Why CEOs Should Treat Their Health Like a Billion-Dollar Asset
If you’re a CEO, founder, or executive leader, you likely already think in terms of metrics.
You track revenue. You measure churn. You analyze margins, projections, and productivity.
But what if your greatest asset isn’t in your business at all? What if it’s you?
More specifically: your health.
In today’s performance-driven landscape, CEO health optimization is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity. Your energy, resilience, decision-making power, and executive presence are all downstream from your biology. And yet, most high performers manage their health reactively, like an old department they forgot to audit.
It’s time to flip the script. In this article, we’ll explore a new framework for high-performance leadership: treating your health like a billion-dollar company.
Watch The Episode
The Big Idea: Your Body Is the Business
In this recent episode, I walked through what I call the“11 Biological KPIs”: key performance indicators every CEO and founder should track to stay sharp, energized, and mission-aligned for the long haul.
These aren’t just numbers. They’re levers of executive performance coaching, grounded in fundamental, measurable biology.
Think of it like this:
Each one tells a story: not about your company, but about your capacity to lead it.
Why This Matters for CEOs
Most executives aren’t failing due to a lack of strategy. They’re failing because they’re unmeasured in the one area that fuels everything else: their health.
Let’s be real, a burnout spiral, an energy crash, or a chronic condition doesn’t just affect you personally. It bleeds into your leadership, your team, your clarity, and your company culture.
Optimal health is not a vanity project. It’s the infrastructure behind every high-stakes decision you make.
“Optimal health is the ultimate leverage instrument. It’s your infrastructure for every decision you make.”
— Julian Hayes II
From Insight to Implementation
To start thinking like an investor in your own biology, don’t overcomplicate it. Here’s a roadmap:
Pick 2–3 Biological KPIs to begin tracking (HRV, VO2 max, or inflammation markers are great starters)
Shift your mindset: Health is not “maintenance,” it’s performance infrastructure
Build a simple system: Use wearable tech, functional lab tests, or quarterly health audits to track changes
Adopt a quarterly review of your body, just like your business
Invest in executive performance coaching if you want to go deeper, because just like your business, health needs strategy, feedback, and accountability
The Blind Spots That Quietly Derail Leaders
Here are three patterns I see again and again in ambitious leaders:
1. The Delusion of Resilience — “I’ve always bounced back… until I didn’t.”
2. Reactive Operating — Health is only addressed when it’s already causing friction in your physical, mental, or emotional world.
3. The Implementation Gap — You know what to do, but execution lags. This isn’t an information problem. It’s an identity and systems problem.
That’s where the proper support and a shift in mindset can close the loop.
Health Is the New ROI
Every time you step into a boardroom, make a strategic decision, or inspire your team, your body and brain are involved. How you sleep, how you recover, and how you regulate stress all compound over time.
CEO health optimization isn’t about perfection. It’s about clarity. About energy. About making sure you’re available for the opportunities you’ve worked so hard to create.
“You track churn and revenue… why not inflammation and VO₂ Max?”
Final Thought
You are a billion-dollar asset. The people who depend on you—your team, your family, and your mission—need you to be fully online. Fully present and optimized.
So ask yourself:
📉 Are you leading your company…
📈 …but leaving your health unmanaged?
Because in a world where everyone’s looking for the edge, the most underestimated advantage might just be you, fully dialed in.
Want Help Putting This Into Practice?
If you're ready to stop winging it and start leading with intention from the inside out, reach out.
📧 Email me directly: julian@executivehealth.io
Let’s turn your biology into your boldest business strategy yet.
Transcript (May Not Be Exact)
(0:07) All right, welcome to another episode of Executive Health and Life. (0:11) I'm your host, Julian Hayes II, back at it again. (0:14) And we're trying to do something different today.
(0:16) We're going to use a live recording of an episode. (0:20) So if this is your first time here, as I always like to say, welcome. (0:25) I'm glad that you found your way here, hopefully you'll stay.
(0:28) And if this is not your first time here, then welcome back. (0:32) It is an honor that you're here joining me today. (0:35) And today, I thought about talking about biological KPIs.
(0:40) And this came up, I was going through a corporate finance book. (0:46) And I thought about that, you know, I think it's imperative that leaders can start thinking of their health as a balance sheet as well. (0:59) And, you know, you're an elite leader.
(1:02) And so you're tracking so many things already, whether that's your finances, whether that's market trends, whether that's competitors, or, you know, quarterly projections, and there's a whole gamut of other things that you're most likely tracking on a daily, weekly, quarterly, and yearly basis when it comes to your business and your professional life. (1:23) And so, as I said, it's got me thinking that when it comes to asset management, when it comes to evaluations, you know, the metrics that we have, they're easy to visualize, they're easy to keep top of mind. (1:38) But as it pertains to our overall biology, our overall well-being, this is not as easy.
(1:47) And this is where our health oftentimes becomes unmanaged, or unmeasured, or even undervalued, or at best for some people, it's going to be passively handled. (2:02) And this is all because health is a invisible metric for the most part. (2:07) I'm sure there's some external things we see.
(2:10) But all in all, oops, I think I had a, I think I hit the button or so. (2:30) Apologies on that. (2:34) All right.
(2:35) So, measuring what matters for elite leadership performance. (2:38) So, as I said, today, I'm breaking down 11 biological KPIs that every CEO, founder, and high-achieving decision maker should monitor to protect and multiply their billion-dollar asset, which is their health. (2:53) And before I go into this, there's so many KPIs that you can actually add.
(2:57) So, I did this as just a fun exercise and just a way to get you thinking. (3:00) But you can plug and play and add different things in here. (3:04) And when we think about our health, overlooking these metrics, it's not just affecting our personal well-being.
(3:11) It can silently undermine our leadership, undermine our resilience, undermine our longevity, and unrealized potential. (3:22) So, our billion-dollar asset is our health, as I said. (3:27) And I always say this, that optimal health is our ultimate leverage instrument.
(3:36) It's your infrastructure. (3:38) It's the operating system behind every single decision that we make, every room we walk into. (3:45) Our health is playing a part in that.
(3:47) Before we even put a word out, our posture, our energy that we're giving off, and our appearance, to a certain extent, is communicating so many things already. (3:59) That's where you come up with executive presence. (4:02) And even every strategy that we execute, our health is playing a part in that.
(4:07) So, as I say here, our body is not just valuable. (4:10) It's the most critical infrastructure that we have. (4:15) And leaders, a lot of times, manage health very reactively.
(4:21) And it's more like a checklist or something that they used to do. (4:26) But it's not treated with the same regard as we treat a lot of things in our businesses. (4:32) And so, let's go ahead and get into the KPIs.
(4:37) I don't want to make this too long of a session. (4:41) And so, the first one here is revenue growth. (4:45) And we know what revenue growth is.
(4:48) It's measuring the company's capacity to expand output. (4:53) But in the science sense, I thought about this. (4:57) And we could think of something like our VO2 max and our mitochondrial functioning as our way to measure our body's capacity to generate energy for recovery to sustain performance.
(5:11) And when we have weak mitochondria, when we have a low VO2 max, this is essentially like trying to scale a company and you have no working capital. (5:23) And another example could be your leadership, your execution power. (5:29) It's going to collapse under pressure.
(5:31) And from a longevity standpoint, VO2 max is probably one of the most well understood, the most studied aspects when it comes to VO2 max. (5:41) And so, this is something that I would highly regard and highly recommend for someone to really put a lot of stock into as it goes through their training and their health is to think about improving their VO2 max. (5:55) And the second one here is profit margin.
(5:59) Now, profit margin is going to reveal what's left after your expenses. (6:05) And you can essentially call this like a buffer for being able to reinvest, for being able to withstand tough times whenever they come, because we're all going to have those. (6:17) And in the health world, I think about our nervous system regulation, and that's where HRV comes into play.
(6:26) It does the same for our nervous system as it's going to measure how long we can recover from stress and essentially adapt under pressure. (6:38) It's our body's resilience buffer as akin to the profit margin. (6:43) Now, a higher HRV means, to me, a more resilient leader, a more adaptable leader, someone who's able to handle a little more pressure, scrutiny, or whatever comes their way.
(6:58) And just as a sidebar, different wearables. (7:02) And HRV is a very number that's all over the place. (7:06) Some people will have numbers that start in the triple digits.
(7:09) Some people will have their starting maybe in like the 40s, depending on your wearable and your device. (7:14) And so it's really important to not necessarily compare yourself to others when it comes to your HRV. (7:22) But you really want to compare yourself over time with the score that you existently have to see if that number is actually improving.
(7:30) So really keep that in mind with HRV. (7:32) So it's a little more nuanced compared to maybe something like a resting heart rate, where you're going to have a pretty standard range of what's good, what's optimal, and what's not so good. (7:47) So the third item here is when we think about cash flow.
(7:50) And cash flow is, of course, the liquidity, the stability of the organization, or even the individual. (7:57) And I thought about what's an equivalent of that if we're thinking about biology and health. (8:02) And I came upon glucose and insulin sensitivity as a whole.
(8:07) And perhaps we can call it metabolic liquidity. (8:12) I made that up. (8:13) I don't know.
(8:14) Well, actually, I think it sounds nice. (8:16) Actually, metabolic liquidity. (8:18) I'm going to try to coin that term.
(8:19) But anyway, you're thinking about your body being able to reliably have steady and focused energy throughout the day, which is essentially the same thing of what cash is going to do for individuals and also for organizations. (8:33) So that's why I paired those two together. (8:36) And also, as I go through this list here, I'm not necessarily going to get into the detailed numbers of what is optimal for insulin, glucose, and things like that, as that's too long of a conversation.
(8:52) And that has a little nuance to it as well. (8:54) And probably shouldn't just be giving blanket numbers massively out on different streams of where this is being distributed to. (9:05) So number four is the churn rate.
(9:06) And I connected that to inflammation markers. (9:09) And churn rate is, of course, we hear this word. (9:12) It's indicating how rapidly someone's going to be losing valuable resources.
(9:16) And I think about inflammation. (9:20) And it's like a biological churn rate that we can kind of connect those two things to. (9:25) And that's going to wear down your health.
(9:29) And you can do it slowly and accelerate aging and essentially just kind of eroding kind of your mental, your cognitive abilities slowly over time. (9:39) And that's why we have the term inflammation. (9:43) And the next one here, I think I had that blocked off.
(9:49) And so the next one here we have is customer acquisition costs. (9:52) And I connected that to recovery efficiency. (9:56) And the customer acquisition costs, as I was practicing explaining this to a young kid, so this is where this whole thing came from, was I wanted to be able to explain different financial terms in corporate terms to some young kids.
(10:17) So basically, this is how much you invest to acquire customers. (10:22) And in the health world, I thought about, you know, this is recovery efficiency. (10:29) And this is going to measure the biological cost of regaining your performance each day.
(10:35) How efficiently, how effectively are you able to recharge, to rejuvenate each and every night so you can be able to perform the next day. (10:47) And operational efficiency as we go down the list. (10:51) And this is connected to our circadian rhythm because with operational efficiency, we want a synchronized, harmonious internal processes on various aspects.
(11:03) And this is the same thing with our circadian rhythm as it's connected and instructing so many different processes and aspects of our biology. (11:13) And so this is impacting everything from our energy, to our decision making, to even some things like fertility, to being able to lose weight, our hormones, every single aspect pretty much of our body and functioning is connected to circadian rhythm. (11:32) And the more in alignment that you're not, then the more that's going to be reflected in various health processes.
(11:41) And so net promoter score is the next one. (11:46) And that is connected to our mood and cognitive performance score. (11:50) And when I was thinking about this, you know, this is how likely customers are going to recommend your brand.
(11:57) And I thought about what would be an equivalent of that. (12:00) And I thought about different, various different mood and cognitive performance scores that we can do and take out there. (12:09) And then I said, these can gauge how likely your brain is to recommend you as a person for high stakes decisions.
(12:16) And here's what I mean by that. (12:18) If you have a low score or your brain's just not as performing as well, or your mood's just not as at a level that is a little more optimal, that's a form of internal reputation damage. (12:30) And this is what I mean by that.
(12:34) Because if our moods and emotions are not stable, and it's a little on the downside, the downswing, that's risking poor judgment. (12:46) That's more erratic leadership, most likely. (12:49) That's less charisma that we can have toward our team members.
(12:53) That's missed opportunities. (12:54) That's probably potentially not as good relationships with those closest to you, as maybe you're a little more erratic. (13:03) Maybe you're a little more jumpy with them, or a little more short with them.
(13:07) So this is where I connected those two things. (13:10) And then, of course, we have the balance sheet net worth. (13:15) And I have that blocked with my image there.
(13:17) But that's what that is. (13:18) And I connected that to your biological, sorry, biological and your chronological age. (13:26) And net worth, we all know what net worth is.
(13:29) It's reflection of long-term financial health. (13:33) And I think biological age is the same thing, because it's going to reflect the long-term health of you. (13:40) And it's going to pretty much give you an inside look at various internal systems and how fast they're aging.
(13:47) There's different biological tests out there. (13:50) I think the best ones is the ones that kind of separate it. (13:55) And it's going to give you the pace of aging as well.
(13:57) That's a different one that just says, hey, you're 12 years younger than your chronological age. (14:07) I mean, that's cool to share and everything. (14:09) But it's not really a lot there.
(14:12) So I would think it's called the Dunedin pace of aging. (14:15) It's by True Diagnostic. (14:17) I think that's the one I would recommend.
(14:21) But anyway, and that's going to break it down even more, because then you can go to different organ systems to see the pace of aging within each of those. (14:30) And of course, the younger your biology, the longer your runway. (14:35) And this is going to be for both personally and professionally with the runway.
(14:42) And so our next one here is going to be quarterly forecasting. (14:47) This is something that plenty of us do every quarter. (14:51) We're planning.
(14:51) And so we recently just got into Q3. (14:55) And toward the end of September, people will be thinking about Q4 and even beyond. (15:00) And we do this so we can forecast risk, so we can forecast opportunities, and maybe forecast things to enjoy in life as well.
(15:10) And I think there's a biological forecasting that we can do as well. (15:14) With tools such as you have MRIs now, you can look into things like coronary calcium scans. (15:21) You can even throw DEXA scans in here, or you can even throw DNA methylation tests.
(15:26) And there's so many more that you can do. (15:29) But the big idea here is that you're getting ahead of things. (15:33) You're anticipating things.
(15:35) You're thinking about this one little thing here. (15:42) You want these to mitigate the risk, mitigate potential risk, or not even have them show up at all before they become a situation, before they become an emergency. (15:51) And the way the world is now when it comes to health and all the great tools out there, the great resources, this is something that we can really take advantage of and stay ahead of a lot of things that normally get people at different junctures of their life.
(16:06) And so number 10 is we have board reports. (16:09) And with board reports, you're providing basically a high level of strategic oversight. (16:19) And of course, the equivalent of that with our health is going to be just different types of biomarker panels and different types of summaries that we can make for our health.
(16:32) And these regular reviews are going to provide frequent oversight of our body. (16:41) So we're never flying blind. (16:44) So we're never just guessing.
(16:46) So instead of looking into something such as annual blood work, annual physical, annual everything, right? (16:55) That's just one snapshot. (16:57) We can start to do things quarterly.
(16:59) And you can go even further if you're one of these people who has any sort of wearable. (17:04) Now you can do almost like a daily check-in. (17:06) Now, granted, it's not going to be as thorough as the quarter, but you're still getting a good snapshot of how you're living, of how you're going throughout your day.
(17:15) And therefore you're able to make adjustments quicker and not let things compound and build up by taking this type of approach. (17:24) And the last one here is team retention. (17:26) And I connected that to something that I coined a social bond strength and trusted relationship index.
(17:35) And if you notice, most of these things beforehand have to do with assessments, maybe labs or something. (17:43) But at the end of the day, the strongest currency that we have when it comes to longevity is people, it's relationships, it's connection, it's love. (17:55) That's our greatest longevity currency and lever.
(17:57) You can study, you can look at any type of study. (18:00) That's the thing that can keep us alive much longer is these relationships. (18:04) But concurrently, if we don't have those things, as we've seen with loneliness, it was classified.
(18:10) I think the surgeon general forgot his name a few years ago. (18:13) He actually classified it as a crisis. (18:17) So, but team retention, it's measuring your organization stability.
(18:23) And I think similarly with social connections and having close trusted relationships, personally and professionally, I think this is going to help measure and help keep in accordance our emotional stability, our resilience, our longevity, our purpose, our perspective of life. (18:44) And I think this is something that we can't overlook. (18:47) Despite how good technology is getting with all the diagnostics and everything, we can't overlook the value of people in relationships.
(18:59) Now, there are a bunch of common blind spots that I could have named here. (19:05) But for simplicity's sake, I didn't feel the need to do that. (19:10) But I did want to share three.
(19:14) And oftentimes, when you are a high performing leader, you're already performing well. (19:19) And if you're struggling with health, if your health is not up to your standard right now, it's definitely not out of laziness and just intentional negligence. (19:30) Sometimes it's unintentional because you maybe have so many other responsibilities and things on your plate that it unintentionally finds itself maybe relegated toward the end of the bench.
(19:40) But some of the top three that I was just thinking of and seeing is number one, I can call this delusion of resilience. (19:49) And this is like the, you have this belief that I'll always come back until suddenly you don't. (19:55) Or some people can maybe have this athletic amnesia.
(19:58) I've always been this type of athlete and can do this. (20:00) I can easily get back and do this. (20:03) And the reason why this is so interesting is because you need a sense of delusion.
(20:11) If you're going after building anything of significance, you're trying to do things that are maybe not common or at least in the majority, you need a sense of healthy delusion. (20:22) But sometimes that healthy, that delusion can actually be something that works against you. (20:27) And this is one of those cases where you're either underestimating your situation or overestimating your ability to handle that situation that's at hand right now.
(20:40) And the next one is operating reactively. (20:43) And this is, I'm speaking individually right here, but really this is actually a, this is actually a societal thing, especially in the West when it comes to our health, is that it's only an issue, it's pretty much out of sight, out of mind. (20:57) It's only an issue when something becomes severe enough, when something becomes apparent enough, then we'll start taking action toward it.
(21:03) So maybe it's, oh, I just, I actually realized I'm 20 something pounds overweight. (21:08) And I realized that because maybe I went, maybe I'm going somewhere on the beach and I don't like the way I look. (21:13) Maybe I am, my favorite suit, my favorite dress is not fitting how it used to be.
(21:18) I don't like the way I look. (21:19) So now it's top of mind, or maybe you get a lab report and some of that data is not good. (21:25) Then you get the wake up call.
(21:28) And the last one is the implementation gap. (21:31) And this is where you know what to do. (21:34) You know, you should do it.
(21:35) You know the information, but perhaps you're struggling to consistently apply it. (21:42) And of course, this is not an information issue. (21:44) It's actually a transformation issue.
(21:46) I would say it's an identity issue. (21:48) It's a lack of making a clear delineation, a deliberation internally that enough's enough. (21:57) And oftentimes this happens because there's not a system, there's not a strong infrastructure behind it that's going to help sustain the actual momentum and shifting of the identity.
(22:10) And so practical steps. (22:12) There's a lot of different things and it's easy to get overwhelmed. (22:15) There's so much data that you can do, so many things you can do with your health.
(22:19) I always like to say, keep it simple. (22:23) Keep it so simple that it feels easy. (22:27) Keep it so simple that it feels like maybe you're not even working that hard toward it.
(22:31) Because the first thing you want to do is you want to build up that confidence. (22:35) You want to reinforce and build up that new identity. (22:39) And the best way to build up that new identity is to keep your word on doing what you say you're going to do.
(22:45) And so begin just by choosing two or three of these KPIs to consistently track and optimize. (22:52) Or in fact, I promote this all the time, that there is no one true and tried way. (23:00) So if you want, create your own KPIs to consistently track and optimize.
(23:06) And make these KPIs match up with the level that you're at right now. (23:14) And also consider adopting quarterly reviews of your health. (23:19) And once again, to piggyback on what I said about starting with the KPIs, you don't have to start with every single assessment test under the sun.
(23:31) If you want to, it's great, but you want to build up to it. (23:34) If you're a beginner or you don't like this stuff. (23:37) So it really just depends on where you're at in your juncture of life and the capacity that you have for it.
(23:44) And I always like to say that elite performance does not come from complexity. (23:49) It's thorough, absolutely. (23:51) There's a lot to it, but it's not necessarily complex.
(23:55) So aim for clarity, aim for clearness, aim for consistency above all else. (24:02) And I like to think that the more that you manage your health, the dividends yielded are going to be stronger in their returns. (24:13) And I say this as it pertains to not just yourself, of course, but as it pertains to your business, as it pertains to your community, and most importantly, as it pertains to your family.
(24:26) Because the pursuit of optimal health to me and hopefully to you, or maybe over time, I'll keep saying it. (24:35) It should feel and be a personal obligation. (24:37) It should not feel like a chore.
(24:39) It should be a personal obligation that each of us have. (24:43) As leaders, as people of influence, everyone watching this now or watching the replay later or wherever down the line, each of us are a person of influence. (24:54) Some of us have more than others, but there's somebody that we're influencing.
(24:59) And I like to think that the healthier we are, the more impactful that we can be. (25:05) And then the more that society benefits. (25:08) So I think it all starts with health and then it trickles on outward.
(25:13) So any questions, feel free to reach out on whatever platform that you're watching this on. (25:20) Feel free to email me at julian@executivehealth.io And you can also reach out if you're interested in discussing the first steps to becoming as deliberate and strategic with your health as you are with your business. (25:35) And once again, thank you for joining me.
(25:38) And as I always like to say, stay awesome, be limitless, optimize today so you can lead tomorrow. (25:44) Peace.
