Transcript
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger show on the choose yourself network. Today on the James Altiger show. A lot of the survival skills that today seem so difficult, making fire or recognizing the right mushroom or berry, it was just kinda trial and error. And then once you learned it, it was passed from generation to generation. And so it was passed to you. And then did you start foraging for mushrooms as a little kid? Yeah. I did. My mom took me and my brother out foraging as a kid as early as I can remember. And then I went to an environmental school, kind of a forging school that my great grandfather started. So also my, like, basic education had, like, elements of forging. And was it in these schools or was it from your family or both that you just started realizing mushrooms had all these medicinal properties that other foods didn't? No. It came much later in my twenties. It was all around culinary mushrooms growing up. It was like chanterelles, porcinis, like brussellas, and a lot of these what you would cook with. And while they were exciting, my personal passion was always on optimal human performance. So mushrooms were like a thing, but they were not the thing until in my twenties when I was, doing ultra runs and marathons and I I was looking at what can I take to boost my performance naturally? So these functional mushrooms really made me fall in love. Here with Tero Isokopula. Did I say it right? Yeah. Good enough. Say it. Tero Isokopula. Alright. That's better than me. From Gotta roll the r's. Yeah. And, you're founder of, the company 4 Sigmatic. You also wrote a great book, Healing Mushrooms. That's the title. Right? I always forget. I need I need to work on my I need to take the long main mushrooms to improve my memory. Yeah. We'll we'll get to that. And I was blown away by all the facts, statistics, knowledge you have about mushrooms and how I mean, you're talking about everything from longevity to anticancer to, you know, you know, boosting the immune system to boosting mental power, all in mushrooms. And 4stigmatic, You're selling mushrooms all over the world, to 4stigmatic.com. Not I'm not trying to promote it or anything, but, you know, people wanna find out more. But we're gonna talk about the healing power of mushrooms and how people can make use of it. But I wanna start off with your background. You're from your your family's been farming mushrooms since 16/12. What's is this, like, the longest running line of anything I've seen? Yeah. At least in 16/19, our family has had farm about 2 and a half hours north from Helsinki and kind of neighboring the small town of Nokia, which is obviously famous for cell phones and winter tires. And, yeah. Oh, just out of curiosity Mhmm. Not to go off on a tangent. So on a tangent. Yeah. But Nokia was originally started to do something else, right, like 100 of years ago. Yeah. It was, it's it's the the original story of a start up pivot. You know? So they, had a sawmill first, and then, over time, they started making stuff that people needed, like rubber boots when it's really rainy and wet and cold in Finland, and and they make TVs. And one of the things they started making is winter tires, and they actually kinda spun off. There's there's still a separate public listed company, Nokia Tires, and they make some of the best winter tires in the world. And then, I think end of eighties, early nineties, there's, like, cell phone technology, and they started really pioneering that. That How do they have the, you know, the skill set to suddenly go into from, you know, from tires and boots to Finnish people are quite engineer heavy. You know? It's like there's not it's a lot of dark, days, and you don't know what to do. So we like to engineer stuff. So But you can argue Korea and Japan are like that as well. Like, Nate went into handsets, but Nokia dominated for for a period. Well, one of the theory obviously, I don't know. Nobody really knows. But one of the theories why, for example, why Nokia became a big hit was text messaging. It was like really pioneered in Finland and one of the theories why it got so popular in Finland so early on is that Finnish people don't like to talk. We're quite introverted. We don't like social interaction that much, and we like to keep our space. So texting was a great way to communicate without feeling intimidated. So, again And do you believe do you believe in that? I mean, I I ran into you at a party. Yeah. So you don't seem so introverted to me. I'm I'm not probably the most typical Finn, I would say, but, yeah, that could be one of the reasons. But I think it's just the superior way to communicate if you compare what we used to do before. So I think Like talking. Yeah. Yeah. I I think for a lot of people because it allows this modern thing of multitasking. Not to say that multitasking is better, but it does allow it in different ways. So so then so, okay, that was the Nokia tangent, but I do wanna write that down actually about the texting. Do you have a pen, Jay? Or Steve, do you have a pen? But, to to finish the thought off, we don't know how long we've actually had the farm. We just know that at least 16/16/19 because Finland's been independent now a 101 years. But before that, we were about a 100 years part of Russia and over 600 years part of Sweden. So some of like, the old capital Finland got burned, and, like, we don't really have records of how long But your family basically owned this farm essentially forever. And around 1600, you started that you your great great great great grandfather and your grandmother started foraging for mushrooms. And it seemed and let me ask you this. If I have a farm and I'm thinking about foraging for mushrooms, how do I know what's like, there's so many poisonous variations of mushrooms. There's actually not that many. I I again, I don't wanna encourage someone who doesn't know anything through today to go on Forage of Mushroom, but there isn't that many poisonous varieties and especially lethal varieties. There's only a handful, so you don't need to learn that many. That being said, you obviously needed to know what you're having and the information just went from generation to generation. It's how did we learn how to avoid certain animals? How to like, a lot of the survival skills that today seem so difficult, making fire or recognizing the right mushroom or berry. It was just kinda trial and error, and then once you learned it, it was passed from generation to generation. And so it was passed to you, and then did you start foraging for mushrooms as a little kid? Yeah. I did. Not just mushrooms, though. We talked before the podcast started how people label you over one thing, but, like, growing up, I actually loved wild berries more. As a little kid, wild raspberries, wild strawberries, bilberries, which are low blueberries. I don't forage for stuff, but the mushrooms were so magical. So my mom took me and my brother out foraging as a kid as early as I can remember, and then I went to an environmental school, kind of a forging school that my great grandfather started. So also my, like, basic education had, like, elements of forging. So our summer assignment when we went for a summer holiday was to pick up an x mound of plants or different kinds of, also mushrooms, but mostly plants, and we would dry them and name their Latin names. So we had to start recognizing plants in the wild from, like, grade 2 onwards, I think. And was it in these schools or was it from your family or both that you just started realizing mushrooms is not just a food or or and we could discuss the philosophy of food in a second, but, mushrooms had all these medicinal properties that other foods didn't. No. It came much later in my twenties. Even before that, I had discovered this rare mushroom growing, and I won this innovation award with my friend. But it was all around culinary mushrooms growing up. It was like chanterelles, like, brussellas, and a lot of these what you would cook with. And while they were exciting, my personal passion was always on optimal human performance. So mushrooms were like a thing, but they were not the thing until in my twenties when I was doing ultra runs and marathons, and I I was looking at what can I take to boost my performance naturally, and I found this mushroom cordyceps that has been shown to increase v o two max or your maximum oxygen intake? And, it was that mushroom that really so there is culinary mushrooms, but then there is also these functional mushrooms, and those functional mushrooms really made me fall in love because they had compounds that you couldn't find in the plant kingdom, versus a lot of the culinary mushrooms have stuff that you can also get in other many other foods. So that was the differentiation point. So So so but that's interesting because it's related a little bit to what we were talking about before the podcast about status hierarchies. Mhmm. So you had spent your early childhood and then young adulthood, becoming an expert in foraging for mushrooms, something that the average kid on the planet doesn't necessarily become an expert in. But, essentially, by probably by the time you're 18, you had put in your 10000 hours of mastery into finding and identifying different types of mushrooms. Then you became an expert in this other area, which is peak performance, and you were not just studying it, but a practitioner. You're running marathons and probably doing other stuff. And it's the combination of the 2 that forced you to kind of think, well, how, you know, how do they how do they relate? How can one help the other? And, arguably, now you're the the world's expert on this intersection of mushrooms and peak performance. But the but the basic question is then, did you use, you know, what's that expression finding a hammer? Steve, what's the expression finding a hammer to Oh. Hit any nail? Yeah. You have a nail, so you gotta, I don't know. I like it. So so I think we're I I think Like, the fact you're an expert like, if you were an expert in McDonald's food, would you also have, said, oh, this will help for marathon running? No. Probably not. But that being said, I don't think I'm even close to the greatest mushroom expert in the world because there are people who've Sorry. That's okay. People who've dedicated their whole life, who are much older than me, and who have spent in labs researching particular types of mushrooms. So I've never argued that I would be even close to the greatest mushroom expert in the world. But if you're in laboratory studying a particular strain of mushrooms, sometimes it's hard to see the application to the kind of, quote, unquote, the real world. So now I think and I think that's the point when we look at, like, some of the worlds, like, people with the highest IQ will not necessarily create the biggest changes. And I I think that's why the the polymath aspect is really important is that I had this understanding of technology. I've traveled and lived in many cultures, and I also had this passion for culinary purpose or, like, how to apply them. And I think that is the really important part when you create true innovation is, like, you don't have to be the number one domain expert in anything as long as you're beyond a certain expert status. You're let's call it the 10000 hours. So as long as you put the 10000 hours in and you're, like, basically good enough, and but then you have these unique other skill sets and knowledges that you can bring together to create an application that helps a group of people that you normally wouldn't help. So, the main point is that I'm far from the greatest mushroom expert in the world. Right. But that's the that's the interesting thing. Not the greatest mushroom expert, but but then when you actually applied into practice so you're interested in peak performance. You probably aren't the best peak performer in the world or marathon runner. But then the fact that you were doing these marathons as opposed to just studying oxygen intake Yep. Marathon runners and the fact that you were, an expert in mushrooms, the comp the intersection, can you think of anyone? Yeah. You're obviously in the top ten for the intersection of mushrooms and peak performance. And then if you take it one step further is is living the life of a busy modern human right now because because, when I started 4 sigmatic or generally even before that when I was interested in peak performance, it's not people who live in a cave and have no stressors. They're people who travel, have family, business. They're busy individuals, so they don't have time to extract mushrooms for 3 weeks at their home and a lot of these do it yourself type of stuff. So also understanding how does all those health practices fit into your daily life because there are a lot of great things that you can do for your health, but they're just not practical at all. So how to figure out well, I think in herbalism alone, there's a whole suite of herbalistic practices that support different body functions that all require seasonal foraging and preparation of extracts, that are very inconvenient. I think, for most people, a lot of, let's say, breathing exercises, in their truest form are a little inconvenient. That's why there's great when there is, like, simplified version of those that give you kind of the 80 20, or even the cold, therapy that we talked about is that's a great way how in a matter of minutes, you can change your physiology versus something that takes hours and hours or even meditation. So the same, I think, goes for nutrition is is finding the things that can move the needle in a way that is still applicable to most people's life. In this case, it's mushroom coffee is one example. So explain to me and and, you know, we're we're we're we're gonna go round and round different tangents, but the the ultimate goal is I wanna use mushrooms to improve my health in the way that you describe in your book. Like, you have you have many amazing case studies and and science and and facts and stories in in your book, healing mushrooms, and then and then, you know, how to practically use this in in my life or the listeners' lives or whatever. You know, one one thing you just mentioned, and I'm just gonna stop you on anything I don't understand. When you say v o two, intake or whatever you said about marathons, what does that mean? Maximum oxygen intake. So how much how many millimoles per kilogram usually is the metric of oxygen can you take into your lungs? And the more oxygen you can get into your lungs, the faster you can move blood basically in your body and transport energy. So it's not a direct correlation how fit you are, but it's a good correlation how fit you are. So is this like if you don't if you can't do it well, you'll run out of breath faster? Yes. And then you have to compensate with other, you know, elements in performance depending what your sport is. So, like, usually, the best VO 2 max is with cross country skiers because they have to use their upper body, lower body. It's an endurance athlete, who does it in high altitude where there's a limited amount of oxygen. So those tend to be at the top of the game. But, overall, I think if you wanna measure general fitness, one of the best metric is on a bicycle or preferably running, trying to run with a mask on to measure how much oxygen can you your lungs take. Mine's not a lot. So okay. Given that, what so so how did you figure okay. Again, is it just coincidence that it turns out the best way to improve this your oxygen intake is with mushrooms or you know, and you happen to have been coincidences, you happen to have been, you know, an expert on mushrooms? Or, like, what happened? Like, what connected the dots? Did you start thinking like, oh, I remember reading something about mushrooms. Maybe I can apply it here. Or Yeah. I mean, there's definitely, like, a chance is an element, but I in this particular case, I very much reverse engineered it. So I looked at it. What are the things that move the needle the most in physiology? And I actually don't think nutrition or food is the biggest driver. I think it's the baseline. I think it's the the white belt or the blue belt of optimal performance. Like, the black belt is something totally different than food, what you eat. So a case example, when I was a kid and my mom taught physiology and anatomy, I remember I was probably 5 or 6, and I was in on her on her class, and she set this rule of 3 that I still think about all the time. And, and the rule of 3 goes, you can be 3 weeks without eating food and you will live. You'll be 3 days without drinking water and you'll live. But you can only be 3 minutes without breathing. Right? And then you could say that you cannot even be 3 seconds without thinking a thought. Right? So a second. I gotta I gotta mind the feeling. I know I got life in my bag. But where where I'm going with that is just the volume of consumption, means that that factor of your life has a bigger impact on the result. So, while food is awesome, I think it's the baseline. It's the the first step. And I think the bigger thing is is water or hydration is more important than food because 3 weeks versus 3 days. And then I think breathing exercises or how well you breathe is more important than the hydration you do, and I think thinking is more important than breathing. But Wait. Wait. Thinking you think is important for, like, let's say, marathon running? No. I think optimal human performance. I think I know a lot of people who eat extremely clean, but they're sick all the time. You could call it, you know, genetics and stuff, but I think it's high stress levels. They're very worried. They go to a restaurant. They're panicking. What can they eat? They're measuring their food. Right? And then you meet a surfer who eats pizza or a snowboarder, and they have perfect skin. They're, like, healthy, happy, vibrant. Like, without seeing any health markers, you think, like, that's a healthy person. Right? And then you meet someone who's ultra healthy and they're pale and lack of vitality. Right? So I think the physiology of thoughts mean a lot. So if you think you're really sick, probably sick. If you think you're not sick like, I made a decision long time ago not to get sick, and I that's such a cliche, but I haven't been sick in 11 years. Right? This is and I've seen you mention this. Like, you know, you travel to dozens of countries a year. You're which and planes are incredibly unhealthy. There's tons of germs. The air is bad, and you said you haven't had a cold in, like, 11 years. I always think I've seen this several times, like, with entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs will it's a high intensity, high stress thing, but you can't stop. Like, you have to be high functioning every day. Yep. And then literally, like, the day after they sell their business, they have a heart attack. Like, a friend of mine was celebrating the sale of his business. He sold a business for $40,000,000. He he, you know, went on a vacation to Hawaii, literally had a massive heart attack, like, on a hike. Unfortunately, there was a heart doctor on the hike with him. And Yeah. Otherwise, he'd be dead. Actually great that you bring that up because that proves my point about the brainpower is, like, one of my employees just recently lost, her grandmother, and the grandmother died the night when all their grandkids came from around the world to see her. So she, Lily, held on until she had said goodbye to everyone and then right after that died. And this is a story that you hear time after time. Or another way of saying kind of is is on a more simplified is you are working a lot, and the day you go on vacation, so not even sell a company, but you just take your summer vacation, you get sick. Right? So how can we how can we manifest this in our lives? Like, it's not like it almost sounds like we're telling people, work so hard and never stop because then you won't No. It's that's definitely not the goal. I think you need to pace yourself. That's really important, and I think you need to have seasonality in your life in any form of capacity. But I like this idea of telling yourself I'm gonna put off sickness. Yeah. So in this case, will I ever be sick? Of course, I will be sick. But I just, like, I think and maybe this is a little woo woo, but I do believe that your thoughts manifest into your physiology. I mean, it definitely goes the other way around how, like, your brain can like, psychosomatic illnesses where your psyche can make your body soma sick. So it definitely works that way. So why not also the other way around is, like, how your healthy body can make your mind healthy? And I think it's a two way street. So let's talk about it from the body point of view because that's you know, ultimately, you created a company around this. You wrote a book around it. So so, obviously, the body is important for health. Mhmm. And your premise is that mushrooms in all its in in various types of mushrooms in particular are very functional, very medicinal. How medicinal are they? Like, what's the most extreme example where you know it was the mushrooms that did something remarkable to the body? So let's take a step back. So mushroom or fungi are a kingdom in biology. Same way as plants are a kingdom, animals are a kingdom, bacteria is a kingdom, and then fungi, and then the single cell creatures are very simple forms of life. And when something is a kingdom, let's take plants, there are plants that heal you and there's plants that kill you. There's animals that you want as a pet. There's animals you don't want as a pet. Right? And just to compare to plants, there's so many things that could kill you, but we don't everyday go to grocery stores like, oh, I shouldn't eat plants because they can kill you. Right? We're focused on the good stuff that really heal you. But in mushrooms, often people are focused on the stuff that kills you. I've heard they kill you. Right? Yeah. I I said it to you right before this podcast. Is it Or in the middle of in the beginning of the podcast. And the funny part is that there's much less lethal and poisonous mushrooms that there are plants, but there's 6 times more fungal varieties in the world than there are plant varieties in the world. So for every tomato, there's 6 different kinds of mushrooms. And for every cucumber, there's 6 times of mushrooms, and still there's a much less poisonous stuff. But, nevertheless, there's bad mushrooms like mold, candida, and there's a lot of not all good mush mushrooms are good for you. But why are they also so healing is because just of evolution. Animalia, animals, and and and fungi, so all kinds of animals and mushrooms, used to be part of a same super kingdom. So we actually still share up to 50% of our DNA and about 85% of our, ribosomal RNA, basically how we synthesize proteins with mushrooms. So we're much much much closer to mushrooms than we are to plants. So for example But also we're close to fruits. Like, I've heard this about bananas as well, the 50% of our DNA we share with bananas. Well, I'll give you a couple. I actually think I don't think like that, but I'll give you a couple examples. Mushrooms breathe oxygen, expel c o 2. Plants are the opposite. Mushrooms cannot produce their own food. They have to eat something. Ground, trees, rocks, they can eat a lot of stuff, but they cannot create their own food. All plants can with photosynthesis. Right? So because of this DNA similarity, there's also a lot of potential for healing in mushrooms. And to answer your question, what are some examples? Well, today, estimated that out of the 20 best selling pharmaceuticals in the world, 10 utilize fungi. And all from all the pharmaceuticals, 40%. So I was gonna ask you about this too, and I'm I'm sorry to interrupt your voice. But, like, you you mentioned I didn't know this, but you mentioned penicillin is essentially derived from mushrooms. Yeah. It's a it's a it's a fungal fungal pharmaceutical, and there's a lot many others. Often, they're tied into the immune system, either hyperactive immune system that needs to be suppressed, so they're immunosuppressants, or a passive immune system, that needs more, you know, boost, so they're immunostimulants. So that's what what they're often used for, and, you know, they're very powerful. There's a lot of so called uncured disease like, MS disease, multiple sclerosis, and it was said to be uncurable disease until Novartis, a Swiss drug company, came out, a few years ago with a drug called Gilenya that was FDA approved as the only official cure for MS disease, and it's based out of the same mushroom that I use for running, cordyceps. And how did they discover that? Did they just say, let's just try everything? 5 years of research. Often from Asia, a lot of mushroom names are from like, Japanese. Let's say, Shiitake, maitake, enokitake. The takie or take, t a k e, means mushroom in Japanese. So a lot of the studies are originally from, Scandinavia, Russia, and Asia. A lot of the Anglo Saxon cultures were microphobic, and that's why in the West, there was a period. And there's a couple of theories why that happened, but we've been scared of mushrooms. It could have been in the UK, a mole that killed a lot of people, and then people got scared of it. It could have been how the church went after witchcraft of people who use psychedelic mushrooms, and they banned all mushrooms because they thought all mushrooms are psychedelic. But there's definitely in the Anglo Saxon culture much more of this fear of mushrooms that doesn't exist necessarily in an Asian or, like, Slavic or, Germanic cultures. So that's probably why for the last few generations in this young country of America, people have been scared of mushrooms, and they focus on the negatives even though mathematically, it doesn't like, you shouldn't be any more scared of them. You should be less scared of them than you're scared of plants. So so let's get right into it. What are what or, actually, you still have to describe tell me some example where you saw mushrooms just do something remarkable with either with you or you notice some huge result or somebody else that started using them. Like, what's what's a great example? Well, I have obviously plenty. One of them is the lion's mane mushroom that you're drinking is Oh, yeah. I'm drinking by the way, you provided. Thank you. It tastes great. Coffee with lion's mane in it. Yep. What's supposed to happen? I'm gonna I'm gonna get brain boosted, adrenaline. And and and you you mentioned something, I think, in in the book how the lion's mane mushroom, because of its alkaline properties, balance off the acidity of the coffee, which is a nice which It's more of the other mushroom that you're also drinking called chaga. Mhmm. Finnish people drink more coffee pretty much than anyone else in the world and, almost 3 times more than Americans. I know. And during second World War, when we're attacked both by the Germans and the Russians, we obviously had lack of coffee beans, so we started brewing this chaga mushroom that grows on birch trees in Finland. And after the war, the University of Helsinki started figuring out it's like, oh, it's incredibly rich in antioxidants, and, like, one cup of chocolate could be equal to, like, £30 of carrots in antioxidants. Obviously, there's many kinds of antioxidants, but this one particularly has a very powerful antioxidant called superoxase dismutase. It's very good for, you know I talked actually, it's step back. We before we started, talked about how often black foods among different cultures is con considered great for longevity. They really built chi, so olive, black olives, coffee, cacao, black sesame seeds, chaga, charcoal, but there are there's a lot of healing foods in the kind of black color pigment because all Should I just, like, down, like, poppy seeds, like, just pour it into my mouth? No. Not necessarily. But it is good on to have black foods on the regular. And so all antioxidants are color pigments, but not all color pigments are antioxidants. So even though that is the rule, I would still say that you should eat a lot of variety, different kinds of antioxidants, different kinds of, you know, polyphenols and stuff like that that really support they don't necessarily contain, macronutrients, which are, you know, carbohydrates, fats, or amino acids or proteins. They don't necessarily have vitamins or minerals, but they support other body functions. And those antioxidants are really good for longevity, brain function, great skin, lot of different things, and that's why it's good to eat a lot of colors. But for particularly for the heart and for longevity, black foods are pretty powerful. So a lot of people who've lived a 100 years, if you talk to them, they often mention, like, oh, I love dark chocolate or I love coffee or, you know, whatever may be, olives. How dark should the chocolate be in percentage when you go to the grocery stores? It's 80%, 60%, 40%. Definitely nothing below 60, preferably over 80. It also matters what are the other ingredients. I don't think processed sugar and milk powder should be in chocolate, personally, even though that's what kind of the innovation that Nestle made when they invented first milk powder and then they combined this, this cocoa powder that the the SkyOne Holt in in Netherlands had invented. And anyway, they they they created milk chocolate, but I don't think cacao is meant to be had with milk and sugar. So you're saying the University of Helsinki started researching this, you know, these darker mushrooms and, you know, its effects on the body. Yep. And then they found all these positive things, what it can do for the body. But kind of going back to, to, the lion's mane or or what are the benefits that somebody could see is, one top surfer in the world who I know I was connected to our mutual Japanese friend, and she had had multiple concussions. She has hit her head real bad just a couple weeks ago and was barely able to speak and was really, really in a bad shape. And I met her, and, and, obviously, I can't make any health claims. I can't provide any direct medical advice, but she really reported afterwards of how Lion's Mane helped her, her cognitive function and heal herself from that accident. But, again, that's anecdotal illness that she says. I, unfortunately, legally can't provide any, like, direct health advice. But I think everybody who's had a psychedelic mushroom, not to say that that's any way my main focus or but if you've had that and you have that little thing and the effects you get, it's hard to after that not to say that mushrooms can change your brain and physiology after that experience. So we'll we'll talk about about that in a second. I'm still just kind of piecing through how I'm gonna start using mushrooms after this podcast on a daily basis to improve my life. So lion's mane with coffee, it's, again, brain boosting, longevity, memory. Yeah. It's, and then the other one, if if you're endowed, reishi mushroom, which is the most scientifically researched mushroom, it's reishi. Again, a Japanese name, and it's the mushroom of immortality. Already over 2000 years ago when the Chinese wrote their first, materia medica, their first journal of of, traditional Chinese medicine, they ranked all the things you can eat, and they ranked rishi as the number one thing you can eat. It's been used for 1000 of years. It has more clinical, both Western and Eastern research than anything else. It's great for, like, evening, afternoon time when you wanna reduce stress, for example. So having, like, a reishi hot cocoa or something like that where you get both the cacao and the reishi to kind of calm you down and hopefully help you reach more of this rejuvenating delta phase sleep kind of sleep deeper, which is also so underrated. Probably the biggest implication for good memory and brain health is good sleep. And so when you started, obviously, you started using all of these Mhmm. Things once you started getting into it. Did you find that in your own sleep? Yeah. Corticeps and reishi are probably the most noticeable even more than lion's mane initially. So cordyceps, c o r d y c e p s, and and reishi. Those are the ones. So cordyceps is more energy, uplifting, power, and reishi is more grounding, calming, nurturing. And those are the 2 that probably most people report, like, immediate effects or very quickly, and the same was with me. Those are the ones that I when I took them, I was like, wow. Like, I really feel it. So you noticed? Yeah. And that's rare. That's super, super, super rare in natural substances. Like, for example, for brainpower, pretty much no natural substance can compete with modafinil and Adderall. Like, it's just synthetic isolated compounds operate much faster, much stronger, but there's always a trade off. I believe that there is a price you pay later for that power. And natural substances, mostly, you have to take them for weeks to feel benefits, but then they're good for you for in the long run. So when you find something in the natural world that also provides immediate effects, that's really rare and powerful. So when I just let's say I order let's say I go to breakfast Mhmm. And I go to a restaurant, I order scrambled eggs and throw some mushrooms in there. Are those mushrooms functional mushrooms, or what am I eating there? Probably not, and you should never have mushrooms raw. So mushrooms as a kingdom quite exclusively have this structure called chitin. It's basically the same compound that creates the shell of a lobster, and it's really stow sturdy and strong, and we'd really don't have an enzyme to digest it. So that's why all mushrooms really need to be processed with heat and lipids. So mushrooms like heat and fats. That's why putting them in a soup, it's much better because you have fats and heat. Sauteing them with butter. Or But but, again, the mushrooms I have in a restaurant, even if it's in let's say I have mushroom soup. Yep. Are those the mushrooms Most most commonly not. So I don't I can't recommend butter mushrooms, portobello mushrooms, or, like, mushrooms like porcini is already a lot better. Porcini is a variety that has a lot more. I believe, and in in at Penn, University, they had in their, department of my college, they studied foods that have the highest amount of antioxidants. And from the foods they studied, porcini ranked number 1. It was the highest in cluthothione, that is this master axe another master antioxidant that really good for the brain function and longevity. So porcini is already better, but, yeah, chanterelles and more morels and stuff, they're more for culinary purposes. The mushrooms that if you do see in in I doubt that you see them in a diner, but Shiitake is 2nd most cultivated mushroom in the world, and that does have a lot of functional benefits. Like what? It also has the SOD antioxidants, but it also seems to really help the liver detox, phase 1, phase 2 liver detox. So it could be used, for example, to improve your skin. So liver is often a mirror to our skin health, and it's, you know, it serves a lot of body functions, but, it's great for liver and, and your skin. And it does have, these polysaccharides, these beta d glucans that really support and modulate your immune system. So So let me let me ask you this. So glutathione that you just mentioned. So sometimes if I'm feeling a little bit tired, but then I have to go to an event in the evening Mhmm. I will call over to my house the IV doctor. You ever hear of this business? So it's like it's like the Uber of doctors. Mhmm. And they come over. They have, like, a bag of vitamins. They stick an IV in me, and the the vitamins go supposedly straight into my blood. And glutathione is an an an add on you can buy. Yep. And I always get that. And I never know. Is this just placebo? Because then I feel great for about 6 hours afterwards. Do you think it's a placebo, or do you think there's something to it? Well, IVs are clearly very powerful, and I don't think there's any placebo, in, you know, IV therapy. IVs But when you take these vitamins in an artificial way as opposed to through their natural substances So I think, yeah, you're taking a good point about synthetic for example, synthetic vitamin c or as ascorbic acid versus a full spectrum, a natural vitamin c. There's a huge difference in absorption actually, especially if you eat it. So a lot of synthetic vitamins don't get absorbed. They could even it's now some of the multivitamins even proven to be, hurt you more than help you. So a lot of multivitamins or synthetic supplements don't really work mostly because of absorption issues, and the body doesn't really recognize it. But on IV, there's really no issue of absorption. That being said, the the trick would be to, if you wanna have synthetic vitamins, to also have a source of natural sin vitamin c in the same situation. So how can you have it naturally where your body kind of recognizes it and maybe if you need that extra boost synthetically as well? But back to the IV is, let's assume you're fully dehydrated after a sports race or wild night of raging or traveling or heat shock or whatever you take to the ER. Like, they will immediately start pumping stuff straight to your blood, be it minerals or whatever the situation is, vitamins, and it really brings people back to life. So I I I think that's one of the things that is quite well proven that that can really help you. How to use it on a healthy individual is very different, though, than if you're in a, you know, a dramatic situation where you're massively dehydrated or over It's maybe it's like, it's only so much will help me, and then after that, it's useless. True. And especially most vitamins are water soluble with couple exceptions. So the water soluble vitamins, you just piss out, basically. Like, if you have excess amounts, your body will just can store them and doesn't wanna store them, so you'll just kinda pee them out. But I just wanna also note that for example, b vitamins that are very good for brain function, cognitive function, that can be found in mushrooms, but maybe there's other sources that are even better than mushrooms. B vitamins, even though they're water soluble and you can pee them out, a lot of people look at, like, recommended daily value. It's like, oh, this is the daily value I should have. But what if you're going to give a speech and you're highly stressed or you're traveling? Your your body's needs suddenly on this short time period double or triple. You know? It's like suddenly you need a much more. And also scientifically, the values that we get are built to prevent major diseases like, let's say, osteoporosis and the amount of calcium. They're not designed to give you optimal brain performance while giving a talk at Google. You know? It's the how the minimum values are defined is not to create optimal performance. It's to prevent on a bell curve, on a normal distribution, like, let's say, 98% of the the population of Americans to prevent them from having massive illnesses. So so okay. So Jesse, who's in the room, invited me to give a talk at Google once. Yep. I didn't eat any mushrooms beforehand. Next time I give a talk at Google, what should I do beforehand? But for example, if you wanna build a stack, I think, for example, the lion's mane is is quite well proven for cognitive function and very safe. It's like what monks used to do for cognitive function. There's adaptogens and herbs like rhodiola, kingopulopa that are quite well studied. I think rhodiola more than kingopulopa are well studied for coughing. Spell rhodiola? R h o d I o l a, and the Latin name is rhodiola rosea. Vikings used to take it before going to battle, and they used it for, power How do I take it? Like, what's what food is it? Tea, a capsule. I actually sneak some in your drink as well. So so there's that as well. Wow. But so Choking. B b 12 is often for energy and cognitive function. Funny enough, oh, and caffeine definitely works for for focus. I it's one of the most studied things for for cognitive function. Why is why why is caffeine so polarizing? Like, some people say, no. It doesn't actually boost brain power. It just slows everything that slows you down, and then suddenly when it wears off, boom, it all catches up. I think the biggest reason which is common in health in general is lack of education, lack of understanding. So what people think is they try to apply these foods every day, all day, all the time, and that's just not how nature necessarily works. So for example, going back to the traditional Chinese medicine, they would look at assistant herbs. They had these minister herbs, and then they have these emperor herbs. So assistant herbs can heal you if you're sick in that moment. Like, they're gonna aid with the problem at that moment, but they don't help with prevention. Ministers, which is, by the way, a funny anecdote that they thought ministers can prevent stuff, and maybe into modern politics that doesn't always happen. But ministers would not heal you, but they can prevent A little bit of a libertarian streak Yeah. Coming out all of a sudden. Yeah. And then, and then the emperors could do both. They could prevent and heal. And what people don't know is that not all herbs are meant to be eaten every day. For example, garlic is an immunostimulant. It's great if you're sick. Just eat raw garlic. It will really spike you up. Don't do it every day. You will actually get sick eventually. So Well, okay. So so let me ask you about that, and I wanna get back to coffee. So mushrooms and like we we mentioned earlier, penicillin's derived from all these great medicines and antibiotics that have cured, you know, billions of people, derived from mushrooms. If I'm eating but but the one thing about penicillin is if you take it too much, if you take it more than the doctors prescribed, it'll start losing its effectiveness Yes. The next time you get sick. Yep. So it's the same thing is true with with these mushrooms that you're selling? So mushrooms have the best mushrooms have 2 kinds of benefits, water soluble and nonwater soluble. The nonwater soluble benefits can you should cycle them. So, like, for example, the cordyceps for oxygen intake, you wanna probably be month on, month off or Mhmm. 5 days on, 2 days off. But the watersulfo compounds, the beta glucans and polysaccharides are massively important on a daily basis. So every day, you should have some sort of beta glucans and polysaccharides in your body. Which ones are those? I don't know. So you can find them in all the top mushrooms, shiitake, maitake, cordyceps3, shiitake. Everything we've mentioned contain those, and those are more like chlorophyll. It's like, should you eat spinach every day? No. Should you eat arugula every day? Not necessarily. But should you have some sort of dark leafy greens every day? Science says pretty openly that, yes, some sort of dark leafy greens will help you on a daily basis. Same with these beta glucans. You don't have to have cordyceps today every day. You don't have to have lion's mane every day, but it does help if you have some sort of beta klugan every day. Like, is it bad if I have another cup of coffee with this lion's mane? No. No. No. And they're also generally recorded as safe, so they're not really a supplement. They're a food. But coming back to the caffeine is a lot of people think that, oh, caffeine is good. Hence, I will take it every day for cup 4 cups. Right? It doesn't work like that. It's it's not a tonic. It's not something you should have every day. You need to cycle on and off from caffeine or otherwise, it stops to work. Also, the quality of coffee, one of the biggest commodities in the world, is there's a huge delta between good coffee and bad coffee just because of the volume that gets produced and also how it's prepared. A lot of people don't know how to prepare coffee. So there are there's in quantity and quality and timing, there's a lot of misconceptions about coffee and therefore, a lot of people have negative effects for it. I believe that something like a 100 and 68,000,000 Americans are trying to reduce their caffeine intake, and over 30,000,000 Americans every day have an adverse effect to coffee. I think Jesse is one of them. So, so I I think it's really important to not say any food is good or bad. It's very binary. It's more about when, how, should I utilize it. So let's look at you on a on a and then I wanna kinda get into the, you know, how you went from all of this knowledge to starting a an amazingly successful business in this area, which is, you know, it's one thing to be passionately interested in something. It's another thing to then actively use it to see performance in your own life, and then it's another thing to monetize it. So I think we've seen how you've built up expertise. I think we've seen how you've been using it in your daily life, and I'm curious about the monetization. But what's your weekly diet like with and and I say weekly because of because of the way you just mentioned cycling through some of these things. What's your weekly diet like with these mushrooms? How should I start using this to increase my health? And so what I'm talking about health, I want brain boosting. Mhmm. I want immune system. I want don't want my breath to I don't wanna get out of breath running up 10 sets of stairs. And what else? I don't know what else. So how I use it and how I use it might be different because, are you saying you're better than me? No. I'm saying is that what works for me might not work for you. And, also, James, what worked for you when you were 20 might not work for you when you're 50. So physiology keeps changing. So there are some themes that are universal, but a lot of the times, it's also personal. So die so when people ask me, Tara, what do you eat? I don't respond because they want a quick solution versus asking the right questions from themselves. But how do you know like, you offer such great combinations of these products Mhmm. On your site, like Lion's Mane with the coffee and stuff. Back to you or general formula where to start and then discovering from there what works for you is I think there should be a morning routine and there should be an evening routine. And for high achievers like yourself, there might be morning, afternoon, evening. And those parts of the day, you have different needs. Right? Depending on your week or day, at some times of the day, you really have to be get stuff done. Right? You have to really have this narrow focus and really concentrate on something and get that done. And there might be a time of the day when you need to relax and reflect. Right? So there's a creation and there's a learning period, and different mushrooms can help with those. So in the morning, I would recommend mushrooms like, chaga and lion's mane to really kind of get you ready for the day as I assume that most people work during the day. Right? And in the afternoon, there is a naturally a dip in energy. So a mushroom like cordyceps can give you energy without caffeine or sugar stimulation, so that might help you get through the kind of little slump between 1 to 3 PM, let's say. And in the evening, you need things like a reishi and turkey tail to kinda calm your body. And Can I do this every day? Yeah. Okay. So this this is a routine you can do every day potentially. So what I would just switch is, like, are you gonna have lion's mane with coffee, matcha, or by itself? Like, that could vary. Like, you could have, you could have, Monday to Friday. You could have Lion's Mane with coffee, or matcha, and then weekends, you could have just Lion's Mane by itself. If I go to a coffee shop and I'm drinking their coffee, can I put the Lion's Mane? Percent in. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. You can you can do whatever you want. You're a James Altucher. You're you're above the rules of the cafe. Exactly. I hope so. So so what made you what what was the switch that went up when you said, okay. Now I'm gonna monetize this. I'm gonna I know so much, and I have so much to offer. This is a problem that needs solving. What happened next? I think it was one of those things where it just had to come out. That's one. I think building a business is so much work unless you're passionate about it, unless it's That's a very important thing to say, by the way. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. Mhmm. Being an entrepreneur is difficult. Mhmm. It is so hard, and it is so stressful. I hardly ever recommend it. I don't recommend having a job either. Yeah. But having but being an entrepreneur is a very particular thing that like, as you said, you have to have, like, a certain amount of passion to survive the lows. A 100%. And, so first of all, it was something I was doing, and I was doing it more. And then it was the marriage of, like, opportunity and personal needs. So I wanted to do good for people, and I wanted life that was not focused on the conventional metrics of success like money, power, and fame, but contribution for the better good. And when I first discovered the previous mushroom, I was that I did not pursue that business. It was more donated to a university because I was not passionate about serving the 1% because it was a very expensive mushroom. What what did this mushroom that you discovered do? It's culinary. It just tastes great. Mhmm. So, and I didn't have power to change the world's and people's behavior for the better because the food and nutrition industry was dominated by these few large giant companies. And it was when I started 4stigmatic, it was partly because I'd seen my friends started blogging and sharing knowledge online kinda peer to peer, way where more unconventional thoughts could spread a lot easier than they could when only there was mass media. And from there, obviously, the things like this, like podcasting. So I had a lot of unconventional thoughts about health and wellness, and it was hard to get all Americans to drink mushrooms if my only channel would have been, like, TV and large magazines where people definitely didn't get why you would drink mushrooms. So the blocking was 1 as I saw the time was right to spread good things. And the other thing I did was I'm I thought, like, what are the things that could make the biggest impact through nutrition on global consciousness? So I think most problems in the world are not solved by any individual thing unless the global consciousness, the average will go up. Right? And like I said, I don't think food is gonna solve it, but I think it is the white belt belt or the blue belt. It's the fundamental that you need to have in order. And the things that prevent people from making smarter decisions or more conscious decisions are things like the immune system, hormonal balance, and gut health. And those were the things that I measured as, like, the 80 20 is, like, what are the things that move? If you are always stressed and you have issues with your hormonal balance, it's hard to stay focused and have that freedom, like, kind of go up in that Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If your gut is messed up, your brain is not working, you're not just testing food, that's a problem. If your immune system is jeopardized, you have cancer, you have autoimmune, you're not getting anything done. So you're not gonna be focused on a greater good if those are. And then I started listing for all those three buckets of things that could make the biggest impact from an natural point of view, and the one thing that was in all three buckets was these functional mushrooms. And so it was a it was, both reverse engineering how to make an impact on the world, but also seeing that the time was right to me to execute against that. And so you're blogging about it. Did you have people, for instance, like me right now asking, well, what should I take? What what can I do? But, oh, I can't prepare this myself. I don't know how to make or get lion's mane. I'm not going to the grocery store. Yeah. For sure. There was, the 2 big problems we had to solve was, obviously, you had to educate people on the benefits of mushrooms, but I don't think the education was the key point. I also don't think that It sounds like the difficulty for me to do this myself is a key point. Yes. Because it's like education. There was always people educating, and education, even though through blogging, there was more channels. The the more bigger education point was about the application itself. Does it taste good, and is it convenient? And those are huge. They cause a lot of friction unless you solve them to a certain extent. Like, if they taste bad and it's inconvenient, very few people will do cold showers in the morning because it's very inconvenient. Right? Very few people are willing to take a cold shower in the morning. So the same with mushrooms. Some of the preparation take weeks. Do you do the cold shower in the morning? Not in LA because my shower is not cold enough, but when I go to New York, always. So I do. And, you know, it's very weird. Like, you feel, like, under the skin afterwards. You feel, like, almost this it's like radiating. It act I don't know I don't know if that's actually affected my health in the long run. Maybe it has it's hard to tell, you know, when you're but it does feel good afterwards. Yeah. And I I think you can quantify it with, neuroprofenin. It's like neurotransmitters that get activated in cold. But I think more anecdotally, I feel tons of energy after that. Like, you're just on fire after you're like, let's go. You know? But, yeah. So how do we get here? So so so you you're you're figuring out ways to, you know, raise the global consciousness through, you know, foods and other things. Yeah. And and then mushrooms were part of the whole thing and but the two problems we had to solve was how do we make it taste good. And most mushrooms don't taste like mushrooms or what you most people imagine mushrooms taste like, and most people don't want the flavor of mushrooms. They don't like how mushrooms taste. And so these products taste extremely bitter. So I had to look at what are the bitters that people enjoy, and there's not that many. Coffee and chocolate are the 2 bitters that people might consume, and even then, they often add sugars and stuff. Yeah. Nobody I don't think anybody like, I drink black coffee because I don't wanna have the sugar or the dairy, but I don't like it. I just drink it. I I think that's partly true, but I think there are people who like black coffee and dark chocolate Uh-huh. The flavor. I there might be they've teap taught themselves to like it. But when you add these mushrooms to chocolate and coffee, still mostly will taste like coffee and mostly taste like chocolate, and and that's a big thing. And then the other part was us preparing this multi week process for them so they can just have a powder. They can add anywhere. They go to their local cafe, like you said, and they pour a little mushroom on it. So so part of it is so so real it's interesting about entrepreneurship in general. So education is good. Like, what you were blogging was good, but there's a lot of education out there. Like, there's a lot of bloggers saying, we'll do this. We'll do this. We'll do this. And you don't really know, and there's scientific research for everything. What's really interesting, what you solved was not necessarily the knowledge gap because maybe a lot of people even thought, oh, mushrooms are good. I'm gonna have more mushrooms in my diet. But then there's the struggle part. And so there was the struggle in the taste, and there was the struggle in the preparation. It's the friction point, and there's a lot of good things in life that we don't do. And sometimes even people know that they should do things, but they don't do it. Let's say reading or they should know they should meditate or but then if somebody can solve those friction points with an app that teaches you how to meditate, a lot more people meditate. Right? Or maybe in podcast, they wanna learn stuff and they wanna that's what why they wanna read, but they're busy. Podcast is sponsored by Blinkist, by the way, which allows you to read 7 hour books in 15 minutes. Sorry. Go ahead. I'll do that reading. Go for it. So podcast is cool because it solves one friction point for people's learning is that they're busy, but they're in a car. They're in LA. I'm gonna leave here an hour in a second, and I'll be stuck in a traffic for an hour. It's a great activity. I can drive my car and listen. Right? Or an, audiobook. It's the same thing as those what are those friction points in any industry? And then how can you kind of, mitigate or remove those friction points? And in nutrition, I don't think knowledge is the friction point. Oh, rarely it is. Even though Probably in most areas, it's not the friction point. Like like, think about Uber. There's not even a knowledge issue. I mean, the knowledge is that, oh, a lot of cars have empty seats that maybe could be monetized. Okay. Who cares? The real friction point is it's raining. There's no cabs. I need a car right now. That's the friction point. 100%. And, maybe to the earlier point about texting in Nokia, you don't wanna talk to anyone. You don't wanna call anyone. You just wanna push a button and somebody comes, and they were not gonna to you and you leave and you don't have to pay them. It's already been taken care of. Yeah. That's also a friction point, like, the convenience of that. And, in food, especially, it's something where everybody has an opinion and nutrition. I've never met in my life a person who doesn't have an opinion what's healthy. What should you eat? Everybody has an opinion. What's the most and this is a tangent. What's the most controversial food where half the people say, oh, it's great for you and half of people say, no. That's the worst for you? Coffee is definitely one of the things where people have a lot of opinions because it's it feels very personal. I think, I think, let's say, meat is one, probably another one Yeah. Where there's it's very divided, especially I think red meat, more than maybe fish. What else is I think a lot of the the debate has been about, animals versus plants or protein versus fats. Like, that kind of debate, carbs versus fats. Are fats good or bad? Are carbs good or bad? I think that's grains versus, like, processed carbs maybe? Yeah. And I I I think, for example, carbs good or bad or fats good or bad is some of the more classic debates, even more probably than meat. So, I think generally people say sugars are bad. I think people agree on that. When I was, doing a podcast with Peter Thiel, we actually concluded where I was asking him about his diet, and he's he said, you know, there's a lot of opinions, but the one thing pretty much everyone agrees on is that sugar is probably bad for you. And even there, he he said probably. Yeah. And even then, you would say that some of the healthiest foods, for example, wild blueberries contain sugar, and, like, mother's milk contains sugar. So it's, again, about the dosage, the amount, and the source of sugar. I guess that's why processed sugars. Yes. Where you get it in a lot higher intensity Yeah. Than than the human is used to. Like, a fruit will almost, it sort of adjusts the amount you're taking. And it also has fiber in it that slows down the release of, of those sugars in your body and the physical impact of that sugar. And, also, fruits you people used to eat seasonally, not year round. So there was a season of harvest, and you would have a lot of apples, and you just eat apples all the time. But it was not a year round thing. So I think one of the biggest mistakes people do in diet is try to eat any diet. Even if it's paleo, vegan, keto, whatever it is, don't eat it year round. Understand that there's seasonality in nature and there's seasonality in your body, and maybe the seasonality doesn't follow summer, fall, winter, spring, but it might follow like, hey. Now I'm in a book writing period, and then I have book launch period. I have my planning period and have my execution period, and your eating might differ based on either, the external factors like weather or where you live, but it could also be dictated by your internal world, and and you should amend your diet based on those seasons. So it's interesting. Seasonality is such a primal thing. I mean, every Very. Species on the planet has dealt with seasonality. What about in things like creativity or entrepreneurship or, you know, for instance, exercising? So I assume you exercise. You run marathons. Do you feel it's important to exercise every day or, like, just No. It's absolutely is not because it's it's you have these stressors either positive or negative, and then the body will get stronger. So be it like a hormetic stressor or, and then you have this, compensation where you provide a stimulus, then the body gets temporarily weaker, and you provide rest and nutrients, and it gets stronger because it gets challenged. For temporary, when you're in in your cold shower, you become weaker, and then soon after, you become stronger. And so there is a cycle of life, and I think it's the same with creativity or, reflection and action in just you wanna have periods in life when you're really reflective doing less, and then there's a time when you really don't try to be overly philosophical and you almost execute, and it's kind of a DNA string going. I mean, it's it's interesting because I write every day, and I've done it for 2 or 3 decades. And I I've been wondering lately whether it needs sometimes now in the more I do it every morning. Mhmm. I'm I'm wondering now if in the morning, sometimes I should it's better off sometimes meeting people or being social. Or Seasonality can also be within a day. Mhmm. But I think breaking patterns is really good for physiology, generally speaking. So if you wanna you should that's when people say, what's your morning routine? I don't have a morning routine because I I I like I think it's good to kinda challenge yourself, press your teeth with the other hand or, you know, vary it up and kind of keep your brain moving as well. I like routines because routine really force habits and strength. Like you said, the the muscle of ideation that we talked about a few days ago is it's really good to exercise the muscle. But maybe sometimes you wanna exercise a different muscle, and there's kind of a bigger impact, better ROI if you switch it up for a moment and then you come back to it. Okay. Now this that was a long tangent on you started your business. You found friction points. You started a business. Yeah. And and the first few years were tough like most entrepreneurs. Like, my dream was to get every American to drink mushrooms, and I'm not saying we're there yet, but, I mean, the first few years, every time everybody I met thought I was crazy. And and you kind of chip away and figure out those friction points to the point when we're not even selling mushroom coffee, really. We're like, hey. Do you drink coffee? Yes. Do you get the jitters or get heartburn? Yes. Would you like to try a coffee that doesn't give you the jitters or the heartburn and maybe even boost your immunity and brain power? Is, yeah, I would love to try it. It's like dollar 50 a cup. Are you willing to give it a shot? Sure. I'll give it a shot. By the way, it has mushrooms in it. Oh, wow. I didn't expect that, but I guess I'll try it. You know? So when you almost position it differently, and that was an important part for us as well. Instead of trying to sell mushrooms or sell the mushroom mission, people don't care about mushrooms, really, but they care about themselves and what are the the problems the true problems they face, be it, you know, jitters, heartburn, lack of brainpower, or whatever it is. And then here's a solution that is easy to implement. At one point, I read, you know, you you you know, you had an opportunity to put up a store in Venice, and you were just you were kind of making it like a cafe, I guess, but you gave away the mushrooms for free. Yeah. And it's still going, and we're opening one in New York City as well in, I guess, March of 2019. And And what's tell me about free because sometimes people the the the argument for it is that gives a chance for people to try something and say, oh my gosh. This is amazing. The argument against it is people don't value what they don't pay for. Sure. When but but I don't believe in either. Right? So there's a there's a line there as well. When when would you do something for free as opposed to not free? I don't know if I have a good rule. I can just talk about my own experience. And my own experience is that, I personally believe so much in the effects and powers of mushrooms, and they can be, intimidating or different for someone. So when you just say it's free, the the risk of testing becomes so low. It's like, why not? Right? So that's a big thing, and I truly do believe that once they give it a shot, more people than not will, like, yeah. I'll I'll buy that as well. So that's one. The second part is that as an entrepreneur, I've been now doing this company for, over six and a half years and before that even business planning for it. You kind of have sometimes have to do stuff that you like, and you enjoy, and I just thought it will be fun. You know? It's like building a company is really hard, and there's a lot of repetitive work. So sometimes you just have to it's more like a marathon than a sprint, so you have to figure out stuff that inspires you and makes you fun. So I think it's pretty fun to start a cafe in New York that is all free and see how people react. It's almost like a social experiment. It it is it is fun. I've always been involved in, let's call them, businesses where you sell ones and zeros, you know, digital or tech businesses. And more recently, I bought a bar in New York City, and it's just a weird thing to be to own a physical prep place Mhmm. That sells things. It's a new experience for me. It obviously doesn't scale, and then there's a lot of the stuff that you worst investment ever. But there's an emotional connection with physical things that you don't have with digital things. Yeah. No. That's definitely true. Like, I can go to the place, and it's like cheers. And yeah. Exactly. It's a community. It's it's the memories. It's the the more the right brain, lack of a better, word, but, like, more the right brain experience versus the left brain experience, and it really, like, is deep in in us to have those experiences. And I think that's the power of the physical place. So so how's biz business obviously must be going well now, six and a half years in. I find the worst businesses go out of business immediately. The best businesses are the ones that survive that that first 1 or 2 year hurdle. How are you doing? I'm good. We're growing really fast and hiring a lot of people and but it's hard when nobody's done what you've done. There's really no benchmark. So it's more like, am I growing as a human? Am I contributing to the better of other people in the community? Am I learning? And those yes to all those 3, but it's hard to know, like, what learning curve has gone down now? It's changed dramatically. Yeah. It's like the things I'm learning are completely different than like, when I started, you have to be really good, like, the product stuff and production and, like, selling, like, the kind of the nuts and bolts. And as you grow, it's more about people and culture and just the stuff that you learn are very different. I don't think it the growth has so far slowed down, but it's changed dramatically. And when I try to focus on the stuff that I used to focus on, I would hit a limit, and then I realized that I'm focusing on completely the wrong stuff. I should be doing other stuff. So I I sort of feel like at every you know, so I've been involved in lots of different businesses, and I sort of feel like, particularly for beginning entrepreneurs, this is a useful thing to know that at the $1,000,000 revenue point, culture changes at the 3,000,000, at the 10,000,000, at the 30,000,000, and so on. Like, you have to kind of the business has to reinvent itself at each one of those levels. And you think the factor is by when you multiply it by 3? Or No. I don't really know what the factor is, and it might vary by Company. Yeah. Because some things require more employees than others. Mhmm. But, you know, it it matters when the CEO knows all the employees. Like, at some level, you grow enough where you don't necessarily know all the employees in the business. So just just culturally, you have to and then logistics changes depending on the number of customers you have. Mhmm. So just it's not necessarily a revenue point. It's more, when other crucial things are changing, like employees, or customers number of customers, number of factors involved that that need to keep your your business humming smoothly. Sure. You know, at some point, you don't need customer service because you're customer service. But then at maybe the 5,000,000 mark, depending on the product, you need a customer service. Mhmm. And maybe at the $50,000,000 mark, you need so much customer service. You have to figure out how to outsource it to India and and so on. So, you know, have you noticed that in your growth? For sure. But I am more trying to focus on what are the stuff that are perennial. Where is the value generation to our customers that doesn't change? And I think and I might could be totally wrong, but I for us, customer service has been a priority from day 1 because it's a place of education. It's a place of caring, it's a place of community. It serves so many other functions than, like, the sales support function of customer support. It's it is sales and marketing. Right. So I think that's a big cultural shift was when you realized that customer service is actually a profit center. Yeah. And, you know, it's part of our DNA. So I used to do customer service, then our my, you know, founding team did customer service. And our 1st ever hire, basically, 1st female, 1st American was a customer service person, and she's, like, she's in the management team. Like, she, like, is making major decisions, and it's not like something that is buried under the COO or something like that. Like, it's a vital function. So let me ask you this. Like, I feel knowing the little I do of your business and the metrics the the few metrics I know, if if I were you and this is not advice. This is just me. This is my personality. But if I were in your situation, I would probably immediately sell the business. Mhmm. And the reason is is because then I can get the money from the business. I worked really hard, get the money, put it in the bank, and now explore other things I'm interested, even involving mushrooms or physical performance or whatever. Have you dealt with, possibility of selling or or you're not interested in that at this point? Not interested at that point. But, obviously, I've thought about it because I have team members who, don't have a lot of wealth, and most of their wealth is tied into because I've given part of the business to every employee no matter what level you're in. And, yeah, they are having kids. They're building their families, and and we get approached now by some buyers. And, you know, I've thought about it, but right now I have, right now, no interest on selling it. But who knows where we'll be in a year? But I don't think we're we're even ready or anything like that. But, but, yeah, I have definitely thought about it, especially after a couple of my first, you know, team members, which I now call business partners, are, you know, having family and kids, and they are renting a place, and they're living in a, like, a small one bedroom and, like, just Well, what some companies do is you set evaluation Yeah. And people could then you know, if investors wanna come in and buy their shares Sure. Yeah. And then there's secondary transactions and other things that can solve it. So it's not selling is not the only way to solve those those kind of problems. Especially today, I feel like there's more and more options. But So so I do wanna touch on even though this is related to your business, obviously related to your your lifelong interest, psychedelic mushrooms. And now there's even, you know, many universities moving psychedelic mushrooms into the category of functional mushrooms. And because there's you know, microdosing mushrooms has been shown to be a a a good antidepressant and Sure. Antipsychotic and and other things. What's where do you see the future of that? What's what's, I don't know. What's what do you do? I think they will have a lot more research now. I feel like the culture is now more open up to researching it again, and I'm curious to see what are the effects and of that research. I think the initial research from, you know, NYU, John Hopkins, all that stuff is exciting enough, and I think the times are where people are more open to it that they'll we'll see a lot in the next 3 to 5 years. And I think so far the research shows that there's a lot of promise to it. So it seems like the the rumor is, of course, that everybody in Silicon Valley is microdosing something. Anecdotally, I can say it's not a rumor. It's a fact. Uh-huh. Is it mushrooms or ecstasy or LSD? I think less people. Yeah, I'd say some people microdose LSD, but I think more prep people probably microdose on psilocybin. And my and the idea of microdosing is that you don't necessarily feel the effect. Like, if you just take a full blown Mhmm. 19 sixties dose of mushrooms, you'll start vomiting and whatever. You're probably not gonna vomit. But, yeah, Yeah. You shouldn't have any alteration in your visuals, for example. So, like, you should be able to totally drive a car, go to work. The dosage is so small, but the idea that some sort of maybe neuroplasticity happens during that is is happening. But And and in what way? What's it rewiring? So neuroplasticity is the idea that as kids, we always or we always knew this about kids that their brain rewires as they grow, but supposedly, it stopped around age 18. More, more recent research has shown that you there's the brain is constantly rewiring itself your whole life. So what what do you think is happening with, psychedelics? On what we know right now in research, completely different, synapses and neurotransmitters get fired when, for example, if you take psilocybin, which you don't. Like, you literally physiologically think outside the box. Like, your thought patterns are completely different, and it kinda brings back to your earlier childhood way of having ability to access different parts of your brain. Mhmm. I think more research is probably needed, but I think, psychedelics been used for a long time by indigenous cultures. Doesn't mean that all the stuff that indigenous cultures did were great, but I think, you know, we have a history with them. I know psilocybin is not addicting. It's not habit forming. It's almost impossible to overdose. So I think how it's currently treated is pretty harsh, but I think more research is needed to understand better what's the effects on the brain. So so right now, if you came down with cancer let's just make up some kind of cancer. I don't know. Am I wishing on that one maybe? No. No. Because I know you haven't been you don't get sick. You're you're you've you've you've cancer. Every second person pretty much gets cancer now. So Well, everybody's got some cancer. Right? Everyone's got mutated cells inside of the point is their immune system is strong enough to fight it. Like, we all basically get cancer, but some people's immune system is not so strong enough to fight it. I also think doctors give you cancer. Mhmm. Meaning, you could have mutated cells, and they could even be somewhat problematic. But it's not until you go to the doctor that, oh my gosh, you suddenly need chemotherapy, and then you get sicker and sicker and sicker. I sort of feel like, you know, there's probably been a lot of people who never knew they had cancer, and then it got it went away or it got cured in some way. They never went to the doctor, so they never knew and got into the the hospital funnel that that occurs. Yeah. So if you got cancer right now and the doctor said, okay. You're in stage 1, stage 2. We should do chemotherapy on you. What would you do? I personally probably wouldn't do it at that stage, but there's so many types of cancer as well. It's not that, like, black and white. But, I and even if I would use conventional therapy of chemo or, you know, surgery or whatever is involved, I would still involve more holistic practices because at that like, what? I would support my immune system quite holistically because after those therapies, your immune system is even maybe further sacrificed and the possibility of getting something else. Or, those cancers, foreign cells spreading somewhere else in your body is very high, So I would very much limit, for example, the amount of sugar. I would add extra double down on gut health. I would look at things that are immunomodulatory. Like what? I can't comment on that, unfortunately. So in this in this context, no. Okay. What about the gut health? Because of, yeah, I can't make that association because of my company. Oh, okay. Fair enough. Yeah. What about gut health? Probiotics are often said to be good, but I I've found through practice that they're very hard to alter your gut biome. With probiotics, it's quite difficult, but prebiotics tend to work better. So things that are food for the the gut biome, different kinds of fibers, really good for it. If you have probiotics, I recommend it in food form. It'd be kimchi, sauerkraut, things like that versus maybe probiotic supplements. I think not washing yourself too much, skin being your biggest organ, so not being overly hygienic, touching animals, being endured in nature are really good. Ex exposing yourself to really hot, really cold sauna. Ice baths and cold showers are really powerful for the immune system. So those are just some extent. Vitamin d, obviously, super important for immunity. A lot of people are deficient on it. So, I'm gonna close it off. I know you have to go. I feel like I've learned so much. Yeah. I'm gonna start so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go to 4 sigmatic.com. I'm not advertising you didn't ask me to do this. I'm you're not this is what I wanna do. I wanna go to 4 sigmatic.com and buy a bunch of things to help me with my health. I like this coffee you made with the lion's mane. Yeah. You put you you sell that as a package. Right? The coffee lion's mane? Both of the ground coffee and instant. And then I'm gonna do the coffee with the chaga. You sell that as well, I think? Yeah. That's what you just have. It's both. It's like 2 in 1. So it's all good. Can I get the reishi for evenings? Yeah. But the hot cocoa with the reishi? And there's also a chai latte, made with coconut milk powder, so it's like vegan paleo. And the cordyceps for the afternoon? Yeah. That's possible. You could just start with the Lion's Mane chaga coffee and the reishi cocoa or the chai latte. I'm I'm gonna do that. Tiro isocapula cap capula. Also, your book, healing mushrooms is amazing. Like, it's it's so so much knowledge. But as you said, I'm reading this, and I'm thinking, like, I can't do this, but your your website, 4thigmatic, solves that problem for me, that friction point. And, thanks for, letting me go on all my tangents. Yeah. Thanks for chatting. It was great getting to know you in the last few days and having this chat. I'm sure many more to come. Yeah. I'm looking forward to checking out the opening party of your Oh, yeah. We'll definitely invite you. Cafe and, make you a way trek to lower east side. Can I serve your coffee in the comedy club that, that I own? We must. We'll we'll get you hooked up on free stuff as well. Well, as long as it makes people laugh. It's gotta be because maybe we'll microdose people. Oh, for sure. We'll do that. Thanks, James. Thanks, Theo. Thanks a lot.
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