So far Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint journey may have been a lonely one. The entrepreneur pays $2 million a year toward a program aimed at increasing his life’s longevity: spending his mornings in silence and his days filled with health tests and exercise, before going to bed alone at 8 p.m.
For many this could be an alienating experience—but at last, there’s someone who can understand what the founder is going through.
Because Johnson’s “protocol”—a strict set of dietary rules and daily schedule—finally has its second subject.
Kate Tolo describes her role at Blueprint as “a lot of things” on her LinkedIn, but more recently it has included undertaking the grueling regimen that Johnson has created in order to reverse his age.
This summer Tolo, who is referred to as Blueprint XX, began her trial of the regimen saying she and Johnson are now “two peas in a pod.”
The colleagues—who had previously worked together at Johnson’s biotech business Kernel—do “everything together” Tolo told the Diary of a CEO podcast.
In the podcast released Thursday, Tolo said she wasn’t following a program that was as extensive as Johnson’s, explaining: “That was a big decision factor for both of us when we were considering this. It is incredibly laborious on our team to bring up another person, but it means completely changing my lifestyle.”
Tolo, who describes her role as an “operations manager for humanity,” revealed that because of public scrutiny on Johnson’s venture, she began the Blueprint lifestyle as a 30-day trial which was kept private, in order to test if she was willing and capable of taking it any further.
“It meant completely redefining what my life and lifestyle is,” Tolo said.
Currently, the team is still working on personalizing the program for Tolo, though some hallmarks of Johnson’s regimen are the same: a 100% sleep score every night and “perfect” nutrition, as well as 60 supplements and a balance of cardio and strength training.
It’s about living, not dying
Although Johnson and Tolo are mirror images in many aspects of their lives, the pair do diverge on why they’re undertaking the Blueprint program.
For Johnson, it’s quite obviously “don’t die.” Johnson is frequently pictured wearing a T-shirt with the slogan on, while a “Don’t Die” ticker continuously revolves across the Blueprint website.
Tolo has a different approach. For the 27-year-old, Blueprint is about living.
“I want to have the opportunity to live,” Tolo said. “I don’t mind the idea of death, if it happens it happens. But I would love to be able to spend each minute living as much as possible.”
Despite noise online that Blueprint plays into a fear of death and aging, both Tolo and Johnson insist that’s not the case—even though Tolo acknowledges it would be very “rational.”
“Out of all the fears I could have in life, fear of death is probably one that I would choose to have, it makes sense to me,” Tolo explained, but added: “I’d love to really want to live every single second of the day.”