Have you ever wondered what the wellness center of the future would look like? Well, it’s already here and it’s called Kollectiv. Founder Alain Palinksy shares how he brought his vision to reality and what you can expect when you visit Kollectiv. Alain has a wide range of optimization solutions under one roof and has provided an setting for health-conscious people to engage with each other.

In this deep dive, you will learn …

What is Kollectiv and why did you start it (0:10)

• A wellness hangout with naturopaths, saunas, IV therapy, cryotherapy, a spa, light therapy, a cafe, a shop, and more
• Everything should be under one roof and like-minded people should be able to engage with each other
• It has been around for about a year and a half

What are the outcomes, what is the feedback (7:45)

• People have the opportunity to pursue therapies they haven’t experienced
• Everyone loves the experience and enjoys getting to meet other health-conscious people

What’s next for Alain and Kollectiv (11:11)

• PEMF machine
• Expansion to additional locations
• Bringing in passionate and knowledgeable staff

Full Transcript

Saad: 00:00

We’re here with Alain, the founder of Kollectiv, andAlain, we’re incredibly excited to be here. Do me a favor and tell me what you guys are doing here.

Alain: 00:10

Basically created a wellness hangout. Very simple. Have a café, retail, and kind of conglomerate of … conglomerate, a guess a collective of a few different brands congregating in a space I designed to create a whole experience for health and wellness activities.

Saad: 00:28

Why’d you decide to do it?

Alain: 00:29

Wanted my own hangout. I mean, simply instead of going out at night to a bar or nightclub, I wanted to create a place that I could actually come to that’s actually health conscious and positive, and have good food and good services around.

Saad: 00:43

All right. So tell me, this place is the first place, and I’ve been going all around the country, you’re probably literally on the bleeding edge, and you brought all the most exciting things together. How’d you come up with that?

Alain: 00:55

I just, I don’t know. It’s kind of just what I thought about, and what I wanted to do. I didn’t really create a plan or do any market research. I thought about, well, if you’re running from one place to the next, how can you bring in an environment of products and services that can fit into one space based upon square footage, and I guess more territory, let’s say, based on the environment we’re in.

Alain: 01:26

New York, you’re not going to put in certain services in New York they would have maybe in Latin America. So, based upon the market what’s healthy, what’s good, and what’s going to work as well, because you got to make sure the business can run. Yeah.

Saad: 01:37

Okay. So, tell me what’s here right now, and then also tell me where you think this is going.

Alain: 01:44

So, right now we offer a wide array of services that are more commercial, like saunas, IV, cryo, massage, and then things that are a little bit more alternative in the sense that there’s an energetic device that’s powered by a Tesla coil, a white light therapy that helps your brain recalibrate, some recovery compression boots, you know, so array of services, some are known, not known. And the idea is to expand upon that, for a medical doctor to kind of do other service and therapies, so maybe draw blood. Create more dynamic testing that could be sent out so they can see patients here, and always sort of be on the brink of what is possible, and available, and feasible for clients and customers.

Saad: 02:44

So, that’s interesting. So, you have not only we’ll call it traditional wellness therapies, you guys have food upstairs.

Alain: 02:51

Yeah. Upstairs is café, retail, probably by The Alchemist’s Kitchen, and the tricky part is, I would guess is what do people do every day? They eat, they shop, maybe shop, and they want to do something recreational. So, you take those three different categories and put them into one place. We’re excited, I think, people want to feel comfortable in a space or want to know, they want to know where they’re going to get their services and treatments done, so part of the idea is to create the environment that feels comfortable, as well, not only has good service, but also feels like, hey, I can hang out here, I can meet people like-minded, and it’s like a community center, where you go to congregate. And that’s sort of the kind of backbone of what it is.

Saad: 03:39

And you actually think, this is really interesting, you think that these kind of places are the places that people will hang out in the future?

Alain: 03:46

I think if you look at the market, like everyone going to their gym, SoulCycle, Equinox, whatever they’re doing, all these sort of active lifestyle slash brands and are coming up, and you know, run clubs what have you, I think for individuals looking to be healthier and more health-minded, yeah I think there’s a need where people are like, well where do I hang out and where do I go to? And there’s just very few options. And I think as we grow and the demand is there, there will be more of these types of places around the country.

Saad: 04:21

Do you think these become commonplace everywhere?

Alain: 04:28

You know, it’s tough to say, I guess I look back when the first sushi restaurant opened up in New York like 30 years ago, and it was good. Now there’s a lot of sushi restaurants, some are better, some are worse. So I think there will be places like this, there will be places that are not at the level of what it is, but there will be more places like this in general, just offering or, you know, a different level of service based upon the community.

Saad: 04:53

And you actually are kind of fusing it’s wellness, it’s food, and even you’re kind of talking about medicine a little bit, too.

Alain: 04:59

Yeah, as we grow I think there’s a need for people like, you know, they’re looking for what tests to do, what doctor, like, my naturopath is a blood genius, he reads blood differently than whatever biomarkers there are, or whatever range they have for a healthy person, he has a different set of valuations and metrics that he plugs to see if someone is healthy or not. So you can get blood work done, but people are reading the information in two different ways. So I think exposing those people to doctors who a little bit ahead of the curve or have maybe some methodology that maybe it’s not today accepted by the medical community but will be in the future, is a very important part of what we’re doing. And what I want to offer to my customer base. You know, not just like X, Y, and Z, but really give them an opportunity to meet other people and get a different input on what’s happening in this space.

Saad: 05:45

Interesting. So I actually spent two hours with an alternative physician yesterday after he pulled 12 different vials of blood from me. What’s the one thing that you think you want people to know based upon the care you’ve had so far?

Alain: 05:57

You know it’s funny, I went to a very good medical center in Europe and they did my blood and the only thing I had off was low Vitamin D, which is normal for not being in the sun in New York, and I had high selenium, bilirubin or selenium, I forgot what it was. One, I think it was bilirubin, and they thought it was genetic because everything else was good and great, and then when I went fully plant-based, other than, well I eat cheese every once in awhile, so I’m actually a vegetarian, when I cut out all meat, all eggs, it dropped. So I went to one of the best clinics in Europe and in their mind it’s actually, “Hey, it’s genetic.” Well now I know it’s not genetic because it dropped based upon my diet. So some doctors would look to test further or look to change a diet to see if it comes in range, and would try to diagnose or try to create different environments for you to see and test the blood throughout a certain period of time to see what it may be, before they make the conclusion, “Hey, it’s just genetic.”

Saad: 06:58

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alain: 07:00

And most, you know, if you think about it, you look at people who get cancer, they go to the doctor when they do fine, a month later they have Stage 3 cancer. Well how is it possible? How was it a month ago when they’re fine, now they’re … so something that they’re reading is not in line with what the actual fact is. Something is off that they’re not equating. And there are doctors who are much better at reading blood than the average doctor that we have, or even a good doctor, he just doesn’t have the experience or doesn’t buy into a new set of principles that maybe is on the cutting edge of wellness.

Saad: 07:29

And tell me, you’ve had this for now how long? In this current format?

Alain: 07:34

It’s always evolving, so current for about a year and a half.

Saad: 07:37

So in the past year and a half, what are the kind of outcomes you’ve actually seen?

Alain: 07:42

Outcomes in terms of like-

Saad: 07:44

People.

Alain: 07:45

You know, I think that people come here, they’re sort of not expecting what’s here when they walk in because we’re not advertising so much. And some of the brands in here are sort of they do one thing, so if you have a sauna company, they do saunas, and then IV’s is IV’s, so they’re kind of focusing on providing a service. When they walk into the space and they see everything we offer, they’re kind of like startled a little bit, like I had no idea. You know, because it’s sort of hard to communicate a message of all the different things that are happening in this space so it’s sort of like letting people find things on their own, is I think a very powerful tool where people get to explore on their own and make decisions based on what they want to try, instead of pushing them towards some sort of service, do something. And I think it’s kind of powerful. So I think everyone’s in process, like children, like they’re just expanding and learning as they go.

Saad: 08:39

Alright. And what have people told you after they’ve come in? Let’s say someone comes in and they’re like, “You know what, I had no clue this thing existed and I tried out these three different modalities-”

Alain: 08:49

Yeah, most people they love the space. It’s unique. They love coming to a place where energetically people have one common goal, which is feel better. So when people walk into a place that’s hospitable, in a sense that we’re here to make them feel better in a variety of ways, either from what they eat or what they buy or what services they do or just meeting someone to talk to about something that may be a conversation that’s not like the regular bar conversation, like, “Well what were you doing today?” “I was on this energetic device from Tesla coil and I feel much better. My feet were tingling.” So it takes a conversation and makes it more in-depth. I think it offers people a little bit more of a realistic and how do I say, more in-depth conversation than they would have had somewhere else. You know, just like a surface level conversation, that allows simply nothing.

Saad: 09:38

Do you find that people that are coming in here are really health inclined? Or do you think that there’s a mix of people?

Alain: 09:43

You get everyone. I think people who come in here want to feel better. I’m not so concerned about them being health inclined because that’s a tricky word, but I do know people when they come here, they want to feel better. They drink, they want a song, they’re hungover, they want to get an IV, they’re tired, they want a massage, they want to feel better, they get a tea or elixir. People have to make a choice to heal themselves by utilizing what’s available to them or go out and finding what’s out there, and then there’s people like me who try to provide that service and put it out in the market so they can come and find that. But I do think that, I tell everyone that the main thing I want to do, is I want you to feel a little bit better than when you walked in. So if I can make you feel just a little bit better than when you walked in, I’ve done my job.

Saad: 10:26

Okay.

Alain: 10:26

That’s what I’m trying to put out. I’m trying to make you feel, you come in, you were tired, you’re not as tired. You’re sleepy, you’re not as sleepy. You’re hungry, you’re not as hungry. That’s really all I’m trying to do.

Saad: 10:34

Nice, simple, right to the point. And if someone comes in, they say, “Hey I’m only going to try two things.” What are you saying?

Alain: 10:41

I would do the Theraphi, it’s not a commercial device, it’s not known, it’s a whole different energetic sort of, it takes you out of time, you don’t know where you’re at, and it’s a whole, it’s a real linear magnetic field. And then I would make them do a more traditional service where they can feel the difference of coming to me or coming somewhere else. Either a massage with our therapists, or an IV, a cryo, or anything else.

Saad: 11:07

So what are the next couple modalities you’re looking at?

Alain: 11:11

So more here on the, looking for a good PEMF machine, Pulsed Electromagnetic Frequency, which helps circulate the blood through your body, and more natural-based or natural skin care. Things that people need to basically combat, you know, living in New York and you know, having good regiment, having the right products, like looking for people who can actually take care of the common needs of most people in New York as well, on the more of a beauty side.

Saad: 11:43

So I guess then the big question I have is when do you make another one of these?

Alain: 11:49

So lots of people are coming to me, my buddy who walked by, the question I have for me is it’s a staffing issue. Can I find staff who’s passionate enough to give the level of service and the level of experience that will make people want to come back and keep focusing on their health, because it’s a motivational issue. I think when you have too many places with the wrong service, you kind of lose the message. It’s like you can be as healthy, you can eat all the kale, drink all the juice, but if you don’t mentally feel good, and you’re not in a good environment, it’s not going to take any affect. Your brain has to line, your mind has to line with what you’re doing.

Saad: 12:28

Oh, that’s so-

Alain: 12:28

And so it really comes down to who we hire, who we work with, and if I can find those people who want to put in the time, and the commitment, a doctor sacrifices a lot of his time in life, of his best, to go out and provide that service to the community, and we don’t respect that, I mean he spent a lot of time to go through residency and you know, medical school, and a lot of money to then go out and practice and then spend years cultivating their craft in order to only start to provide good care at a certain time, and that’s really important. And we take that for granted. And I follow the same principle in this space here. The amount of money I spent personally on all these things around the world and testing things out and different doctors and naturopaths and practitioners, it’s a big bill so I can then curate and hire and know who’s good at what they do, and understand that they can provide a level of service. So I have to have people who have the same mindset and want to sacrifice that time to give a good quality product.

Saad: 13:27

So go into that. That’s really interesting because the culture of the employees here is what’s really the differentiator almost, at the end of the day, is what you’re saying.

Alain: 13:34

Yup.

Saad: 13:35

What is that culture exactly?

Alain: 13:36

People who spend time and sacrifice themselves to train in taking some services that otherwise they, you know, most people like, “I need to go make money. I don’t have the time for that.” Or, you know, “This is not a good idea because I am going to have to commit so much time and the return on investment is not so good.” And you can’t look at that. If you look at everything as a return on investment from a financial point of view, then becoming a doctor is not really a good idea.

Saad: 14:07

You just don’t make enough.

Alain: 14:08

You just don’t make enough. You know, for the time you put in and the average doctor time spent, it wouldn’t be a good idea, but I think that, you know people, I don’t think it’s the right mindset, so people who have a different mindset, people who are like, “Yeah I want to learn about this. I want to help people and I want to give my time and I feel good about giving my time.” Is a really good, big differentiator.

Saad: 14:27

That’s really interesting. I would have never guessed that that was the one thing that you thought was so important, is that you have to make people feel really good about themselves while they’re here. Everyone has to have the same exact set of principles and when that happens you want to come back.

Alain: 14:40

Correct.

Saad: 14:40

Right, you just want to come back. Well man, I appreciate this.

Alain: 14:43

Yeah I appreciate you coming out.

Saad: 14:44

Yeah, tremendously and I’m fucking stoked you guys are doing this stuff, man.

Alain: 14:48

Thank you.

Saad: 14:48

I appreciate it brother.