How To Optimise Your Brain Health | Dan Murray-Serter
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Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

Hello and welcome to Deep Dive, the podcast that delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators and other inspiring people to uncover their journeys towards finding joy and fulfilment at work and in life.

My name is Ali, and in each episode, I chat to my guests about the philosophies, strategies, and tools that have helped them along the path to living a life of happiness and meaning. In this episode, I sit down with Dan Murray-Serta. Dan is co-founder of smart supplement brand Heights, host of the UK's top business podcast, Secret Leaders, the co-founder of Founders, a writer at Forbes, covering UK entrepreneurship and communities, and an angel investor as well. In our conversation, Dan talks openly about how his mental health journey led him to founding Heights,

and we discuss the relationship between anxiety and entrepreneurship. We also chat about everything from spiritual enlightenment to identifying your wants and haves in life. Integrity, contribution, and I mean, like ultimately impact is the me,

The key of where I want to see my life's work go. So please feel free to grab a cup of tea and enjoy the conversation. Dan, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing? I'm great, Ali. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. So you're the founder of the Heights company. What is Heights?

Straight into it. Great question. And how did you talk me into subscribing? Yeah, okay. So, I mean, look, you're a productivity expert for starters, right? That's your jam. And you're looking, allegedly, if the stories are to be believed. And one of the ways, you know, one of the most overlooked ways for optimizing brain performance full stop is nutrition. And...

um i guess like to go back to the start a little bit um the role that nutrition can play in our brains is something that is a you know not particularly uh necessarily an interesting story to most not the kind of thing that most people come across in general i think when people are looking for your content and the type of stuff that you uh you share on social particularly um

You know, it is all about how to get the best out of life coming from a good base, right? So coming from a healthy base, I discovered nutrition with regards to brain optimization, mental health, and what we call brain care from a low base. So I never had any interest in this space whatsoever. I'm not a neuroscientist, not a nutritionist, but I had insomnia.

and I got insomnia out of nowhere. I was perfectly healthy. I was happy. Everything was going well in my life. And then one day I just couldn't sleep. And the next day I couldn't sleep. And this just went on and on and on. My anxiety, I've always had some anxiety because my joke to people, but I think it's true, is I'm an entrepreneur.

Um, that's like a career choice of anxiety. Okay. Because if you think about it, um, anxiety is really a fixation on thinking about the future, that uncertainty of what might come. Um, that's a very, you know, practical reality of when people describe anxiety, that's what entrepreneurship is. You're constantly creating a future that doesn't yet exist. So you are living in the future. And if you're not, you're not doing it right. So they're kind of good bedfellows. So, um,

I'd had normal anxiety and what I call normal anxiety, it can be frustrating, a bit debilitating, et cetera, of course. It makes you feel not great and different people have different symptoms from that anxiety. I have shortness of breath, for example, that's my symptom, but this was chronic anxiety.

So I'd never had something like that before. You know, the symptoms of that were, you know, I would get hot and cold sweats. You know, I would break out into a panic attack. You know, these were things that were happening to me on a near daily basis after two to three months of no sleep. And I ended up with insomnia for six months.

So, um, I tried everything. I tried calm. I tried sleepier. I tried CBT. I tried, you know, cutting out alcohol, having more alcohol, you name it. Um, and I went to a doctor, he gave me sleeping pills. Um,

at no point ever did nutrition come up in the conversation. And I went for dinner with a friend and she said, have you heard of brain nutrition? And I was like, nope, I've literally no idea what you're talking about. That sounds super weird. She's like, have you been to a dietician? It's like, no, what is a dietician? Which is ridiculous because actually, you know, I'm really into health and wellness. And I was, and I used to work in tech, but I was into health and wellness, but I still had no idea what a dietician was because I just heard of nutritionists. She was

She was like, well, it's like a nutritionist, but they deal with sick people. You have a mental health problem. And I was like, well, I wouldn't go that far. Calm down. It was quite offensive almost, right? I took a bit of offense to her saying that. And she was like, but you do. She told me you haven't slept for six months. Doesn't sound healthy. And I was like, oh, this is really actually very helpful framing. I hadn't really thought about it. She was like, yeah, you have insomnia. I hadn't labeled it, right? I was just like, I'm not sleeping.

She was like, anyway, just go to a dietician to see what she says. And I did. And she diagnosed me in seconds, told me to start taking supplements immediately. She was like, she prescribed me supplements, which I thought was a super weird thing to do because you prescribe medication, not supplements. Huge supplement skeptic over here. Never taken them before.

think they don't work, heard bad things, just not particularly, you know, I'd taken protein for example, so not like anti-all supplements, but you know, for whatever reason in my head, just didn't buy into any of it. Anyway, she prescribed me DHA, omega-3, B vitamin complex and blueberry extract.

Very specific so you can't go to Boots, you can't go to Holland and Barrett, you have to go to like a Whole Foods or a Planet Organic where they basically get the most expensive, highest quality, blah, blah, blah. I thought she was like a shareholder or something. So that's a bit weird, like telling me where to buy my things, but okay. Spent over a hundred pounds on those three.

Spent a week, literally. Well, within two days, I started to like have my first few hours of sleep. Within a week, I was sleeping till 7 a.m., 8 a.m., called her up to tell her what genius she was. And frankly, she was just like, this is science. This is my job. This is like, you told me your symptoms. I knew basically what was wrong. Also, because I'd eliminated other things, right? I had tried the psychological interventions of my symptoms of insomnia and anxiety, right? I'd been to a therapist. I'd been to a sleep therapist. I'd tried lots of different things.

So it was easier for her to say, look, it's none of those things. It's going to be nutrition. You've got poor brain nutrition. You need to bring it back to a level. And this is where my journey started, which was this like sheer fascination that there is something so obvious for a scientific medically trained professional to

that most people do not go to. For her, it was like a one minute fix and I'd spent six months basically having my life ruined. It's the worst thing that I'd ever experienced. And I've had depression and a bunch of other mental health problems, but this was the worst because it was a daily lethargy. Daily, I just couldn't function, which is not a good place to be for an entrepreneur. And grumpy and snappy with people because of it. Anyway, like I just found this whole thing so crazy that there was this thing in science that

that was so obvious that she knew would cure me and did that is a space that people are highly skeptical about and don't trust. And as an entrepreneur, you're like juices start flowing, right? You're like, there is an amazing opportunity here to combine like science and evidence alongside really great communication and brands. So this is kind of where the backstory of that started. Interesting.

Yeah. So I think the first time we spoke, I think I said to you when I learned about heights and saw that it was a supplement, I kind of said to you that, well, supplement equals scam in my book. I guess it sounds like that was your opinion of supplements as well before this worked for you. Yeah. Why are supplements so associated with the word scam in like the minds of normal people? Because they totally deserve to be.

So there is a really, so my co-founder Joel, and we've been co-founders for a couple of businesses now. So we worked in tech together, et cetera. We've got very different mindsets with these things as well, but he was also a supplement skeptic and he had really bad gut problems, right? So he actually ended up curing his gut problems by taking Simprove, which was the first time that he was like, well, the supplement can work. How interesting. And actually, if you go into the basics,

Of course supplements work. Like ultimately, you know, there are so many narratives that are counterintuitive, right? But there are narratives where we understand they work. If you're pregnant, you're told to take supplements. If you've got a young baby, I've just had a baby, as you know, like they were immediately injecting with vitamin K, vitamin D, that is the...

When I say immediately, I mean in the first 10 minutes of her life, right? So, you know, there are multiple examples where science and medicine know that that's evidence-based and worth doing. We're told in the UK to take vitamin D all winter. Now with COVID, vitamin D is one of the most popular supplements, et cetera, et cetera, right? There are multiple narratives where we know that supplements work, yet...

The reason these narratives and that they take big headlines like supplements don't work, don't waste, don't waste your money, don't waste your time kind of thing. The reason they take hold is actually totally deserved. And it's the marketing industry that's behind supplements. That's the reason. So the main challenge here is price. Most supplements you buy for 10 pounds, for example, in a high street shop, like a Boots of Holland and Barrett has apps.

absolutely nothing in it and they are legally obliged to tell you this. And this was sort of the journey that I went on, like starting to understand the industry that I'd be going into. Right. So give you a bit of backstory on this. When I was told to go to Planet Organica Whole Foods, right. I was a bit, you know, I asked more questions about all this stuff. Like why? I don't get that. Long story short,

All the supplements in there cost 30, 40 pounds a pot. But if you buy exactly the same thing on the high street, Boots, Holland and Barra, they cost 10 pounds with a one penny deal. And you're like, that makes no sense. Like I walked five minutes away and like there was so much more. Anyway, the main reason is there is a discrepancy in the industry that is global.

Where you can basically put a minimum amount of nutrients in and make a marketing claim. And you make that same marketing claim, whether you put in the minimum amount or the right amount, according to science. So give you an example that I use regularly because they're such a big company, it's hardly offensive to anyone. Omega-3s.

Right. Everyone grows up and their parents... I was taking omega-3 when I was like 11 to 18. Yeah, right. And your parents want you to take omega-3s. There's loads of evidence around omega-3s and whether you take fish oil or your plant-based and you take algae oil. And by the way, fun, you know, meandering fact. Fish...

that are where most people get their omega-3s from, fish don't naturally make their own omega-3. They get it from algae. So it's really interesting, but like, you know, this idea that we only can get omega-3s from fish. Nope. Fish can only get it from algae. That's their main food source. They get it from algae. Then we eat fish. So if you get it from algae, you're getting a more sustainable natural source. It's where it actually comes from, which is

A fun fact. Anyway, so the reality is Omega-3, so Seven Seas being the biggest brand in the world, was the one that I used when I first started looking into this, like what a scam this all is. If you buy their number one bestseller, which is the number one bestselling Omega-3 oil in the world, which is 15 pounds a month, you get 45 milligrams of Omega-3 in each daily dose. Fine.

That is the minimum amount you are allowed to put in globally to make a marketing claim like promotes a healthy heart function, promotes a healthy brain function, etc. The right amount, according to science, is a minimum of 250. Oh.

So that is all the science research. Any paper will say it's a minimum of 250. So if you work that out, you need to take a daily dose of seven C's for six days straight to get one day's worth of what science is telling you. But they're a marketing company, so they do what they want. So they put in the minimum amount. And so what happens, this sort of perpetuates, what happens is the global prices of supplements are cheap.

Because everyone is putting in the minimum amount to make a marketing claim. And the maximum amount, or at least the minimum you need according to science, is so far off the actual dose that when a regular consumer like you or me will go into a shop and say, this one's £30, this one's £5, I'm just going to pick the £5 one, you're getting the same thing. 5 times 6 is 30.

It's just that you would have to take 7Cs six days in a row. So then what happens, sadly, is people feel nothing from the impact because they're having way less from the scientific dose that you actually need for health and well-being. And so people basically start taking supplements, feel nothing from it, not getting any benefits, think they're rubbish. And that is across the whole industry. So like 99% of supplements...

that you buy basically use the marketing amount, not the scientific amount. And they're legally required to put all of this on the pack. So this isn't just some guy with an agenda trying to sell his product. I'm telling you that you can do all this research yourself, but the problem is, is it in an asterisk?

It's on the back. You have to be a savvy consumer. We've had this conversation so many times with people where they then got into their own supplement cupboards and it's the box you usually throw away as well, right? So you throw away that box and suddenly you don't even have the thing on there. So you're like, well, I'm not really sure. But next time you go and look, you will see the difference between the RDA and the science. Oh, sorry, the marketing amount, the scientific amount. And it's usually...

miles apart. So the industry is set up to scam people one way or another. Everyone is in collusion. There are so many bad things that go into these products. So up until recently, well, I think they still do it, but I like to say up until recently. Vitabiotics were using a product called titanium dioxide, which is basically like a poison in their products. So, you know, that is like a, it's literally on a banned list now. So having to like recall products.

But the reason people do this is because they use fillers.

So if you think about the size of a pill, right? So think about a multivitamin in general, you put a bunch of different things in. A lot of these compounds are tiny, right? Like a speck, like a speck of dust would be like the amount you need per day. And if you put all of that together, you get to a capsule. And then to pack it together and not look like you're underselling a customer, you pack the rest with chalk or with bulking agents or whatever it is so that you get to like a full size product.

So what we do at Heights, for example, is two clever things. One, we use these bespoke capsules where it's omega-3 on the outside and then the capsule is injected on the inside. So each one is two pills a day. So you as a customer taking two pills a day, but you're already getting four. That makes sense? Okay. Because as you can see, it's like a two in one every single capsule. Okay.

And then secondly, there's no synthetic caking agents or bulking powders whatsoever because whilst we're creating the product, my business partner and I were like, if that's how everyone, this is one of the cool things about coming total outsider to the industry. So you ask stupid questions, right? It's total first principle thinking, but not because we're geniuses because we don't know how to make the product. So if you don't know how to make the product, you come at it like, well, why wouldn't you fill an entire product up with ingredients? But the reason is because no one else does that.

But having no training in this space, having never worked in it, you don't ask those questions. You go, well, that's what we want to do. We want to fill it with ingredients. Okay. So that's why...

Supplement equals scam because the whole industry is set up to basically scam consumers because the marketing claim is so radically different to the scientific claim. And I guess what you guys are trying to do is approach supplements with a more evidence-based kind of less scammy perspective. It's simple. It's like, this is what the science says.

This is what the science says about the nutrient requirement to get this level of impact on a daily basis. That's why we chose it. That's why it's in the product. This is why it's good for you. It's as simple as that. I mean, it is honestly like what you would hope to expect from any modern day company. It's like clear communication. This is what you, the consumer are hoping to get. Yes. This is what we're selling you. It was really that simple, the contract. But it's

it's so murky and I have no idea why, but supplement companies have this enormous loophole and, um, and it, this is the weird thing. It's like a global loophole. They're just like, they all do it. That's very strange. Um, I'm going to ask you more, more about heights in a minute, but, um, I wanted to ask you about, uh,

your recent baby. So firstly, congrats on that front. Thank you. How old is she now? Two weeks and one day. Two weeks and one day. Her name is Margot, is that right? Margot, correct. There's also some very cute pictures on your Instagram. Thank you. We're going to take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor for this episode, and that is

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And the first 200 people to sign up with that link will get 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you Brilliant for sponsoring this episode. What's it like becoming a father? To change gears completely. Yeah, okay. So initially I would say, I mean, there's two things to say here. One is that, you know, there is a great sense of uselessness. So all of my friends who are dads are all like, oh God, it's amazing. And, you know, get ready for all of this stuff.

Right. But actually the reality, if I'm being totally honest and I like to be as honest as I possibly can be with people, um, the dependency on the mom is a thousand fold, the dependency on the dad. Okay. So it's a really interesting time because you're, um, you want to help. Like I want to help my wife as much as I possibly can, but practically speaking, uh, the baby is totally reliant on her for breastfeeding. Right. And I can't help with that.

And we were lucky because some babies struggle with breastfeeding and ours has started off really well. So we haven't moved her onto a bottle yet. And that's a choice of my wife. So basically, mum is in the driving seat, dad is there to support. So my job is change nappies, soothe her when I can. But actually, from a very practical point of view, it is

eye-opening to think of yourself suddenly, right, as a kid and just how much your mum had to do for you compared to your dad. I'm sure it all changes and I'm sure I will become more helpful and more useful as she matures. But it's so fascinating right now just to see the redundant role of a father in the early days, right? I mean...

honestly you could not be there and i don't think i don't think evolution would have any difference it would make no difference okay so that's like one side of it which is the sort of uh self how we describe it like i'm not being useful enough kind of vibe you said there was a there was a second yeah i guess yeah the second is like two two sides as well one is that um you know when she was born everyone told me about that you know how i'd have this uh philosophical moment of of sheer fascination and bewilderment etc and

The thing is, I am a very spiritual person. So I've been on a big spiritual journey for the last 10 years, constantly working on trying to be more in tune with my spirituality one way or another in whatever way it

You might define it. I'm happy to talk about it. But the point being, because of that setup in my head, I was really ready for this moment, this existential moment. And maybe it's because I have already experienced existential moments in my life and thought deeply about them and I spent time reading around them and self-inquiry and all that stuff. But I didn't have that moment. They handed me my baby

And like, honestly, it could have been anyone's baby. Yeah. And I wasn't like, oh my God, I'm cooing after this thing. I can't believe it. I was like, oh shit, this is my responsibility. What am I going to do with that? And you know, the fact that you were in the room with them means, you know, it's your baby. But otherwise, you know, who's to say it is, it's just a really weird, you know, it doesn't come out of you, the man. So on that basis, like they hand you this thing and you're like, okay, well, I'll deal with it. So that was like weird. Right. Because I think I felt like disappointed in myself.

And not having the spiritual enlightening moment of, oh my God, clarity. 100%. And then I had these really doubting questions. Do I love her? Do I care for her? I thought these things would be natural to me, but actually I'm learning that they develop over time. Time spent like any relationship. So that's one side. The other side is that two nights ago, she just stopped breathing. Yeah. So Sunday night, 10 p.m.,

First lesson of fatherhood was don't try and get an early night. Made the mistake of trying to get an early night. Paternity was like first part of paternity anyway was over. So back to work on Monday. And she just stopped breathing. She's like, starts to like really struggle to breathe. Starts making these weird sounds. Starts to go pink, then blue. I'm on the phone at 999. My wife is like inconsolably crying. We're doing like, I'm watching St. John Ambulance, like how to resuscitate a baby. Not really the kind of video you're hoping to search for in the first two weeks.

super helpful NHS 999 person like calming me down telling me what to do etc was really really great ambulance came she ended up

just getting back into breathing, like sort of naturally then massive cries and all this stuff. And yeah, like NHS just tell us that this is extremely common. One of the most common ambulance call outs is for babies that won't breathe, but they need to resuscitate. And I was like, what? They're like, yeah, they don't talk about this, but yes, it's a really common thing. And sometimes that's how babies die. They just forget to breathe because they're so new at breathing. They just forget. And you're like, what on earth?

So the other side of this is like, you know, I've had my first fatherly panic, which is like, oh my God, I can't even look after a child. And like, oh God, I'm so sorry that I didn't say I loved you so much, like immediately. So you have that sort of moment where, you know, you realize you do inherently deeply care about this thing because suddenly these emotions like all come out of you that you like,

the fear and responsibility that you didn't really know were in you, if that makes sense. So it wasn't the kind of thing I was hoping to experience by now already, but crazy, no? So she just like randomly stopped breathing? Yeah, and she was totally fine. How did you guys notice that she'd randomly stopped breathing? I mean, my wife is super astute because, yeah, it's not easy. She was basically making these weird sounds, looked like she was struggling. It was just after feeding. We were sitting her upright.

It looked like she was struggling a little bit and we're like patting her back and stuff. But her eyes were streaming and she wasn't crying. We're trying to make her cry by like moving her legs, moving her arms, trying to annoy her because you can't cry if you're choking. Oh, yeah. And you can't breathe. So, you know, baby crying is like great sign. But it was like five minutes of this, like really struggling to breathe, going bluer and bluer, us freaking out.

And then like, you know, it's weird because in some senses, I think it's almost worse that they're like, yeah, she's totally normal. She's perfectly healthy. Don't worry about it. And you're like, don't worry about it. Like, much rather you told me she had a breathing problem or something. What, this might happen again? They're like, well, you know, it could. It's not as likely once it's happened once, but could. Yeah, we get this all the time. Isn't that bad?

So now your listeners know that that is a thing to look out for. What was going through your mind as she was slowly getting pink and blue? Well, the thing is I am a very... Growing up, my dad was ill a lot. So I'm highly desensitized to health concerns from people. I've been in the hospital a lot. I have...

I guess the point I'm trying to make is I'm very cool, calm and collected in the moment. All of these things are great. They have their downsides. I can be highly apathetic in situations I should be more emotional, you know, where people are really looking to me to have a distressed emotion. I can seem like I'm emotionless and I'm not. I'm a very emotional person, but my reaction in a moment of high stress and great challenge, especially health wise is

Is to be super calm and practical, which is quite useful in this moment. So straight on the phone to 999, having a calm conversation, describing things a bit like a robot, right? So it's only after the fact that I sort of am able to like access my emotions, if that makes sense. Okay. This point that you say about apathy, I think this is something that I have an issue with in that often people,

like I will feel stuff but it would not be it would not be like uh broadcast on my face and so often you know my housemate would ask me like how are you feeling and I'm like oh you know feeling pretty good and she'd be like why don't you tell your face yeah apparently like I just have a resting kind of apathy yeah resting calm face resting bored face is kind of what I call it resting calm face is probably a better one even especially when doing these sorts of interviews where I have to really try and

Because I'm fully engaged, but the way I look is like, you know, eyes droopy is like really boring. People are like... Yeah. How did you realize that this was something that you had kind of this mismatch between like the emotions on the inside and like the outward expression of those emotions? Well, my mum told me. It's always a good way to get started. But, you know, my mum is...

The opposite. So my, look, my, my dad was very stoic. My dad had, like I said, a lot of things, like it's a long list of things that he had wrong with him. He was blind. He had heart attacks. He had diabetes, had like, you know, slip discs and like just everything on the list that a human body can go through over multiple times.

pneumonia so many times bypasses like you name it um and was always really stoic and really calm in the moment um my mom would like freak out in the moment understandably right like really panic really freaking out and if you're a young kid and this is happening regularly um you sort of learn to desensitize yourself a little bit because the freaking out doesn't help a solution

It doesn't get you any closer to anything. I guess in my experience until my father passed away, like up until that moment, he'd always survived and come back. So you also have the experience that, you know, the fear in the moment, you know, the panic in the moment, not only doesn't help you solve it, but it also isn't representative of the outcome, if that makes sense. Like if it's the first time you've seen someone struggle for their life,

The fear that you feel is the same fear of essentially assuming that they're dead, right? It's that like total panic that things are over. And I think the reality is like, because I'd so many times gone through the cycle of, well, he's really sick. We need to get him to hospital. We need to get him to support, but he'll be get better. Really helps temper your emotions. So I think I have this sort of natural disposition. I'm very glass half full guy anyway, but I always have a natural disposition that everything will be okay.

And I think that really does help in the moment to like get in touch with how to solve a thing. Does this apathy have any downsides? Yeah, which is that essentially people think that I don't care. Mm-hmm.

And it's really funny because, you know, feedback from my team, for example, we do really open 360 feedback all the time. Like care without compromise is a heights value. So we have four values and one of them is care without compromise, which means that like we'll go to the nth degree for customers. If you're not happy, we'll, I mean, we'll do silly things. We'll spend tons of money on making sure that without compromise. And also the other thing coming back to the without compromising is because we think, you know, especially in supplement space, there's so much compromise. Yeah.

So we choose the highest quality ingredient, most buy available source, most sustainable. Everything is like, you know, what would like, how would Ferrari source? This is like, oh, without compromise, every different level. Anyway. So the flip side of this is people tell me that I'm very caring, very emotional, but in the moment of a challenge, I think it can be really surprising to people because I am an emotive person. I'm expressive, you know, I'm,

I am an ambivert, but you know, everyone that meets me thinks I'm an extrovert anyway. So all of these things are not what you expect as a reaction from someone in the moment when suddenly I sort of go into myself and I'm like, how do we, how do we calm down and solve this? Everyone be calm. And then it takes, so it's less about like how I feel about that, but it's more that I am aware that it really surprises other people, not necessarily in a good way. Yeah. I guess it's, it's one of those things where, um,

Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in his book, "Talking to Strangers," where there are some people who have an emotional response which is broadcast on their face, and some people who have an emotional response which is not broadcast on their face, and how this can cause a lot of problems.

and the examples that he uses, which are always the most interesting ones, where a murder trial, where the way the housemate responded was not how people thought the housemate should have responded. And she should have been more distraught and crying openly, but instead she kind of retreated into herself. And that made people think she was cold and emotionless. Therefore, she must have been the murderer and ended up getting wrongly imprisoned for...

some some number of years because of this phenomenon whereby you know we think that people should be displaying the things that they're feeling on the inside more so on the outside um and so like when i when i read that a year or two ago it really resonated with me because i felt that i probably have that issue where i'll often ring my mom and she'd be like why do you look so sad it's just like genuinely been a great day like what the hell do i look sad yeah yeah that kind of thing but how does that make you feel

It makes me feel like, Oh, that's a good question. Um, it makes me feel like sometimes like, Oh, maybe I am sad. I'm just like convincing myself. I'm not sad. Um, and that like people talk about how 70% of communication is body language and how body language is all like subconscious. And maybe I am like subconsciously feeling sad, but I'm just actually telling myself I'm happy because I've drunk this doses and Kool-Aid for too long. Um,

And it was only kind of speaking to other people who also have this, that they're like, actually, it's kind of okay that your face does not reflect how you're feeling inside. Like you can accept that part of yourself and not feel like it's something you have to change. But I feel like it's probably quite useful when it comes to being an entrepreneur. And you mentioned entrepreneurship is kind of a journey of anxiety. I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about that, because you've been a serial entrepreneur for a long time. Why?

What do you mean about this like anxiety component? Yeah, so I mean, there's a great quote. I mean, it's by Lao Tzu, but I'm going to completely cock it up on that basis, which is, you know, something along the lines of, or the paraphrasing of it is depression is a sadness and reflection of your past and anxiety is a sadness for the outcomes of your future, which is why presence is the only cure, right? You stay in the moment and then you're not really accessing the sadness of the past and what you would change or the...

future scenarios of the anxiety that you can't control um and i think a much better quote that i can remember because i can quote pretty much anything from him which is eckhart tolle who i told you about last week when we were chatting under the audiobook oh man you're in for a treat but so he he says this brilliant thing which is um stress and anxiety is a symptom of being here

but wanting to be there. Being here, but wanting to be there. Oh, interesting. It's so simple, but so is everything he says. This is why it's so good. You know? And he said like, you, you can't ever be there. So pure facts is why I think his spiritual work is so, um,

Because he speaks and just like talks to you like an adult. And it's very, he's very binary. So you either read his stuff and you're like, this is garbage or you read it and it all makes sense. And that totally depends where you personally are in a spiritual journey at that point. No judgment because you can come back to it and it means something to you differently, different time. But, you know, literally it's like you can't ever be there.

The only place you can be is here and now. So creating a mental image of what you'd like to be in the future, fine, do that if you want, your body's here now, so you're not there.

And that disassociation with like this battle with like, no, no, but I want to be there. You know, it's like, it doesn't matter. It's not reality. So it's a really nice, like distinction of like fact and fiction. And your mind is always playing in fiction, but your body is always in reality, right? You're not literally time traveling. You're not literally in the future. You're not five minutes in the future. You're not three months in the future. You're literally here. And so the constant like battle there is some of this understanding that can manifest into some anxiety, right?

Now, when you think about it from a, you know, I'm going to literally rip off one of my own tweets because I just like, you know, I had this realization and it was quite popular and it sort of made its own version of sense, which is, you know, whether you call it manifestation or you call it a business plan. Right.

Right. One way or another, you are trying to predict the future and like different people will call it different things. A neuroscientist will call it, um, you know, neuroplasticity, right? You call it the brain's ability to change the brain's ability to think about, you know, how to mold itself into the future that it wants to be tomorrow. Um, but,

a business exec, you know, at a business school is going to say, create a business plan and think about where you want to be in three months, three years, et cetera, and create that. You know, a spiritual person will call it, you know, manifestation. And I'm going to sit here and I'm going to imagine the world that I want to live in. And then I'm going to write the steps back from it. And I'm going to create a bit of a plan and a path.

They're all the same thing, one way or another. They're all the same thing. And they all sort of exist in this world of disassociating to an extent where you are today with where you want to be. And there's always going to be that kind of tension. So if you're an entrepreneur, your job is literally always to be spending time like, who do I need to hire? What do we need to do?

do. Why do we need to do it? How am I going to get there? What money do I need? These are all questions you can't necessarily answer. So you're constantly like searching in the dark or looking at YouTube videos or asking friends like how to unlock these things for yourself. But ultimately, they're all questions that need to be answered for the future you. There is an aspect where

I think time management is so important here. Like if you overload yourself with spending all your time in that future reality and don't spend enough of your time as an entrepreneur sort of working the here and now what you can affect today, that's when things can get a bit out of hand in my experience.

And it's just, again, the disassociation with presence and future concepts. - Two thoughts. Number one is around goal setting. Everyone talks about how goal setting is like so important, et cetera, et cetera. And the importance of a business plan and a vision and manifestation and all that kind of stuff. I've always been historically like anti goal setting because it's never quite sat right with me that why am I kind of deferring my happiness for a future date when I achieve a certain type of goal?

compared to, you know, just focusing on enjoying the journey and like enjoying each day on its own merit.

But there is like a balance there between like, you know, it's not a case of live every day as if it was your last. Because that would end up, you know, I'd end up being like a heroin addict or something. Well, exactly, yeah. But it's like, how do you manage that balance between, yes, you want to grow and you want heights to go big and you want to impact, which is all future-y type stuff. And also you want to kind of be present and that sort of thing. Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think this is where...

um and you know cringy but i think this is sometimes where purpose um and and working and defining on purpose your company's purpose your purpose which can change by the way um but i think this is where the stuff plays in really nicely because i don't necessarily think about stuff in terms of goals goals i don't know goals always feels a little bit um it's not necessarily true but it feels a bit

mercenary or financially led or you know there's always a reason why you need that goal um whereas purpose to me is a bit more like a direction of the person that i'm i'd like to become yeah um that i'm on the way to being that every day that i am working towards living my purpose is a step in the right direction and i'll make mistakes and i'll forget to live it entirely one day or whatever but it helps me knowing that i'm going in the right direction and because i'm a bit of a hippie i believe that

by going in that direction for long enough or consistently enough. And the most important thing here, by the way, is like enjoying doing that. So if you have a sense of where you're going, if you have an idea of what your purpose is, and again, doesn't need to be some big grand statement. If you have a sense of your own personal values and you ask yourself, you know, what are those values that I'm living every single day? And am I living up to them? Those things will just basically ensure that you are spending more time happy,

because you're spending more time doing the things that you know are serving you well, serving you and serving others. And...

the compound effect of that is you're more likely to be getting to whatever this sort of magical goal is. Like being honest, I don't have a set goal. I don't have a, like, I want to be, you know, I know we both, um, no one are friends with Stephen Bartlett. Right. And he's very specific. You know, I have, I want to be running this nine figure business and this many years and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, that's fine. Like for you, for me, I have very different sort of outlook on that stuff, which is, um, I've identified my, um,

like five key guiding values, right? And they include fluffy words like contribution and impact, right? But like, how can you, spirituality is at the base of these things 'cause I think like spirituality is a great base to layer things. Well, base is a great base, mental wellbeing goes above that. Integrity, contribution and I mean, like ultimately impact is the me.

The key of where I want to see my life's work go. You can't have impact broadly if you're just impacting one person. You can, but if you are an entrepreneur like me and you do think big and you think about scale and that's just inherently how I think...

I know by putting at the top of my pyramid of values, if you will, I want to have impact. Inherently, I have to think big. Apparently, I have to think about how am I going to have an impact on more people because I happen to care about emotion. I care about I've had a personal experience of mental well-being. It is...

bonkers to me that nutrition can play such an enormous impact and that we can create products, high quality products, a great brand, like which plays into my creativity and the things that I'm good at. You know, the fact that we can build a great brand that can have that kind of impact, that stuff all serves me well, but there's other stuff that I can do with impact as well. And I might not be doing that today.

But if as long as I'm sort of leading up towards where that might go in 10, 20 years, I like that I don't have a clear idea of who I am in 20 years, only that it will be leading to impact because I'll be contributing. Does that sort of make sense? Yes. I think a very succinct way of saying this, because people talk a lot about passion as well, is...

I think, and I have thought a lot about this, but I think that your passion is something that you do for you, right? You've got guitar over there. Maybe that's a passion of yours. So your passion is for you. Your purpose is for others. So as long as you're thinking about where your purpose is going, and I mean, you've got a great example, right? You're an educator online to millions of people. That's purpose. There's other people, but guitar for all I know your shit, but you have fun. That's great. Yeah. There you go. Passion. Yeah.

Okay. I have so many questions. I'm going to kind of just give you the questions that I've got floating in my head and then we can start with one of them, but you'll have an idea of like where I'm going with this. So maybe that'll guide the answers. So you mentioned spirituality a lot. I want to know like, what is spirituality? Like, what does it mean to you? And like, how did you discover spirituality? Because I feel like this is an area in which

I want to discover spirituality. I also feel I have to quote it with all the spirituality type stuff. So there's that side of things. You talked about your five guiding values. And so I also wanted to ask, like, how did you figure out what your values are? And you also have this, like, presumably some sort of guiding mission, guiding purpose. And I want to find out, like, how you figured out that side of things. So, yeah.

Should we start with the spirituality thing? Like what the hell is spirituality? Yeah, it's a great question. How does someone like me get into spirituality? Yeah, so I don't actually have a good defining... There's a great... I love questions like this because it makes you sort of realize as well, you know, it'd be nice to sort of solidify the thinking down into something succinct, not my strong suit. But, you know, I guess in the summary, for me, spirituality is a connection to all things. Knowing that...

you know, my second favorite YouTube channel after you, obviously, Kurzgesagt. I've probably said it badly, but oh my God, right? That channel does such an amazing job of, in my opinion anyway, especially the space and, you know, very science-y ones. Such a great job of sort of explaining just how much of a speck of dust in the universe we are. That can be either the most depressing realization of your life or the most enlightening one.

Because once you realize that you are so insignificant that you're like in the grand scheme of things that, you know, everything in a sense has to be connected. It really helps you connect to nature, for example. So one of the things that is definitely the most hippie things about me is I could literally sit and stare at a tree and like total wonder. Like it's the first time I've ever seen a tree. Right.

Because when I look at that tree, I just sit there and like marvel at the concept of the fact that this thing is basically how I'm breathing. I am so connected to that tree. Maybe not that specific one, but in the grand scheme of things, if you've ever watched any planet earth or any David Attenborough documentary or just any great documentaries on how the planet exists and works, you realize what an absolute wonder that all of these forces that are conspiring against each other actually conspire together to

to create the first, you know, life on earth that then evolved into man and all of this stuff, you know, that, that sort of, um, total, very high level birds. I view like bewilderment at how we're here. Having this conversation is in a sense, you know, how I think about spirituality. What I, um,

don't do. And I think this is where I had a very, so until I was 24, like I hated the word spirituality. I think it's cringe and I hate it so much, but that's why I am comfortable using it now. Cause it's like the antithesis of who I was, which is another thing. Identity is very interesting conversation to have like separately as well. But, um, you know, the identity of who I was as someone who grew up Jewish,

Um, my parents Jewish, not religious, but my, you know, we'd have to go to synagogue on, you know, the religious holidays and all this stuff. And it's in Hebrew and I speak Hebrew. I'm in England. So, you know, and Judaism is a weird one as well, because it's a race and a religion, which is the benefit that you get both the racists and people that don't like your religion all at the same time. So, um,

It's like, it is a weird one to grow up in, but culturally it's very connected, right? So the benefits of it is there's really nice culture. So I always used to say like, I really like the culture, but like this religion stuff is bollocks to me.

I don't believe in God. I don't believe in being force-fed anything. In my opinion, I'm sure it's extremely offensive to most people listening of any religion, but growing up religious, in a way, is indoctrinating your children with a belief. You don't do that consciously on purpose as a good parent. You try and let your kid work out what they need to work out in the world. But

When your religion is, um, you're like a huge part of your identity and it's a big part of your family. And when it's a big part of your like traditions and your culture and all of this stuff. And when it is, and this is most important when it's your only sense of connection to spirituality, that's when it all gets very complicated. So for me, where I challenged this concept was I don't believe in God. Hmm.

right? Big capital G word, like big white beard or whatever it is I'm being told is this person in the sky. Yeah.

So I'm not religious because I don't like Judaism any more than I like Christianity, Islam or anything. I've just like, it's not my religion or their religion. It's like, I don't like any of the religions, but I love the teachings. Okay. So I love, I love the point of religion, right? The point of religion is when you break it down is to teach people good values. That's, that's ultimately what it's all about. Every single story in the Bible, whichever Bible you read is all about really trying to teach you how to be good, not bad. And

And then people obviously hijack these stories or whatever, but like fundamentally that's the point of religion is through the years,

culture wise when there wasn't tv and there weren't stories and everything else there were books and stories and you'd pass these down so people learn how to treat each other well wicked i buy into that that's amazing now it's all like politicized which is like the church owns so like so much real estate and blah blah blah it's all about money and you know that really starts to make me feel very disconnected from spiritual lessons so growing up

I felt really disconnected to this idea of religion. And my dad was basically the only person in my family who was quite into religion because he had faith and hope because he was very ill and sick. So I think that's another thing. People have that sort of come to Jesus, come to God moment when they're sick. And he was a lot. So when he passed away, I sort of threw out all my religious beliefs and everything and I went quite nihilist. So I was very much like, there's nothing afterwards. You just live, you die,

Went into a bit of a depression, but that's quite normal. I think if you have a close parent who passes away, um, and I was just totally anti the whole thing. Um,

Probably rudely so which is like now if someone tells me that they're religious I'd love to have a conversation with them because actually usually the way that I think about spirituality is exactly how they speak about religion So we have a good conversation because we're actually on the same page It's just I don't label mine with like I'm not a thing I just believe in the same things you do which is that there's more than this and that's actually enough and if you take away a lot of the labels you're all speaking about the same thing I very randomly was at a dinner and

And some guy was there talking about this thing called ayahuasca. I've never heard of it. Couldn't pronounce it. Didn't know what he was talking about.

But I was in this like really bad place and I'd been like really depressed for six months. Maybe the best part of a year, to be honest. My friend was like, let's go and do it. And I was like, sure, nothing better to do. But it was interesting because I didn't know. I think, you know, this is like 10 years ago now, right? People, there's much more awareness around something like ayahuasca and psychedelics in general now. 10 years ago, less so. So I didn't know at all what I was getting myself into. And I sort of turned up. Even now, like you say, ayahuasca, it's...

It's only really the tech bros. Yeah, it's not known. So what does it look like to just go and take ayahuasca? Yes, so ayahuasca is essentially it's a plant.

So it's tree sap, ultimately. And it's a special vine that grows in South America. So it grows in Peru, grows in Hawaii. There's Indian versions of it as well. So it's got sort of different names in different countries. But it's this very ancient, used by shamans deep in the jungle. And it's the most potent psychedelic in the world.

So it is not something that you do recreationally. There's no dipping your toe, so to speak. You're either in or you're out. And, you know, it's a six to eight hour experience minimum. So for all of those reasons, you know, it's...

um it's not something that you choose to do lightly you've got to do it in the right company all of these things you can't basically i mean i've heard loads of stories about people when you there was a craze in new york with people just doing it in their apartments and stuff but like really you want to be doing it with people that you trust in a safe environment with people who know what they're doing and um my experience of it and it basically says green liquid you drink it it's like you drink a shot

Okay. That's the actual thing. You drink a shot of this liquid. It has a, and this is where it all gets mystical and amazing. It has this compound in it called DMT.

And DMT is nicknamed the God particle. And actually the thing that like DMT is the only particle that is in absolutely every living thing full stop. So it is the, that's why it's called the God particle because it just happens to appear in everything, whether it's a leaf or a human brain. And actually very weirdly, the way that the human brain is set up is

is we have it's very weird but we're basically we're we've got tons of dmt inside us already we've got dmt and we've got dmt inhibitors and very weirdly what's going on inside our brains when we're awake and conscious is our dmt inhibitors are stopping the dmt from flooding our system and when the dmt floods our system that's when we get dreams so when we fall asleep

We get into a really relaxed state in a deep sleep and the DMT inhibitors start to like relax or whatever. Our brains get flushed with this DMT. So you ever woken up with a dream and being like,

I've never met those people in my life. I've never seen that monster or this experience or those colors. I don't know where any of that came from. And it feels, it's the first, it's really the most tangible way that you could explain to anyone who doesn't believe in the afterlife or anything else. It's like, but then explain that. You never met those people. You have no idea what these things are. Even if you've never seen like a TV show before, you'd have those kinds of dreams, right? And that's like a bit weird and wacky. It happens to you first when you're young. If you've dreamt, you know, or had any of these wacky dreams, you're just like,

I can't explain that stuff, right? So that's kind of the crazy thing about DMT, which is that we already have it in us. And when you drink ayahuasca, what you're actually drinking, what they prepare for you is DMT and the inhibitor together. So then you flush your system with more DMT and the naturally occurring DMT that's already in your brain. And suddenly you're under the spell. And obviously everyone's experience is very different.

My first experience, they say with ayahuasca, the point is that you go in with an intention. That doesn't mean anything to me, right? For the layman, like that just sounds like more wacky words. And when you're a cynic, like I was, you know, that's an incredibly triggering way to speak to me as well. I'm like going with an intention. My intention is to fuck off. But I went in with this intention of like, I want to stop being depressed. I want to stop what I feel now was basically it.

Um, you know, I won't go into like, you know, the whole thing because, uh, there's a great author called Michael Pollan who wrote this fantastic book called how to change your mind, which is the journey of psychedelics. He's an amazing author. Um, and it's really fun. And he says, you know, describing your psychedelic experiences is ineffable. So it's an absolute waste of time. However, um, he said that on the Tim Ferriss podcast, I thought it was quite fun, but he

My experience was to understand, I came out of my body and I saw nature. And as horribly crass and cringe as it sounds, I for the first time had this experience of seeing birds, bees, trees, oceans, rivers, all of these things interconnecting on a big global scale together and understanding and seeing that these structures exist.

predate human existence and have inherent wisdom in them to have this like natural occurring coexistent experience

to such a deep level that I started to see reincarnation on, I guess, some quite scientific, I started to see it on a way that I could understand. So this concept of reincarnation, AKA, you know, previous thinking was you, for me, you live, you die. That's it. My dad had just died. That's it. That's why I was depressed. There's no more, there's nothing else. This was like, actually, you know, when your parents,

pet dies and you bury it, turns into ashes, it feeds the trees, the trees grow, right? When it rains, it goes into a river, that river ends up condensing and becoming a cloud. The cloud rains, goes to the top of a mountain, becomes a new river. You know these terms from geography.

But you actually never give them any thought. And when you look at the way that the cycles of nature work, you realize that everything is a cycle and everything is reincarnating one way or another and from one energy form into another and feeding the next. So we know this stuff to be scientifically true. It's just that we don't really connect those concepts to any sort of sense of spirituality. And I was sort of just given this platform to sort of see, this observation to see that whether I can see it on a daily basis or not, this stuff is happening automatically.

every year, every 10 years, every thousand years, every millennia, right? It's just constantly happening all around us. And we're just sort of passing by with our busy minds, not really paying any attention. If you stop and think about it, it's actually very practically happening around us. And that's the way that the world works in this like unbelievable cycle. And then, you know, you go even further to think like where even earth is in the universe, right? And how much of a speck that is. So this was kind of the starting point to a sense of, like I say, spirituality, which was really

um, a sense of connection to other people and other things. Um, and you know, plants and animals and just being a total equal, I suppose, in the sense of all things on earth. Yeah. And how did, how did this have like lasting impact beyond the eight hours of the experience? So, you know what I, um, I, you know, I had this immense gratitude, um, that came to me. And I think one of the really interesting things is, you know, I've learned a lot about habit formation, um,

over the last few years. And I think this is like the first thing that I learned. So, you know, just for contacts, you do two nights in a row. Um, and I go back pretty much every year and do another, another session. So I've done it like multiple times now coming up to 20 times every single time is a new sort of experience, new, new sort of insight, depending on where you are in your journey and what you want to learn. Um,

The first lesson I learned that was really interesting is, you know, had this wonderful sense of like appreciation and deep gratitude. But like anything, having an insight and having an experience is not the same as having a daily practice. And so whilst I sort of left and I felt glowing and, you know, I was working at a very different startup back then. I was running a tech company. You know, everyone came in and you're like, oh my God, you're like glowing. You look amazing. Where the hell have you been? And I was like, yoga retreat. But I was like, you know,

very consciously aware. Like the first couple of days I felt incredible. And then suddenly, slowly I started to go back to being myself, right? You know, someone would say something to me, a bit snide, I'd snap back, you know, you have these moments. You're a human being, right?

And I think what was really upset me at first was like, God, I thought I was, you know, going to be this amazing spiritual person that really understands all of these beautiful moments in life and like be the best person I can be. But actually I'm still me. That's really annoying. I can't believe I just, I can't believe I was so rude to that person just now. Like they were just like, they might be having a bad day. I'm having a bad day. Why am I even having a bad day? You know? And actually I learned that

All of these lessons you get, they're like moments in time, like reading a great book, right? You know, we also talked about this very briefly, which is, you know, you could read a hundred books or you could read the same book a hundred times.

The book that you read a hundred times is the one that's going to have the biggest impact on your life because you'll be putting it into practice. And it's the same thing with these like ayahuasca retreats or any sort of spiritual experience, which is none of it matters unless you commit to how to put it into your daily life. So this is like the real hack from my point of view, which is,

I don't think you need to go on a spiritual retreat. I don't think you need to do ayahuasca. I don't think you need to do any psychedelics. You could just, A, some people just naturally feel in tune this way anyway. I've met loads of people that are as in tune with their sense of connection to others as I am. And that's awesome. I just needed a spiritual awakening because I was so far the other way. That's the difference. It was like a complete 180 to me. However, you might read a great book and that might speak to you in that moment.

Um, if it creates an epiphany in your head of like, this is actually the person that I'd like to be, right? This is the person I want to become. So these are steps I need to get there. Then it all comes down to habits. And it's like a boring thing to say, because habits is such a tried and tested topic done like, you know, a billion times over, but

For me, this came down to the first thing I did, for example, was say like, listen, I want to be a grateful human being. I am so grateful for the experience I had. I'm so grateful that I now get to experience the sense of wonder of connection to things. Cause that is kind of amazing to find entertainment in a tree now. Right. That's great. I don't, I don't need an iPad or a book or a TV. I could just go out and be amazed by a tree. That's wicked. Lucky me. So I want that gratitude to happen on a, on a regular basis. So

Bearing that in mind, the first thing I tried to do was keep a totem by my bed. And by that, yeah, by that, I mean like I got a stone, like literally like a little crystal stone. I put it by my bed. I said, that's my gratitude crystal now. What does that mean? Nothing, nothing. I literally went into a shop and I bought a crystal. Okay.

And it had no significant meaning necessarily other than I was like, when I look at this crystal, it'll be a reminder that I need to like be thankful. So it could have been like a mug or something. Could have been anything. Okay. Could have been anything. And actually I then, you know, as, as it transpired, I don't know, like at some point someone was cleaning and I lost the crystal or whatever. And I was like, God damn it. Like I'm going to forget. And actually, you know,

Now I practice gratitude every day. I've actually just made a brain care journal for heights. It's like our next product, which I actually spent like a year of work on the science of like gratitude journaling and habit formation, which we can talk about another time for sure. But I noticed after say three or four years, so a long time had passed and I was really good at gratitude practice, but I wasn't waking up every day

thanking my lucky stars that I woke up. And I was like, why not? Well, maybe I was hung over, right? Maybe I went out last night and I got wasted and I woken up and I feel crap today or like I'm sore or I've got COVID or whatever the thing is, I'm not grateful today. I don't have a natural reminder for it. So I've sort of got out of bed in a bad mood and walking around stropping and it's affecting my mood for the day and I'm a human being. So I wrote down a note which literally just said on plain white paper there and then, like, I'm grateful I woke up today.

and my intention today is. And that's all it says on this piece of paper. And I folded it over and I put it on the side of my bed and it's literally been there five years now. And I wake up, turn and look at my phone, obviously, because I'm human. And that's the first thing that I do, even though I want to be this woke spiritual person, but I'm not a human being and I've got all the same flaws as everyone else. But

But this thing is in the way. And the first thing I see is this note. And I'm like, oh yeah, I'm grateful for waking up today. Do you know, it's funny because it's like, even though I've been doing it for years, it still helps to have the visual prompt. And, you know, set and setting and all of these things were like, when we're trying to learn good habits, you know, for studying, put your phone away in another room, all of this stuff compounds, right? But...

Having that note there, make sure that the first thing I do every single morning is remember that I'm a lucky human being. A, I woke up. Most people don't. Like a lot of people don't, right? Millions of people died today. It's just a fact. So I did wake up one way or another. However, I feel that is a fact I should be grateful for. And my intention is gives me a good moment to just think before I start looking at my phone or whatever. Like what do I want to do with today? And it can be really simple, right? It can be like my intention today is...

to be nice to my mom. Right. Or my intention today could be, um, to check in on a friend or my intention today is to be super productive at work, but I just spent like 10, 15 seconds. I'm not again, pretending that I'm some superhuman. I just give me 10 to 15 seconds to pause before I go about my busy day before I'm like, Oh my God, back to back zoom calls and all this stuff. I've taken that time for myself just to start and be like, okay, I've centered myself spiritually. And this is like, this is a spiritual practice because the

those prompts are about being connected to something greater than myself do you have like a sense of i imagine given that you're human there are some days where you forget to do this even even though the things that by your bedside do you have a sense of like days in which you don't set an intention versus days in which you do set an intention in your kind of n equals one ab test scenario what's the difference between those two days so honestly i don't and the reason for that is um

is that I haven't measured it. Right. So like, you know, it's, it's hard for me to sort of say like, well, I'm, I'm less productive or I'm less this or I'm less that. Um, but I would say like in general, like as a rule of thumb for me anyway, um, I really try to do something every day for someone else. Um, um,

And that's probably the biggest sense of whether I feel like I had a fulfilling or productive day one way or another. And again, you know, conversation for another time because the whole other thing, but like ego, nothing wrong with ego. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing things for yourself. It's incredibly important. Self-care.

Brain care is self-care. Genuinely, as silly as it sounds, I start the day with heights. First thing, with a glass of water, and the reason I do those things, I mean, there's so many different compounding things, but in the first five minutes of my day, I've taken care of my brain, given it all the nutrients it needs so that I can thrive today, had a big glass of water. Hydration is just like nine-tenths of the law anyway, if you want to feel good.

And I've done a quick gratitude practice. I've already started the day exceptionally well, right? That is like a huge win, but those are all things for me. So thinking a little bit about, you know, how to help impact someone else or how to do something for someone else.

That usually makes me feel emotionally the best. And you can like relate this stuff quite logically, right? When you spend too much time in your mind thinking about what you need to achieve, what you need to be, does this person like me? Does that person like me? Did I say that thing right? That's all me, me, me, me, me. And the more time you spend thinking about that stuff, the more agitated you get with yourself anyway. So it stands to reason that doing the opposite

taking a moment to do the opposite, think about someone else actually sort of calms you down and, you know, takes you out of yourself for a moment. And that can be really, for me, like I still make mistakes as a nice to still spend plenty of days, I'm sure just thinking of myself, but I think that's usually when I most notice it. It's like, shit, I forgot to do anything for anyone else today. And I do feel quite pent up. Oh, so on, on your Twitter, you've got, you've pinned a thread of mental health tips. And then number four is no, it's not about you.

obsessing over me is a root cause to most of our suffering brackets in my experience i wonder if you can kind of elaborate on that a little bit yeah yeah you're right that is more of the same right so i mean one of the really helpful um aspects of learning about spirituality is understanding that let's say the opposite right so let's say you have no spiritual practice um and um

We're defining spiritual practices in connection to others. Yeah. As in, let's just say, well, let's just say that you're, you're not interested in religion. You're not interested in, um, yeah. In, in connection to others necessarily. Um, um, maybe, you know, speaking very practical terms, you're like a career obsessive.

Okay. Right? It's just like a lot of people, right? It's all about productivity, climbing that ladder, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And, you know, whatever. Like, you want a successful life. We live in a material world. Like, at the end of the day, it's not our fault. We're literally, like...

everywhere plastered around us is advertising with junk values, drink sugar, do this, buy more, consume that. That's literally the world that we live in by this JPEG. So, you know, the reality is that is the world that we step out into every day and see. When you're sort of

confronted with those emotions all the time, the narrative that goes inside your head is, yeah, I want that, I want that, I want that, I want that because we have an obsession with wanting and that is a huge problem as well. So, you know, there's like a very simple reality, which is, you know, if you make a million pounds, let's say you want a million pounds. If you want a million pounds, then when you get a million pounds, you'll want 10 million pounds. And when you get 10, you'll want 100. And the reason is nothing to do with the quantums of money is because you want it.

So the obsession with the wanting is the root cause of the problem. Actually, the joy of having and the joy of experiencing what you already have and appreciating it, and this is where gratitude practice is genuinely scientifically proven, but also spiritually really fulfilling, is you can enjoy the now. And if you can enjoy what you have today, you will enjoy the million, you will enjoy the 10 million, you will enjoy the 100 million. They will all mean the same to you because you'll be enjoying the moment.

So let's say that you have all of these wanting, right? The consumerisms around who you want, you want, you want.

And therefore, what's going on inside your head is how do I get, how do I get, how do I get? Well, logically, the only way that you get is by providing some kind of value to the world. So that might be climbing the ladder in your job. That might be getting notoriety in your field one way or another. But all of these things sort of lead to an obsession with your own worth and

And especially your net worth compared to other people's perception of you. So other people sort of validating your amount of net worth and then hopefully financially rewarding you as such so that you can get all the things that you have been trained to want. So that sort of cyclical reality is...

actually, you know, sadly what most people live every day. And the reason they live that is simply because we live in this, like I said, we live in this sort of society where breaking free of the question of what do I want

Right. What do I want? Therefore, how do I get is a sort of like tyrannical cycle that just like constantly feeds itself. So the reality is the more you spend time there, it's quite possible that you will achieve more and then make more money and then get more and then have more. But the cycle just continues. The numbers zeros go up, but the experience sort of continues. Let's flip that.

Let's say that you are, whether it's culturally or naturally inclined or whatever, to just spend time thinking about other people. Right. So, you know, it's I won't go too weird and wacky. We won't use like Dalai Lama as an example or anything like that. But, you know, some of the happiest people that you meet are people who work with not much money, but serve other people one way or another.

And I think that that's like an unbelievable insight. You know, these people very often don't tend to suffer as much from anxiety. They're spending much more time thinking about how to help other people and being practically useful.

the gratitude cycle, right? So they're being grateful that they have the opportunity to serve people, the people that they're serving have the opportunity to show them gratitude for what they're doing. The cycle is all about gratitude and being in the moment serving the person or serving the community or whatever it is. And I think the trick is like how you find the right balance. Because, you know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. It's like, I don't want

At the moment, I'm not spiritually woke enough to want to be a monk on, you know, the top of a mountain in Tibet. I want to provide to society. I want to have impact. You know, there are many different ways to do that.

However, I want things too. And I don't shy away from the fact that I suffer from all of the imperfections that I say are... I think a really good way to describe this is another great way to describe spirituality is just awareness. So without tying myself around in knots on this statement, I have the awareness that

I can be self-obsessive. I have the awareness that I can think about myself too often. I have the awareness that I want to be successful and I want more money. I want to provide for my family. I want my investors to be happy. I want my customers to be happy. I want, I want, I want, I want. So I have the awareness that I want all of these things. But

In the moment that you're stopping yourself and not just running with the narrative of the things you want, but stopping yourself and just saying, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. Where's that noise coming from? Let's unpack that for a moment. Let's spend some time thinking about why those things are important.

suddenly I'm able to say, all right, well, I want them so that I can have an impact at a later date. I don't necessarily know what that means, but this is some of the rationale and reasoning behind it. It doesn't mitigate the sort of mental health cycle that goes around here, which is like all the anxiety, the things I could achieve and what I want, but it connects it to like a higher purpose. And for me, like that helps me find some kind of balance in the middle of the two things, if that makes sense.

Yes. Yeah, I definitely find that. And I don't know if you get this. I find that when I am in my most sort of outcome goal focused mindset, that is when I'm the least happy. Probably the least productive too. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, definitely the least productive as well. You're putting so much pressure on yourself. Yeah, you just but that's the thing. And what's stopping you? Probably the internal monologues going on as in the internal cycle narrative and matter of your brain of your mind. Yeah, is usually going into overdrive in those times because you put so much pressure on yourself. Yeah, I've been having this issue a lot recently.

which I've talked about a few times in videos, like, you know, I'm trying to write a book. Obviously, I want the book to be successful. I want loads of people to buy it. I wanted to hit the New York Times bestseller list because then my personal career as a professional thought leader goes increased because of et cetera, et cetera. All of these I wants. And whenever I think about those, that level of I wants, it kind of paralyzes me and stops me from actually writing anything on the page. Of course.

whereas in the few occasions when I can probably like I I guess be a bit more spiritual about it like to use that word um and I think instead I want to write a book that I'm proud of basically and I want to have fun doing it which is all I want and it's actually you know I want this book to help at least one person and as soon as I start thinking in those ways suddenly it's like takes the pressure off it makes it more fun it makes me it's like a feeling of a breath of fresh air like oh

I don't have to worry about like all the external measures of status and prestige around writing this book. I can actually have fun while doing it and hope that it helps other people. And there's a line from one of Derek Sivers' books called Anything You Want. Yeah, it's a great book. It's great, yeah. And I think this is probably my favorite quote of all time where he says, never forget why you're really doing what you're doing. Are you helping people? Are you profitable? Are you having fun? Isn't that enough? And I think, you know, every time I think of that, I think, yeah, yeah.

that's actually pretty great like you get to help people get to have fun and you get to make a profit like some sort of profit and on top of that like 100 have you ever had a job have you ever had a job actually first question yeah so i worked as a doctor for two years yeah yeah okay so that was it yeah sorry i actually knew that i guess i didn't really mean that kind of job because i suppose obviously it's a very fulfilling job doing that although i've heard obviously you talk about you but you didn't have that fulfilling experience quite the level you wanted that's how you knew that you weren't

Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Actually. Um, I guess the reason I'm asking is because, you know, I've had bad jobs, and I've had bad bosses. And so it's as simple as that. Like, sometimes I just remember that, which is that I used to hate work. I used to hate work. I used to hate who I work with. And I used to hate my boss.

what kind of life is that? It's horrible. I mean, that is some people's literal existence and they managed to find a way to be happy. Um, I don't have any of that. And like you just said, isn't that enough? And sometimes you're like, yeah, that really is. It's, it is, you know, fundamentally, um, poetic and fulfilling to know that life can be that simple as well. And it's really like this internal narrative. Uh, you know, I do think the, the,

massive dichotomy that is confusing and challenging in this whole scenario is I do want, and there is no amount of spiritual experience I've had, book I've read, psychedelic, out of body, anything, insight that I've ever had that has stopped me actually wanting.

But what that's all given me is balance to one with a sense of purpose and a sense of goodness at the heart of it and a sense of knowing that I want to contribute back to society in some meaningful way. That I think is the balance. You know, like everything, you know, there are the extremes. There are always people who do things extreme. There's always the total Malcolm Gladwell outliers who will do that 1% of the 1%, you know, Olympic gold medalists, right? Yeah.

That's great. But we all compare ourselves to that person too often. And actually, that's not going to create a life of happiness necessarily for almost everyone on the earth. That won't create a life of happiness. What will is some level of balance between the things that you want that are going to make you happy and the way to sort of find peace and harmony within whilst trying to achieve it. Yes. That's the reality. There's a great quote from Muhammad Ali, which goes along the lines of,

like once he won his heavyweight championship or whatever, it's like, I suffered every day in training for 10 years to become a champion. And I look at that quote and I feel like it's supposed to be inspiring. It's supposed to be a sort of like, you know, hustle and suffer. And then that's what it takes to make it big.

And I think of that and I think, okay, well, if that's what it takes, I really don't want to make it big. Totally. Like 10 years of suffering to hold up a trophy does not seem like anyone's idea. And you told me about your week earlier and like, what a lovely week.

And like you've worked hard to achieve the freedom to have that week and you will continue to work hard to have the freedom to achieve that week. But then let's compare you, for example, to someone like Tony Robbins. I don't know the guy, but I don't imagine that's his week. His week will be like, I'm going on tour this day, that day, that day. You know, he's doing the Muhammad Ali type thing. He'll go down. Again, I'm not a particular fanboy of Tony Robbins, but I respect him.

talented people putting in the hard hours like we all do he'll go down probably as the greatest coach ever right public speaking whatever you want to call him like inspirational speaker he'll probably go down as best ever but like yeah he does the muhammad ali stuff and guy has more money than god he could stop tomorrow but like he gets out of bed with that sense of drive and purpose to do that and i you know i've had plenty of like little glimpses into that life like raising money for my company like my last company that was a bit of a rocket ship at the time like you know

getting on a plane every two days and you know, all the stuff that people think is really glamorous and you do it for like a couple of weeks and you're like, this isn't the life. I thought this was the life. This is not the life. It's not at all. I have no time to myself. You're in queues and people emailing you all the time and you're like really busy and not really able to connect with people and all of this stuff and

only really looks great on the outside. Like, and the reality, I don't think that's fun at all. So, you know, the life that you describe is not the kind of life that, you know, a lot of people, even Steve, who's, you know, Steve is living more of that life at the moment. Right. But, you know, a lot of people will assume that the only way to do this stuff is like with a real hustle porn, Gary Vaynerchuk kind of angle. And I think that's nonsense. I think what you're saying is

not just healthy is actually the lifestyle people should try and aspire to. I think there's also like a level of, like for example, if I describe my ideal way of growth, like, you know, I spend one whole day kind of having kind of research brainstorms with the team, one whole day filming YouTube videos, talking to a camera, two afternoons talking to podcast guests.

That to me is like, bloody hell, that's like really, really fun. But to a lot of people that would be like, whoa, that's awful. I can't imagine wanting to spend a day a week talking to a camera. That seems like the worst thing ever. I quite enjoy it. It's your profession. So just swap profession, right? As in like a doctor is not like, you know, but for a doctor, maybe their ideal day. Well, this is the thing, maybe for a really passionate doctor, their ideal week is five days helping people. But that is great. The point is like identify the thing that works for you.

You know, this is the other thing I think about, you know, people ask me a lot about work-life balance. I don't think there is such a thing as work-life balance at all. There's just life and you should choose to do work that is fulfilling and meaningful or is giving you some kind of value. Like when you're younger, you're

Gotta work bloody hard to make it in quite a tough world, get a bit of a name for yourself, find the positions. You know, I understand all that, right? I think that's really important. 20s and 30s, absolutely. You've got to find a way to get yourself into a recognizable position. That's just the way of the world. And if you don't do that, more chance that you will be unhappy in your 40s and 50s, like,

Statistically, I mean, that's a guess, right? But I guess I'm saying statistically, I can see how that makes sense. But, you know, the most important thing is that you're sort of working towards understanding what makes you happy and how to spend your time. So if there is no work-life balance, there's just life.

Well, there's also just time. And that is something that is being spent every single day. It's the currency that we all have. So we've got less and less of it every single minute. So it's nice to think more meaningfully about how you spend it. And actually, if you're someone like me, like I love my work, like I love work. I love the things I do. I love all the different challenges that come with being an entrepreneur. Every minute spent there is great joy, right? I've got friends who don't love work, but they love

their family time and going on holidays and all that stuff. So therefore they really appreciate that the work that they do, that they can do between nine and five, um, and put in, you know, the minimum, but reasonable amount of effort to get the things that they want. And they're just as happy as I am. We just have, we just both understand ourselves.

You know, I think that's the really important thing. Like I wouldn't be happy doing their thing. They wouldn't be happy doing my thing, but we're both as happy as each other because we've, we found the way to make our lives work for us. On this podcast, I imagine the YouTube channel, there's a lot of people in their teens and twenties, a few people in their thirties and older, but like mostly teens and twenties listening to this stuff. And when people talk about purpose and finding your calling and all that jazz, it's,

And I think you touched on it just now where it's like, it's very easy to say that, oh, focus on your purpose. But when you're young and you're just kind of finishing school or starting university or trying to get your first job, it's like if you had that requirement that you have to find what's purposeful and meaningful and what your values are and only do work that aligns with that, that would become paralytic to the point that you wouldn't go anywhere and you'd end up broken, homeless and stuff. How would you advise like a younger person, let's say someone in their, let's say early to mid twenties, just going into their first job,

potentially wanting to have an impact on the world like all young people seem to do these days. But also, you know, it is the way of the world that you might have to get a job in admin that you just don't like. For sure. Well, look, everyone will give different advice. The most important thing is listen to varied advice from varied people that you respect. You might not respect me for whatever reason. And I think that's absolutely valid and fair. So find people that you respect the values of or the journey that they're on and the messages that they share. For me personally,

You know, the way that I like to live my life, and I have this joke with my wife a little bit because she's, you know, different in this sense, but I like to think of things as strong opinions loosely held.

My wife has strong opinions, strongly held, but I'm strong opinions, loosely held. And I guess also the other side of that is like, I'm not a dogmatic person. I'm very up for changing my mind. And actually one of the things I think why I really like working in science, even though I'm not a scientist, like I love it because science is loads of pure facts, right?

that completely go against the last person's facts and then can be completely disproven again by new person's facts. And everyone is just respectful about the fact that this is the current science and the facts until something better comes along and disproves it and displaces it and there's new science and new evidence.

The reason I'm saying this is because I think a lot of people are extremely dogmatic. They take a point of view, this comes back to identity. They take a point of view about who they are, what they are and how they want to present themselves to the world. I am a YouTuber. I am a podcaster. I am an entrepreneur. These are labels. Um,

And labels can get you really stuck on the person that you think you are and that other people, and that you'd like other people to perceive you. And you sort of go about like repeating it a lot. You know, I did like a lot of time on clubhouse, like earlier this year when my wife had morning sickness, cause she couldn't go anywhere near me. So I was like, thank God I'll speak to some friends. I was in lockdown. So I'll just go make some random friends on, on a voice app. Um, and there was this kid there, he was like 17 years old and was a life life coach. Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah.

And I was just like, yeah, really good chats with him. Lovely guy. I really liked him. But you know, I can't help, but just like be skeptical. Like you can't be a life coach at 17. Like, I mean, you can, you totally can. I don't let me like get in the way of your dream, so to speak. And I wasn't telling him that you can't, but like, I don't think I can be a life coach at 35.

Life is there to be lived. You have to understand different people's experiences. There's so many different types of experiences. One of the best things you can do in your life is go traveling into other cultures. We both live in England. It is a first world country. I know that you obviously are from third world countries where you have African roots as well. But the reality is you've lived most of your life in England.

So you've had a first world upbringing as have I. Go to third world country, go to Favela, go to a shanty town, go see how people in these communities live. That's a great opportunity to think differently about the world for starters. Secondly, I think pragmatism is hugely underrated. So what I mean by that is, when you're thinking about your purpose, I said earlier, when we're talking about purpose, purpose can change. So one of the most important

things as people would like having to decide, like, what is this thing that I'm defining myself as? Cause it will be me forever. That's not true. We changed like every few years. Like I've changed. I've had multiple personalities over multiple years, different things interest me at different times. I can't believe the kind of things that interest me now that don't them. You know, I, I,

10 years ago, I couldn't even imagine not wanting to go raving every week. Like I couldn't imagine that. Like I loved going out. I loved going clubbing. I went to every festival in Europe, go to Burning Man every year. Like all of these things, like absolutely love that. And I'm just less interested in that now. And that means I'm a different person now.

doesn't mean anything. Like I don't judge myself on it. It just means that I'm like learning to listen into the person I'm developing, um, into like sort of day by day. And so right now, you know, I'm an entrepreneur, right? And that's a label, but maybe in 10 years, maybe I will be an author. It's a different label, so to speak. Right. Um, I think that this is

big P purpose that young people try and search for. The best advice I have is like, don't start looking now. Life is for exploring. Best advice I think I can offer to young people is to get really good experience in various different industries and various different spaces so you can learn what you like. I literally did a LinkedIn post this morning about this guy, Hoss, that I used to employ. So I found this guy on Upwork, super...

16 year old kid on Upwork. When I started my podcast, Secret Leaders, $5 an hour, I just needed some help, found a guy on Upwork, whatever, right? Really, really good, really helpful. Absolutely loved it. When I started researching new industries I wanted to do, I was learning about like brain nutrients, et cetera. You know, I got this guy on Upwork to help me a little bit as well. And we'd never really spoken, like we're all doing this over Upwork and email, right? I was like, go research these papers, like tell me the summary of the findings, I'll do this, you

et cetera. Um, the more we start working together, the more I'm like, listen, I'm starting this company heights be really helpful to have you like, you know, helping out, et cetera. I'll save you a long story short. Um, he like, he was from this tiny town in Morocco. Um,

really smart kid. I was really just like keen to learn everything as much as possible. So his attitude to me was constantly like, tell me what else you want me to learn this, learn that no problem. Do a loom, do a YouTube video. I'll figure out how to work all these things out. Um, in the end, Hoss was just like,

you know, a linchpin in starting heights. He was like MVP, most helpful guy ever. Like everyone that we were employing full time, we tried to employ him full time. And he was like, actually, I really want to go to university. Like my dream has always been to go to university, then do an engineering master's. And like, this is what I want to do with my life.

And so I got this amazing email. The reason I'm bringing this up is an amazing email last week from Hoss who basically said, you know, you guys have changed my life, me and Joel, my co-founder, because you gave me all of the opportunities, you know. Also, we moved them from $5 to something reasonable, right? We're like, look, we're going to treat you like you're in London. I'm going to pay you like £10 an hour instead. And like, just like, you know, which was for an 18 year old at that point, like super good.

um we helped him get to university we did all of his recommendation letters helped him get into university he just got the master's in engineering that he wanted at his first choice you know and it's like oh that's amazing it's amazing but the kid is like 21 right 20 or 21 now um he already has like four years professional working experience with an entrepreneur um i literally couldn't possibly imagine a single task that he couldn't outperform me on but just do in general um

Anytime he wants a glowing recommendation from me or my co-founder, he gets it. But he's also now got university experience behind him. He's doing a master's. He has professional experience. He's 21 from this tiny town in Morocco. And all he wants to do is get out of Morocco and go study in France. That was his dream. He found a way to do his dream, to live his dream and be doing it right now with a lot of different life experience. If you think about all of these different things, because he had an amazing attitude.

Right. So his mindset was 100% based on, I know that I want a better education. I know that I want to get out of Morocco. I know I want to get to France. I know that these are the things I want and I have some idea of how I'm going to get there. Ultimately, the way that I'll achieve it is by turning up every day with a can-do attitude.

And there's nothing I can't learn. And I really believe that. I don't think there's anything that anyone can't learn. We have these narratives about ourselves. Like I do, like, you know, I'm not good at maths. I could learn how to be better at maths. I just choose not to. But like, we all have these like self-limiting beliefs of things we can't do or won't do or whatever. And I look at Hoss and think like at 21, this kid has like a decade of experience that most people just sort of laser route on not doing. So my advice to young people was just be more like Hoss, take opportunities. When you get an opportunity from someone,

you know, as the employer and you're an employer, you know, the difference between someone who 10 X is your expectation level or not. Some people just turn up and do the job. Some people do the job, no fuss and show you how they could have done the job better. And those people are the ones who are going to win at life. Um, I think Hoss is just such a good example of like how other young people should be thinking about things, right? His purpose is

I don't think if I asked him what his purpose is, he'd have any idea whatsoever, but he knows that he just wants to, you know, provide value and learn. And that mindset of just like wanting to learn is the thing that's going to help him find his purpose at the right time. Nice. Be more like Hoss. Yeah. Be more Hoss. How do you think about money, especially in the context of we all need some way of making money to sustain ourselves in the world.

For a lot of us, that is our job. And for a lot of us, that job is not also the thing that brings us fulfillment, joy, meaning connection, love, belonging, fun. All of these expectations that we young people now have on our jobs, whereas back in the day, you know, 50 years ago, like it's a job, it makes you money and then you enjoy your family life in the evenings.

How do you think about money as like a serial entrepreneur, like a new father, all of the experiences you've had as a spiritual hippie kind of guy? Yeah. What are your thoughts? It's a very poignant question for me right now. I think as a father, because I honestly, honestly, honestly never cared about money ever. It's my detriment.

I'm not money motivated is the point. Uh, and that's a good and bad thing for sure. Um, you know, it's not great for investors to hear that you're not that money motivated, right. But like you have this vision of the company that you want to be, but like inherently not just, there are things that just interest me so much more than money. Um,

And actually, interestingly, I recently came into some money. One of my investments did really well. I've got to pay out. Timing was impeccable. It was about a month ago. So just before my daughter was born. And I realized for the first time, like, you know, I had some money in my bank account for the first time ever. And I suddenly realized, oh, I suddenly I'm like, you know, what do I do with this money? Right. I'm like, I'm going to invest some of it. You know, I did some NFTs and some crypto and like public stock markets and all this stuff. And I'm like, you know,

What do I know? You know, I'm selling a flat and buying a house. So I actually have like big overheads coming and all this stuff. But, you know, fundamentally, I sort of sat there. I'm like, what do I do with this money? And I realized that partly not caring about money is not having money.

So interestingly, as in my personal experience, I'm not saying like philosophically for anyone, because I have not sat and thought about this too much. But for me, I realized I having never had money, you know, my salaries as an entrepreneur have been pitiful. 10 years in the business, as in 10 years as an entrepreneur at this point.

Um, my salaries were, and I'm always really open about this. You know, my salaries were literally, uh, zero first year, 12 K second year, 24 for like the next two or three years. Um, you know, I moved back in with my mom and did all of these things. Right. So, um,

there's no money to spend, right? Like nothing. Anyway, the point being that whenever I've had money, I've actually also invested it. So I've invested in tons of startups, which is a very illiquid asset class, as you know. But I believe in backing people and I get much more enjoyment about helping other people build their dreams

It's a personal thing. Like, you know, throwing money into some stocks that could go up or down is just so distant. And I love building relationships. I love brand stories. I love creatives. So I love the idea that you can work with them to help whatever way that is, right? Maybe that's your money. Maybe it's just getting an investor update. I think it's cool to be part of that. But yeah, so anytime I've had money, I've basically given it to another entrepreneur and invested in their company. So always on this sort of cycle. And now recently, like, you know, what do I think about money? Yeah.

I guess suddenly very differently, which is that I realized that, you know, new paradigm shift as a parent, um, the money isn't actually about me and

And again, this is like comes back to the is not about you thing. Constant reminder that it's not about you is really helpful. So suddenly you have this responsibility in your life that is someone else. They are apparently not that cheap kids. I'm yet to discover directly how expensive, but the little starter kit has been quite expensive for sure. Of course, yeah.

And so, you know, you do start to think about the fact that money isn't all to be spent. Some of it needs to be invested. Some of it needs to be taken care of for other people. So, yeah, I guess I don't really have like a particularly philosophical point of view on it. Only that I think I've shifted from someone who doesn't care about money to actually I do care about money. But the things I care about haven't really changed. So I still invest in lots of startups. First thing I did.

I mean, literally first thing I did when I got my payout was invested in three startups that I wanted to, right? As in I've been wanting to, I just didn't have the money to. And I did the second that I could because firstly, I believe in them, right? I happen to think that investing is the best way to make money. That's just my personal belief. And from what I've seen, you know, I very hard,

to be on a linear career and you know even entrepreneurship can be quite a linear career sometimes. Very hard to sort of be on that and suddenly 10x one day to the next right. Hard to be at 50k salary one year and 500k the next year. That's hard.

But it is not that hard to technically invest 50K and get 500K back in a year. That's possible. So when you look at things on a very basic level like that, investing, which is quite high risk, extremely high risk in fairness for most of it, the kind that I like to do, the reality is you think about it and actually realize that my...

isn't necessarily the, I think my career is the long-term way that I hope to make money and I expect to make money.

But in the shorter term, you know, there's only so much you can do as an entrepreneur as well. You know, you're like running a company and you can't be taking money out of it. I mean, this is like mystical thing that people actually imagine, which is so different from reality, which is, oh, you're the founder of like a, you know, 50 million pound company. Like you must be rich. Yeah. And you're like, oh, God, no. Like, I just literally have some shares. I just none of that is liquid.

So I think the reality is whenever I get an opportunity to invest in other people or, you know, a wide variety of investment opportunities, that's where I put my money. I know you've done quite a lot of stuff on investing as well. So I know, but not too much startup investing. No, I think Heights is the fourth or fifth startup that I've invested in. I always feel a bit weird about it because... Why?

I feel weird about it because I always worry about like, how can I actually add value? But don't you think like for most investors, like 2 million YouTube subscribers is a lot more value add than what a lot of investors actually offer. Yeah, I don't know what other investors offer. Well, fuck all, I'll tell you that. Well, I could make a YouTube video for 2 million subscribers talking about the thing and talking about why I like it. Yeah, but that is valuable.

right? But there are different ways that people add value. You have an audience, audience is value. Some people have insight, insight is value. I mean, value is not like, is not on a linear spectrum, right? That's like a lovely smorgasbord of things that people can offer you. You know, if you're a nutrition professional, you might have an opinion, that's value. There's so many different ways. But

But yours is a very clear-cut, obvious way, which is that at the end of the day, if I think about it as the entrepreneur, the reason Heights excites me so much is because somehow my co-founder and I happened to stumble across a space

where the science is there to back it up. So we don't have to create anything completely new. We've compounded different things together in a new way. So a brain first supplement, you know, by choosing nutrients that have the scientific paper behind them, literally providing the evidence with none of the market awareness. So there's not many things on earth that

really, if you think about it, there aren't new compounds or new inventions that you can literally say the evidence is all there. Just no one's done a really good job of putting it together and marketing it. And the concept that we have, which is like, which is brain care, right? So literally the idea behind brain care is if you take care of your brain every single day, according to science and reality, it will improve your energy. It will improve your sleep, your focus, your productivity, all of those things. Plus

you won't hopefully get to the downside of mental health, like the insomnia, the, like, you know, the negative effects. But if you are at the negative side of the spectrum, you can get back to baseline and from baseline reach your heights, hence the name. That's the point of the product, but there is no market awareness of that, right? People do not know that nutrition is a part of this space. So if you go to a remote town in Africa or, you know, the,

a favela in Brazil and ask people how to look after their brains or their mental health they will all say the same thing I was in even the niche as much as the well you know as much as anyone in London you know maybe therapy speaking to friends go outside for a walk you know these are things that we understand nutrition won't come up

It doesn't matter how sophisticated you are, like nutrition, supplementation, vitamins that can impact emotions and things like sleep and energy. It just doesn't come up. People don't think about it, but it's scientifically true. So that is an unbelievable platform to raise awareness in. And again, like I say, it's so exciting as an entrepreneur because it is unusual to

To find a niche like that, that people aren't playing in yet, but I think it will be a huge category, but to find a space where people aren't playing in yet, where...

Everyone is essentially your customer because they have brains but sort of the entry point that they become interested in it Is it sleep as energy is it this or is that you know, that's that's the challenging bit So you find people like yourself where your audience is more interested in productivity, right and essentially achieving more, right? That's the most important part of your message is like, you know unlock your own ability and

that'll be your message for your audience. And that is like exactly the thing that can like help us usually because we get to learn from you as well. We get to learn how do you speak to your audience and how do they respond to this stuff? Because

The job that the entrepreneur has to do is great product development. So without harking on too much, that's the number one rated supplement on Trustpilot now, full stop. So proof is in the pudding. That is literally Trustpilot's biggest review engine in the world and we're number one and we're only a year and a half old.

So the proof is in the pudding on how the product makes people feel. Just no one knows about it. So that's like an unbelievable opportunity of value add for an audience owner. Interesting. One thing I was going to ask about, like regarding this. Yes. So I've been taking it for about a week or two now, judging by the size of this. Yeah, it looks like it. What are you supposed to feel? Like, I don't feel any real difference, any noticeable difference in my like,

Energy level. Like what's the timescale and what should I expect? Yeah. So this all depends on really three things. So one is where you are today. So if you are like at your baseline, healthy, look after yourself, go to the gym, all of the things. Right. And generally like a really good diet.

then the increment levels are, according to the science anyway, so I'll use the science on this, between one and three months. So much longer period, right? And this is actually one of the really interesting things. Like A, we're subscription because we're not looking for quick fix. We're not trying to tell you that this is a limitless pill. This is not an overnight thing. You're not going to get a buzz. You will notice an overall improvement in energy levels, notably an overall improvement in energy levels per

productivity and focus are two things that people say a lot but focus seems to be like actually quite a big one okay um which is the ability when working to focus on work um um it like i say if you come in it like you're already healthy that's a one to three months kind of timeline which is

The other really interesting thing, which is like everyone wants results today. No one's willing to do anything for the long term. But as you know, sadly, that's counterintuitive. So lots of people pick up new habits and then drop them. And then they wonder why they don't work. And the really interesting thing that we have to unlock at Heights somehow is we don't let anyone, everything's a subscription basis with us. You can't just buy it once. You can't just buy in the shop. You can't do any of that stuff, right? It's a subscription product. Most popular version of it is three month.

Um, almost all of the results that, so the trust pilot reviews, et cetera, all post three months. So it's people actually giving this a go because they're serious about doing something for the longterm. Um, and then they sustain like our retention metrics are crazy. Um, and you only get that if your products go to special supplements where

drop off is awful um so that's very common the flip side by the way is if you're currently struggling so like let's say you are struggling with sleep or anxiety or i mean a lot of different you know can even be depression by the way like you know there's a lot of different mental problems mental health problems that are below the baseline as i like to call them um if you're currently suffering with one of those it is very common and also by the way if you have like a um at

actual neurological, like diagnosed system. So ADHD or bipolar, you know, any of these kinds of things. Usually the impact is within one month. And then the most interesting one is vegans.

People who are completely plant-based, but also a lot of vegetarians, they'll usually feel it within one to two weeks. And that comes down to the nutrients they're usually lacking from their diets. And I can say that because I am one, so it's not like insulting anyone. It just seems to be a fact. That is just because you're missing out on certain diets, as you are on any diet, right? If you're doing the caveman diet, if you're doing a vegan diet, whatever you choose to do that isn't just broad spectrum, you'll be missing something.

So those are the real anomalies. The reviews that we get always, we have this like internal joke, basically. If we see a review go up in one to two weeks or someone emailing us to tell us about how amazing it all is, et cetera, we're like, literally they've got a vegan or they are a vegan or they're currently got some kind of issue. Let's find out. And they always do. And they always are.

Always. Interesting. So it is all about where your current lifestyle and circumstance starts you at right now. And yeah, I mean, this is the thing, like you come back to like my story when I had insomnia and anxiety, what she prescribed for me worked perfectly.

Like super fast. Within a week. Blueberry extract. Yeah. A few other bits. Yeah. Within a week. What does that work like? What the hell is blueberry extract? So to give you an idea on these things, so to like break it down into the science, your brain is 60% fat. 90% fat is one compound, which is DHA. Mm-hmm.

So DHA omega-3 is basically the main building block of your brain. So if you think about it like a house, got foundations, you've got all of these things. And let's say that DHA are the bricks. If you think about a house with bricks, you can remove as many bricks as you like and you can put back in polystyrene here and there, right? But after a while, it's going to start to collapse. And that's kind of what happens with your brain if you starve it of DHA. Vegans do not get enough DHA. You have to supplement DHA if you're a vegan. It is a factor.

All vegans will tell you, I mean, a lot of them will, but that's not true. You get omega-3s from ALA, from plants. ALA very rarely actually translates into DHA. So I won't get into the whole scientific process. I'm not a nutritionist. I don't like to, even though I know, I don't like to like overstep my boundaries, but the reality is very hard to convert ALA into DHA. So you have to supplement it from algae, for example. So

Most end up deficient in DHA, number one compound in your brain. So the fact that it starts to have an impact on your health is not surprising. So what was happening to me as an example is I was starting to get warning signs, right? My building, my house was on fire and I was ignoring it.

And you know, it starts off with not being able to sleep very well. Then it goes into full blown insomnia and then it's chronic anxiety. And these new fires are coming on every single day until I have like the overnight, I start going through a process of elimination. Am I meditating? Am I seeing a sleep therapist? Am I going to the doctor? Am I doing all of these things in the end? I go to the dietician, here's something, it calms it down. Don't

doses the fire out right and and suddenly i'm like okay i'm back to normal right so my brain is literally giving me warning signs by symptoms mental health symptoms it says you're not okay that's the dha side the b vitamins is actually energy regulation so i'm sure you're like familiar like even barocca and stuff and actually you'll have noticed your urine when taking it right it goes a bit more yellow and that's because it's riboflavin which oh yeah yeah

Um, so that's like totally normal. It's exactly the same as Baraka, but basically it's just a high level of concentration of B vitamins, which by the way is amazing for so many things, including for long-term brain health and for productivity. Um, but B vitamin complex is all about energy regulation. So when you've got insomnia, for example, very irregular energy regulation. So B vitamin high dose, very important. And then the blueberry extract, the one that got you peaked your interest, which is in heights. So for the equivalent of 25 blueberries every single day in a double dose of heights.

So double dose being two pills. So every day it's two pills. So one dose, two capsules, 25 blueberries in the form of anthocyanins, which is the extract. And what it actually is, is an antioxidant. And what that does is it cleans the glymphatic system of your brain whilst you sleep. So, you know, our chief science officer, Dr. Tara Swart, she has this lovely analogy she uses, which is like putting your brain through a car wash every evening.

So it's cleaning out the system of your brain whilst you're sleeping where junk and dust and all these sort of things will gunk basically will pile up in your brain and the antioxidants will clean it out. That's why blueberry extract, it just happens to be the highest form and highest quality. Blueberries, by the way, have phenomenally interesting neuroscientific advantages.

I, even though I take heights, I eat about, you know, 15 to 20 blueberries every single day on top of that as well. Most interesting scientific study is, um, there's 13, um, so yeah, I think 13 and 14 year olds doing their exams and the ones that took blueberries before their exams, the same day, blueberries before their exams, much better grades than the

It's insane, but it's a really well-known scientific study. It's so funny. So there are like lots of stories about how blueberries are incredible for your brain, but you know, actually using 25 blueberries is quite expensive as well. So, you know, that will cost £2.50, £3 a day to do that. So even though it's good for you and I'm obviously do advocate eating like healthy food as much as possible, most people don't.

This is the thing, our main message at Heights is actually, we'll tell you all of the whole point of Heights as a brand is come join our newsletter, listen to our brain care podcast. We have a podcast that's 15 minutes every episode with different academic or scientific expert. It's all super snappy. I write a newsletter every single week, which is how the company started 140 episodes in now. Every Sunday, two to three minute read max. But our whole job is to help you understand how to take care of your brain according to science.

If you can get that in your whole food diet, you don't need the supplement, then don't take it, right? Definitely have the best diet ever. Hugely encourage it. But according to, again, studies and the science in the UK, 99% of us do not get anywhere near that requirement. So this is using something called the MIND diet, which we'll obviously be very familiar with, basically a Mediterranean diet and very high in fats and fish and all sorts, but you could substitute that out for algae or whatever if you wanted to. The reality is most of us just do not eat this way.

We are very dire. We might eat on delivery or whatever it is, right? We live normal lives. We're busy people. So heights is literally the most simple, guaranteed way of making sure that you're giving your brain the nutrients that it's meant to have every single day, according to science, to stop any of the downside effects happening, but also over the long time, compound the positive effects. And you can get all of it from food.

So definitely encourage that first and foremost. But I tried it. So there's the other thing I was going to say. Before we started this, I thought I was going to do like a meal delivery service type thing of like brain food and stuff. But my God, it was expensive and tiring. And I'm a bad cook. That didn't help. Yeah. I mean, I've tried the Mediterranean diet so many times and lasted like one day. Yeah, it's hard to keep up. It's just too much effort. Like I want to get delivery. I want to go out for dinner with the boys, that kind of thing. Exactly. Okay. Interesting. Okay. I feel like we could talk about this forever. But...

I want to have lunch with you now that I'm hungry. That's a video for another time. Video for another time. We have a handful of questions from Instagram. Okay. Which we can just sort of do as rapid fire. Go for it. So Harry Bloggs says, how do you deal with negative thoughts? If I say the wrong thing in a social situation, I spend tons of time thinking about it afterwards.

Oh, it's a great question. Um, so there's a great guy I interviewed on brain care podcast called Dr. Daniel Arman, and he has a saying called ants, which is automatic negative thoughts. Um, basically are, we have a negativity bias, right? Psychologically for whatever reason, well, there is a reason we have a negativity bias because we're born to protect ourselves, right? So when we grew up and we're in the jungle and all this stuff, you know, ultimately got to protect ourselves. I've got to look for threats. So we are naturally hardwired to think negatively, to be negative, et cetera. Um,

How do I deal with negative thoughts? Awareness. So the most important, I believe one of the most important realizations I've had, I've had this from ayahuasca, but I've had it from reading plenty of books after the fact is that I am not my thoughts. So really accessible spiritual book that I think is fantastic is a book called The Untethered Soul. It's by an ex-entrepreneur.

Not woo-woo language, totally accessible, really easy to read, good fun. And in it, the author Michael Singer talks about there is a noisy roommate inside your head talking absolute garbage to you all the time, right? And you basically live with a maniac. You live with this irritating voice inside your head and it is driving you wild, right?

And for whatever reason, this guy is a nutcase and everyone lives with him, right? Every single person has this like absolute nutcase inside your head and it's feeding you shit all the time. So as soon as you like, literally part of spirituality as well as like this awareness, right?

of like this duality two voices inside your head one is you the awareness of like oh who is that where's that coming from and why is that being said and the other is the constant chatter that constant chat is almost always negative so and and if you don't stop and listen and think where's that coming from and why then it will just keep on going so what helps me is this awareness that i am not my thoughts

sick just bought it on audible uh link in the video description audible if anyone wants to check it out um maria says do you have any tips for men about talking about their feelings oh that's interesting yeah it's interesting isn't it because yeah men do find it hard to speak about their feelings whereas um you know for me masculine masculinity is such a loaded concept like i find myself like

It's interesting, you know, I, with my wife, for example, we have sort of gender role reversals and that like a lot of my behaviors are like the feminine stereotype and hers, the masculine stereotype. But, um,

you know, giving other men, I think the first thing is like men giving other men advice on how to be sensitive probably is the first way to not get to open up into it. This is the challenge. I do think that there's a role, a really great role for role models, for male role models to be more welcoming and open about speaking about our feelings. Because it's this weird like macho thing, like as in, you know,

we're human. So male or female, whatever, we're human. And humans have emotions, right? This is the stuff that happens psychologically inside our brains one way or another. Sadly, when you...

Don't express those emotions you don't share how you feel and you don't share why you're feeling that way and you are you're unable to connect with someone else and that lack of connection could lead to a sense of loneliness and then that loneliness can lead to bitterness and can leave the personal confusion about where you are on earth, so I think You know, I don't necessarily have a book although I suppose if I was to recommend one there's a great book called lost connections by Johan Harry and

It's more a book on like the story of mental health and depression to an extent, but it is a great story as well, just like on how much humans need connection. And one of the ways that we can connect best is by being vulnerable, right? There's only so much you can learn from someone that talks about how great they are all the time.

Like that kind of showboating is interesting as well. You look at like Instagram, right? Like, you know, a few years ago, like most interesting content is just like hot girls, bikinis, that kind of stuff. Now it's actually like people opening up and talking about how they feel. And that's just like vulnerability porn. Yeah, exactly. Like also just bored of all this surface level stuff. Like I'm not as amazing as you. It doesn't really make me like you as much as like, oh, you're a real person with real feelings. Wicked. Me too.

Yeah, one thing that I've... I've noticed this issue recently where I struggle to talk about my feelings. And I always thought it was because I just didn't have the feelings. And I was like, well, you know, I'm generally a stoic guy. I've drunk the Kool-Aid for a while. And so...

For me, like when I describe something as like making me feel bad, it's like, you know, I've got my baseline level of tranquility and this is like a minor, minor blip. And what my housemate was encouraging me to do is be like, okay, you know, stop thinking that you're going to get like a blip to like a negative 10 because that's never going to happen for you. But just like kind of expand the scale out. So when you have a minor blip, that's like a pretty significant event for you. And I'm trying to describe how you're feeling. And at that point, I'd be like, well, I don't have a word.

But what I find useful is to just be like, you know what? I'm just going to try and just talk about how I'm feeling without feeling as if I need to be able to describe it with a single, like in a succinct tweetable 140 character thing. And then I found that once I'm like, oh, I'm feeling a bit of this because a bit of this, a bit of that, like it became kind of rambly. But that really helped me to talk about my feelings without feeling that pressure to be able to say, I am feeling anxious right now. Because it's like, what does that even mean? I don't know.

Or I'm feeling scared or I'm feeling stressed. It's like, well, no, I'm kind of feeling a little bit of this because of that. I found that expanding it out to not a tweet found it really much more helpful for me to talk about my feelings. Yeah. And also labeling your feelings is a really like it's a well-known practice. Very helpful. Right. So being able to say like, I am feeling angry. Yeah.

Is in a way like it's pretty similar to the last answer is the awareness of like you're a human being you're going through that emotion you're able to speak about it you know and as soon as it's out you realize actually it becomes quite other literally saying i am angry has made that feeling into an object outside of you so now you're sort of looking at it and you're like well i guess that's not so scary yeah nice um two more questions so hussein says how do you organize your life

uh three more yeah how do you organize your life what are your daily practices um yeah um okay so my daily practices and by the way i'm like i do mix this up timing wise um so always wake up and do the same morning practice right so i say grateful for waking up today think about my intention that's like first 30 seconds take my heights drink some water um now you know

Kiss the baby, change the baby, all that stuff that needs to happen at that moment, like whatever. Then I'll either do... So usually what I'll do is go for a walk. And go for a walk is like my number one life hack for everything. So I do walking meetings. I do walking Zooms, walking everything. I do walking. And if I don't have them, I will do like Audible or a podcast. Or sometimes I just take my headphones out and I just like a walking meditation. Yeah.

And by that, all I mean is literally just like, you know, I'm not trying to clear my mind. I'm just trying to observe the things around me. And in so doing, it clears my mind. So that's like, I do an hour and a half every day of a walk.

And, um, I think that's one of the benefits of like the pandemic is like, I've got team stand up, whatever. Like they, I mean, everyone is used to me being on a walk the whole time now anyway. Um, so that's like, uh, probably takes me up to about 10 AM. Um, then I will do an hour of work almost always. And then at 11, I will do either the Peloton or yoga.

Then I will shower, then I'll make lunch for my wife, my baby, et cetera, et cetera. And the afternoon tends to be where I'm more like focused, productive time. So say I finish work, I mean, you know, I'd like to pretend that I finished work early, but you know, whatever. I've got a new routine as well. I'm trying to figure out this, the interesting thing, right? You're asking this question like a time when I kind of,

I'm going to have to sort of feel out how this goes. Um, usually I'll do podcast recording six till seven, seven 30. Um, so I've got two podcasts, um, which is like three episodes a week. So it's quite a lot. So I need to make sure that I like stay on that schedule quite well. Um, and

And at seven 30 ish, I will either have dinner or make dinner depending on whose turn it is. Obviously the new father, it's more my turn. Um, and then almost always every single night I just hang out with my wife. Um, so I don't really tend to work. Maybe I'll do some emails on my phone, et cetera, but like in reality, that's what I'm doing. And then before I go to bed every single night, same thing I do 10 minutes. So I tried to fit in 10 minutes of meditation during the day, but I usually mess it up. Like I'm usually too busy or some kind of personal excuse that I'm trying to get better at, but it's what happens.

I'll always do 10 minutes of meditation before bed because I know that I can guarantee that I will be in my bed, that I can listen to a calm or an insight timer or something like that. Or waking up, I like a lot as well. So I will do 10 minutes of meditation before bed and I will always do my gratitude journal. So, and this is one of the ways that the brain care journal came out and a whole other topic another time is marriage OKRs, which like literally. Very interesting. Yeah. A whole other topic for me.

Yeah, a whole other topic for another time. Marriage OKRs with my wife, which like my evening practice plays into a lot. So I do like a habit tracker, what are the things I did today so that I have some awareness as well. Like, did I actually do my brain care habits? Like, is it like, again, like going for a walk, drinking enough water? Like these are all things I do for my brain because if it's good for my brain, it's good for my body. And therefore I'm going to be happy, productive, et cetera. But also, you know, I make sure that we do three things that went well today.

It's the usual gratitude practice from Martin Seligman. So three things that went well. One thing I manifest. So quite often it's something for someone else. You know, I hope my friends, you know, exams go well, whatever the thing is, right? Like you just, it gives you a great moment to think about who's in your circle and who you want to pray for something good for.

Let's do one thing we learned today. So with my wife, one thing we taught each other. So that gets us into the habit. This is from marriage, okay Oz, right? So this is a bit more like niche. But anyway, this is like one thing that I learned today that I wanna share with my wife, that I wanna teach her. And it just gets us into the process of learning something new every single day 'cause we know that we're gonna teach each other something before we go to sleep. And the final thing is what we ate today.

So that keeps us on track to be like, you know, it's accountability with a partner, right? It's like, you know, it has these sort of separate lives, but they're together and we want to live a long and fulfilling life together over the long term. So as long as you're accountable on a daily basis on the things you're grateful for, what you're learning, what you're eating and how you're spending your time and you're comparing those sort of with action accountability at the end of the day, just by sharing with each other, sort of keeps you roughly on the straight and narrow. Interesting. That's very interesting. I have so many questions to ask you about this while we're having lunch.

Okay, Abe says, what is one piece of business advice you ignored and now regret not taking? Oh, that's a great question. I don't ignore this now, but the advice I always ignored before was focus on margin. Margin as in? Margin as in business margin. As in, so when you're making a physical product, you're making a product for anyone, right?

inclination as an entrepreneur sometimes people can be very price sensitive especially with a product like this it's a very expensive product to make and we're working in an industry where everyone pedals cheap stuff so the understanding of the quality and the price that you should pay is way off the mark so it's very tempting to take a huge hit on your margin to basically sell it at almost nothing so well not almost nothing but almost at the point where you're not making any money but I

great advice i got and you get this in business school or when you fail a business which i have um if you don't look after your margin you can't look after your customers you can't look after um problems you can't look after your team like it's a big mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make and especially bleeding heart ones like myself a lot of people that go into entrepreneurship who want to do good and want to do great things i don't care about money and all these narratives and stuff and the reality is all of those things will limit you from being successful um

The reality is if you're choosing to be an entrepreneur and make a business, your responsibility to everyone, your customers and your team, is to make sure that you're doing it in a sustainable way, that you can grow, that you found the right price point, that you can get the best quality, you can do all of the things that align with your objectives as a company. Selling the cheapest products at the cheapest prices, that's like an Amazon thing, right? That's literally like that's one of their things. That's why they exist. So great. That fits their business model. And at the scale they're at of billions of customers, it works.

But for most of us, that doesn't work. And so it's a really hard lesson I learned from failing. Interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. And finally, Grace says, what's one piece of advice that you'd give for aspiring entrepreneurs? Yeah. So one piece of advice, like 100% so obvious, like so, so, so obvious, but it's just be kind. So...

it is not that big like everything comes around I mean obviously I believe in karma and things like that because like I you've been listening to me of course I do of course

And it's uncanny to me how many times being kind to someone without even really thinking about it has come back to 10x that opportunity for me later. Right. So it's not even just like trying to say to people, be kind in a spiritual sense. Be kind because it's good for business. Be kind to everyone you possibly can all the time because it's great for business. And like wherever you can take the high road.

So don't get involved in like pettiness. Don't do stuff to like, because this person did X, I'm going to do Y. Like all of those things are emotional moments that are going to come up when you're running a business for sure. And it's fine to have those thoughts and it's fine to fantasize about those thoughts, but don't act on them or do them. Always take the high road. It's never worth it. And business will be good to you back. Awesome. Dan?

Dan, thank you so much. Where can people find out more about you, learn about you if they're interested? Yeah, so I'm at Dan Murray Serta on all social platforms, my podcast where I interview other leaders as secret leaders and our brain care podcast. If you're into all things neuroscience and mental health is where you'll find that on any podcast player. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, man. And we'll see you later, everyone. Thanks for listening.

That's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to check out Dan's podcast, Secret Leaders and Brain Care, we've linked them in the description. If you did enjoy this episode, don't forget to subscribe to be notified when we post a new video and let us know in the comments who you'd like to see on the podcast next. Have a great day and see you later.