolving Your Product with Accessibility

Your biggest ideas must cater to all people, and Jim underscores why founders should take into consideration everyone’s needs and wants when rolling them out.

10. Stay the Course Even When No One’s Watching

Jim’s guiding principle: “Do the right thing when no one’s looking.” Integrity, consistency, and belief are the cornerstones of real success.

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Watch the Episode Here

Listen to the Podcast Here

Creating A Revolutionary Technology With Jim Poole

Introducing Jim Poole Of NuCalm

We have with us Jim Poole, who is the CEO of NuCalm, which is one of the coolest apps out there. Jim, I’m very happy to have you on and also very excited for you to tell people what NuCalm does because it’s pretty revolutionary in many ways.

Zack and Shawne, thank you very much for having me. It would be pretty difficult to coalesce 35 years of applied neuro-psycho-biology in a 60-second overview, but let me try to do this. The brain, the way we feel, and how we operate in our behavior are directly correlated to the frequency of our brainwaves. It’s mathematics.

There are five categories of brainwave function. Delta, theta, and alpha are slower frequencies in sleep. Beta and gamma are faster frequencies in action. As a human species, we rely on external stimulation to regulate the speed of our frequency, meaning we’re not doing this internally. If I say, “I want to focus for the next hour,” I don’t do this myself. Caffeine, when we’re feeling mentally lethargic, activates and increases the speed of your brainwave. It’s not magic. You think faster. You have a tough day, emotionally challenging some conflict. You have a glass of wine and voila, all the problems in the world rolled off my shoulders. That’s not magic either. It slows down the frequency of your brain.

In 2025, as amazingly complex and brilliant as the human brain is, it’s pretty pedantic when you’re thinking about how to regulate how I feel. We rely on caffeine, Red Bull, Monster Energy, and 5-hour Energy to activate. We rely on alcohol and recreational drugs to slow down. We rely on anti-anxiety, antidepressants, sleeping pills, exercise, intimacy, you name it, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are two ways to regulate the frequency of your brain without drugs, no side effects, and no external stimulation.

The first way is visual stimulation. Made famous by Sigmund Freud. Following a frequency to elicit a response changes the speed and the frequency of your brain. The second way and the way that we perfected and invented is to use your ears to carry a signal that your brain synchronizes to. We use your ears to deliver 250 megabytes to 2.5 gigabytes of information. We put music over it so it’s a nice experience for the listener. You put headphones on and like a thermostat, you are regulating the frequency of your brain. That is what we’ve done. If it sounds revolutionary, it’s never been done before.

Jim, in terms of the outcomes, it helps people sleep. It helps them reduce stress, it helps them focus. Talk a little bit about the outcomes that can be generated by using the product and how people should use the product.

We started as an FDA Class 3 medical device in medicine from 2009 to 2021. We had one defined outcome. Hover your brainwave above deep sleep in the healing zone called theta. It has a frequency of 4 hertz. That was our one defined product. That product went through the FDA, Health Canada, military approval, and NSS-certified for sports for athletics, the only patents in the world. Research is done at Harvard and NASA and 52 medical advisors. All hardcore science with one defined outcome.

I have witnessed about 500 surgical procedures and surgeries are pretty barbaric. There’s blood, there’s torque, there’s physics. You’re doing things in an operatory and the person’s not on general anesthesia. They’re listening to our physics wearing an eye mask. That makes you suspend your disbelief. You look at this, you’re like, “How are we doing this?”

In 2015, I challenged our neuroscientist. I said, “If we can take everybody’s brain to 4 hertz, even in the chaos of surgery, can we take them all the way to 0.5 hertz sleep? Can we take them to 7.83 hertz creativity? Can we take them to 18.4 hertz focus? Can we take them all the way up into Gamma 41 hertz, high-intensity, mistake-free performance?” The answer was yes. From 2015 all the way to July 2022, we built 6 products that now manage all five categories of your brain with one mobile app.

With one mobile app, you can manage all that.

We have six products. As the user, you simply select what you want. Rescue and power nap take you into the healing state of theta. You lay down, you put an eye mask on and a headphone. You meditate like a monk for 20 or 30 minutes. You get up and all your problems are washed away. You feel amazing. Your mind is clear. Deep sleep takes you to 0.5 hertz. With a speaker in your bedroom, you press start, we put you to sleep.

The flow state is 7.83 hertz. It’s the intersection of alpha and theta. I don’t want to get too scientific, but 7.83 hertz is also the magnetic rotation and the Earth’s frequency. That’s why people who do grounding are trying to pick up the frequency of the Earth at 7.83 hertz. That’s the creativity and flow state. The 18.4 hertz is focus. It’s not lying down. You put a headphone on. You can do chores, you can go walk, you can do your contracts, and you can look at the computer.

The 41 hertz is a product called Ignite where we activate you. Shawne, you would have loved this when you were playing. Listening to physics for thirteen minutes. We activate your gross motor cortex and your sensory motor rhythm. We activate your musculature. We increase your peripheral vision, we increase your olfactory and we activate your mind for absolute certainty. In January 2025, we launched a confidential product for the elite FBI Hostage Rescue team. Fifty-six operators have elite access where they put headphones on and we activate them to that high state of consciousness where they can make split-second decisions that can be life-threatening or life-changing.

What People Are Saying

I have a question about this. I’ll be completely honest. Early on, when I started my career and we were playing, none of this stuff was important. Nutrition wasn’t important. You knew you had to sleep, but the most important was powerlifting and the core things. Not until the middle towards the end of my career that all this stuff came around and was available. At least people started to talk about it. I know you guys are working with athletes and things like that. How have you seen the changes in some of these athletes? What’s some of the feedback you’ve been getting from the guys that have worked with you guys?

In 2015, the medical staff for the Chicago Blackhawk said, “We would not have won the 2013 and 2015 Stanley Cup championships without NuCalm.” That’s pretty much the biggest honor in endorsement on record. It begs the question, “What are you talking about?” They said, “It’s simple. Our players are restoring and recovering faster.” We know the battle of attrition in the Stanley in the cup playoffs. You’re playing seven games against a team you hate. You’re traveling. They know you, you know them.

Secondarily, and most importantly, it cleans the slate. If I have a bad game, instead of ruminating over it all night and the next day, it cleans the slate. The trainer said, “I want our players to play intense, not tense.” That was the biggest endorsement. We’ve worked with the Golden State Warriors when they won championships. The Washington Capitals, the Philadelphia Eagles, the French World Cup team, 58 UFC fighters, the United States Tennis Association, US Open.

As you know as an athlete, very few athletes share their competitive secret unless they’re in a contract year and they’re older and they’re like, “Okay, now I’m going to share.” These athletes weren’t even sharing with their spouses. I remember a renowned quarterback and his wife had a baby. I said, “How’s your wife like NuCalm?” He’s like, “She doesn’t know about it.” I said, “What?” Share it with your wife. Happy wife, happy life. She’s sleep-deprived. You got a tool for it.” The sports stuff has been fascinating.

I love that idea. It’s not only good for the athletes to listen to, all their family members should listen to it, like their kids and their wives.

It’s fun too, Shawne. I don’t come into a locker room and train a team and talk to them about applied neuroscience and meditation. I say, “Guys, do you want to heal faster? Do you want to get rid of your bumps and bruises, your hematomas? Do you want to get rid of inflammation, and lactic acid? Do you want to work out hard, push hard, and then accelerate your recovery? This is the tool. You’re jet-lagged. You had a good game, you had a bad game. You get on your flight, you get your hotel, you get home, and your circadian rhythm is disrupted. Let’s put you to sleep.”

It’s simple access points, but the product is effective. These players know their bodies. They know their mind and their body is their currency to succeed. If you solve these problems and as ritualistic as professional athletes are, once it works for months, you create all these habits. We’ve established a lot of good friendships with athletes, but it hasn’t been a good marketing piece for us. Professional sports and the military have been great market credibility pieces, but they’re not marketing. You don’t sell because the military can endorse products, it’s illegal, and athletes won’t share their secrets.

Working With High-Profile Clients

Jim, you do work with some of the biggest influential people that are out there. Can you talk a little bit about that and why they work so closely with you?

It’s hard for people to understand when they look at what we’ve done, they’re like, “You guys work with FedEx Pilots Union. You work with SAG-AFTRA, you work with the military, DOD, VA, Department of Justice, FBI, House of Rescue team, how did you do all this?” My answer is, “We didn’t do any of it. People’s word of mouth found out about it. We opened the door and we serve.”

Tony Robbins was introduced to me on May 7th, 2015. His doctor called me up and said, “Tony and Sage are here. They flew from Fiji. They’re jet-lagged. They tried NuCalm, they love it, they want to buy it.” I said, “Tell them to buy it. Why are you calling me?” They bought it and then they bought more, then they bought more. This was a $6,000 FDA Class C medical device.

Within nine weeks, Tony Robbins became one of our top customers. He’s not a doctor. He bought nine systems. I said, “Somebody call his manager. What is going on here?” They call him up and say, “Are you selling these?” They said, “No, Tony loves your product. He refuses to go a day without it. He’s got five homes, his own jet, and the others are backup.” I’m like, “This guy is crazy.”

I called Michael and I said, “Michael, this dude is freaking nuts. I want to meet him.” He arranged for me to fly down and spend the day with Tony. This is why he’s doing what it’s doing. He’s a smart guy. He coalesced that information and we began a ten-year relationship where we fly around the world and create what’s called NuCalm Recovery Lounges at his platinum events. We were an Abu Dhabi and Whistler.

He exhausts them, sleep deprivation, malnourishment, and psychological overload. They come and they get restoration and voila, they become lifelong customers of ours. Tony has been a key influencer for us. He’s helped spread the word. He’s got a tribe that follows his word. He wrote the foreword to the NuCalm book. He featured us in his book. We collaborated with an LA relief program where we donated 500,000 free annual subscriptions to NuCalm to anyone affected by the LA Fires.

Jim Quick is another dear friend of mine. He is eight years practicing NuCalm. He had a major traumatic brain injury that was compromising his sleep and putting him in crisis. I was introduced to him in 2017 and quickly he called me up after our introduction. He said, “This is changing or saving my life. I mean I’m not sleeping well.” When you create value for somebody and you change their life and then they introduce it to their spouse, their kids, and their parents, you create lifelong partnerships with people.

It’s not, “Go out here and do this and that.” We haven’t had to do any of it. I was on the phone with the head of the FBI. Why? Because we’re doing things for them and they’re seeing this value like, “We have new pilots that are using this. We’ve got new operators here. We’ve got logistics people here.” We have a product that solves an inherent problem for them, primarily Zack and Shawne, it’s around stress relief and sleep.

When you balance that out and you get to a place of good health, then we activate the focus and the ignite pieces. It’s been fun to do. As a neuroscience company, I reflect on the sixteen years that I’ve been running this company. There wasn’t a path. We started by helping surgical procedures, by replacing general anesthesia. “Let’s operate on somebody without compromising their central nervous system and let’s do this well.”

We perfected that model and then people were coming in and having surgeries. That’s how we got into pilots, professional athletes, and the military. We were like a 32-year-old insular Willy Wonka neuroscience company. We didn’t play well with others. We didn’t try to partner with anybody. We didn’t ask anybody for anything.

We spent 32 years trying to figure out how to manage the complexity of the human brain and build solutions to take care of you. Now, we’re a mobile app. The first product in history that transitioned from an FDA Class 3 medical device to a mobile app. Now we can start having fun. Now we can start having partnerships and sharing with the world the possibilities of what can be without drugs.

Doing Something No One Has Ever Done Before

Let me ask you because you guys don’t need a recommendation now. You’re past the point of trying to sell it and prove that this works. Initially, starting out, what were some of the hurdles? I remember playing and it would be all products dropped off in front of my locker. You can sleep longer, you can work out hard, you can jump over a building. What were some of the initial hurdles when you first started out? What were some of the pushback?

This happens now, Shawne. No one can believe what we do because they never heard of it. If I say to you, “With a mobile app and a headphone, we can regulate your sleep, your stress relief, your anxiety, your focus, your creativity, and your energy. You can throw away caffeine, anti-anxiety, drugs, alcohol. You can throw it all away. You can modulate your behavior every hour of every day for the rest of your life.” You look at me cross-eyed like, “What planet did you come from? That’s insane.” That still happens now.

Early on, we’re a neuroscience company. Early on, our hurdles and obstacles were we had to develop a medical advisory board. We found 52 of the world’s best academicians and scientists because when you’ve pioneered something the world hadn’t seen before, you have to bring advanced scientists that take your ego to the door and either corroborate it or destroy this work.

The beauty of this product and my running the company, I didn’t invent it. There is no ego attachment. You take the adage from Wall Street, in God we trust, everybody else brings data. Let’s prove this. I want to see the data. It was going through the FDA, it was going through the patents. We studied stage four cancer patients in the Chicago Blackhawks for five years to get the first patent in the world to balance the autonomic nervous system and solve stress without drugs.

The hurdles were more in the scientific realm of this is the hurdles you have to go through. You have to pass all these gates. To me, upon reflection, Shawne and Zack, it’s money not well spent. Millions of dollars, time, energy, and resources to prove something. All you guys need to do is go to a hospital and see a surgeon with them using NuCalm instead of general anesthesia. You’re like, “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but that works.”

Pragmatically speaking, if somebody wants to use this today, what are the steps they take, how much does it cost, and how should they use it?

It’s simple. You go to NuCalm.com. You look at the site and say, “Here’s who uses it. Here’s what it is. Here’s how it works.” You go to the Buy Now page of the Free Trial page. We have a seven-day free trial and then we’ve created plans. The first plan is $0.50 a day. The second plan is $1 a day. The third plan is $1.67 a day. You purchase your plan, you download the app, you get a headphone, and you get your own headphone and eye mask. We take you through a seven-day onboarding, “Welcome to NuCalm. We’re going to change your life. We’re going to reduce your stress without drugs. You are going to sleep well. This is how we want you to do it.”

It couldn’t be any easier, Zack and Shawne. We serve 100 countries and one of the things I value about NuCalm is it’s culturally agnostic. It’s gender-neutral and there’s no language barrier. There are four tracks on Ignite that Tony Robbins collaborated with and did the voiceover. One was us training the Washington Capitals together. The other was us training the Golden State Warriors together. Other than that, it’s music that you hear on top of the physics. We’ve made this affordable.

When you say on top of the physics, what does that mean? To me, that sounds abstract, music on top of physics.

Trust me, it’s even more complex and abstract.

For a dummy like me, explain what that means.

We have math. We have a pitch and frequency matrix. At minute one, the pitch might be 161.2 and the frequency is 14.2. There’s a mathematical matrix. There’s a non-linear, constantly moving oscillating algorithm. That’s our secret sauce. That’s how we have the only patent in the world. We’re delivering a message to your brain that your brain is synchronizing to. Shawne earlier said, “Back in the day, we were thinking go, go, go. No pain, no gain.”

The zeitgeist has changed. People are starting to wake up to the necessity for recovery and sleep and restoration and growth hormone and all that, all the important elements to grow. Binaural beat, there are millions of those. You can get millions of binaural beat apps. People say, “How are you different than a binaural beat app?” First, let’s apply logic. We used to be a $6,000 FDA Class A medical device. Do you think we might be different than a $0.99 app? Of course, it is.

Here’s why it’s different. Binaural beat references the delivery of the message to the brain. It is a delivery path. An example would be when I order a pizza, and the pizza delivery boy shows up. I don’t eat the delivery boy. I ate the pizza. The binaural beat is the delivery boy. What is it that you’re serving my brain? Blake was a neuroscientist, quantum physicist, and genius amongst geniuses. It took him nineteen years to figure this out. If I don’t trick the brain with the message I’m delivering to the brain, you’ll build resistance.

Any app that you’ve ever tried, Holosync, The Monroe Institute, The David System, The Silver System, any of those binaural beat apps, the first time you listen to it, has a tremendous impact. You’re like, “This is amazing.” The second time you listen to it, it’s good. The third time you listen to it, it’s mediocre. The fourth time you listen to it, nothing happens because your brain has something called a reticular activating system that figured out the pattern and then found a shortcut. We have a non-linear algorithm. It’s perpetually changing. The physics is software and it’s big. It’s 250 megabytes and 2.5 gigabytes of information that we’re presenting to your brain to gently guide you, slow you down, or speed you up.

Tenets Of A Successful Career

This is fascinating. I’m pretty excited to try it. Let’s take a step back. Let’s talk about not just NuCalm, but other success principles that you’ve learned as a business person. We’ve talked about the product, which is compelling, but what about what you’ve learned over your journey building this? I’d like to also learn about what you’ve overcome to get here because I know you’ve been doing this for a while, over fifteen years as a CEO, and it seems like now you’re at this breakout moment.

Shawne and I have talked about this many times and with other founders too. It takes twenty years to become an overnight success. Pretty soon, you’re about to be an overnight success. It’s because of roughly twenty years of work behind this. Talk about all the stuff you had to overcome over those twenty years to get to where you are now and what the future holds now that you’ve broken through.

It’s starting to feel more like an intervention. I’m going to get emotional thinking through all the hurdles.

You’re going to have to listen to NuCalm to feel better.

I am. There’s one thing I didn’t know when I got involved in 2009. I didn’t know the challenges that confront revolutionary pioneering technologies. I’ve had to learn. I’ve had to learn and read about Disney and Steve Jobs and the microwave and other technologies. When something is new, how can it take so long for it to become a mass market? It is because our brain, our central nervous system demands a comparison. If I say to you, “This is what we can do,” and I don’t compare it to anything, your brain paralyzes and shuts down.

Jim, I have to pause you right here for a second because this is exactly what I’ve gone through and I think Shawne as well, because we’re all doing something innovative, but in different fields. I’ve experienced this over the last few years as I’ve been trying to explain to the investment community what growth, credit, and venture lending, some people call it venture debt, what that is. It’s crazy to me that it’s been very hard for people to get their heads around it. They don’t understand.

I’m telling you, we are killing it right now. We work with some of the best founders in the world, Shawne included. People still are like, “Why would I do that if I could buy stocks and bonds or if I can do a real estate loan that’s going to blow up and lose me a bunch of money?” I feel what you’re saying here personally because there’s nothing more frustrating than having a product that you know is killer but you’re like a little bit too early.

You have to fight through this resistance from people who are like, “If it was so good, why didn’t they do it 50 years ago?” It’s funny, we were talking. Shawne and I were on another podcast with Dave Mays, the founder of The Source Magazine, which was the most iconic hip-hop magazine of all time. It was the same thing. He lost a lot of his money or all of his money essentially during the dot-com era because he went all in on taking The Source online and he was a little bit too early because he was saying the speeds of the internet were so slow then so you couldn’t download a music video or stream music like you can now.

Imagine if he had done 15 or 20 years later what he was doing then, he’d be a billionaire, but because he happened to be in this generation where he was so talented and so visionary and so innovative and he was there too early and it wound up costing him. I feel like that’s something that a lot of founders struggled with. That’s why I brought it up because I’ve struggled with it, you’ve struggled with it. I want to hear your story.

Have me on another time. I’ll walk you guys through the evolution of the brain, the physiology of the brain, why we do what we do, why we’re creatures of habit, why we don’t take risks, and why we evolve so slowly as a species. For now, I will share with you the tenets that would have helped us. Number one, I’ve never lost the sense of purpose and the mission to help humanity liberate humans from stress and sleep.

I’ve seen through the data and the research, we work with stage four cancer. We work with dementia, we work with disease, trauma, and complex, trauma addiction. We work with people who have the biggest need in the quietest voice. I didn’t know how nefarious and how negative the consequences of stress and poor sleep are. It doesn’t kill us with an ax. It kills us with a million cuts with a butter knife and we don’t see it because every day, if I don’t sleep well tonight, I’m not dying tomorrow, but it’s contributing to my death ten years from now.

Seeing that and seeing the capability, and also for me, I had an incredible mentor. I’ve done about 500 medical lectures to the best doctors in the world all over the world. I was the voice box of this technology because I couldn’t put Blake on stage. He had to share with me all the knowledge. Learning about your brain is so fascinating, you’re never going to get bored.

That helped me along the path. The more we tested this, Zack, when you go to Harvard Medical School, NASA mathematicians, the world’s leading psycho neuroimmunology say, “Here, this is what we built. Prove it or disprove it. We don’t care about the research design.” Everybody comes behind and says, “This is amazing, let’s move forward.” The mission and the purpose give you the tenacity and the absolute certainty that nothing is going to stop me.

You both know, as soon as there’s a door opening, as soon as I think, “Maybe I don’t want to do this anymore,” my fear factor will consume that energy and I’ll find an out. I have never for a millisecond thought we’re not taking this to the world. I never knew the path. I’ll be honest with you. I can hypothesize all the great strategies in the world. We’re dealing with the brain. We’re dealing with pioneering tech. We’re dealing with complex science, but we’re also dealing with people’s lives and trust. You keep going. We’ve built.

Shawne said, “What are the hurdles?” The hurdles have been ridiculous because nobody understands what we do. We’re forced to go and do research and clinical studies and trials while we’re trying to serve people and then it’s a $6,000 complicated device. I can only serve a finite group of people that way. Find a better way. It took six years to move this tech to an app.

I’m not a patient man. I was a Wall Street private equity guy before I did this A year in, year out. You set up the thing, you do the investment thesis, you do the roadshow, you secure the money, you grow the company, and sell the company. Everything was bang, bang, bang. That’s why I say I don’t know if I’d have done this if all those years ago you said, “Jim, do you know it’s going to take 40 years to bring a novel concept to the world?” I’d be like, “I haven’t got 40 years.”

We’re 35 years in. I think we’re going to truncate the 40 years. I think we’re going to get out of here sooner than that because of technology and the fact that we have a force multiplier in an app. Again, stay the course. Keep the faith. As leaders and pioneers, you’re alone in a crowd. Get used to it. Get used to speaking alien form to people who look at you and their eyes are crossed. You’re like, “I thought you were smart. I don’t understand how you’re not getting this concept.” It’s because they’re incapable of thinking out of the box because of how their brain is wired.

The more I learn, the more I realize that people are always going to be resistant to change and innovation. I used to get frustrated by that. Now, I view it as an opportunity because the slower everybody else is to adapt, the greater the lead I’ll gain because they’re staying put, and I’m going to keep moving forward.

Dealing With Negativity And Naysayers

I think this is what differentiates a lot of the best founders from others. They’re willing to put themselves out there and start doing something that people don’t believe in. When you were building this, how did you fight that negativity in the sense that people probably didn’t believe you? They’re like, “Jim, this is some BS idea. Everybody’s already doing it. It’s not going to change the way we do things.” You had to hear no thousands of times before you started hearing yeses. How did you get through those tough times?

I was born with an identical twin and I was probably wrestling in the womb and I wrestled for twenty years, did martial arts. I want to throat-punch you and put you in a corner. That’s what I want to do. My initial reaction is I will kill you for saying no. Over time, I’ve grown patience and wisdom and I’m 56 years old. My first thought isn’t killing. It’s, “How about the path of least resistance?” There are 8.4 billion people on this Earth.

What I find, Shawne and Zack, are the people who say no and dig into no, it’s their insecurity. There’s a saying in medicine, if you’re not up on it, you’re down on it. When I run into that obstacle, I don’t try to push through because I know I can flank you to the left, and flank you to the right, but I’m not going to waste my energy.

If I stay true to what we do and as a culture, we live by this credo, we do the right thing when no one’s looking. I never have to look over my shoulder. The Mark Twain quote, “When you tell the truth, you never have to remember anything.” You stay the course with the tenacity and persistence. Listen, my wife will tell you, “My husband has been cheating on me for fifteen and a half years.” NuCalm has been a mistress that has occupied my life. She’s ingrained in the culture of NuCalm.

Now she’s evolved to a place where we raised our three kids and she’s less jealous of it because the kids aren’t taking a hard time and juggling. You guys both know this. You have to believe. The people who don’t believe, it’s not up to us to decide why they don’t believe. We can speculate insecurity, jealousy, envy, lack of interest, whatever. It doesn’t matter. They’re not going to believe. I’m not going to waste a moment or a mental calorie trying to convince them. I’m going to move to the next target.

The beauty of this was for thirteen years, we didn’t push. We received. The surgical window was our gateway to pilots, professional athletes, military, and cancer patients. Everybody came to us because they tried the NuCalm in surgery and then ended up calling our surgeon saying, “What was that? I feel amazing today and I shouldn’t.”

We have been recipients of the goodwill of the product itself and grassroots marketing of word of mouth. This isn’t good either. Shawne and Zack, you both know, we’re never heroes in our own homes. If I come home and say, “I’ve got to tell you about this new product,” my wife’s like, “Whatever. I’ve heard about it a million times, I don’t care.”

Word of mouth to friends, word of mouth to people who do respect us has been the grassroots for this. To any entrepreneur, what I see and what I’ve seen over the last fifteen years is the persistence, the purpose, the mission, and the tenacity not to allow no. We’re like pachyderms. You can say anything you want, you can do anything you want to me, you’re not stopping me. It’s the persistence. I’m not patient, but I’ve learned I can’t force and impose my will on humans. I can’t do that. I have to educate. If it’s important to you, you’ll come to the family.

That’s awesome. I appreciate it. That’s great. I figured you did something. What revolves around sports because I saw the tenacity. I knew you did something, so it was good to hear that you did a little bit of combat sports here and there.

I was probably twenty years too old for MMA. I wrestled for 20 years, and in martial arts for 20 years. I was built to get in a cage. At 56, I’d be winded and knocked out in probably 30 seconds.

Maybe we get Jake Paul in the ring with you or something.

I’m 220 pounds, so let’s go.

Closing Words

I guess we’re about out of time. Jim, I appreciate having you come on. There’s a lot to grasp here with the science, but we know it works. We know real people with stressful, high-level jobs love it. I’m pumped up to try it.

Shawne, you played football. Football is probably 1,000 concussive acts of your brain to your cranium. This is good for TBI, CTE, concussion, all of it. I had TBI.

I already thought about that as being the number one, especially when you play collision sports. In some of the contact sports, we played collision sports, it’s the first thing I thought about when I heard it.

At a high rate of speed, too. It’s not like you were crawling and hitting heads.

Jim, one of my favorite things that always cracks me up when I think about it, I asked Shawne once, “Have you ever gotten a concussion?” He said, “I never got one, but I’ve given out a bunch.” I don’t know if we should be laughing about it.

A force of habit. Thanks, Jim. We appreciate you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Thank you, guys. Be well. Thanks for the opportunity.

Take care, Jim.

Take care.

Important Links

• Zack Ellison on LinkedIn
• Zack Ellison on Instagram
• The 7 in 7 Show with Zack Ellison (podcast)
• Applied Real Intelligence (A.R.I.) website
• Shawne Merriman on LinkedIn
• Shawne Merriman on Instagram
• Lights Out Sports TV website
• Lights Out Xtreme Fighting website
• Jim Poole on LinkedIn
• NuCalm
• G. Blake Holloway

About Jim Poole

Jim Poole says, “the human race appears to be in a race to erase the human race.” And at a time when “many people seem to have lost control of their lives,” NuCalm is the perfect remedy, argues Poole, the visionary CEO behind the stress management technology.

“We have a tireless passion for helping people reclaim control of their lives,’ says Poole. “And we can do it with the world’s most powerful neuroscience. We have a culture of service. We don’t serve for reciprocity or credit, we serve because we want to, we can, and we love to. It’s our mission and it’s our purpose and we will leave an indelible legacy on the human condition.”

NuCalm is a unique, patented technology that’s clinically proven to lower stress and improve sleep quality. It naturally guides brain wave frequencies reliably, safely, and effectively, with no drugs or side effects, using physics, mathematics, and algorithms in neuroacoustic software underneath music.

Poole, 56, is an accomplished business executive with extensive experience in the healthcare, biotechnology, medical, financial services, market research, and IT industries. Since 2009 he has managed the strategic direction and ongoing operations of NuCalm, a neuroscience company with an expertise in evidence-based personalized wellness and performance.

NuCalm stands alone as a pioneer in neuroscience that provides humans with the power to change their mental state on demand, without drugs or side effects. In July 2015, the U.S. Patent Office granted NuCalm the first and only patent for “Systems and Methods for Balancing and Maintaining the Health of the Human Autonomic Nervous System.” In August 2021, the U.S. Patent Office granted NuCalm the first and only patent for “Methods and devices for applying dynamic, non-linear oscillations and vibrations to elicit a physiological state change in humans.”