I think there is something to be said for within psychology or for me, psychotherapy of quieting the ego, probably the most psychotherapeutic beneficial thing, most spiritually beneficial thing, the most community beneficial thing, most self beneficial thing that I do. It's all the same thing. It is quieting the ego and tryingto listen where I could be most useful

listeners. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Paul Austin, and this week I interviewed my friend and an informal adviser to the third wave, James Becerra. James is an angel investor, founder of Tilt A payments platform podcaster at Below the Line, and the general startup helper from Texas who now lives in San Francisco. California Inc. Forbes and Time magazine included James in their 30 under 30 list, and over the years he's been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, CNN, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal and has spoken at places like Harvard Business School, Stanford, Why Combinator TechCrunch disrupt and South by Southwest.

James is invested in a few multibillion dollar companies, has advised even Maur and now hosts a podcast focused on the inner journey of founding, leading and creating called below the line with James Bashira that New York Times bestselling author Eric Reese has called the most exciting new podcast in the start up world. But that's not why we interviewed James today. I got James on the podcast to talk about his new book, Beyond Coffee. A Sustainable Guide to New Tropics, adapted Jin's and Mushrooms. And in this episode, we started off by talking about James's journey with burnout and what role coffee played in that and why that inspired him to write a book about going beyond coffee. How we define productivity in today's day and age. How Alan Watts Yes, that famous philosopher kickstarted James's journey into a deeper sense of self knowledge and why being honest at all times is often the best thing that we can do. So without further ado, I bring you James Becerra. James Becerra, welcome author of Beyond Coffee. A Sustainable Guide to New Tropics, Adapted Jin's and Mushrooms. I just want to thank you for joining us on

the show today, man. Thank you for having me. Paul.

I'm really excited to do this, You know, we're here in your little nook. Um, my wife's art studio

that we recorded our episode. You have great episode Where the focus was It was really you in the third wave and everything Psychedelics, you know, maybe 34

weeks ago says cool. And now we get to turn the tables and I get to inquire about you and you know where you come from and what your story is and what led you to starting your podcast below the line. And we're gonna talk about the Dan TAS and New Tropics and Finn tack, and this is just gonna be, like, do it to be, like one of those conversations that just goes all over the place. And I'm really excited Toe dig in. Let's do

it. It's ah, mind body spirit. All three and one episode,

I hope we touched on it all. So one story that you've told me a few times and we were just talking about before we started the podcast was sort of this breaking point that you had back in 2013. Could you just tell her listeners just what happened, how you burned out and what role coffee

played in that? Sure. Yeah. And that's where the book the book starts with we talking about in 2013 26 and I was running Ah company here in San Francisco, and we had about 60 70 employees at that point, and I had to go to the E. R. I had to go visit my doctor, and he's the one that said, We need to go across the street to the R. Right after the visit, I went to go see my doctor because for about three weeks straight, I felt shallow breathing and felt like my heartbeat was just a constant elevated. Great. And it's kind of like the feeling of kind of butterflies in your stomach. But for three straight weeks, long story short,

I had an irregular heartbeat and a condition called atrial fibrillation at 26 which is super rare and in all of the questions that the doctors asking about my habits, my exercise regimens, he said, and and James, how many, many cups of coffee do you drink a day? And I said, uh, somewhere between 5 to 6, and he just nodded it. There's no emotional reaction. He was just like it was like confirming something in his

mind and like he basically already right, got that sense, right?

Because everything else checked out. You know, I exercised. I slept well. Eight. Well, yeah, it was. It was really interesting that I just thought this is, you know, some elevated stress that would go away or really, during those three weeks, I just thought, Oh, there's some nervousness going on, but but it will go away. But what was interesting was me knowing that the nervousness just kept staying day after day made me even more nervous.

It made me even more just, I think, on a bio physiological level, like it was just spiking my quarters on, making me really stressed out about being stressed. Long story short. Um, the day my doctor was like, it's you really should limit your caffeine intake to about 80 milligrams a day. And I was like, OK, what is what? How many is that? What is that? Three cups of coffee, Four cups of coffee.

He's like, No, that's about 1/10 of what you're doing right now. I was like, There's no I mean freakin way. Um, that that I can You operate a 70 person company on 1/2 a cup of coffee and he said to me. Well, have you ever tried green tea? It has this stuff in it called El Fini, which will help calm you down and gets rid of the stress hormone that your caffeine is building up that's contributing to this heart condition. So long story medium. I was I was just I see the most impactful thing from that day was hearing that you could have this other ingredient that would work with caffeine in a very different way than just drinking coffee. And it was so interesting from now from then until now, I went from thinking Well, if there was anything better than coffee,

then we'd know about it. It would be obvious everybody would talk about everyone would know about it. That would be obvious to now fast forward. Five and 1/2 6 years later and the opposite streets. Now, I'm of the mind where it's like, Are we gonna find a better concoction for our productivity? And then this thing we've been drinking for 304 100 years to me. Now it's much more obvious that we're gonna do better than this thing that we've been drinking for 400 years. And especially now on the heels of five and 1/2 years of research, it's clear that we can go beyond just coffee for our morning rituals, for productivity and also this world we live in. It's that is just collectively encouraged. Just over, Captain eight Over. Cappie over. Captain it. It's just his obvious that that is, it's really terrible for physical and mental

health. Why was that case for you? Why were you over caffeinated over?

Yes, it is a good question. The background, you know, in running a 60 70 person company is I was just really stressed, and I think I was. I fell into this cycle that I think a lot of people fall into where I was overworked on by my own doing. I can become pretty fanatical and was working seven days a week, probably 90 100 hours a week, every week. At that point for about two years. On my start up, I I think I just fell in this cycle where because I was so stressed because I was so overworked. My antidote to that wasn't healthy choices. It was more caffeine. It was as prescribed Adderall in college, and so is caffeine.

Adderall and I actually only taken admiral maybe 40 times in my life because it really actually get a bad headache. So it's very, ah, diminishing returns after about two hours. But it certainly wasn't openness to trying as much of, ah, coffee, caffeine stimulant as I could meet was a joke around the office. I was just chugging so much caffeine that's in the darkest observation about that point in time wasn't there. I was consuming so much caffeine, just chucking so much coffee. It was that it was so normal to do that it was that it was that it was a joke around the office rather than Hey, you have an addiction thio, this incredibly strong stimulant and your way around all of the negative effects that it's causing used to have

more of it. Interesting, right? The way that we can rationalize that. It's kind of like, I mean, that's sort of inherent in working culture. It's like we sacrifice longevity and sustainability for immediate gratification for what we need in the here and now, particularly and start up culture when it's like, Look, we got a hostile, we gotta work our asses off. We gotta make this happen? We don't think about months goals, you know, like, and then boom Berna happens, right? What was burn out like for you when that wind that would eventually happen.

So there was the physical, the very strong physical symptoms of elevator heart rate, shallow breathing for three straight weeks and for atrial fibrillation. Many people can't feel it, but I could feel it. And so is easy for me to go into the doctor and get a diagnosis. And that also made it really easy to recognize. What I was doing was really unsustainable. I think for many people, if you don't have, you know, if you if you don't have that really bright flashing, you know, check engine light going off, then you don't know that what you're doing is unsustainable. You don't know that you're burning out your physiology, and I'd say mental health,

justice much of both combined. And when we get into kind of just a culture of over caffeine a shin, it is affecting our mental health as much as it's affecting our physical health. The very easy tie between those things as cortisol stress hormone, you chug a coffee and the caffeine intake from coffee will be the exact same cortisol response as acute stress. Um, it is you could be on a beach and chug two espressos, and it will be as if you're under a stressful situation and your body doesn't know the difference. And so that well, then, trigger of the mental health side of things of just I was I was not only chasing each week's goals each month's goals because I felt like, Oh, we need a chase. The here. Now this is our opportunity as a startup. I also is chasing the here and now because I was so worried and anxious at all times.

And it is this this non virtuous cycle, because it's it's, um I was worried and anxious because of elevated cortisol, you know, and then it leads to insomnia. So then you're drinking more caffeine, having you've been Maur elevated cortisol. But yes, it was this non virtuous cycle. Then I was anxious that we weren't gonna had our goals, and that made me more anxious. And it's so you know now that I'm a few years removed from it, it's so easy to spot how a healthy waas, but it's also just as easy for me to get back in that doctor's office and get back in that feeling of thinking half a couple. There's no way. It is really fascinating, just as I think back to how easy it should have been to spot that I was burning out and how hard it would have been to pry. Yeah, that 4th 5th 6 cup of coffee out of my hands because I felt like I truly needed each day.

So now, six years later, you've written this entire book you've done extensive research on you know what are things that are beyond coffee in your research? What have you found to be some of the most effective substances or, you know, drinks or whatever else it might be that that are useful for productivity? And within that, how do we? How do we define? How do you define productivity? Now?

That's a great question. And as you can see, drinking Mata right now much a lot much is great, and I love mantra. It has its, ah, much as just a former green tea. It's powdered green tea. It's the whole leaf powdered up and grind it down and put into a drink, and it has a lot of el feeding as well as a cat. Akins, which are great antioxidants along with the caffeine in lower amounts of caffeine, said it just could be spaced out of, you know, two or three cups of madre throughout the day would equal about one and 1/2 cups of coffee. And so I did. I just say that right off the bat.

I love Marcia. I think you've heard me talk about Marta, and it also has the difference between grinding of the actual leaf versus just green tea is the difference of I think it's around 130 times as many Anna antioxidants as a cup of green tea. So it's really healthy for you and and really, for me, it also I get tohave the somethingto sip on something to drink, but it's facing out the caffeine throat zooming out to your to your question off. What is productivity really, really great question, because I think one of the things that we do, you know, collectively societally is confused. Alertness, wakefulness, something from coffee with productivity, and we can get into the actual compounds.

And if you go toe beyond coffee book dot com. You get the 1st 2 chapters free as well as see what I take every morning based on this research around sustainable approaches to these things zooming out, I'll answer your question on productivity and then also just talk about the different buckets of thes compounds on productivity. Productivity is really it's not just wakefulness alertness because anyone can you can go back to him. Ah, time in their life where they've had four cups of coffee and they're jittery. There actually Wait, that's like anxiety, anxiety, right? You, mornings I and you can be awake and completely alert, but terribly a unproductive because you're anxious. So productivity is really in my zooming out kind of first principles thinking when I approached all of the different compounds, productivity was, um,

it was energy, plus cognition plus direction. And so energy would be wakefulness alertness, something that caffeine can provide for you. And then cognition would be focused clarity, memory, creativity, lateral thinking, and then direction. Is it? Was this pointed in the right direction? Think of it kind of like energy is the fuel. Um, you've got cognition as the engine and the direction is the steering wheel. You need all three. And if you on Lee have energy,

but you have no clear way of directing it, then you're anxious. Do you have energy? But you're putting it on some pretty unproductive thoughts, or the engine is isn't really there. And your your frickin ready to go because you just pop to Adderall. But you're on 24 hours of no sleep. You're not gonna be very productive even if you're not gonna and your cognitively not gonna be really there. So it's energy, cognition and direction. And and when I kind of think about my own approach each morning and I love a morning coffee, But also add in certain routines like one switching to macho after that first cup of coffee. Also add in things like omega threes for cognitive performance. It's not just about energy, it's about a cognition and then direction. Aladdin Immuno supportive things like econ Atia,

Vitamin C because you might have energy from a dina seen receptor blocking caffeine. But you're catching a cold. It's going to sap your energy so immune support of things like econ, atia, vitamin C and then also things like anti inflammatories and turmeric. And the book, obviously, as you could imagine, explains this stuff much more linearly than a podcast can. But things like anti inflammatories like tumeric human, your body can waste 10 to 15% of its energy, just on inflammation. And let's say you, uh, it's information in the gut because you're slightly allergic to something that you consume that morning. Or it's inflammation from a twisted ankle from exercise the day before and a sore back.

Whatever it is, you're wasting energy on that, and that's energy that you have. But it's being spent in the wrong direction. That's my definition and our definition for the book of productivity. So one thing that

comes up for me as we're talking about this concept of productivity, you know, you had a background in fintech, so you actually let's let's talk about that because I want I want to take that and I want to talk about kind of where the future of work is going. As more and more people transition from coffee to these other substances that essentially the focus isn't as much on I need to get as much done as possible. But I want to be in a really great state of mind wannabe inflow. I want to be in the groove of productivity, right? Yeah. And so, like, I think that reframing and doing it within your story would be fantastic. So I love you. Could just tell our listeners, like, a little bit about your business background, in particular in terms of short bill kind of what you're involved with. And then we can transition into

Yeah, absolutely. And And I do want to touch on Justo, um slightly correct. Something that I think is the predominant conception of productivity or or especially with something like this book. Is that okay? You add in supplements, you add in compounds in Europe. Better version yourself, but the book is very. I make sure to say this is fifth in the list of things to really focus on. And these are things you and I have chatted about before as well. But if you want to get into flow and this is the contrast to where I was in 2013 words like, I got this awesome crutch and it's caffeine, um, or an awesome crutch. And it's these exogenous compounds and the truth is,

that should be fifth on the list of first being great sleep and, you know, two hours of sleep. No matter how much caffeine and healthy and you have that you're not gonna be productive with only two hours asleep, next would be exercise exercise has been shown over and over again as being just a cz cognitive enhancing as any supplement out there. So three times Ah, week. So sleep. I get eight hours of sleep every night and one of the best piece of advice ever got from asleep. Doctor, when I was looking into this as I was approaching my CEO founder role in an unsustainable way, she said, Wake up every morning the same time and do it for eight days and see how quickly you can get into a creative flow After eight days of waking up same time every morning after sleep exercise three times a week of pretty strenuous 30 minutes of aerobic exercise in the research on that is also like I said, pretty clear that it's just a cz effective is any cognitive enhancing supplement. Third, would be diet and everything in moderation.

I don't really drink, and that's mainly because it really disturbs number one for me sleep. So if I have to three drinks, it's gonna do, I'm gonna have worse sleep and then forthis stress management. So meditation practicing the art of under committing, committing to fewer and fewer things mindfulness I'd practice Ah tm transcendental meditation Just breathing and mantra driven meditation. And then fifth would be these exogenous compounds which the book focuses on. I'm not an expert on the other four, but I know from all of the research at the other four foundational before you get to that. So I just wanted to call that out, going to my background s. So I've been a startup founder. This is such a weird book for me to write, because my background for the last 10 years has been all startups. It's about 11 years now.

It's just been focused on startups and technology companies. And and that's where I started doing right out of college and and, um, build three companies and and that's my main folks. That's what all my friends know me for. But, um but yeah, there was this parallel threat that started about six years ago. If researching these things from my own productivity, creativity, mound, desire to get into flow. And then what started at the end of last year with the block post a long block post became a five part blogged coast. And it was like, All right, I might as well just do all of the research and put this into a a short little book.

So that's a little background on the book, But yeah, the background me is started guy and was building a payments company in 2013 when a during that, your stint. And ah, you know, what would

you like to know about the founder background? So I think talking a little bit like, you know, you have this podcast now below the line. So how did those you know that work that you did in building the startups really inform the sort of reframing of work that you have now, where you're not in the trenches working you now have the flexibility to take a step back and you're focused on more creative pursuits, you know, like the podcast. Like writing the book like angel investing. So I just love to hear you talk about, like that sort of shift in perspective and how it basically influenced you to start this podcast and write What? The podcast.

It's somewhat related to the book, but I'd say it's kind of in these buckets of body mind spirit and in all three really need to be working together but also independently focused on and and maintained. And so the podcast below the line is really an outgrowth of when I was going through a really tough time at the end of till and ultimately it till it just failed. Did not meet any of our expectations. It was at one point valued at just under $400 million. Private valuation, and we can talk about how just limited those private valuations are and they're not. They're not what it kind of sounds like for all intensive purposes. We're flying really high and you fast forward 18 months later, and we're selling for a fire sale fraction of that to Airbnb. And it was it was as painful as as acquisitions can go during those those 18 months and probably maybe a year or two before that. But definitely during those 18 months of things really just kind of crumbling in our hands of having this major opportunity to build this social network around money and missing that opportunity. And the the above the line version or my podcast called below the line. For listeners, that's a metaphor of the iceberg. And in the water, where 10% is above the waterline and 90% is below.

And and ultimately, you know the rial real substance is below line beneath the surface what you can't see. And for me, the above the line version of that experience was and we really struggled to hit to find a revenue model. We're growing virally were growing pretty fast even as we sold. But we couldn't hit a real revenue model similar to something like Venmo um struggled with as well and and why they sold. But the below the line version was it was just, um and I was caught up in trying to build this world changing company 50% to change the world and 50% financial engineering, ego, engineering, identity, engineering, build something and I will be the face of it at home. You're right on the tip of the tip of the spear of this change, and it was a really short sighted and pretty dysfunctional way to start something to build something. And I noticed in the last 18 months it was you were struggling because of a lot of a lot of the decisions that my co founder and I made that were trying to optimize for the business.

But it's just a CZ honest to say it was trying to optimize for ego, for financial engineering, for identity, in generic, in setting these wild expectations, you know, externally and crumbling under those expectations internally. And it was such a trying experience for me was it was so stressful, so emotional, even like all of the right nutritional supplementation diet, exercise. Um, and there's a really important, uh, but getting all of those things right wasn't gonna change the fact that I was probably going through that was stressful career or stressful professional experience that I'll ever go through and ah, enduring that experience,

I said, Okay, on the other side of this, I don't really care how it goes. Um, even if it is a complete wash, I'll go write about my experiences. We'll move to South Africa. I had lived before. I was like, I'll just live there and write about my experiences, be completely broken and just share my experiences the world. And I think that was the other was an outgrowth of this desire to want to talk about what it's really like to be a founder and add to this pretty strong. Are you any dearth of of literature around the psychological side of being a founder? So that was the beginning of it. And then after we sold that thought,

never went away. And I said, Okay, I want to write about the psychological side of creation something that no one ever talks about. And if I'm gonna write about it, I better interview some of the best creators, leaders, researchers on the topic of the psychology of creation. And then one of ah, my friends, Eric Reese from Leans started with best selling author. He said, Dude, Okay, cool book sounds really cool, but you should start as a podcast. And,

uh, that's what kicked it off would have been some of the best lessons that you've learned so far from doing that podcast, huh?

It is. I try to catalog them as as the episodes go by. It's gonna require so much. It is phenomenal from the perspective of, and it also right after we sold after we went there, this just really painful experience. That's when I would hear from some of my favorite entrepreneurs. Investors would hear from them that they had similar experiences or I'd be getting dinner with them and they would tell me they're below the line version of what their experience in the last company was really like. Or a company that I would read about that I have this amazing and a venir a polished to their story. And then I would hear the real version. I was like, Why the hell didn't you tell me this stuff when I was going through it? And why aren't these stories the real versions of these people's stories? Why aren't those more known? Is it always just this polished, You know, perfectly packaged version out there,

and I found it so comforting just to hear that I wasn't alone to go through my experience that I went through in the way that we did. We weren't alone, and that was not only is it hopefully know you can go on recover from it and learn a lot from it and actually get to focus on the change that you want to effect in the world. More than that, it's, um it's so commonplace to have the type of entrepreneurial experience. And I say that sharing of other people's stories on a podcast of other bills, real versions of their stories that ironically, instead of the actual tactics that they talk about, I've learned that just sharing and airing those stories have been so valuable to other entrepreneurs because they write in all all of the time. It's is probably the number one thing that people write in about saying that they're just really appreciative that they got to hear Person X is real story like Justin Con. The first episode talks about how he sold. They sold Twitch Ah company for about a $1,000,000,000 to Amazon, and within a few months he couldn't get out of bed for four days because he was in a really dark place mentally. And he realized how little this thing that he chased for 10 years a massive entrepreneurial exit, how little it actually mattered.

His mental health that's powerful shed like that's crazy, powerful to hear that the thing that you're chasing might not actually be the solution to your problems. So you it's at least worth the curiosity that may be the solution to problems or elsewhere. Yeah, that's just one small anecdote of powerful stuff entrepreneur

share. But this is like a recurring story that that, you know, I've I've heard time and time again. When back in December, I hosted a panel here in San Francisco with a friend of mine who exited and had a seven figure eggs at another friend of mine who was a V p at LegalZoom and quit. And then a friend of mine who's an executive coach and I will ask executive coach Michael Castro's who has been in this before and what both the two former, you know, start up the VP and the friend of mine. What they both emphasized was, I wish I had that perspective, that doing all that work and making all that money and doing the big exit wouldn't actually corn a quote, fix or address a lot of the underlying kind of core reasons. Why was unhappier dissatisfied or continuing to seek for that external? You know, Colin, I think This is what I was hinting at before with this overemphasis on coffee and needing to get things done.

It's like we kind of continue to want to put fuel in our rocket ship to go somewhere, get somewhere be somewhere without having the context. The understanding that at the end of the day, what matters most is what we have right now in terms of what we could be present with, um, what we could be grateful for. And this is obviously a hotter and hotter topic, particulary, you know, because this is a second Alec podcast within the sort of emerging psychedelic space. And entrepreneurs like yourself, we're not becoming interested in psychedelics were having this reframe and understanding. There is something deeper that we really need to understand about ourselves. And this is what gets into like, for example, what you've now been been exploiting with the Vedanta Zonda.

What's there? So I'd love to. I think this is an excellent transition point toe like, go into kind of from a spiritual perspective, right? What has been your path and where you at either currently or where have you been? You know? What have you been processing that's helped you to get perspective on some of these larger questions thes larger existential quinces of like, What do I want to pursue? What's meaningful to me? You know, um, what do I believe is true? I love. Just hear a little bit about your perspective in your story.

Well, I'd say three things come to mind with that question. And as I think is as a backdrop, you're moving forward is not always progress. 10 feet forward in the wrong direction is can feel good because you're moving forward if that's your you know, your measurement. But if it's in the wrong direction is the exact opposite of what you need. And it's and I think that that is it's like a you know, a road trip. If if you feel like this professional pursuit and achieving this professional milestone is the end all be, all of it is the solution to what's missing or, um, what's wrong in your life? You better hope that that's right, because if you're wrong and you went on a road trip 1000 miles in the wrong direction, well, you just made your path that much harder to get to the place that you wanna be in.

And I'd say that that is, um the first thing that comes to mind is just moving forward is not always progress. And I think entrepreneurially career professionally, you know, that's you just get told moving forward is progress. Can't tell you how many founders I know that will burn bridges, burn relationships. They will work through familial relationships that are now destroyed and get to the other side. And they're in a situation like Justin's, where it's like, Oh, shit, this wasn't what I thought it was going to be and being irreparable situation, having burned those those relationships. I mean, you you hear about it,

or at least I heard about and grew up and in a neighborhood where you would, you know, someone really, really professionally successful, lived in that big mansion, and yet their family was really, really messed up. And, uh, yeah, that's territory. That's you. Ah, it's irreparable many ways. The second thing that comes to mind is, um Well,

then, as I would mention this on any podcast but ah, specifically for yours, I think it was, um I probably saw three years in 23 years and that the professional side professional pursuit was not checking that box for was not the destination I really wanted to be in. I definitely struggled with ego side of things, wanting to engineer this identity of this. Really, In some ways, it's innocuous. In some ways, it's It's pretty, Um, it's just super, incredibly vain, incredibly vain version would be.

I want to be that guy that Sena's as the creator of this world dominating company. I would see a movie at 24 say, Oh, I want to be that character that everybody is cheering about. Everybody is, um, is showing these obviously just visceral reactions of how awesome they are, how great they are. Um, that's a vain way putting. I think the innocuous way or potentially less selfish but still misguided viewpoint is I just want to be useful, and I would settle for signs of being useful. You can want to be on the cover of a magazine because you want the vanity of people who know who you are. You can be on the cover, want to be on the cover of magazine because that's a sign that, oh,

that person's doing something useful that this magazine is putting on the cover of it. I want to be really useful. And I think my entire purpose in life boils down to and I think all of ours but mine there takes the articulations really simple. It's just to be useful to those around me. And and I think that professional pursuit, that side of it there was the ego kind of engineering identity engineering in that direction. But I also knew is pretty. That was going to be an insatiable pursuit. Probably 23 years. And I just could see notice in my own minds like, Oh, no, we only want to go further and further and further so whatever we accomplished here, it's gonna be, um it's going to be kind of a futile pursuit cause I'm only gonna want to go further. So let me look elsewhere,

and I got really, um, addicted. Thio. Alan Watts lectures on YouTube and I have grown up. My dad taught us to meditate when we're about eight years old, and so I grew up with a religious and meditative kind of practice around me with girls. I grew up Catholic, and so my dad was this unique character meditating, you know, every single day at 2 p.m. And us going to church every Sunday and so having that exposure to Buddhism and Catholicism and a real age was really formative. But I'd say it really sunk in when I was going through the really trying time of building something outside of the acquisition experience is creating something from scratch is extremely stressful. And and I think in that mind, body spirit, you know, ah,

formula. There was the body side of things of the regimen regimen that I would start to adopt after that conversation with my doctor and and that you are visit and then the, uh, the mind side of things of meditation of, you know, just honestly, a crowded to journal so frickin powerful writing down every morning what you're grateful for, and then third kind of that spiritual practice of being really receptive to these the messages of people way smarter than myself, on ah, purpose of life and and how to be effective in that purpose zone. Being useful. I loved Alan Watts's lectures because in my pursuit of all kinds of trying to be useful, this an insanely articulate philosopher from the 20th century. For those that don't know, he's one of the his British. But he's one of the one of the people most responsible for introducing the West to Eastern philosophies. Lived in Sausalito on a houseboat on a houseboat of all places, and so lived nearby. Where we are right now is this extremely articulate philosopher that also happened to record everything just happen to be a philosopher in a time where he could record everything in the forties fifties sixties that he was a land out. So you go on YouTube and you can just look up his lectures and many of which now have been put to really cool you melodic kind of soundtracks.

Those were some of my favorite soundtracks to put in my psilocybin playlist. So when we started synthesis last year, we would throw in a couple Alan Watts soundtracks you confined over Spotify. They're really easy, and just like dropping one of those in there when you're on like four grams of mushrooms, it's just like, Oh, you know, just bone hits you because it's so really and it's There's so much truth in it and it's grounded in something that this lineage, this wisdom that's thousands and thousands and thousands of years old.

Remember, listen, one lecture a few months into being exposed to it in the lecture just said, What do you want? Can you sit down and write 250 words of what you want in life? And it's a powerful exercise because you'll realize you can say maybe eight words 10 words of what you want in life. But try to write out 250 words to describe exactly what you want, and you quickly realize 100 150 words. And it's like I am describing total bullshit. I have no idea what any of this stuff means that you end up describing some fictional kind of like medieval version of heaven like And then you're like, Oh, shit, I have no idea what any of this stuff is, or just

a latitude or is clouding your right so basic or like this is very superficial.

Someone else's words. Oh my God! And it's And it's all the Texas. You could do that in 10 15 minutes, Tried it, tried to describe what you want in life into our 50 words. He basically just says You don't know what you want and you don't know what you want For two potential reasons one is. And at that point in the lecture, I'm like, Yeah, I don't know what he's He's reclusive. I literally want these things that I think I want just so that I can pursue What I really what it's like. I want to hit these professional career milestone so that I can have infinite options to pursue whatever I want. It takes 30 seconds to realize how ridiculous that is. Like I want to hit this milestone so that I can do whatever I want. It's like, Well,

if you can't answer that question of whatever you wanted that milestone one, how do you know that's the milestones gonna get either? But so I was already had this kind of arrested place of Okay, Mr. Watts, I have no idea what I want. I agree with you. And then he basically said You don't know what you want for two reasons. One, um, maybe it's you don't know what you want because there is no you. You're changing every 10 years. So the thing that you thought you wanted 10 years ago has now changed. And if you're changing over 10 years, then you're changing every five. And if you're changing every five,

you're changing everyone. So if you're changing every year, you're basically changing every second. So there is no you static. You tow wants something. Maybe that's the reason you don't know what you want. And then you said the second reason that perhaps you don't know what you want is maybe you already have it. Maybe this idea that you don't no, what you want, you don't have what you want. The implicit nous of the question of what do you want? Basically saying you don't have it. So what is it is completely wrong. Maybe you don't know what you want because you have everything that you want deep down and sow. That hit me like a ton of bricks. And I had had softened up for 1000 hours before I got to that point in one of his lectures.

But, um, totally reorder rearranged kind of my thinking and psycho shit have Maybe, maybe, I mean, just entertain this for a little bit, maybe have everything that I want, the reason I don't know what I want. Career, life, personal whatever it is because I already have everything under one and that in conjunction with these with his gratitude journal journaling that I've been doing a it just dumb It really resonated. And And I was so fascinated by why I never heard that before that just that concept. And then I became equally fascinating. Why do we societally just jump straight to you? Don't have what you want. You are missing something critical.

Why do we just collectively take that for granted? Why is that so in the water of off, You know, the world's well with the world we live in And then three, um, is this his concept or is this somewhere deeper? And all of those things took me to, um this philosophy so religion. And in fact, I mean, it's it's actually worth pointing out Eastern philosophy. In many ways, it's, you know, it's Buddhism, Taoism,

Hinduism, Vedanta. They're more philosophies in there. Our religion there's no like should shouldn't. In Vedanta, there is no dogma what you needed attend X. On this day, you need to celebrate why, on this day there's no real traditions to it. There's a few, but it is. It's more of a philosophy than a religion. And truthfully, I think it's more of a psychotherapy, then a religion. And so I think that I was just in a place where I was so eager to learn where all of this came from.

That single kind of inflection point that Alan Watts talked about, of why you don't know what you want, And I just kept finding more and more wisdom when I searched in that that area of Adana. It was like just pulling, You know, I always think about it, kind of like, you know, the magician pulling the handkerchief that just never stops out of his hand. When I pull at Vedanta as a kind of psychological foundation for my day, Tch morning, I could just pull out it over and over and over again. It's really rich tradition and a little bit of background for listeners on Dante's, So the adage about Buddhism is that it's Buddhism. Is Hinduism made for export? Simplified as it went from India to China?

Ah Zan is, is an evolution is goes from China to Japan, so Hinduism underpins Buddhism and Vedanta underpins Hinduism. Vedanta literally translates to end of knowledge. It's the end of the Vedek scriptures. It is this 3 4000 year old philosophy that underpins pretty much all of Eastern Eastern

philosophy. And as we were talking about before, it's It's the text that Mahatma Gandhi relied on for his path towards self realization.

Vedanta and in the back of a Geeta there were the two things that he loved more than any other kind of spirituals, scriptural type of philosophical kind of our foundation and Ellen wants, interestingly, he never subscribed to anything and particularly never labeled himself. It's kind of similar to someone like Ah J. Krishnamurti just kind of saying, hey, and he took it even further. He just said, Look, I'm a philosophical entertainer. I'm just gonna talk about these things up on this stage. If you find it interesting like someone ah, you know, playing Mozart than great. Stick around and come to the next one. It was very difficult to discern what he,

um you know which tradition our philosophy he he really subscribe to. But now, after, uh, years and years of of listening and reading his stuff, it's probably Maur Vedanta HQ than anything

else. Wow. So that was That was a lot that we just went through. I want to, like, take a step back, have a little perspective. This is good Thio like especially contextualized within the larger conversation that we're having, you know, around coffee and new tropics and purpose and work and burning out. And, you know, one thing for me that continues to give me perspective is is ritual with particularly second Alex. Earlier last weekend, I did mushrooms by myself for the first time, and I'm in Oakland. So what's great in Oakland now is all plant medicines or decriminalized mushrooms.

I Alaska San Pedro a bogus. So that's a amazing. So I feel comfortable doing that in my own home and talking about it publicly. And what do you mean by your first time? So, like I've done mushrooms probably 20 to 25 times by this point, Micro have seen even more, But almost always when I've done mushrooms it spend with friends outside hiking. The exception to that was last year went to synthesis, the retreat center that we set up and did it within, like a ceremonial context, with 12 other people. We had guides, facilitators and did a really high dose at that point. But I never done the whole Terence McKenna eat five grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms in the dark and just see what comes up. So road.

Oh, Siro does just, like, go right in. You know, in the last couple of years I've been doing a lot of public self with micro dose scene. So it's been micro dose in has been more my practice. But I also have these high dose experiences always like Let's go ahead and let's let's do this. And one thing that I noticed is talking about who we are, talking about, what we want or what the you want in us. Whenever I have those experiences there, always a fantastic ability just to remember what actually matters. And oftentimes what comes up is at the very, very high level. It's this connection to source.

Some people say that that's truth. Some people see that as God. Some people see that as the Earth. Some people see that as all those things. But Dante you call

imperishable and Christianity called got check out Vedanta treatises is a great book. Azan introduction to Vedanta. I do what I do want to plug that. I think it's there. So, so much profundity and the great religious teachers that you can look into Buddhism. You can look into J. C. Jesus Christ. Probably the I think, is probably the peak of the ideal. That's that's my ideal that I kind of describe to have All right, where am I not measuring up? Okay, that's the ideal that I think about, cause I also I think philosophically, Ah,

spiritually, it's really important. To have an ideal that you almost by definition, won't live up to by definition is to show you where you're not living it up. Let me up to Yeah, I take J. C. And it's, um, the uh yeah, I just wanted it plugged that because I think it's much more beneficial to be observant of what is around you rather than just seeking for what's foreign, what's exotic, what's crazy, because there is, in my view, there is source.

There is truth. There is God all around us, and that's him. The quote unquote kind of mystical experiences experiencing got around you, but it's a but I think it's worth noting that whether it's Vedanta or whether it's psychedelics, I can't wait to chat about this side of things. Just the perpetual seeking is kind of like that road trip where it's like, Oh, shit, 10 feet forward might actually not be progress. What is right here right now,

right around me one. And I think that's the point that I was getting to it. It's psychedelics have that tremendous ability to bring us into the to bring us into the value of the present moment, right? As Alan Watts says, you know there is no past. There is no future. There is only now and two to understand who we are becoming and how psychedelics this connection to sores helps us to become this ideal self, right. So this is This is like the whole process of integration after we have these peak experiences with mushrooms. After we, you know, completely open up and come to realize, Oh, like I have everything that I need within me. Then you know there's this old sort of I don't know if it's conspiracy theory, but it borderline. It's a borderline conspiracy theory that Jesus was a mushroom because the word that the way that we talk about mythical figures like Jesus is often when we have these deep experiences with psychedelics thes mystical experiences, we come to realize that we are God and that we are the manifestos of our own

reality. I mean, it's like any anything historical. You're taking this carbon copy of a carbon copy of a carbon copy of a carbon copy of what actually happened. It's just a opinion of selection, of which fax stuck together so we'll never know what you know. History really contained. But I've also heard that the apple from the tree of knowledge was an apple. But it was the psilocybin mushroom that is red in nature that grows on the trunks of trees. And that is what gave us vision. And the story of Genesis wasn't an apple. It was just through thousands of years of I don't know what what the hell the conspiracy theory goes because this really could just be a conspiracy theory as well. Thousands of years of us basically through climate change that was happening, you know, around that time period, not seeing the fungus growing on on the the trunks of the trees. So we just thought,

Oh, the red thing from the tree. That must be a fruit. It must be Oh, it's an apple. Maybe. What actually gave us knowledge, vision? Waas At least I've heard the, uh this theory that it was it was actually no magic mushrooms, not an apple

one. This is Terence McKenna, Food of the gods. You know how basically early consumption of mushrooms, you know, pre Neolithic time pre agriculture helped to facilitate this jump in consciousness where we then were, you know, painting on walls and coming up with stories to understand and that this is metaphorically then represented in the Bible is the fall from grace as the disconnection from God. Because then we have these cognitive faculties that that separate us. This is sort of what we're now coming back to. Even talking about this conversation is how this push towards cognitive faculties and like the emphasis on cognitive faculties and kind of the the monotony of cognitive faculties, it's it's very one dimensional and that if we really are to be well and if you are to create great work, that's in service to the world around us, that we need to be mindful of not only the mind but the body, sleep, food, exercise and spirit right? The the rituals and the traditions that we've cultivated over thousands of years about how we reconnect to really, what is the energetic source from true? Well,

we'll be right. Well, in the metaphor of the below the line podcast you, the way that I think about it is blow line. What's observing with really there? And it's not just this bifurcation of this is the 10% that you ah, you tell the world and this is the 90%. That's the reality of of your story. It's actually the exact same for what we tell ourselves. I am in continual pursuit of this below the line work of understanding the 90% of shit that I probably would have just spun some different way put into that 10% version that I'm that I'm not even aware of the 90% that's really behind, whether it's the unconscious mind directing me to do X y Z, or whether it's no Carl Young shadow and it's uninterested force that is pushing me to do X y Z. Whatever it is, it's that's a lot of work for me to figure out. Okay? What are my real intentions? What?

That whole time that was talking about affecting change, changing the world. 50% of it was I think that's how I'm wired. I really do want to improve the world around me. 50% of it was absolutely. This is a shortcut to financial engineering was a shortcut to ego engineering. One stuff that I taught you touched on a few minutes ago. I'm a pretty egoistic creature, and then you go layer below that, and it's actually through my own macro dozing experiences with, uh, Iowa Oska that I went a layer deeper and just realized Oh, my God, Everything that I just This is kind of full circle to them and wants exercise that that probably did five years ago after an Iowa ask experience. A year ago, I was like,

Oh, my God, it was there the whole time was this phrase that just kept coming up over and over again. It was there the whole time and everything about childhood or adolescence, or just right now. And and I'm like, Oh, there is not enough time to try to explain unpack this fully, but this phrase just kept coming out over and over again. It's like it was there. The whole time is big. Similar

right now this use of a huge smile, right? You're like you're, like, glowing.

And that's exactly what Thea I Waske experience was like where I had just kept saying ear, ear grand, just like Oh my God, it was there the whole time and again I won't be able to unpack that fully but but But it is a

little bit. It's like these stories that we tell ourselves right of ego, of financial success, of thinking that we can pursue things in an external way. A lot of that is for love. A lot of that is because we think if we do X, y and Z, if, like you were saying If I portray myself as useful, my thing is, if I portrayed myself, is cool, right, because that's like my kind of thing from my early adolescence that I wasn't it wasn't cool and I want to be cool. You know that. That's a thing

I definitely have. I definitely have certainly a threat

to that right and so it's like then we realize when we have these experiences, whether it's through psychedelics or deep meditation or through reading something like the Vedanta. We realized that that love is is inside us and has been inside us because that true love comes from this relationship to source in this relationship to family. And then there's all that. But it's really like connecting back to that knowledge and that wisdom that goes back thousands and tens of thousands of years. It's like That's where

it will end And I think it's also getting to a meditative practice or, ah, spiritual practice. I mean, it's even the term psychology is the study of the salt. That's the the Greek etymology of psychology. Study the soul so psychology psychotherapy would ever turn. You give it whether it's like I don't like the word spirituality, but oh, psychology. Oh, interesting. I'll listen to this. Whatever the word is, it's all the same stuff, and that's what you touch on as well. With source divinity God,

universe, it's, ah, imperishable. It's all the same thing, and we're just getting caught up in different words, but we're all attracted to it. We're all attracted to understanding the soul. I didn't want to stop that conspiracy theory of Jesus being a mushroom cause I gotta hear more about that. I've heard that, but I won't hear you talk about it a little bit more. But the I think there is something to be said for within psychology or for me, psychotherapy of quieting the ego, probably the most psychotherapeutic beneficial thing, most spiritually beneficial thing, the most community beneficial thing,

most self beneficial thing that I do. It's all the same thing. It is quieting the ego and tryingto listen where I could be most useful, and the reason I bring that up is because the exact opposite of that is what we're told 2800 times a day. The average American is exposed to 2800 advertisements every single day. If you feel like Oh, I don't need any of that stuff psychology or spirituality or meditative practice, whatever it is, well, you're just subjecting yourself to the way the world that we live in today is 2800 advertisements, on average a day. You were being hypnotized either passively or you can kind of self hypnotized on the things that you're selectively choosing to reinforce the message is that you want to reinforce whether the messages it's been here the whole time or the messages. Oh, yeah. I'm not happy because I don't have that car and then, you know,

add that commercial or Oh, yeah, I do need that. Watch that commercial. I need that phone, That commercial. I mean, it's choosier. Choose the the messages that you want to reinforce. And I think where psychedelics are really powerful, it's not just this, like, sound like we're born in the static world where everybody is on this base line and you choose your path. We are the expressions, everything around us and were born. I'm kind of like level negative 12 in terms of you.

By the time you're 22 you have been hypnotized into this messaging commercial messaging that you were not happy because of this. You lack this. This this this that says this may be you are born in the baseline of zero. But by the time you're reached adolescence or the ability to go pursue something, you have been hypnotized into thinking you lack so much in that question of what do you want? I mean, shit you're asked that question. What do you want in life? 1000 times Deliberately asked 1000 times by the time you're 22 much less like implicitly told 100,000 times. You really do have to take a participatory role in undoing that counter acting that I think, um, Macro does. I've never done micro dozing. Um, but, ah,

I know for me a macro dose of psychedelics. It's a pretty powerful way to counteract that. But just like I list out in the book Exogenous Compounds, I'd say our fifth on the list. I think that is, um, I think it's integrative work with many different things to get to that other side. I think meditative work is extremely powerful, I think introspective, reflective spiritual work, something like but on a treatise or reading the Gospels. Um, reflecting on an ideal that you put above yourself that it just like if you want to play basketball, you measure yourself to the best basketball player that ever played here, You know, on any of your teams or the best basketball player from your state or the best basketball player ever.

You you see what Steph Curry's doing because you want to use that ideal. I think it's the exact same. Um, you should. We should also say that it takes the same tack for for life and and for me, that's Ah, you know, Jesus in the Gospels air just so such a powerful ideal. But it's integrative work beyond just one of these things because I also think that's not enough. You can't just ruminate on Jesus or Buddha or Mohammad, you know, meditative Lee. I think you need to go out in the world, and you need to create realize where that's the you know that's the work. And if you measure yourself against Steph Curry, you know,

theoretically, but you never take a three point shot and you have no idea where you actually need to refine polish, improve, um, in practice. So any other a little bit of ah touching on my psychedelic experience but also integrating that into the things that I think about.

And this is this is why I found myself studying people like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. You know, like, who are these figures in the 20th century who have stood up for something who have been in service to a greater good and have significantly changed the world in a in a dramatically positive way, t overcome injustice and to help, you know, create freedom and liberation. You know, for many, many people, So like having those as role models, I think is critical in this dovetails with, You know, a question that came up for me is we're talking about this, You know, we're talking about the soul psychology. You know,

the soul. You're talking about your own path in terms of really healing the soul and coming back to who you are and what it is that you really want after the burnout and after, you know, the fin tech stuff and after all the coffee. And, you know, I've even experienced this and getting to know you the last, what, 67 months? Now, you know, we talked about this process and talked about, you know, just where you're at and where I'm at. And it's been a really beautiful thing. And,

you know, as an angel investor and as someone who is a founder and someone who's really involved in, you know, Silicon Valley and, you know, tech scene in the start up world. I would just love to hear you talk about, you know, based on some of your experience with psychedelics and what you understand about it based on, you know, the work that you've done with the video Santa's How do you see this work overlapping with business and entrepreneurship and founder mentality over the next 10 to 15 and 20 years? In other words, as more and more people wake up to the truth of who they are through psychedelic use and through Alan Watts of Madonna, how would that change the way that startups and businesses and entrepreneurs, actually you know, run their companies in the organization?

You know, as you asked, the question that goes through my mind is like the social conventions. I mean, career is 1/20 century convention, just never and you you go back 2000 years and you'd have apprenticeship and you'd have lively hoods. You would have vocations, but careers, like so business exact same thing. I mean, business is is just a social convention. I don't want to think about those things. I think it's ah you know, those are the names we give to Ah certain pursuits. And and that is the above the line, every broadcast upset about the podcast or about the book. I just go back to that kind of above the line below one.

I think when you go deeper as I've gone deeper and I'm still an inch deep, I'm still like as I talk about these things, I'm just continually reminding myself like James him No idea what, like you're just learning. You really no idea what you're talking about, and you can have the experience and have the fruits of experience and still have no idea. It's just like psychedelics or it's just like no tropics where it's you have no idea the mechanism of action. I have no idea why Lion's mane, mushroom lion's mane mushrooms will make you more alert and improve your mood. No one does. The Dark of the research on this has no idea why Iowa Oscar is going to have this profound effect. But I can't say the fruits, the initial scratching, the surface in the fruits of of these pursuits have lead to things like not caring about quote unquote business. What I really care about is just at the core the nuclear core of of what I really care about us being useful. It's those two words being useful to,

um to those around me, and that is concentric circles of my family, my community and humanity at large. So within those things, I think, and to answer your question most most pointedly, I think I went from thinking about all right, how do I choose the right business path or the right business idea toe work on, which is kind of like, um, you can go in the entire map and you're like, All right, I'm gonna take which highway do I take like Well, if you zoom out on the entire globe, it's You get to choose wherever you want to go, wherever you want to be and just skip the road trip altogether.

You could just point, but in many ways, 5 10 years goes like none of which highway do I take towards the thing that I want zooming out, getting rid of kind of the idea of business. It's just like I want to be most useful. And where can I be most useful? And that's a lot of internal reflection, A lot of work and and what I've got the answer that I've gotten to now is literally just being honest at all times, so mind numbingly simple. But the response is like, Oh, I don't need to be anything other than who I am. And the more that I pull in this threat of Be honest, be honest. Be candid, be frank.

The more I realize holy shit, that's the useful thing. So the entirety of the podcast is literally just the honest conversation of my own housing creation, entrepreneurship and asking the honest version of the guests. I don't always get it, but ah, but the more honest I am even and then very direct since the more honest the guests becomes, the more honest that I am, the more people find the the podcast interesting. The more they listen, the more honest I am, the more I realize where I am lacking and the more honest I am with myself, the more honest Ah, I get to be about how much further I need to go. But it's so every time I articulate this and say it out loud, it blows my mind.

It's like Whoa to be most useful. It's not this like 30 year trek through whether it's, you know, professional training or whether it's a ah, a monk in a monastery for 30 years reflected. It's like, Oh, I kind of know the answers, at least for right now. And all we have is the now just be honest, and that's the most useful thing. And maybe that is, Ah, sign of the times in a world that's just filled with filters and polished versions. Uh, you know, bullshit. Being honest, people find it refreshing, refreshing and

useful. Well, I and it's it's like before agreement to be familiar with the four agreements. Great agreement. Number one is to keep your word. Is that in Buddhism? Um, this is a book. Bye Don Korea. Maybe it's time. So it's a recent sound familiar, but I'm not. So there's four agreements. To be honest, I don't remember the other three offhand, but I do know the one is to keep your word, because what you're talking about essentially is integrity,

right? And in Buddhism, they've got the four noble truths and noble speech exactly, and the more that you're honest were honest externally, the better relationship we have with ourselves because that we know that we can trust ourselves, and I think that is at the core of it. It's like sometimes they're difficult things you have to be honest about. Sometimes they're difficult truths that you have to say. Sometimes when you're saying those troops there is that you know, that anxiety that comes up in that nervousness that comes up about like, What's this person gonna think of me If If you know, I say X, y and Z but

right, the average American or I think it's the average, at least in this study, um, and I'll try to look it up and send it T. C concluded in the notes. But I think it was something like Will lie once every six minutes and conversation average personal life once every six minutes. It's I find it so funny when people think that it's like, Oh yeah, well, everybody's honest. Everyone tells the truth. I'm like Mel. Actually, the research does not support that at all. Everyone lies and lies pretty often. It I still I definitely still lie in conversation in out of courtesy,

out of just the Reds laziness season in the path of least resistance or out of selfish gain to where it's just like you in this this situation, um, ostrich easier. And I can just, like, smooth this over. But it's, um but yeah, I mean it physically pains me when I'm when I, uh and I think about it for hours, but I tell the mistress. But so yes, it is the baseline is that you're most likely lying 30 times today,

and it's it's like the simplest thing, right, just to keep your word and to be honest. But it's also the practice of actually executing. That is, that's what the path is. That's what this path towards self realization is. And that's even what psychedelics and meditation all these other things help us to understand is what is our truth And how can we have that perspective to know what it is like, how we could just be honest about our situation, about the way that we treat people about the way that we do work in the world about you know, our relationship to ourselves. Just having that clarity is so powerful because it creates this internal sense of stability and security, Um, which can't be created by pursuing external things that it is deeply internal process.

It definitely isn't. I think, in your question of houses shifted my, you know, business pursuits or my professional path. Um, it's kind of like going from what's the highway between Pittsburgh and Philly that I need to get on and zooming out just saying, Oh, I think so in it. Chill over here. I want to just stay in this part of the Joshua Tree or something. Um, I just want to stay here in the in the map. I just want to stay here and Thea the Valley of Honesty and I don't want to go anywhere else. And if I'm pulled, place is great, but that's where I want to be.

That's where I want to resided and put a microphone in front of my face, and that's that's what you'll get. And that's, um, and in doing that, like with the podcast and in trying to trying to reveal my path is ah, as a founder and then trying to reveal other people's paths as founders creators, their Grammy Award winning positions, their street artists on the podcast, podcasters like yourself on the podcast. Founders like yourself and I think the there is so much insight to be gained tactical insight to be gained, but the biggest inside has been just being honest, have been so revelatory for so many listeners that air just like we should. I read all of these tech books. I read all of these. You have created stories,

all these productivity books and it's like This is what was most soul nourishing was just hearing someone else's version that I thought was epically flawless. It was actually a lot like mine or got to the other side of what I would have thought would have been an epic destination, and it did not solve. Do not fill that hole within them. Maybe I should start looking elsewhere. Everything is kind of coming from these to my life as an angel investor as a which is basically just professional encourager of founders or podcaster, professional encourager of creation or writing this book beyond coffee, it's professional encouragement of of productivity of usefulness through, you know, just one of those three pillars mind body spirit. The book happens to be on the focused on the body, but but it is just sharing what I have experienced being really honest about it and then continually being pleasantly surprised by people finding value in that

great well, James has been a phenomenal conversation. Got

this is one of the rare ones that gets to touch on all your mind body spirit.

So thank you, Paul. And I just want to give you a little bit of a chance to tell our listeners a little bit more about Beyond Coffee. The book that we've been talking about. I know that it's being released, or it will be out by time this November

12th. No, it won't be out by the time the podcast comes out, but you can go to beyond coffee book dot com beyond coffee book dot com and, ah, and you can sign up toe. Learn what it will come out. It will be around the middle of November, and, um, it is. You can also get the 1st 2 chapters free, as well as just learned what I take every morning by going to that site. It's ah, really exciting to get it out there. It's been a fun, productive but stressful process of getting a book out there.

How what's that process for you was

it was, uh I'm thankful that it started in my mind very small as all right. Everyone keeps asking me and friends asked me for years about all of this. Just the new tropics adapted Jin's nutritional mushrooms, not medicinal mushrooms, Nutritional mushrooms, kind of space. And there really isn't There aren't many experts on this space, and I just kept finding, like when I would search for the expert is like, how I guess I'm kind of compiling this part of it on my own. And just after many years of doing it piecemeal is I got I'm gonna write one block post, one essay, um, that that shares everything that I know. And then it became 55 parties saying that it was like, Okay,

this thing is like, this is ah, 100 page book. And, uh and so that is, uh, luckily, that's where it started was a small project of block Post that then became the book on and so is very just it evolved, pulled in the threat, and it just evolved into it definitely stressful and so many things. It's just like one way doors of once south or it's out there and getting every citation. There's over 240 scientific citations throughout the book and just getting everything right and trying to do in a really responsible way for anyone that reads it. Just taking that advice for what they take. You know, it's a lot kind of on the shoulders, but,

um but you have all in all I'd say, Easiest thing was, it started with a small nugget of an idea and then just pull the threat and evolved. Had I started with, I'm gonna write a book on this topic. I

think it would have been much more stressful. And that's a great lesson right there. One step at a time, right? Exactly. Start small one step, one step at a time. Well, James and below the line podcast is your podcast

below the line podcast. And it's ah on every podcast app. Ah, you can also follow us on Twitter. Go below line or you can follow me on Twitter. James Becerra You can get all the information for the podcast

in the book on Twitter. Perfect. Well, again, thank you so much for everything that you've done for everything that you're doing for this new book that you've created and for your work with Angel investing with some fantastic cos it's been, you know, in honor to know you these past few months and likewise, wait to continue. Continue this. Likewise, Paul,

I can't come into your your courage enough and going in this. You're a pioneer in a space that I think is especially for my background. And I talked about mental health throughout the podcast. It's kind of a through line about mental health, or founders have had multiple family members hospitalized with with mental health issues. And my sister took her own life when I was 15 because a major depression and it is, you know, we haven't had really any progress, um, to speak of in the mental health realms, especially pharmacology. Ah, solutions to mental health. And last 20 years, psychedelic seemed to be one of the most encouraging avenues for a treatment for mental health issues. And it was through really hard core, courageous,

pioneering work that you I put you right up there with everyone else that is pushing the envelope on on this exciting new realm for us to take it really seriously in a world where just five years ago it waas laughably dismissed. And now five years, which is a snap fingers. Five years later, it's now being seen is perhaps the most encouraging area for for treatment in Tulsa. Thank you so much for the courageous work you're doing. Thank you.