Meet Sam Lehr | co-Founder at Thema Brain Health

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sam Lehr and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sam, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
Work-hard play-hard is a line that gets thrown around a lot. And it was a trap I fell into early in my career. I would spend most of my time working at a corporate law firm and trying to use my scant free time to make up for the fact that all I did was work. It’s a losing battle. I realized that not only was I unhappy, I was also boring. No matter how great your job is, nobody wants to hear about it all the time.

There are two things you can control in life: how you spend your time; and who you spend it with. Working hard and playing hard is not the way to maximize the joy that spending your time with great people can bring. Instead, I have attempted to structure my life so that I’m surrounded with great people at work and have enough time for interests outside of work.

About ten years ago, I started a chocolate company with one of my closest friends from college. It was a hell of a lot of fun for a couple years. I then moved to Portugal for three years and did remote legal work while enjoying the Lisbon lifestyle.

Now, I started Thema Brain Health with my closest childhood friend. Cognitive decline is, of course, a very serious issue. But I don’t think you have to be serious all the time to take things seriously. At Thema, we want to create an environment of hope for our patients – aging is inevitable, cognitive decline is not. To do that, we need to have a positive attitude about what we are doing.

The best way to balance work and life is to realize that work is a part of your life, not something separate that you have to do in order to live. Obviously, work will sometimes be no fun. But if you can create a job where you are having some fun, working with people you like, and not taking everything so seriously, it will not only benefit your life but also be good for business. Clients/Patients can tell. And it makes a difference.

What should our readers know about your business?
Thema Brain Health focuses exclusively on the early-diagnosis and treatment of cognitive decline. Cognitive decline is the number one health-related fear. And yet, people often feel hopeless and like there is nothing to do and no one to talk to.

By making the assessment process easily accessible, friendly, and efficient and stressing that there IS hope and there ARE things to be done, we want to hammer home the point that: Aging is inevitable. Cognitive decline is not. We are very excited to help people take control of their cognitive health and shift the focus from one of hopelessness to one of agency and prevention. We constantly monitor our cardiovascular health (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.) and adjust our lifestyles to prevent heart disease. We should all do the same for our brain health.

Three developments in the brain health landscape make this possible.

First, the assessment techniques available have drastically improved in recent years. Both in terms of our ability to measure current cognitive functioning and, perhaps more excitingly, our ability to use blood tests to assess Alzheimer’s risk.

Second, we now know that almost half of all cognitive decline is caused by modifiable risk-factors.

And third, there are now disease-modifying treatment options that show real promise for the first time.

Starting a business is never easy. But when you believe in what you are doing you are willing to deal with a lot of annoying nonsense to keep moving forward.

Our biggest challenge is trying to change the way people think about brain health. When people are scared, they often don’t think rationally about things. We think with a compassionate, convenient, and hopeful approach we can help lead the way of a brain health revolution that will benefit us all.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Perhaps ironically, perhaps the most underrated part of South Beach is the beach itself. So of course we would have to spend some time there – preferably South of Fifth where it’s a bit quieter. A lunch break at Lobster Shack (the best fish tacos in town) and then a walk through South Pointe Park to Monty’s for sunset and happy hour. Seems like an almost perfect day.

In terms of “tourist attractions,” I recently went to Vizcaya for the first time and was blown away. Definitely worth a trip there – especially if it’s not summertime so that you can enjoy the gardens without melting.

I am a total Miami Beach homer so other than Vizcaya, I probably wouldn’t take my guest off the beach much.

Some other things we would eat and drink on the beach:

Joe’s takeaway to get some stone crab and maybe a lobster reuben. Serena rooftop for some chips and salsa and a michelada. Semilla for a glass of wine and baguette. Kill Your Idol for a can of beer.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d like to shoutout the Flamingo Park Tennis Center. I moved to Miami about three years ago and have lived in South Beach the entire time. But it wasn’t until I got back into tennis about a year ago that I really started to feel like part of a community. It’s always hard moving to a new city and I think South Beach can be particularly difficult given the amount of tourism. It often feels like you’re just living on vacation – which sounds great, but actually isn’t.

Playing tennis at Flamingo Park made me feel like I lived in a neighborhood, not a travel destination. I’d see the people I played with at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. We’d nod. It was great. It seems meaningless, but it made me feel at home.

Website: www.themabrainhealth.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/themabrainhealth/