Trussville native ‘where I’m supposed to be’ in Nashville

Adam Bobo found himself making his way through a number of programs in his time at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

There was biomedical engineering. Then the plan was to double-major in biology and chemistry. That changed to exercise science, using biology and chemistry as a double minor. He took and passed the Pharmacy College Admission Test. None of those fit the 2005 Hewitt-Trussville High School graduate quite right.

“I was just trying to find a place to be among that,” Bobo said.

Bobo, a wide receiver on the Blazers football team, had injured his ankle and gone through reconstructive surgery. He stopped playing, and a teammate who just graduated decided to move to Nashville.

That teammate? Country music star Sam Hunt. Bobo, who assured his mother he would earn his degree, moved to the Music City, too, and went to nursing school at Belmont University.

In subsequent years, he worked nearly two years in a hospital’s cardiac unit helping with heart surgeries, heart transplants and ventricular assist devices. He attended anesthesia school for more than two years and worked in that world for four more.

Bobo’s interest in health and medicine didn’t start with a college major. It started much sooner. His father, Dennis Bobo, was killed in a car accident when Adam was 7 years old. Bobo said his dad was taken by ambulance to an outlying hospital, which couldn’t meet his urgent medical needs. He was then flown to UAB Hospital, where he died. It’s hard to say, but Bobo said the trauma surgeon portrayed that had his dad come to UAB first, the circumstances may have played out differently.

“That kind of resonated with me,” Bobo said. “A lot of times in medicine, the seconds, the minutes, the small amounts of time really can make the difference in someone’s life. That drove me into wanting to do something that every minute of my life mattered. It really drove me to being somewhere in medicine.”

Along the way, Bobo felt that the nursing world wasn’t for him. Hunt’s younger brother, Van, is a University of Georgia graduate, with whom Bobo had discussed starting a company. Van Hunt had the finance and entrepreneurial background. Bobo had the medical experience. RevIVe, a health and wellness company for mostly the music business world, was born in May 2017. The concierge-structured company focused mostly on IV wellness.

“It was just a concept at the time,” said Bobo, who continued working at the hospital full time as the new company took shape. “It was just an idea that we didn’t know would work or not.”

Bobo worked 50 to 60 hours per week at the hospital, often leaving work to go home to shower, turn back around and see the new company’s clients. It grew. The company was renamed Arete, which is Greek for “excellence of any kind.”

“We didn’t really know going in what this company or what this idea or this whole thing would be,” Bobo said. “We kind of let it direct itself and let the consumer or the people around us, the clients, drive the direction of it.”

Bobo left the hospital in November 2018 to focus on his work with Arete. A grassroots, word-of-mouth referral system has blossomed into a well-known health and wellness company.

Clients include players for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, the NHL’s Nashville Predators, former New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, Sam Hunt, former NFL wide receiver Eric Decker and singer-songwriter Jessie James Decker. There are more across the Nashville music scene.

“God has constantly reaffirmed that this is where I’m supposed to be right now,” Bobo said. “The whole concept of what we’re building is we want to provide excellence. We want to build excellent humans, so to speak. We want to build a lifestyle that is, in essence, excellent.”

Bobo rarely has any off time. He goes to events. He travels to the Titans away games during the NFL season. He always says yes to opportunities.

“I make the whole focus of the company with our clients a relationship,” he said. “Every person who I work with is not a number, they’re not a dollar sign. I don’t care how much money you have, how many services you get, what you’ve done for me. I try to treat everybody like an individual and make a friendship with everybody that I get the opportunity to work with. That has built this ongoing referral-based system.”

He does not focus on who he gets to work with, but the work he is doing for many.

“I get to help different populations of people, whether it be an NFL athlete or NHL player or musician or a high school teacher or a marathon runner doing their first marathon, or a stay-at-home mom whose got four kids and the husband travels a lot for work,” he said. “It’s just such a unique thing that I get the opportunity to help so many people with so many different backgrounds that it allows me to not only grow as a company, but I grow as a person because I get to meet so many different people from so many different backgrounds. That’s one of my favorite parts of what I do, the relationship piece of it.”

There are many influences Bobo has had in his life, too many to list. Aside from his family, Bobo singled out just one friend — Drew Smith, a Hewitt-Trussville classmate who is now a family practice physician.

“Drew has always been willing to talk me through things from the primary care physician point of view,” he said.

Bobo said his inspirations have come from many people over the years.

“Every little small part and large part in my life played a key role in making me who I am today,” he said.

Many people see Bobo’s Instagram posts at Titans games or with country music stars, and they believe he often hangs out in the limelight.

“It’s really not like that. I just work,” he said. “I just work. And I hang out with my dog, Drake, a lot. That’s literally what my life is.”

Of course, as the success and growth have transpired, his thoughts often drift toward the memory of his dad, his reason for choosing this path. He has a tattoo of his dad’s initials on his arm as a constant reminder.

“I’ve always wanted to make him proud and do whatever I could to make him proud,” Bobo said. “And I’ve had many moments where I know I haven’t, but I think overall, day by day, I try to make decisions, at least in the bigger picture, that really he can look down and be like, ‘Yeah, I am so proud of the man he is becoming.’ I think that’s really what I think about. I really try to do all I can to make him proud. I like to think that the man I try to become my mom looks at and sees my dad in me because how good of a man he was, how hard he worked. It allows my mom to still see him through me, I guess, in a way.”