Episode 559: James Beshara: Top #2 Angel Investor Shares Why He Backs The Founder Not The Business

You're listening to "Havits in Hustle." Press it. - Okay, you guys. We have a big treat today.

“We have one of the most fantastic founders,”

serial entrepreneurs on the planet, and not just my opinion, but actually the opinion of many, because we have James Basharra, Basharra, guys at it, right? - Either works.

So the Americanized version is Basharra. - Basharra. - The Lebanese version, my family's Lebanese Basharra, but our family's like, we just go with the flow. So Basharra works.

- That works, okay, James Basharra, or Basharra. He is the founder of Magic Mind, one of my favorite, favorite habits, daily rituals of all time. But also, I just found out that James is also considered

the number two best, the angel investor on the planet. By, of course, Angie's list you said, said that. - Angelist, yeah. Angelist. - Oh, Angelist. - And it's also an angelist.

- There is, Angie's list, yeah, if I was home cleaner, I hope to God, I'd be in the top three. I would, I'd work my ass off to be in the top three, but the angel lasts, I went the angel investing route.

“Instead, and through a lot of, honestly,”

through a lot of failure and building things that learning what not to do, it got me into the circles of a really great founders and started to make a couple investments, and then now I was like, I think I could do a few more, and it started

to take off from there. - But way of speaking, so you have had three exits

of companies that have 100 million and more, right?

- I've built three companies, yeah, to evaluation of 100 million or more. - You were also voted number two on Angel's list as a-- - Yeah, Angelist, they, everyone's rather put out data, and the last time they put out the data of their top investors

on the whole platform, which is the biggest platform for Angel investors, they did have me. - Well, this is number two. - So why you, like, what are they looking for? What are the kind of qualifications

or staying at this guy is the top angel investor? This one's not, like, what are they looking for? - There's a great question, it's done. - What are the data points? - It's done by height.

- Yeah, that's true. - And for sure, do you want six-five? - Yeah, so it's all done by height. Now, the number one actually. - They don't, yeah, thank you, thank you.

They actually do not release exactly how they compile their data, but they do have more data than anybody, and it's built on performance data. So how your investments have been in Angel, I've been in Angel Investor for 14 years now.

And so they compile all of the entry points when you get into companies, where those companies are. But the reason I say that it's hard to know exactly what data they're using is because, let's say, a company is private for 10 straight years.

They haven't gone public. Maybe they raised around two years ago that says there are a $10 billion company, but two years later, maybe they've grown a lot, do you make it a $12 billion company,

do you make it a $14? It can be a bit of an art at that point. So yeah, that's kind of a lot of people like, how do you compile your data, and I don't even know how they compile it?

- Well, also, let me ask you a question that, why do you think you are, why do you think you're a great angel investor, or because you've raised a ton of money over the last many years?

- I always think about this Warren Buffett line

in this realm where he said, "I'm a better businessman because I'm an investor, "I'm a better investor because I'm a businessman." So when I think about my investing, the lens, and I look at about 1,700 deals a year,

and it usually invests in about 20 years, so it's 15 to 20. And these days, it's less and less 'cause magic mine keeps growing, and we've got three little daughters,

and just wanna be as present as possible for them my number one kind of like, waking hours goals to spend 20,000 hours with them before they're all 10 years older above, because I can tell you the story behind that goal,

but that quote from Warren Buffett is so, I think so brilliantly encapsulates that building startups, and you know this as well, by building your own operation, 'cause you have team members, you've got just a really well-oiled machine.

That then helps you notice when you're working with a company, and like, well, how responsive are they on an email that I sent them five days ago? Why is it taken five days versus why? They replied five hours later.

You see these things, and it's like, I wouldn't necessarily hire someone that takes five days to reply, so what I wanna partner with a company that takes five days to reply. And it's a very similar lens where I'm thinking about

in terms of just the people that I,

“something that I think about is when a founder is pitching me,”

I guess I'm investing something like 100, 100 something investments.

I've never counted it up, but when I'm chatting with a founder

for a potential investment, I'm thinking, does this person make me wanna work with him within seven minutes?

because you meet someone great at a network event,

at a dinner at a house party that could be an amazing

co-founder, potential investor, a partner, a brand ambassador, a recruit for, you know, let's say an open role that you have, if you can't hook them, even if you do have 30 minutes on a Zoom, but if you can't get them engaged,

you know, for a dinner cocktail, serendipitous moment, you might have six minutes before they decide whether they wanna chat with you. - Why chat with you? - That is a great question.

I settled on seven because I usually know within seven minutes

“and I think it goes back to this intuition aspect”

of yours like logic is 11 data points, intuition is 1000 data points that you're pulling on to recognize, do I love being around this person? Like for instance, do I get great energy or so I get amazing, every time I'm like dude,

I just love Jen. And everybody does, and if it took eight minutes, you might not have those eight minutes like you, you have learned, probably since you were nine years old, since you were five years old.

Like it's probably not, it's part learned and part just who you are. It's like I wanna make this person feel amazing on minute one and second, 30. And what I've noticed is the best founders

is they're wired to make someone else feel amazing. Minute one. - Really? - They're already looking into, and this is how I've fundraised probably a hundred and maybe 150 million

for different things over the last 15 years of building companies, 18 years of building companies. And I recognize early on, like I am so wired to wanna figure out what is this investor care about three days before the call?

What am I thinking about that morning, the shower before calling three hours like for Jen in this podcast, I was showering early thinking like, okay, what would she, I'm on the drive here thinking, what would she care about this?

Okay, she loves this, I'm looking this up. And it's a total empathy thing of like, whether founders, the best founders, whether they know what or not, they're so surface oriented.

- Yeah. - And this is obviously very different than what the press would say about founders. But like Steve Jobs, I heard this about two years ago, this is so, so cool.

His chief of staff, that had been his chief of staff for 22 years, James Higa. He is an investor and magic mine. And he was chatting with our team two years ago and he said, I was like, well, what was the underlying mission

of Apple?

Like well, it was the, 'cause I didn't actually never heard

their one-line mission. For Google, it's organized at World's Information, Facebook, it's Connect, Humanity, and I was like, what's the one-line mission for Apple?

“And he goes, oh, it was, how best to relieve suffering?”

And I was like, what? Who's like, oh, yeah, we never really like codified it, but you know, in our executive team meetings, I was kind of the decision maker was, which route would lessen suffering the most?

And I was like, wait, James, what? - Wow. I was like, I've consumed nearly everything that there is to consume about Apple's chief jobs. I never heard that.

It was, well, yeah, I think he got it from his guru, something I'm like, wait, what? And he's like, yeah, well, yeah, his guru and Tokyo that, give him a lot of advice on these things. And I was like, you could think that, all right,

billionaire, Apple, Edison of our time, you think of those things. And this is, I think the mistake that young founders get caught up in early. Any first time founder gets caught up in his,

you get caught into the fruits and set of the routes for examples in life.

Never look at the fruits.

The fruits of what a tree is bearing

“of has nothing to do with if you want to replicate those”

or it's ever, like, you go to a great vineyard, the wine maker would be like, yeah, you can't look at the grapes and get that much information. It is all about the soil we chose, the climate of exactly where we are on the hill.

You would never just look at the grapes and be like, that gives me the whole playbook. And yet we do that with examples in history all the time. Or like, that's so true. That's such a wise thing to say.

And it's so true. And we are programmed to do that so often. But I'd like what you said about, you said so many good things in the last few minutes. I was trying to remember them.

So I can, I can, let's take a matter of time.

This is the caffeine free because it is about one PM. And this is, this is vegan over the, the roots and set of fruits where you can have half a one. But yeah, this is part of my roots for this test. You guys, I do it all the time.

And they're, they're, they're, they're, they're just smells good too. We're going to talk all about this. We're not there yet. But that's our sugar free version. That's, um, it is so delicious.

And caffeine free. Yep, it's good. It is so good. First caffeine free shot that we had ever heard of. Caffeine free energy shot.

So it's, yeah, it took a while to develop amazing.

They all taste so good. But wait a second, before we even jump into magic, because you know, I'm going to have a bazillion things to talk about with that. You know, a couple of things that I want to make sure we don't forget

“because I think they're really valuable pieces of information.”

There's a lot of wisdom there about founders. Because if we have logic in order to people who want to start businesses, you're a really great person and a great resource to give people some very tactical actionable things and things that people just maybe not think about.

But you said something that really kind of resonated because I did a whole talk on this and it kind of went viral on the fact that I believe and from my from what I've seen for my purview that companies or investors, typically they invest not in the business or the company, but the founder. And if you're likable, you're going to have a 40% more chance of not just

raising money, but getting more money. And you just kind of said that you prove that that hypothesis, right? Because you said, if you like somebody or they give you that feeling of energy or that energized feeling within seven minutes, you know, if you like them and then all these other things, of course, make a difference.

So basically, I totally see this because now that now I know you, I see why, you know,

you are able to raise money, you're able to like build this business and be like because it all comes from from the top and you exude a great energy, a great and very empathetic, your kind, your likable, so that is exactly, that is your secret, that is your secret sauce, your magical bowl. It's all magic, I do say I'm like people are like, maybe you have such great energy

of you know, 4 p.m. 8 p.m. I'm like that's the magical bowl. It could be the magic, but it's also part of like we say in the Jewish world like Nishama, like it's part of like who you are, like your DNA is very much that way. I do, I love people and I love nothing lies me up more than figuring out what someone wants needs is struggling with and then I can, I can get so quickly emotional,

think about and then jumping in to help them. It's a, I was chatting about this with the Hofa on the comedian. Yeah, I love it. He's so great. We want his podcast. No, we were just chatting in these uh, he's been a friend for years and he and I were chatting

“about, I was like, you know what's so weird is growing up. You remember the King Arthur stories?”

He was like, oh yeah, I love those. I was like, did you want to be King Arthur or did you want to? Was there any party that liked Merlin? He was like Merlin? No. Yeah, I want to be King Arthur. Of course, any like any, he's a nut for like childhood

things. But yeah, he mentioned that so quickly. And I was like, man, I always wanted to be Merlin.

And I always loved Merlin. He's the wizard that like helps the Knights of the Round Table. He's kind of like a side character. Yeah. But what I loved about that character is, and I was doing this like, uh, non-associative drawing exercise where I was just drawing and seeing with my eyes close, like, where would my mind go? This was, uh, I don't know, year or two ago. And I was drawing Merlin. I was like, oh, he's that forgot. I loved Merlin when I was a kid. The product is called match

mind. I love performing magic when I was little. And you did. I did. And I loved this aspect of this character that would help these Knights. He didn't necessarily have like some big challenge of his own. But he loved helping the Knights of the Round Table succeed in their challenges. I wake up each day and I'm like, I don't really have that much to do. I don't have like this drive of like I need to make this happen in my life. But once I hear someone that I know and love

has this or that problem, dude, I'll go on a walk for 45 minutes thinking about how can I solve it. It's the reason that we're saying just before we hit record, like both of us are wired to where we don't, um, people think I'd be good at sales. I'm like, not if it's only if it's something

“that I really believe in. Because then I can't wait to tell people about it. Because it's kind of”

benefits you. So yeah, that was the, I mean, the whole founding story. Imagine those 12 ingredients.

These are the 12 things that I was doing that years before ever starting. I tell us about it. Because

“you're, what you'd also say was interesting is that you are one of these founders with magic”

mind, but you're like intricately involved. Like you were at that, like, you know, at expo West. Do you or they are like, starting there for hours, like for like, you're there at the booth. Like, you really, you so believe in this product. And on top of that, you also are investing on all these other projects that you also are involved with. Like, you were like, do sleep or just magic might keep you up. But like, how does it work? That's great. I'm in bed at like

830, wake up at 430. Yeah, imagine my sleep. It is, yeah, we did launch my sleep because it's, it is, we launched it a little bit ago. And it's great too. It is. So I know, and in fact,

one of our other partners and friends, do you know, Pete Holmes? You got to eat. You just mentioned

him before the podcast. I've no idea who this person is. Oh, he's a great comedian, hilarious. He's comedian. I like him already. I know it's book on. Yes, you would love him. And he like you get stopped

“on the street because he's like talking about magic mind all the time. And, uh, and he'll send me”

texts of like, I'm on the streets at Baltimore. Someone just came up to understand their life was changed with, uh, the, uh, one of the things that he said that was, uh, that is so, so I guess, uh, interesting around this topic. And by the way, I also, yeah, this this morning, I, I was like, I need to go surfing and figure out this thing where we're about to launch a little bit listeners in on this. We're about to launch a new version of magic mind sleep and how do we launch an improved

version, but we still have this inventory, we got to mind every penny we sell this inventory of version 1.0. And so it's, it was a, uh, like, I'm very involved. To where I was like, I was like, I have to figure out this Tetris in my head and I need to go clear my head. I'm going to go surfing to try to figure it out to help the team to help the team. I don't think so. Maybe, but then I was on a 30 minute call in the way here with our team member Joe, just trying to think

through this, these logistics, my co-founder William, who's just so brilliant in the same way, he and I both love. We can't, we can't, we cannot be involved in these things, because I'm, I'm sure we, we piss off team members that are like, you hired me to be the expert in this, and they are experts that tell us how we should be doing things. But then everyone wants, it's like, there's five, five years. Yes, exactly five years. I mean, you know, just like,

institutional knowledge, it says, I need to jump in here and help with this. And that was kind of one of those examples today. But, um, but yeah, there is a, uh, Pete, he wrote me this text. He's like, okay, imagine my sleep house, one company done it twice, and this sounds like a commercial, and obviously I know. I saw his a commercial. He's like, he's like, there's no, usually companies may have one product, and you guys actually, they'll be with Magic Minds Sleep, but yeah, I do love.

Yeah, because I will, I, I, I'm saying this because it is legit, and that, and can, even vouch for this, the, my, my camera man over here, people come here and they say to me, without any type of conjolling, oh my God, I'm obsessed with the sleep one. And people legitimately love that sleep one. What is in the sleep one? That's not it. Okay, how did, like, because it's true, like you did, like, like, knock two out of the park? Well, thank you, the, uh, and, do, I could talk about this

stuff. The people that are interested in the ingredients. Yeah, they, they, I love, love talking about this, and, and this will be, uh, generically helpful, whether you buy Magic Minds or not. So, with

“Magic Minds, um, the daytime shot, the morning shot was all built around, at least the key”

insight was the leading cause of procrastination is low grade pervasive stress and anxiety. It's not fatigue, it's not lack of motivation. We think it's, it's those things. Yeah. But the leading cause and the research actually shows that it's low grade pervasive stress. You actually re, you're motivated, extremely motivated to nail that big paper you got to write, or that three hour project you've been putting off. But you low grade pervasive stress just of living in the

world that we, we live in of 25 text messages every hour and 50 emails every every day. We're like, I'll get to it later. I'll get to it later. But if you can decrease that stress, that low grade kind of just like, uh, I want to get to it. But like, it's got to be perfect. If you can decrease that, yep, you can actually, you're, you're, you're to do this just melts away. And when I figured that out in my morning stack, just my personal morning stack, this is probably seven, eight years ago,

and I was like, oh my god, that's the unlock that when we're drinking excessive amounts of caffeine,

the sad side effect of excessive amounts of caffeine. First, caffeine works. It's primary function

is that it blocks our adenosine receptors that tell us we're building fatigue. It actually, it doesn't produce that much energy in the body. To produce the energy in the body, you want to

cordy-seps mushrooms, which is in magic mine, or you can feel like you're awake by shutting off the check engine light. The adenosine receptors that tell us we're building fatigue, but that fatigue, and everybody knows this from chugging a coffee. It's building in the background and when that caffeine wears off, you crash. But it is like I, like I said, it's just like turning off the check engine light when you chug another cup of coffee or a red bowl or an energy drink. It's

turning off the check engine light instead of actually improving the engine. So the first insight

was like, well, I want to improve the engine. What are the ingredients that actually produce more ATP and produce the fuel currency of the body? That was the first set of things in the beginning. The night, then I learned that when we consume, and this was, you know, like I said, seven, eight, I mean, really the beginning of the journeys about 12 years ago, ended up writing a whole book on this subject before starting magic mine. And, and it was just

loved this. So it was kind of this Merlin kind of story. It was like, when I tell people about,

“hey, you should try Ashwagana, you should try Rodeoli, you should try Bacopamenaire. They would”

notice such a better lift in their productivity for years. And then I found out about, okay, decreasing stress. And let me let people in on this, this secret that most biohackers know, which is when you consume a lot of caffeine, you are turning off that check engine, a check engine line instead of improving the engine. But also critically, also, you're spiking cortisol, the body stress response. The very thing, you think, like, if I chug this red boom and knock

out that project, maybe for the next hour and a half, you're good. But then the very thing you're tugging to get through that next to do list is the very thing that an hour and a half later, your stress is spiking like, I don't want to do anymore. I can't, now I've got to go into, you know, being a great mom or a great dad after where I'm so stressed. And people would rarely make the connection of, oh, it's because I had those two, three, four extra cups of coffee that I,

I shouldn't have had. Also, what I noticed, because I'm a big coffee lover. I love ice

“cup. I love cold brew. I love that whole thing. I love it too. I love it. And the problem is,”

not, not even necessarily, well, it's actually, I drink it because I like the taste. And I love the ritual of it. I love a great, I drink a half gap in the morning. They've really loved it. The warmth and that I add my magic mind just alongside it, take a magic mind next to me. Well, what I was going to say is that the coffee for me, the ritual of pouring the cold brew, putting in the almond milk, doing that whole thing, is more of the ritual. And I don't think it gives me any more

energy. I'm not, I'm doing it for the taste, not for the effect anymore. In fact, I can try to drink five of them and pipe fall asleep because the, my body has acclimated. You build the tolerance about 30 days. You really do, you build a talk. I can have now two, three cold brews and people like could be jumping off the, I guess, the rooftop. And I'd be like, I'd ever, what I found with magic, my, what I do, my, my part of my ritual is I drink it

before I work out because it will, it will actually make me work out longer. And I'm, I'm like in, like, I'm focused more. The quarter-seps of mushrooms and specifically the, the supplier that we get our quarter-seps from, we're like, we are nuts for how much research is the most open research, uh, beverage or an oven. It sounds, that sounds, uh, bias, but like,

anybody can email us for the, the third party testing that we do across every contaminants,

heavy metals. You do. Yeah. And my crowbeales, my go talks, it's, it's, we, we, we give it to everybody. Everybody, we know our own family drinks it daily. So I'm just like, I'm going to go, as far as you possibly can, our operations manager Blake, when I, as said it made a request for the latest test that Tim Ferris asked for, he was like, uh, we can do it, but that's like, we're the only beverage I know of that would do it. And I was like, great. That's a, that's the

reason we should do it. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, the, the, the quarter-seps, specifically quarter-seps, so great for endurance athletes and for anybody working out the ones 15, 20, 30% more endurance for their workout. Yeah. Well, and also like, I'm, I'm focused more, and I, I have my best ideas that, like, when I work out regardless, but the coffee doesn't do the same thing. It does not work as well. It does not. I mean, I'm, I'm just being honest. And caffeine is actually,

“this is where we get into the fun, I think, uh, but there is happiness. There's not this one,”

not the caffeine free, but we do have 55 milligrams in our original charge. And we have a, uh, magic mind max, which is 165 milligrams, which is, uh, that is about a cup of coffee, but it's time release over the course of eight hours, which is so cool. You couldn't do that until about two years ago, time release liquid. You could do tamarilus pills, but not liquid until about two years ago. As soon as we saw that, William and I were like, we're going to be doing it.

The first time release energy shot. And Max, uh, is that now we've incorporated time release into

original, but okay, I definitely want to oscillate back to the generic helpful information that's so independent of, of whether you, uh, anybody drinks magic mind or not. And on the caffeine

interesting. And it's so poorly understood. One, what I was saying of people think a cup of coffee

“gives them energy. Yeah. It gives you a tiny amount of adrenaline, but, uh, it's primary function”

is shutting off the, the nerve receptors telling you that you're building fatigue, the adenosine receptors. And then three hours later, those blocks were off and the adenosine rushes in and you have that crash, but there are actual things that nature and science give us that do build up the body's fuel currency and produces more energy. But the other thing that's, uh, that is poorly understood about caffeine, at least from the, uh, mainstream audience, it's very well

documented in the, in the literature, is that caffeine is a vast sub-constructor. So it restricts the blood flow to the brain. So you get less oxygen to your brain with something like city calling, which is in magic mind. City calling improves blood flow to the brain. Why is that good that improves lateral thinking? Lateral thinking is the scientific term, the academic term for

“creativity. Lateral thinking is being able to switch context, be able to combine this problem in”

this problem or this potential solution with this problem. So city calling, we use this, the best version of city clones called cognizant took us like two years to get on the weight list to get

cognizant in our product because it's, it's, uh, it's always in such high demand. But that product,

and you, anybody can buy a cognizant or city calling on their own, they don't need to get their matter went. But that, that is a great approach to improve blood flow to the brain, which improves lateral thinking, drinking a lot of caffeine, drinking a second cup, a third cup of, of coffee. Not only do you build the tolerance within 30 days, my, my parents, my mom and I have been drinking coffee for 50 of two cups for 50 years. For 49 years and 11 months they've been in maintenance mode.

Exactly. Just maintaining, getting back to neutral with those two cups. And they feel when they're out of neutral, like, oh, there's these two cups, I need them. Well, you do need them to get back to neutral. But you're not going to anything more than that maintenance mode when you drink those two cup after 30 days. If you add in a second cup, a third cup of someone's listening to this and they add in like a fourth cup, they'll feel it for 30 days and then they're in maintenance mode.

You can take about 12 days to get off and then get back into, you know, feeling that. That's pulling it, you mean? Yeah, cycling. But all this is to say that you aren't getting much of the benefit. You're just getting back to neutral. But every time 50 years in, five years in, 55 days in, you are getting the negative effects of the vaso constriction. The limited blood flow

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“Okay, I have a question for you. Can your body acclimate to drinking a magic wine?”

Everything in magic wine outside of caffeine does not bill tolerance. Really? Like I said, it's like the, I almost tell people like, if you can put aside the knee-jerk reaction of thinking this might be a commercial for a young guy's own product. Yeah, if you didn't put it in, if you can't put that aside, the ingredient choices are so fascinating that it's why we have you, you've had so many people

take it from a lead athletes to the person that you wanted that you wanted us to send it to. Yeah, totally recently. Like, they've tried everything, and it's like this stuff works. Actors and actresses, athletes, moms, entrepreneurs, all alike, everyone's obsessed with. Maybe the best cycleist of all time, that has tried everything else. That's right. And yet they're like, can you send more of that? And it's a,

that is like, can you give me a hug and give me a hug? Oh my god, I know my, my Rolex

is he, he took the time to also write a note back and he said, I've got to say whatever you've

“done, and this is so impressive. My wife actually loves this. And we get all these products sent”

our way and she doesn't love any of them. It's rare for actually love one. So that was really kind of, but the, um, but when I say, you know, if you can put that aside, it's a really fast thing dive into the ingredients that, like I said, you could buy on your own and you don't need to call it subscriptions, you can get on your own, cognizant, you can get on your own. Like, also like stuff like rodeola stuff like that. rodeola stuff like that. You could buy it, but is

it as effective on its own, or is it the combination and sequence together? They call it the entourage effect. Yeah. So yeah, biohackers and all of our formulators, and we have a scientific advisory board of these, these titans in this space that's been a constant trek, is how do we get the

best minds around the table? Like, Dr. Andrew Wilde, who, if you've never had him on point, he's great.

He's amazing. He is so amazing. He's like the, the OG functional doctor that, that, uh, cover his time. I absolutely like it. Yeah, he put me into that with him. I would think you're like him. He's the best. He's the best of all these people. I know, and he's like, goes on to Joe Rogan. He doesn't have, like, uh, he doesn't have some commercial interest. He does, he just like, not just great for dot dot dot reasons. Uh, it rodeola Rosé is great for

dot dot or reasons. I'm like, mentioned magic. Yeah. And he never does. And you just keeps it so cool, you know, and objective. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Okay. He's like head of all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Dan Angle, who also goes on, you know, all the big podcasts. He's a brilliant, nurse, easy, unique because he's neuroscientist. And he's a, uh, MD and PhD. And, uh, and he is, also overlaps with a lot of psychedelic researchers really rare to get. Oh, yeah. Two of those,

but all three is, is really rare. So great neurologist and neuroscientist and just has, he's so open to all plant alternatives to things. And there are no, no psychedelics and

magic money, even though the name, uh, some of the things. That's a lot of people always ask in that too. I know. So then,

okay. So obviously, clearly people love it. Um, there's 12 ingredients. You made it. You basically concocted this whole thing in your kitchen. Yeah. It's been around for how long now. Like seven years you said about five years. Oh, five years. I've been doing it in my own for about 12 from started all

“started with a heart condition that limited how much caffeine I could have each morning. That's how we all”

started half a cup of coffee. Yeah. Or I was like, I have coffees and they'll be all drinking six to seven cups a day. And my doctor was like, with your condition, you can't have more than half cup. And I was like, there's no f in way I can get through down half a cup of coffee. And then he said this one thing, then we'll, we can wrap up the, the magic my content. Uh, and you know, the long, you know, the long ask commercial. But I'm going to commercial people. I think people should know about this. It's good. Yeah, this, and this is a great

point around green tea and, uh, and or anybody that wants to add alfine to their, their morning ritual. He's the, this doctor is brilliant doctor and, and San Francisco. He said, you know, with your condition, really can't have more than half a cup of coffee because it'll trigger your regular heartbeat. And, uh, and it was like, dude, there's no way I can get through a down half cup because it's like a true addict. I was my, it was the only thought from the day of hearing out a

heart condition, we're going to go next door to the ER and have your heart shock back into a, like, I didn't care about any of that stuff versus him saying that. And he said, well, if you ever tried green tweet, a green tea, it has this compound, and it called alfine that extends your body's absorption of caffeine over a longer period of time and dials down the stress response for how much caffeine for the caffeine that you're consuming. And I was like, wait, this alfiesta, wait, there's a

stress response. And I could add this alfiest stuff that he just mentioned to my morning ritual to

get more out of my first cup of coffee. And that was 12 years ago, that was the beginning of my engineering

brain going crazy down the rabbit hole of what else does nature and science give us to add the

“morning ritual to get the most out of it. And so how did you drink a day just out of curiosity?”

I drink one original, and then in the afternoon, every once in a while, have a magic mind free. And then the sleep went, okay, what's in the sleep went to don't go into the, just tell me if you can, you have the best ingredients, my favorite ingredients in sleep are magnesium, camimil, there's a Valerian root, and and then I love lavender as well, but it's a low dose lavender. So why is it works so well? Like why are people going to see sleep?

Okay, and this gets back to your question of the 12 ingredients. And yeah, rodeo is on par on par. It's been shown in a large scale size beyond par with low-dose pharmaceutical stimulants, which means I can say this correct. You could say whatever you like is supposed to be, and this is what a lot of people I know who are on atarol or on all these ADHD medications. The natural, the natural occurring

and then if you par it with buccopa minary, then that decreases in pulsivity, about to 40, 45 percent.

Really? Yes, so that you really feel locked in your energy is higher, and you feel super locked into the task you're working on. And nobody knows these things. And in China, buccopa is given to kids and adults way before they would give a pharmaceutical. That's incredible. This other one you used to mention was called buccopa. But buccopa, like you can buy that on itself. You can taste awful. That's where three different science teams. And I helped us probably, it's probably 700

k three years three different food science teams to get it to taste good. Yeah, you guys spend a lot of money on the ingredient list. I mean, there's a reason why it's like, it's a very high quality product.

“Yeah, I think three months ago, it became the number one health shot in the natural in the country,”

the entire country in the natural in the channel. Really? Yeah. I'm surprised it's a whole food sprawl scene. I feel like it's been on a rocket ship for the last couple years. It's been fun to see go from D to C in e-commerce. Yeah. And biohackers and influencers and Silicon Valley Lebanon too now. Yeah, it's been cool to see it in grocery stores in the same place. Where's that arrow one? Well, yeah, it's the number one shot at arrow one. By the way, I think do not quote me on this.

Ed, you can clip this out if I'm wrong. Oh, look out. Look afterwards. But I believe last time I checked, it is the number two revenue beverage at all of everyone. And it is the number one shot in the natural channel, which means Whole Foods and Sprouts and Air One and Natural Grocers around the country. And now we just started to get into conventional grocery, which would be places like crogar and other things and publics and, you know, the southeast. So yeah, now you'll start to see it

in those kinds of, which is so fun. I love it. Most of my family and friends back in Texas, they're not, you know, going to Whole Foods for every grocery. No, they're going to regular grocery store. Right, so it's fun. That's amazing. Okay, so that's amazing. Tell me more about what your other rituals are daily to kind of keep on point. So we know that you do this. What else? Because I know you're very spiritual and you're into all sorts of like meditations and stuff. So we talked on,

we talked about looking, I love your shoes by the way. Those are so cool. I've never seen

shoes like that. You have it, you know, you know what these are. They're called sneaks. Do you know Sarah Blakely, who did spanks? Yeah. So she sent me a couple of her. Those are so cool for listeners that can't see it's a high heel. They're, they're, they're basically a high heel writing shoe. They're, they're not the most beautiful to look at. But I will tell you, they're the most comfortable shoes. Yeah. Ever word. I thought like, I thought like, wait, first saw them. I'm

like, oh my god, they're so horribly ugly. And then Jesse, her husband, it's her, who is a friend of mine,

“sent me a couple of pairs. And I believe they were so cool. They are amazing. They are the most”

comfortable shoes ever. And people can make fun of all they want. But listen, put your foot in the

house. You'll never walk around with them again. And then do you end up talking about it?

All the time. People are always like, people are usually, people are usually guys are like, oh yeah, those are so cool. Girls are like, they're so ugly. How are you wearing them? Really? Yes. Yeah. But they're selling, I think. I mean, function over a form for guys, I guess. Like, I'm like, that looks so much more functional. It's, it's a functional, like, for me, I mean, I don't know how to, like, walk in real high heels because I'm such a, I'm like a gym

bro, but with long hair. Yes. So for me, I have to, it's true. So I need to, I can't wear like stilettos. I will follow for my face. So I need to wear shoes that are very comfortable. So I wear these. And this is also not an ad. This is legit. This is something that I've been wearing. And I really liked them because I can wear them with jeans and not like a boy. Sneaks. I went out. So I took an Instagram test as that is a seven, meaning at Epicurian,

loves to go find things to tell the community. So I love. Like, like, just knowing someone's made out really high quality, cool looking product. And now you are testing to the comfort. I'm like, yes. I want to be able to know snakes, snakes, snakes. I'm telling you, you're like the fifth guy on this podcast to mention them. They look like shoes from straight on and then on the profile I know. I was like, wait, what does her heels? So it's very cool. So people thought making a girl

stop making fun of me. They're all going to be, you're ahead of the curb a lot of ways. So Sarah's actually are Blakely's ahead of the curb. I'm just the follower, apparently. But I mean, they're really

“great shoes. Well, you know the, yeah, the, uh, one of my favorite quotes I think of in entrepreneurship”

and in life. This is a Jeff Bezos quote. He said, innovators must be willing to be misunderstood. Yes, totally agree with that. I think about this all the time where if you can cultivate a willingness where it's not a, um, it's not a bug. It's a feature if you can cultivate it. It's not like,

You don't really care. You can be, you can go from being six months ahead to two years ahead to three years

“ahead. And that can allow you all kinds of affordances in life. You become the maven where everybody”

starts, you know, what's next? What should I be, what I'm sure everybody in that work asks you, it's like, what do you think about this product? What do you think about this stuff? What do you think about this day? Coal plunging for women. And you're like, because I just didn't need to fit into, I wasn't striving to be understood. I got the answer for this three years ago. 100. Also, it's so funny that they said that James, because that does happen all the time. People like

said me stop for my opinion or whatever. And many years ago, actually like 10 years ago, maybe 8. I was actually, was it like the LA times or some magazine like put me as like in the top 10 taste makers in like the health and wellness space? Because I have like, you know, I created this whole thing called no gym require before no gym required became a thing. I created weighted shoes before

like, you know what I mean? Like I was always doing these things. But I was always like, like five

“years before it became popular. And then it kind of exploded onto the scene. You know what I mean?”

So people who know me know it's like kind of like, yeah, like, and people laugh at me in its interim. They're like, oh my gosh, what is she doing? She has something she's talking about. Like, I was doing fitness stuff way before fitness and wellness and longevity became popular, you know? Have you started your own company? Yeah, I thought I started too. I had a shoot. My first one was a weighted shoe. That was basically the weight was like based the the sole of the

cool was like a weight. So you can interchange. You can take up the weight and have a regular sole or have the weight. And the weight was evenly distributed to be easier in your knees and your ankles. And it was like, it was I sold. I don't know like a hundred thousand pairs of these shoes on my own. What happened? Where did you go? The what happened was, oh my gosh, this is like this is a podcast on its own. I got acquired by a big company. So what happened?

I sold so many shoes on my own. I factor the money. I didn't raise any money. So I was like paying a ton of interest on the money and the shoes were coming from Korea and they were heavy. So because of that, like it was costing me a lot. But all these made like the top five

“because in the in the business of shoes. There's not many. There's Reebok, Nike, you know?”

People were like, oh my god, how is this like girl selling all these shoes without a big

$200 million a year marketing budget without all this? But I was giving out these shoes to every

celebrity and they were wearing them around. And at the time, like those magazines like, you know, us weekly and life in the style were really popular. So everyone was capturing these shoes in these magazines. So like all these companies were going to incubate me. Do you wear them? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know about like all the like, yeah, like they would be in the shoes. But they would be in the shoes so you can't get it because

ankle weights are really bad at joints. And they were weird to where it's like you look like a person. I looked like it was they were heavy, but they were cool looking. Yeah. And so like everyone was wearing them. Like Jennifer Gardner was wearing them. Jennifer Anne is whoever, like everybody. And so people like who the hell is this chick? And so I was going to be, I was getting

offers to be incubated by all of these companies. And then I ended up going with this second

tier company because I really liked the man who was like, who owned it. And he this guy, this company owned a bunch of these like tier two tier three shoes that you'd find like at TJ Maxx, wasn't like a Reebok or a Nike. And I got the deal with him. And then when I did the deal with him, he wanted out of the deal. And he basically like kind of screwed me. And so I it was like and to the whole deal last took so long that like by the time I was like legally okay, I already lost momentum

on the shoes for so long. And it's still one of those like bees in my bonnet. Like I still think about that this is bringing back. I wanted to listen, I just had this conversation two weeks ago because I was like 10 years ahead of my time. And those shoes two day in the wellness space would kill. Yeah. I'm going to show you a pair. That's the first thing because that went to this day. I should have made I was young and naive. I trusted this. I told young founders all the time.

It first time founders, you might be 55. First time about get your first startup out of the way. It's a burnable and your first game is the messiest get it out of the way. If you're successful, great. Otherwise, you've got a cheap MBA. Oh, you've no idea. I learned so much. I also haven't MBA, but I learned so much. But the truth of the matter is like, if you get into business with someone who wants to screw you who has more power, money, money and power, it's really hard when you're like

a young girl. Do you see your partners? That's the first lesson. So for it. It's life and everything and life. The second business I did, the second company was sold. I got acquired by Weight Watchers. So I developed a fitness app. Wait, how is this stuff going on? You don't want to talk about it.

And weirdly enough, as extraverted as I am, I don't really talk about myself in that way. Like,

people always laugh at me and like my friends and family. Like, I'm super like low key in

stuff like that. But people who know no, you know, there are people who only know me as the entrepreneur. There are people who only know me as a fitness person who like does squats and lunges on Instagram. People who only know me as like the bigger, better, bolder person who does they know this TED Talks. I'm very sick. I'm very, yeah. I'm similar in that. And I think that all of those different beautiful songs made it three or four chords. And I think they'll come together so beautifully over time,

“or where you're like, oh, that's why it just felt destined that I would invest in these different”

areas that come together because they certainly are coming together. But also, add that I, I'm wired very similarly from building companies to investing in companies to making a lot of music. Make a lot of music just for fun. I love that. I'm magic. Yep. And I love magic. That's, I was telling my wife two nights ago. I was like, yeah, I stopped doing magic because my friends made fun of me in eighth grade. But I'm going to start bringing that back. You should. Yeah,

especially the little kids they love it. But you should bring it back. And by the way, that's a the willingness to be misunderstood. That was the beginning of bringing it up. That was the beginning of me being like, oh, I want to be understood. So I'm going to get rid of these things that I'm, that I'm naturally, that I have naturally love. But everybody listening, if you can lean into

“things that you love when you're six, seven, eight years old, you will uniquely be preternatially”

wired for that thing. Maybe took 30 years off. But finding a rediscovery that playing music was one of those things. There was no commercial reason. It was just, if I do this, you know, you know, told me this, that got me thinking in this direction. It was two experiences. One I saw are six-month-old daughter dancing to music. She didn't even understand what music was six months away. Her fate, it would, is she her face, and you know, there's no smile. She would hear music

and within half a second. Her body is sorry. But her first daughter didn't have that response.

And I was like, I'm wired that I always start tapping on everything. And I've kind of been like

repressing music. Yeah. And when I told my dad I was taking making more music lately, he was, oh, this is his response. Maybe two years ago, he was, does that make any money? And I was like, oh, God bless you. That's been the influence in my life. Totally. For different pursuits, like it doesn't make money, so I shouldn't do it. But man, Gene, why start to make more music. And when I leaned back into making music, all of these other things started to flourish because one,

70% of our brain is wired for movement. So you're lighting up the, the idea that you're going to city your desk front of computer screen and become creative and find creative solutions for things is so laughable when you look at the science that you want to be walking around the proverbial like throw in the ball against the wall. That's way better. Go on play basketball, not because you're going to play basketball. But the randomness of where the ball is going to go, where you're

going to have to dribble it around is so great for lighting up the brain or music. And Einstein was actually like famous for leaving his office playing a couple notes to the piano or in his violin, going back with some insight. Also think about it. People who are not talented like that, even just going for a walk except your brain, the cognitive power that you get just from moving your body and a walk. Like, again, you get way better, right? Yeah. Probably why you get great ideas of the

job. I do. That's like, I, to me, I think there's a lack of the ability of people just to be with themselves and there are thoughts because that's where like brilliant happens or that's where like

“ideas happen to me. You know what I mean? I really believe that's like a very important piece of it.”

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Also, I wanted to say it's being, I think, you said something that was very true, which is

“being okay with being misunderstood. The other thing that I think is really valuable is that”

being under, I think being underestimated is also very valuable. Because people don't even know what they're getting. Well, because you're saying to me earlier about this whole, when I was in the bathroom, I was just thinking about this. Some of my secret powers have been being misunderstood because people don't really know where to fit you, you kept pigeonhole me. I'm a podcaster, but I'm also an investor. I'm a fitness person, but I'm also had two successful exits.

But this person, but and people don't know, so it's like constantly the small that they're like,

"What do you do? I don't know who you are. What do you do? I hear that all the time." But that

that ability to be underestimated all the time, right? And then people get to know me in one lane and they're like, "Holy shit, how do you know all that?" Or, "How do you do that?" And that underestimation or being underestimated has served me so well in life because you shock and awe and surprise people constantly. And they don't see you coming. Well, you know, you know,

“what's so great is that I think it's in building any identity. You can catalyze an identity”

by focusing on something. Or, is you can catalyze an identity by getting tattoos. You know, dying your hair or purple. You can do expedient things to catalyze an identity. And it doesn't usually last that long. Like you could be the eccentric friend that has purple hair and a face tattoo. And it's like, "Yeah, yo, Christy is really like, you know, really creative." And then they look at the output and they're like, "I don't know." And not very reliable. And

your identity, you can really undo your identity on the other side of whatever shortcut you took. But the long-term investment into a unique singular identity. Then it's like, and this is how I already talk about you with other people that wear wear mutual friends. I'm like, we already know it's Jen Cohen. Like, there's no other way of describing Jen's. Jen Cohen. That is the, that's the painter. Like, that is, that is the golden territory to where it's like,

"Oh, you don't know." Oh, you just, I don't even, I'm not even trying to explain. Go look

“up and you need to know her. And that's nice. I would hope that for my daughters. I would hope that”

for the founders that I work with, where if it's just like the founder of Instacart, I know that he also feels like that's limited identification. Maybe he did that for 10 years, sort of a friend of mine, Corva's Anne Max, the two founders of Instacart. I know, damn well that that would suck if seven years later. That's just how they're, that's how they're known. 15 years later, it's how they're known. But that might be the way that they're known

because it was so burning hot so quickly early in their life. But I think if you invest in these other areas like the last area that I, I am somewhat, somewhat followed for and known for is

on philosophy in Venice every month. I, every first Friday to this thing called philosophy Fridays.

And it's this thing that started in our backyard with five people and now it's 200 people and it's 110 people that meet up every first Friday because the room capacity is 110 people standing remotely and it's around the 5,000 year old philosophy of Vedanta comes from India. And it's, but it's really a perfect container for any field that you could bring up. Cycrates, you could bring up St. Augustin. It's the perfect container for anything philosophical. Cont, you could bring up

Hagel, Nietzsche, and anyone and everything in between because this is a great little container for like we were talking about before roots and set of fruits. The stuff that I think about you asked about my morning routine, it starts right waking up at 430 and it's an hour and a half of philosophy and spiritual just stillness. So it's about a 45 minute lecture of some of some kind of reading and then it's 45 minutes of journaling reflecting this ancient, as old in terms of

continuing studies, all this philosophy on the planet is called Advaita Vedanta and I have a daily podcast on this that like 11 people listen to but I'm like man, no one is people would really benefit from an accessible approach to this very ancient cryptic philosophy and it's the source of nearly all Eastern philosophy. Buddhism comes from as it's described. The adage goes Buddhism is Hinduism made for export as it leaves India and inters China. You have Zen as a derivation as it leaves

China and inters Japan but if you follow it all back for they all go back to these four philosophical

get built on top of it really kind of distractingly get built on top of it. Hence Buddhism

“strips a lot of that away to get back to the simple philosophy but this philosophy these philosophical”

principles things like one principle is love is seeing no otherness in the world. Another one

is wisdom is the capacity to see the end in the beginning. Another which I've never heard

definitions on these things. Another is reflection is a hundred thousand times more powerful than listening. The reason I mentioned that one is not only is that morning ritual just it's all reflection time. I'm not reading anything new. There's a three year course on this philosophy I've done now done it four times on the fifth cycle through it's nothing new it's just reflecting on these things because like I mentioned one of the principles is reflection is a hundred thousand times more powerful than

listening. If there is a listener to this episode this conversation that got anything that resonated with them out of the conversation if you don't reflect on it maybe it was the Jeff Bezos quote of

“innovators must be willing to be misunderstood. If you hear that and you drive in your car like”

that was really cool and maybe you tell a significant other spouse that night and over dinner this cool phrase but you never think about it again. If you're not spending 7, 10, 14 days just reflecting on that for 5, 10, 15 minutes with your morning coffee with your magic mind for 10, 15 minutes before you get started with your day. It is like it never even happened because you know you know this when you click on something so inspiring on Instagram you like it maybe you're insented to a friend

but if you don't reflect on it two days later it's like it's in one year out the other

it's like you never happen. Second never happened. The reflection in this philosophy so brilliantly

and precisely the words are on the philosophies they're so precise but it's so precisely it forces this reinforces this this beautiful notion that reflection isn't just like twice as powerful

“tens it's 100,000 times more powerful than listening or reading. So I every morning 90 minutes”

of just reflecting on these things that now it's a decade into this philosophical pursuit these studies but that will serve the conversation that I'm having like the conversation what I'm coming to with this the investor meeting or a podcast conversation is seeing no otherness in the world what is Jan Andrew said in what would make this a fun conversation for listeners that kind of even asking Ed during the quick bathroom break what are the things that what are the things that we said

that were interesting to you and that's um it's so ingrained in how I operate so someone might see multiple nine figure businesses by the way the first one didn't stay there it was valued at 400 million before a fire sale to Airbnb and total PhD and triple PhD and whatnot to do but there's so much reflection on what not what mistakes that I make so much reflection on that that then it allows for this beautiful clarity to where magic one has been like a five-year journey

where every night I'm going to bed just being like how did this all happen I've never gone to bed feeling

like stressed about it not a single time no not a single night I've never had I've had maybe stressful hour of how do we figure this out a stressful three hours of like oh my god our mod financial models wrong we're gonna run out of money and have to solve for that in like three days but there's like two hours and then it was clarity literally go go for a walk and then I'm like oh we could well this investor loves us this customer loves us so much he's been a subscriber for

three years and he loves investing in companies maybe he would want to invest maybe she would want to invest and yeah maybe max three hours of stress but I've never had a stressful day never woken up in the middle of the night thinking about some existential thing or some made up pretend things are you're lucky and I my previous lives in my twenties there's failure for failure and every night stress at waking up in the middle and I'd about this that or the other kind of stress well how

it's held like you just said it yourself it was evaluated a 400 million dollars and that was a fire sale to Airbnb what the hell what wrong oh my god what is part two of the episode it's kind of like when you get a PhD asking somebody gets a PhD what'd you learn I know so it's so many things but I'd say the number one thing that I crystallize it down to where it's helpful for there are a lot of things I learned where I utilize it every day and and utilize that reflective learning

for anything even how I run a meeting or how I elicit feedback from somebody like I'll ask

I was so scared of the truth my twenties I never asked people I wouldn't in a way I do what do you

“think but I'd be like how do I catch this into something that's gonna be pleasant to hear first”

you know yeah exactly where it's like no gin be as brutal as as you possibly can because it doesn't help the company if and then for two years it was iterating on the product before we ever launched magic mine it was two years I mean wanting that versus my twenties was something like tilt a payments platform that we're in through a skin of our teeth we're able to sell to every and be but certainly not at the heights of our valuation that we achieved how much did you sell

it for you allowed to say it was about the cash and stock is about 55 million 55 million but we

had raised our previous round of funds at 385 million you guys raised 385 million dollars

no we raised a total of 70 at the last valuation last value yeah we raised 70 and sold 55 which ain't a good that ain't a good equation no it is not that good so did your investors talk

“do you still every meaningful investors invest in me multiple times in fact so I was”

thinking about this on a run yesterday just in con like the co-founder twitch I'm sure you've seen this in your entrepreneurial journey too you think they won't talk to you I thought I was like I was teaching you nobody you I bet you've seen this you're like the best investors they're like you just got a PhD I want to invest in you again and again just in con the co-founder of twitch he's investing me in four times Mike Maples maybe the OGC investor of all time the best

senior investor the first investor in twitter and lift and budget companies he's investing four times this you the people invest in the person so many variables make a company break right make or break it like it could it like you said it was like on the skin of your teeth you sold it for 55 but like the line between x like like excellence and just like unicorn to like a complete failure is like this this then you know what I mean crazy crazy margin maybe we had to launch three times

and still had like the year that they were going to go public and where I was like all the stock is going to finally we were 10 years to do a thing again and the year they go public the first global pandemic in a hundred years that shuts down travel they year that they're going public and I'm like why does everything I work on just a fail this is like once in a hundred years oh my exactly the biggest travel companies going public and then this happens yeah so it's and then

luckily they ended up having one of the best IPOs of all time but that and it's every company has these near death experiences Facebook Uber famously just dragged in blood for three years

“Uber like that and I think they were going to survive I kept they came back like with like”

they came back well because like they're a CEO he's a really good CEO right yeah Dora

Dora did he really kind of take that company and he did made some amazing moves and honestly

just a lot of these companies Apple famously almost died a couple times when Steve was there when he came back it six weeks of cash when he came back Tesla famously almost a death store and I you know that's another learning that I had was I just was so scared of it failing that I thought well it's going in the wrong direction we should find a place that we should sell not realizing now every company if you're lucky you get a third act where up in the right

then it comes down and then the third act you rise again like as Phoenix and then you're unstoppable and until the so that I was mentioning that there's so many things that I use each day like how I elicit uh product feedback but the thing that I tell you earlier maybe the first or second time founder the thing that I say most often is wait until your product is loved before you try to scale out your business and obsessively biopically tunnel vision focus on getting to that point

and nothing else with tilt there's a payment technology that was lukewarm light people kind of liked it it was good but as soon as they liked them as free as soon as we tried to charge for it's kind of like Venmo as soon as you try to try to charge for people like wow PayPal's free or Zell's free people bounce and you can have a good product but a terrible business and we had a good product but it wasn't loved enough to wear any time we tried to charge people 2% five percent

they would bounce and we realized way too late we're scaling a product that people like lukewarm light but they don't love like your shoes how do you try to sell shoes or it it's kind of a derivation of what's out there people don't really love them you're such a charismatic persuasive person you could force 10,000 pairs of be sold but you

isn't loved yet and with Madramine I literally was like I will put my own capital into this

“and I want to be told in the first two years that people don't want this because these journeys are”

so brutal that I want to find out in two years and not six or seven like I've found out before that people don't want this so that I can go on to the next thing luckily totally that by the way another really good piece of advice you've given a couple of really good like good solid like morning a couple like pray four or five solid gems here that's another one which is if a product's just liked it doesn't have the the threshold to be good yeah it has to be

loved you're a hundred percent right and this does so that's interesting you're right because

tilt like yeah whatever they liked it kind of like Venmo but it also you can do it with 12 people

it was it was a real learning of do not rest on your superpowers reserve those superpowers so true how do you get a product to be massively loved because like that's okay super simple time time in a obsession with the truth brutal honest feedback from people for some founders there's we we myself included my 20s I just wanted to be not only did I think it was like this is a shortcut to egos engineering this is shortcut to the career that I

really wanted this is a shortcut to financial milestones yeah and it was like I'm doing this selfishly because I would have some cool articulated mission but it was really just selfish on three different channels and I now was so I was so impatient to get there on those that I was like I'm going to brute force this like my one of my superpowers was being persuasive or being really persistent and with with magic money it was a beautiful thing to reserve those cards and say yeah I have

these cards but I only want to apply them it's like a surfer you could surf multiple ways wait

“for the wave of the day wait for and surf some great waves you're leading up to that that's how you”

find the wave of the day as you surf a few but wave selection that is that is an art form all in its own whether you're surfer or whether you're an art entrepreneur where you could do anything we can't do everything and if you are really good at let's say three paddles popping up on a wave and you can write it for 300 yards 300 meters this sets coming choose the best way obviously but if you're so eager to just prove that you could write a wave then the other people

look and they doubt you and you're going to prove it to them you're going to jump on a shit wave if you get detonated and not only not get the validation but also you're going to be hesitant to ride the next set that's coming great analogy and and I think with if you can have time recognize that it's a it's so much of it is like you said you can have the same founder that chooses the wrong wave in a dog market and that market is going to destroy them same

founder that waits for the right wave maybe is really paid it with imagine why there's two years of like universe show me that you don't want this to exist because the last go around was so freaking painful nearly killed me I want to be shown early yeah this is a bad way and luckily that patience allowed us to iterate I was iterating on the product to make it better and better and better before it even had like a name to it's just I just called James is magic potion

James is magic potion yeah that sounded like that sounds like a horrible name and I wanted that's a lot of density yeah and you know what was funny is I was like this tastes awful doesn't have a name and I'm shipping people a little these little bottles with powder that

“you have to add your own water to and I was like I luckily with investing or someone that has”

other jobs with you have it if you have another day job then you don't have this undo unnecessary financial pressure well it was so fun about those two years or what was helpful about I should

say is I was like if people want this when it has a dumb name basically no name tastes awful

and they've got to add the water themselves that's what I'll know that I have something that's worth it's and I say this and in product building to founders all the time if they'll buy it when it's ugly they will pay a shit ton when it's pretty wow so that's what you did and it's exactly what we did for it's what I was doing on my kitchen for two years and so you're constantly iterating the product so it was a Williams job to like run the operations yeah so like once I knew

we had something yeah you're like I got to get a co-founder that's really great on all the things I'm not great at this is part of the PHD2 of my 20's triple PHD because there's three failures of my 20's just failure to fail at this point I was 32 so just turned 40 so I guess there's 32

we launched about five and a half years ago okay and so I brought him on about five years ago

“and I was like all right I know what I'm great at which is I know this this world of products”

like the back of my hand yeah I know e-commerce like the back of my hand and brand building but I do not know supply chain management logistics of these things cash flow and if you mentioned with the shoes being so expensive coming from Korea it's a whole art form and it's own right cash flow management I was crushed and then retail I know nothing about expanding the grocery and retail and he knew all there was is to know about that with Bill brands that he had built before he's brilliant

Princeton grad and just like he was building a brand called brahmy if you've ever seen brahmy in air one is a protein protein pasta yeah I have seen it he's a co-founder brahmy yeah co-founder brahmy and was on the operation side so he just knew his super power is is all of these things that managing a retail sales team looking at a spreadsheet for a month financial model it sounds as

all really well it is a really powerful one plus one equals three but this gets to also one of the

PhDs is knowing what you're not good at knowing what you're good at and then also knowing what makes a great partner what makes a bad partner to all the way to learn these things it's like

“surfing I can't tell you can't read a book and know how to do these things that's why I tell”

everybody get your first business the event clinicians want to start something get it out of the way to get the which was more valuable for you the businesses you started or the NBA you got NBA got for sure really telling more oh the NBA got from school no which was more about okay this is this proves you've no clue who I am I just did an entire TED Talk called a lot of social money my decision does not nearly all my social release yet technically but I

just did a whole TED Talk on why your barbell is more important than your NBA because I have both and I learned almost nothing from my NBA I mean except like how to memorize and to you know spend a lot of like the amount of money it costs to get the NBA but everything I've learned that has been valuable to me has been way more valuable in being like practical experience and doing and greatness stuff like fitness has actually taught me way more gave me gave me the best

NBA I could have ever had because it taught me discipline it taught me taught me a ton of things but like patience discipline hard work perseverance perseverance persistence doing something even when you don't want to over and over and over and over again to me that's the best best training ground so like I learned more on like on the like at the top of the squat rack than I did in my in my NBA program and to I tell everybody that and people like a lot of people like Pupumi who have

like Princeton degrees and Harvard degrees honestly got did it teach you did it did it give you some type of status yeah it can give you some status to get you in the door but it will not make you successful it will not teach you the fundamentals and the foundation of what real success is in life I don't know yeah I it's you know we can we mention that the warm buff a quote before on better business person makes him a better investor being an investor makes him better business

person and it actually ties closely to his long-time partner Charlie Munger who is one of the best both of them two best investors of all time and they're talking about having multiple perspectives and multiple pursuits and how they help each other Charlie Munger had his own version of this

“where he said everybody should have a cross lattice work of mental models that you should take how you”

play bridge or poker into how you run a business how you run a business and to how you parent your children how you parent your children into how you maybe it's play tennis on the weekends but the cross lattice work is so different than our academic notion of mastery where we think it's

go deep into just playing the piano 24/7 for a 30 years and then you'll be an amazing

physiotherapist and it's like well that's the most boring person at the frickin dinner party because they can't apply it elsewhere they make for great employees they make for great playing and read playing show time but they're not a show pan and you you look at someone like Isaac Newton, Isaac Newton perfect example study we know him for physics maybe the greatest scientific mind of all time he's been a third of his time on theology trying to prove

God exists a third of his time on alchemy trying to turn lead into gold and a third of his time in math and physics there's no like removing those other two they all fed into each other in the same way that yeah working out when I'm when you when you're saying that I think about me playing music

that then informs how we're working on the let's say sleep 2.0 launch is it's a story arc

“and every song is a story and if you don't know a mismanage that story for a song and the”

different characters of instruments that come in you're going to mismanage the listener's perception and the same way you mismanage a press release around a new product it's interesting you say that I think fitness personally is like a microcosm of life I really do it and I use it as that so like people think wouldn't like I talk about fitness being so important to think because it's for your abs and for your glutes and for I think the fitness element for me anyway

and what I've seen from a lot of people is that it's the mental that it builds it builds it makes

you more mentally strong it shows you that you can kind of go beyond your limit and surpass

your limit and with your goals I think that like if you can take that same those same principles and apply it to everything in life that you want to be good at you will thrive and so to me that's why fitness has been such an important piece of my life and why it tell people early on like

“young people who who contact me if you want to be successful start working out now start exercising”

right now amen I'd say I think about in the same way I think about these kinds of things with surfing where it is such a beautiful I mean every the truth rhymes everywhere you see it everywhere if it's the truth it's going to show up everywhere and it rhymes in the way that you learn the

surf it's it's gonna rhyme in the way that you run a meeting it's gonna rhyme in the way that you

put a company or build a relationship talk about choosing the right ways the relationships you're building like send a great human end to a really toxic relationship they're not going to come out to great on the other side but if they chose a different way a different partner different friend a different business partner then it can be the most beautiful ride of their lives and it's a true and with the working out in the fitness approach of fitness you're one of the things that

that I think about so often and this is comes from Tim Ferriss where he said just one push up he said this randomly in a podcast episode where he's like if you were wondering where to start right before bed right when you wake up right after lunch close the office door right when you get home from work just do one push up and that was an entry point into now everything that I'm doing and and working out started with got that such an easy entry point because once you get down

“the ground to do one you're like oh my god that's why it's a gateway drug bar yeah it's like”

it's the hardest thing is the beginning is the start right so a good mind trick that I tell people all the times you don't like to work out that's okay do one minute go outside and jump around for one minute just jump yeah you know or just walk around your block once or do one squat I know say one push up I say one squat because the point is once you start then chances are you're going to keep on going you know once around the block will turn into like two or three totally

do you mean because it's about getting your shoes on and starting the process is the procrastination is what what stops the start you know once you're in there you're like well I'm already here among the floor anyway I'm also doing another five push-ups and you're not working against your other goals so beautifully harmonious when you recognize your fitness is going to feed your other goals like you getting the best ideas you get when you're at the gym or move it

70% of your brain's wired for movement get out and move that'll help you not only will help you prom solve the thing that you're working on but so beautifully might help you avoid to mistake the year this close from making with some suboptimal decision it also makes you so much more resilient there's been a study that shows that people who are like fit or like work out regularly they are much better at like dealing with struggle and with of course like

like setbacks and all those things like they're able to bounce back was it like 80% quicker then people who are more sedentary because they they've they've they've primed their brain go pathways and go further go further they're primed their brain for like for like for failure because every day we're in the gym and you're the purpose of the gym is to like get to failure right so that is like you're you're ready primed for that feeling so when you can take that and transfer

into anything else in life that mean may not go your way you can bounce back much quicker yeah there's a great investor that he's on our he's a board observer for our previous company Mark and Jason and one of the conversations we had one time was around around this idea of to

last on the PGA tour you want to consume like crazy on terminal failure you want to go and hit

“as many balls you can't you want to miss the cup over and over again from 5 10 15 25 yeah”

you want to hit that failure point at the gym as often as possible it's not about avoiding failure at all if anything it's the exact opposite of exactly what you're saying it is not the exact opposite of what you're saying but it's the exact opposite of avoiding failure it's running towards failure so frequently in the non-termal where it's like who cares if you miss a three point or in practice if you miss the free throws and practice eat that up like a bit of poison

to where you're completely immune to failure to meet to failure by the time you get to the a free throw line or the 11 seconds left in the fourth game of the game seven finals you're like due to I I'm not only I know I'm gonna make these but I'm immune to sensitize if you don't exactly do you sensitize to it and in getting to that place where you are avoiding terminal failure paradoxically it's through chewing it up every day and every chance you can and the non-termal

stuff you know it's really full well I'll tell you over again I my first TED talk was on this idea

it was called a 10% I've seen that I've seen your TED Talks but I was maybe I saw one maybe two years ago without impairing some resilience for kids I didn't reflect on it so I it's yeah I should have reflected more on it but it was it was beautifully articulate but I don't

“remember I just know the setting I know the setting the first one went crazy viral it was about”

this idea of asking for what you want in life yes I do know yes and so and the whole idea and basically being bold and saying it out loud yeah and and like the 10% target is based around this

which is the idea that you become immune to failure because you you make 10 it my whole thing

is 10% target because you make 10 attempts of whatever you want most in life and either two things happen ever you get that thing or another opportunity presents itself that you didn't know existed because you went you went and did it over and over and over again but the the secondary thing that happens is you become immune to the feeling of failure because now you're used to it

“doing it so much perfect example was I wanted to know and I still do all the time people's”

brutal honest right feedback on anything I'm creating as soon and it early as possible and it's frequently as possible because that's the way to avoid well I know the alternative my 20s avoiding that leads to terminal failure and a whole lot more pain a hundred percent my gosh this has been a really good podcast thank you Jen thank you for the conversation no this was really good well you're great host thank you you're a great guest you actually gave some

I shouldn't sell surprise I'm not surprised you have some very valuable information for people on every level you gave some really great wisdom great gems I'm really happy that you came on well for a simple text and with a little drink company I try aimed to serve especially in a podcast you serve beautifully well you you're a great host and it's you are interested in these topics in a different gear because you apply them instead of just podcast host it's kind of a journalist

yeah really know where they apply so I'm also happy for being such a great share of this wisdom no no I I I really have loved this conversation you were such a good thank you James I'm happy to do this again let's do it we'll do it on your podcast whenever whatever you want podcast that's right yeah people want to find out anything of my projects from magic mine to the the philosophy podcast just James J.B. Shara on Instagram is the best best place for all of it

and try a magic mine you guys will not be disappointed as you know we've already worked hard to make sure that people get to say that all the time absolutely thank you bye bye