Hello, and welcome to Inc.’s 1 Smart Business Story! Today’s article looks at the growing popularity of direct-to-consumer testosterone—from the manosphere hucksters and influencers who sing its praises online, to legitimate medical uses, as as telehealth and wellness giants begin offering Testosterone Replacement Therapy, also known as TRT, to customers later this year. 

Once confined to underground markets and bodybuilder forums, TRT is now entering the mainstream, fueled by a booming wellness economy and a cultural discourse around  masculinity in the red-pill era. As wellness company Hims gears up to roll out its TRT offerings to consumers, it signals that hormone therapy is becoming a serious and lucrative business. 

As access expands, a grey market still thrives—and if widespread acceptance of Ozempic is any indicator, recreational use can quickly supersede medical need, blurring the line between evidence-based care and performance enhancement. 

In this piece, Inc. senior writer Sam Blum explores:

BY SAM BLUM, SENIOR WRITER

Hims announced that TRT therapy would be coming to its telehealth platform this year. But a grey market still thrives as recreational use supersedes medical needs.

Thanks to a boom in the number of clinics offering direct-to-consumer hormone therapy for men, the pursuit of massive gains in the gym has never been easier for guys like Jesse. The 45-year-old father of two from Texas is ripped, with six-pack abs, and follows a borderline obsessive workout regimen: He gets up at 4 a.m. every morning and immediately hits the rowing machine. He also injects testosterone into his thigh twice a week. The twice-weekly jabs have been a revelation, he claims. 

“It was a life-changing scenario for me, bro. Full on, a hundred percent life-changing scenario,” Jesse, who declined to give his last name, tells Inc. of his Testosterone Replacement Therapy treatment, also known as TRT. Jesse credits TRT, which, if prescribed by a doctor, is an FDA-approved treatment for men with hypogonadism, or low testosterone, for his ability to match the intensity of younger guys in the gym. He says it has also given him a newly cultivated sense of self-worth and purpose. 

“The way I look at it is for all of us guys, when we close our eyes at night, we go to bed, and we think about who we are as a man,” says Jesse. “We have specific visions of whatever that might entail. For me, I was just tired of feeling less than what I wanted to be. I was just tired of feeling tired all the time.” 

Jesse is just one guy among legions who are either sending vials of their own blood into telehealth clinics for testosterone testing, or visiting traditional doctors and men’s wellness clinics to seek out TRT. 

Previously a niche terrain of bodybuilders and fitness gurus, testosterone—or off-label medications that boost the body’s natural testosterone production—is rapidly becoming a mainstream wellness hack. Though it has long flourished as a part of an underground marketplace, men interested in TRT can now consult a ballooning range of telehealth options. In 2026, both Hims, the publicly traded wellness giant, and Rugiet, a telehealth firm specializing in erectile dysfunction, will start offering injectable testosterone to patients, the companies separately confirmed to Inc. 

“Millions of men experience symptoms of low testosterone but face stigma, confusion, or limited access to effective care,” said Andrew Dudum, the CEO and founder of Hims and Hers, on the company’s most recent earnings call, which discussed the upcoming TRT availability. “Our recent launch aims to address these issues with access to personalized, provider-guided treatment plans supported by at-home lab testing.” 

The TRT explosion comes at a time when the very idea of being a man— whatever that might entail—has never been such a matter of public intrigue and debate. Against a backdrop of corporate leaders embracing “masculine leadership” and the U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deriding “fat Generals,” it’s perhaps never been more enticing for wayward young men to seek out something like TRT. 

“The definition of a real man, or the definition of masculinity, changes every seven seconds with a TikTok swipe. Everyone’s got a different definition of it,” says Dave Rossi, a life coach whose new book Alphas Die Young seeks to educate young men about the dangers of repressing emotions. 

Testosterone has been sparsely studied in the corporate realm, but one 2010 study linked the hormone to erratic CEO behavior that can erode a business’s efforts, such as deal-making. Nowadays, certain clinics like to plug TRT as a tool for enhancing workplace performance—

To finish reading this story read more at Inc.com

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