Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - How to Optimize Your Gut Health for High Performance | Dr. Colleen Cutcliffe

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

This week’s conversation is with Dr. Colleen Cutcliffe, the CEO and Co-Founder of Pendulum Therapeutics.Colleen’s extensive background includes a doctorate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Johns Hopkins University, and over 20 years of experience managing and leading teams in biotech, pharma, and academia.In 2013, Colleen left her position as Senior Manager of Biology at Pacific Biosciences to start Pendulum, a company on a mission to improve health through first of its kind research and development in the gut microbiome.Pendulum’s next generation probiotics are pioneering ways for people to transform their health and wellness by unlocking the power of the gut microbiome.I’ve been studying gut health and the microbiome for a long time now, and it’s clear that Pendulum is on the forefront of creating meaningful change for people.I was fascinated to learn more about the topic from Colleen, and I hope you leave this conversation with a better understanding of the gut microbiome, and some applied insights on how improving your gut health can improve your life._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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components to really be successful in your health. Okay, welcome back, or welcome to the finding mastery podcast i am your host dr michael gervais by trade and training a high performance psychologist and i'm excited to welcome dr colleen cutcliffe to the finding mastery community colleen is the ceo and co-founder of pendulum therapeutics who's on a mission to improve health through the first-of-its-kind research and development in the gut microbiome. She received a doctorate degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from Johns Hopkins University, and then she spent over 20 years managing and leading teams in biotech, pharma, and academia.

So Colleen, before we get started, I just want to say I'm honored to have Pendulum as a partner on the show. I've been studying gut health and the microbiome for a long time, not at your level, but I understand the value of it. And you're on the forefront of creating meaningful change for people. So I can't wait to take a deep dive and learn from you today. So with that, thank you so much for being here. How are you? I'm great. Thanks so much for having me. I'm also excited about our conversation today and getting to partner with you. And gut health is becoming such a common word and everybody has maybe a little bit of different

definition of what it means. So excited to dig in with you today and share thoughts. I thought what we do is we would better understand some of the science and then better understand where that comes from for you and what you're trying to solve. For two decades, just as a framework, you were working in biotech and pharma. And then what was the impetus for you to pursue, you know, gut microbiome specifically? I think there were two really key factors that made me jump in with both feet. The first was really the science, the microbiome science that was emerging and things like probiotics and yogurts have been on the shelves for decades, but there hasn't actually been a novel kind of new species introduced into

the world for over 50 years. When you think about any industry where you haven't had real innovation over 50 years, that's sort of exciting to anybody who is kind of a creative thinker. And the microbiome is all of the bacteria and viruses and fungi that reside inside and on us. And the way we know about them now is through DNA sequencing. So DNA sequencing technologies enabled us to understand the microbiome and therefore to create new innovative interventions in the space. And so for me, I was actually working at a DNA sequencing instrument company. And so from a science perspective, there's this really cool new health opportunity that hadn't been available to us before because that data wasn't available to us. And so there was sort of that scientist and innovator part of me that was intrigued by it and bringing new products to the world.

But then as I started reading and learning more about the microbiome, I realized there was also a personal connection for me through my first daughter. So my first daughter was born almost two months prematurely, and she was about four and a half pounds. I held her for a couple of seconds, and then literally she was taken away to intensive care, hooked up to all these machines and monitors, and also receiving multiple doses of antibiotics. And I noticed about her, I mean, if we got out of the hospital and she was ostensibly healthy, but I noticed about her over time as she got into elementary school that there were things about her health that were different than the rest of our family. So in particular, she had food sensitivities that the rest of us didn't have. She was the kid in Baskin-Robbins asking how much dairy is in the Sherbert. And she also just had to worry about her metabolism was just different. She had to worry about what she was consuming. And at that same time, this study came out where they looked at 12,000 children and they showed that babies who were systematically given antibiotics were also systematically more prone to obesity and type 2 diabetes as they got

older. And then that study was recently repeated by the Mayo Clinic, and they showed that kids under two years old, if they got systematically exposed to antibiotics, they were not only more prone to obesity and diabetes, but also allergies, asthma, ADHD, celiac disease, all of these different things. And it really stems from the fact that the antibiotic treatment completely decimates your microbiome. And so you're missing or lacking these key functions in your body that everybody else has. And so at the same time, this science was emerging, the DNA sequencing application was clear. I read this, you know, paper, I connected all the dots with my daughter.

I thought, oh my gosh, we could create products that could help millions of people, including my own daughter who had this early antibiotic treatment and is on a path to potentially these chronic illnesses and lifelong health issues. Let's do it. Okay. It sounds like the classic entrepreneurial experience. Like I'm grinding, I'm figuring it out. There's a moment of crisis, trauma, suffering in the family. And then I uniquely saw a way through it that I could actually help my family and at the same time with the entrepreneurial spirit, maybe turn it into something that's meaningful for many. How did you, before we get into the microbiome, how did you manage that? Because that's a story, and I'm glossing over for sure many of the details in your

life, but I think many of us are grinding. We're doing our thing. And there's this other idea that maybe there's something else I'd like to do, but we don't actually grab that vine. We don't actually take the next step towards it. So how did you make that transition? Well, actually, I didn't initially make that transition. I first pitched the idea to the CEO of the company that I was working at. And to be totally honest,

I don't think of myself as entrepreneurial or an entrepreneur. I became an entrepreneur because that was the only way that I could actually do the thing that I wanted to do. But I first pitched it to my CEO and basically got a no. And that was what started the path of, okay, well, then how will I get it done? And I don't know if you can remember a time where, you know, you pitch an idea to somebody and they said no, and you just felt like you still needed to do it. Yeah. Okay. I do know what that feels like. And it feels like it happens to me all the time. So that's why I'm in this space as well. Yeah. Okay.

All right. So how old were you at that time? That was about 10 years ago. So I was in my mid thirties. Okay. So career's rolling and you're applying what you studied. You're leading your company in the field and you're applying what you studied. You're leading your company in the field and you had another idea and you've got a new family.

Okay, so what is the next step that you take? Once you get the no, how long does it fester for you? Or how long did it fester for you? I think whenever we make these changes, you know, and everybody's been through life changes, whether it's, I mean, starting a new company is one example of a life change, but, you know, relationships, moving to a new city, you know, there are a variety of different things that we do.

And I think when we look back on those moments, there's a push pull. So I was pulled to this new idea. I wanted to do something there, but I also was feeling something unsatisfying about the current position I was in. I felt like I was doing fine in my career, but it didn't feel inspirational, as inspirational as something else could be. And I remember distinctly, there was one morning where I pulled into the parking lot of my job and I turned off the car and I sat in the car and took a deep breath and was like giving myself basically a pep talk to go into work. It was like sitting in the parking lot thinking, oh, I really don't

want to go in and saying to myself, all right, it's going to be a good day. Let's do this. And I think those are some of the moments where you realize, like, you have to give yourself a pep talk to go into the building. You're not doing the right thing with your time. So I think for me, it was that both the push and the pull. What was your health like at that time? My health was fine. And actually, I would say, you know, part of becoming a parent is that you, your children almost, and this is, you know,

probably totally from caveman days, but your children start to become the thing you think about the most. So I was not thinking about my health. In fact, we sacrifice our own health. We have terrible sleep when these people are little, they're constantly waking us up. We're at their beck and call. So you start to think about their health. And I really was honed in on the health of my kids. And that was, I think, what was the impetus more them than myself. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true.

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I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly.

They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Atiyah, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief

science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters and that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus recovery for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out, get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Did you notice once you started understanding the relationship between

antibiotics and probiotics that you, and you were using some of your own science that you saw a difference in yourself, or did you see the difference in your daughter before it made a difference for you? And the reason I'm asking this question is because it's framing, is this better? Do we see more radical results if we're struggling or suffering from a health, gut health perspective, or is, is the fast track with somebody who's already healthy and it's relatively healthy. And this is more from let's call it struggling to thriving versus suffering to struggling. Um, I think it is, um, from just a numbers game, it's easier to see a difference.

If you are the, the, the further away from optimal you are, um, you've just got that much more of what we call in science, a dynamic range. So that range is so much bigger that you can see small changes more easily because you're so far away. However, what I have observed is that people who are really thinking about optimal performance are so quantitative that they also observe small changes. And so you kind of have the two ends of the spectrum, the people that are really far away from optimum, where small changes make a big difference. And then the people who are really already at the cusp are really thinking about

how do I continue to optimize, they also observe small changes. And somewhere in the middle is where people kind of maybe don't observe as much. And I would be curious because you're really working in health optimization, what you've experienced in terms of people seeing differences with new tools and interventions. Yeah. It's so much easier to, I don't know, take a college athlete and help them be faster, more confident, stronger, you know, more resilient. And I'm toggling between physical and mental skills than it is to take Usain Bolt and help him, right?

Because he's already so finely tuned and maxing, if you will. At least, I don't know Usain Bolt, but like the idea still holds up that taking something that's highly tuned and trying to fine tune just the margins is much more difficult and much more stimulating than working with somebody who has a large gap to be able to close to understand their potential. So I think the same probably holds true for psychology. But the advantage of psychology is that so few have actually deeply invested that the margins are quite wide for most people. That's true. That's true.

And I would say, too, one of the interesting things is that when we're younger, maybe we take all of these strengths that we have for granted. Like I remember a time, and I'm sure you remember a time where we could eat or drink whatever we wanted to. We never even thought twice about it. And as you age, maybe you have more of an appreciation for, you know, those things that you used to have and are maybe noticing more when things slow down or you start worrying about things more. Like I don't think I had a sleepless night until I, you know, had my own kids. So things like that, maybe you observe more and appreciate more as you, as you age. I didn't have a drop of caffeine, you know, really, I didn't eat, I didn't eat sodas or drink sodas before I had my child. I didn't have like, but I did. Yeah, you too. So I will say

though, like I love my parents, but they did not show me the way with nutrition. And so prior to sport, surfing was my main sport, we would grab, my buddy and I would grab a dozen donuts and we'd sit and eat. Can you imagine this? We'd split a box of donuts and then we'd go surf like three or four before and three or four after. And each, and it was, I mean, it's so gross.

When was the last time you had a donut? Saturday. No. Terrible, but it's true. Was it a gourmet donut or was it like, oh my gosh, wow. You really, you just went right to the kind of like, uh, professional there. Uh, you're good. You're good. Um, I have a donut shop at the end of my street and that's a Saturday thing is, it's not even like highend donuts, just, you know, donut. It's actually refreshing to hear because like, I don't know, I don't know the science behind this, but I imagine that a fried glazed sugary something piece of dough that you're eating

is not good for your gut biome, but there's a stretch there, but it's refreshing to hear that you're actually eating some donuts. It's not good for your gut microbiome, but I am doing a lot of things to counter that donut, which we can get into. And I also think that a little bit of ice is okay. It's good. It's healthy. Okay. All right. So let's start at the top. Let's start at like, what is, go back to square one, what is the gut microbiome? Why is important? What is its function? You know, how do we get better at enhancing, um, the, that organism? So let's start at the top. All right. Uh, so kind of at the 50,000 foot level, um, your microbiome

is all the bacteria, viruses, and fungi. They're on our skin, they're in our gut, they're in our lungs, they're sort of everywhere. And we've co-evolved with these microorganisms over time, and they actually play a really important role in our health. And so we think about bacteria and certainly viruses as of late as really bad things that we want to eradicate, and they cause us to become sick. And that's true, but the vast majority of them are actually not these bad players. The vast majority of them are actually not these bad players. The vast majority of them are actually providing protective functions for us and helping us protect our bodies from the outside world and all the allergens, helping us metabolize our foods,

helping us digest our foods. And so the microbiome is really all of these organisms that help us with our health. And just to do a couple of definitions, a prebiotic is the food that feeds the bacteria. So things like fibers and polyphenols, these are prebiotics that feed the bacteria. The bacteria themselves are called probiotics. So prebiotics feed the probiotics. And then kind of a new phrase that's emerging is this phrase called postbiotics. So each of these bugs, they kind of make their own small molecules that have all of these different impacts in your body. And those small molecules are the postbiotics. So the prebiotics are the food for the bacteria, and the postbiotics are things that they produce when they're being fed well. And so this is kind of the ecosystem of the microbiome. And maybe one really key thing is that you may have heard the phrase leaky gut or your

gut lining and gut permeability. This is referring to your gut microbiome, which is, you know, your distal colon. There is actually a important part to the lining. And so I think about this like I have a wooden fence in my backyard. When I moved into my house, it was brand new. The fence, you know, had all these really strong pillars that had really strong glue between them. And they kept my lawn and my yard secure.

Over time, through wear and tear and sunshine and rain, the planks start to get weak and, you know, they might even fall. And so now we got a real problem because now I'm exposed to my neighbor's yard. So your gut lining is exactly the same thing. You literally have a fence that is your lining. And there are specific strains whose job it is to stand at that lining and make sure that those planks are really strong and that you don't have leaky gut so that all of the things that are supposed to be inside the gut stay there and all things on the outside of the gut stay there. And so that's another really important part of microbiome science is that strong gut lining. And then what is the function? I get the cheap version, which is like they're good for your health, but what is

the actual function that the bacteria do? Well, there's a lot of them in there forming an ecosystem. They have a lot of different roles. The an ecosystem. They do all, they have a lot of different roles. The thing that we've really been studying is their role in metabolizing your food. So everything you eat after it goes through your stomach goes right to the microbiome where it gets digested. And one of the key things about, about fiber is that we all know a high fiber diet is really good for us. We're supposed to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, but it turns out that actually your body can't metabolize a bunch of those fibers. They're entirely metabolized by your gut microbiome.

And when your microbiome metabolizes those fibers, it creates all the signaling that leads to GLP-1 and glucose and insulin responses. And so when you don't have the right microbes, the fiber you're eating is literally going right through you and you're not getting all those benefits of managing your glucose. And I think that that is one of the most important new discoveries in the microbiome is that your metabolism is tied to your gut microbiome. And then for clarity, what are the post biotics? Is that what we find in the toilet or is there, is it,

is it literally small bacteria that, um, or like the gas, if you will? And I don't want to say that that's not the right word. Is it the exchange from the metabolites? Yeah, it's more of that. So it's, uh, so for example, butyrate would be a good example of a postbiotic. So you have all these strains, butyrate, it's a molecule that has a lot of known, you know, benefits in health. So, so that would be an example of a, of a postbiotic. Okay. Because early days there was conversation about, um, you know, scoop your poop. We're going to assess, um, we're going to assess your pro or your gut biome through your feces. And I understand why that's value. But I also, I have not taken a test where I've said, Oh, I understand what to do now. So I know I get that we're moving the science forward by, you know, having many trials so that people can get better

at identifying what some of the solutions are. But I haven't taken a test yet where I'm like, oh, there's the culprit or there's something I should be able to optimize. I guess a two-part question is the first part was why is the structure of feces important, the consistency and the structure of feces? And that's like the eyeball test, if you will. And then the second is what are we doing when, with the science right now in the analysis of the microbiota? Yeah, I think the first question is an interesting one. You know, we walk around with all of these, you know, devices and things that are measuring all the different parts of our body and our sleep and everything that we're doing. And the meanwhile, you know, God kind of gave us the ultimate diagnostic marker, which is

our poop. So now I'm going to ask you a kind of a weird, stay with me for a second here. I'm going to ask you a weird question. It depends on if I'm eating donuts or not. Have you ever? I'll share if you share. Yeah, actually, I should ask you when the last time you had a donut, you were eating dozens of these. Yeah, no, it's been a long time.

I'm trying to get my gut right. I don't think it's strong. And I've been looking at it, you know, and studying some of the metabolites as well as the gut biome for a while now. And I just don't feel like it's strong. So let's take a little journey here. Yeah. We'll dig into that. Right. So my question for you is, have you ever pooped and then turned around and looked in the toilet bowl to see what your poop looked like? It's weird. I do it all the time. Yeah. We all do it all the time. And we get annoyed when there's too much toilet paper in there and we can't see our poop. Like

this is something that everybody is doing. And if you take a second to ask, I can tell you that once I started this company, the most common set of conversations I had was around people's poop. And I started to think about this and realize that actually everybody is looking back in that toilet bowl and everybody is annoyed when there's too much toilet paper in there and you can't see your poop. And the question is why, what are we looking at? What are we looking for? This is a basic instinct. We don't even know what we're looking for. And I'll tell you what we're looking for. Worms. Potentially worms. The ancient brain has trained us to find worms or not. Yeah, no, no, keep going. I'm being silly. But you're on the right track. The ancient brain has trained us to look at this

diagnostic marker because what you're doing every day that you look at it is you're creating a baseline in your head of what does my poop look like? Therefore, you know what it looks like when it's different, when it changes. And that's your indicator that something is happening inside of your body that's not quite right. And so it truly is the world's oldest diagnostic marker. And we are ingrained in our ancient brain to be monitoring it, even though we don't even know we're doing it. And that's how important and fundamental the gut microbiome is to us.

Oh, that's really good. And we spoke, I think it was last week and I had just eaten, it was a salad and, um, you know, doing my best to make a good healthy choice and lots of different vegetables in the salad. And, um, five minutes after I ate it, the top of my stomach looked like there was a beach ball in there, like, like a, or like a soccer ball or something. I was like, what just happened? And so I'm, I'm sure there was something in there. Yeah. I'm sure of it. But my, my poop was like a mess and I'm being polite. Like, so, and actually it was, there was a constipation that was taken that took place first. So can you talk about like what we eat and how that affects our feces? Yeah. Your food is, well, I would say

the most dramatic way to change your microbiome and your gut is an antibiotic. And then the second thing is really your food. So if you change, let's say you decide I'm going to become a vegetarian one day, it takes you about two months, but two months later, your gut microbiome looks completely different than it did in the beginning. And so your diet is one of the most dramatic ways to change your microbiome. And we don't need science to tell us that. I mean, we can show you lots of plots around that. You know that, you know, when you travel to a new place and you eat new foods, you have a different digestive experience than when you're eating the foods you're normally eating. Or like you said, you eat a bad salad, you know, right away.

And so really the, you know, relationship between the food that you're eating and your gut microbiome and your stool, it's like, there's like a direct line. And so that's why your stool is such an indicator of what's happening in your gut microbiome and you can influence it through the food that you're eating. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters.

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Bacteria, then the fiber is not going to be metabolized properly. So where do we start? Well, we are actually designed to have these bacteria and to get them over time through our childhood years. And so from the minute that you are conceived, you know, through delivery, there's even differences in a microbiome between a vaginal delivery versus C-section, the foods that you're introduced to as a toddler, all of this is designed to kind of set your microbiome. And typically, you know, most young people have a really thriving, diverse microbiome that is performing all of its functions.

And what happens over time is you actually start to lose these microbes. And part of it is through things that we have control over, like our diet and our exercise. Part of it is things that we don't have control over. So when you are, when you age, your microbiome becomes depleted. When you undergo stress, your microbiome becomes depleted. As women, every time we go through a cycle or have go through menopause, our microbiomes become depleted. Whenever you travel and your circadian rhythm is different, day is night, night is day, your microbiome becomes depleted. So there are all these things that we're just doing as part of being, you know, humans and living that are causing us to lose these certain microbes. And so, yes, a high fiber diet and great nutrition is super important. But at some point,

also giving back these strains allows you to have the one-two punch. It's sort of like a, I think of it like a car, you know, you want to put great fuel into your car, but you also need a great engine. The fuel is the food you're eating. The engine is the microbiome. So if you put shitty fuel into a great car, you're not going to get high performance. And if you have the top of the line fuel, but the worst engine ever, you're also not going to get a great high performing car. So you need both of these components to really be successful in your health. When you think of some of the high flyover research results or results from people that have their gut microbiome intact, what are some of those benefits that you're seeing? Well, first and foremost, if you're having any blood glucose or blood spikes, blood glucose spikes that you're trying to minimize, people see that kind of as, you know, kind of hard improvements.

Same thing if you're A1C, which is a number that gets measured if you have diabetes. If your A1C is high, we see people kind of being able to reduce their A1C, being able to reduce their blood sugar spikes, all of those kind of measurable hard benefits. But alongside those are also all of the maybe softer benefits that come with being able to metabolize your foods better. So better digestion. So you don't have as much kind of diarrhea and constipation and bloating and gas and pain, people tend to have more energy. And maybe the more important thing is the more sustained energy throughout the day. So you kind of don't have as much of that post-lunch slump or brain fog and things like that. We have a lot of

people reporting better workouts, better sleep. And, you know, one of the most interesting things is about 60% of our customers have reported that when they're able to get a better microbiome and this better blood glucose control, 60% of them have reduced sugar cravings. And that's a really interesting part that we haven't talked about, which is the relationship between your gut and your brain, but your gut having the optimal gut microbiome can also reduce some of the cravings for the foods that are really not good for your body. And so there's also that, you know, kind of nice outcome that leads to, you know, better food and better diet and a nice positive circle you end up being on.

When you think about optimizing the microbiome, how would you start us? You say, okay, listen, here's five ways to think about really being great with it. Well, I would start by saying we're very early in the science. So 10 years from now, five years from now, I think there's gonna be even more tools in our toolbox. So right now, I think we're at the very beginning. So all of the tools are relatively crude. And so, you know, the first thing is that we know fibers and polyphenols, these are prebiotics. Those are really good for feeding the good, if you want to call them good, microbes in your gut.

So increasing fibers, increasing polyphenols and foods with those things in them is a- Where do you get your polyphenols? Polyphenols are pretty high in things like pomegranates, um, and, uh, actually grapes. Um, there are also polyphenols in red wine as well as dark chocolates. So there's some fun places to get your polyphenols. Um, so, you know, those are, those are some of the places where you can kind of increase your polyphenol intake, um, tea leaves and coffee bean. Yeah. Yes. Those also have polyphenols in them. That's right. Yeah. And then also increasing your fiber through high fiber foods, which are

mostly vegetables. Jerusalem artichokes are some of the highest fiber. Asparagus also have really high fiber content. But basically any fruit or vegetable you're going to grab and eat as a whole, you know, vegetable or fruit is going to have good fiber content in it. So eating those kinds of foods is good for your microbiome. It's interesting because you bring up, you know, grapes and then red wine. And my assumption is that, or not an assumption, but some of the research is that wine wreaks havoc on the gut biome. So maybe you can, of course, correct that or double down on it. I think, you know, everybody who's in health knows that alcohol, you know, has detrimental effects on your health in a wide variety of ways. But that, you know, in moderation, you're not going to one glass of wine isn't going to totally decimate your microbiome.

And I this is when you're really like, I don't have that many vices, but they're now all kind of coming to light on this. Donuts and red wine. I see. That's not even red wine. Oh, it's bourbon. It's even worse than red wine. More hardcore. Yeah. A little bourbon every night is not going to kill you. It's not going to be great for you, but you know. All right. So, okay, good. So then how do you, let's go, let's go this way. So you've got

high fiber, you've got polyphenols are the two ways that you're helping support your gut biome. The relationship with sleep and gut biome? Um, I think that's still in early stages of research, but, um, but there, but what's not in early stages is that when you're metabolizing your sugars, when you're metabolizing your glucose better, that is, there are quite a few studies showing that that's linked to, uh, better sleep or more restful sleep. And so if you're, you know, improving your body's metabolism of glucose, you're, as you know, you're hitting something very fundamental that shows up in lots of different ways, including sleep. Why does stress affect our gut in such an intense way?

It is, it is interesting. I mean, I, I think that that right now what we know is that stress will deplete your microbiome. And maybe what's unclear is the complexity of what stress does to our behaviors, that it maybe is not the stress itself that leads to the change of microbiome, but maybe the stress leads to a different eating habit. And we know that the food you eat changes your microbiome dramatically. And so it could be, you know, that relationship. There could also be this, this gut brain relationship where the, we know the gut is talking to the brain, you know, and the brain might also be talking to the gut. And so I think there's also that kind of, you know, potential way that these things are getting disrupted. But the short answer is we don't exactly know. We just know the observation that when people go through periods of heavy stress, their microbiome looks different on the other side of that, not in a good way. Yeah. And when I say stress, I was shorthanding chronic stress, which I would imagine you picked up on as well. But I have not studied this and I don't know this, but it seems that there would be a relationship between the gut brain access and cortisol. And I love that you actually created something

behavioral as an indicator. Like when you are chronically stressed, maybe not sleeping well, overthinking, excessive worry, that the internal resources are not matching the perception of the external stresses that you are eating differently. Like that's a bit of a light bulb moment for me. And because of that, maybe you're not choosing polyphenols and fibers. You're choosing something with high sugar. You're searching for donuts and bourbon down regulation and, you know, up regulation. Yeah. Okay, good. So, all right. So what is the relationship between gut biome and intermittent fasting? This is, I think, a super interesting topic. So obviously when you're fasting, you're not feeding your gut microbiome anything. And the most, what I have come to realize about intermittent fasting is that the most important

thing is the first thing you put in your mouth when you come off of the fasting. So you imagine you've got this basically a starved environment. So all the microbes in your gut are now waiting for food and they're all equally waiting for food. That first resource that you give them is the decider between who's going to thrive and who's not. And so that is important thing. The first thing you eat and what I would pair with that and what I do pair with that are also these probiotics that are the good probiotics that help you with the gut lining. So, you know, we haven't talked about this specific strain yet, but acromantia

is the only strain out there that literally lives in your gut lining and is making sure that that fence is strong that we talked about earlier. So if you pair the athletic greens or similar, you know, high fiber product as the first thing you put in with the microbes that you want to colonize there, that's your fuel in your engine going in at the same time. Do you take that on an empty stomach, relatively empty stomach, acromionacea? Yeah. I take it at breakfast, at the at the, the, the breaking of the fast. Yeah. Okay. So, so for me, the breaking of my fast is not it's athletic greens as a little bit of a

holdover until I actually put some calories in because there's no calories in it. And so it might be another two hours before I have calories. So where, when would you take your strain? Well, I should say that when we've done clinical trials, we actually have people taking them in the morning and the evening because everybody kind of eats on different cycles and timelines. And so it's not clear for every person what's the right time to take it. I myself don't tend to eat until kind of middle of the day. And so my, my like breakfast is really kind of the middle slash early afternoon. And so I take these pills first thing in the morning, because I feel like, again, it's about competition. So if there's, if everybody else is starved, and now we're introducing the strains that we really want to colonize. And then shortly after I'm going to, I know I'm going to be eating food that's going to feed them or several hours later.

That's kind of my routine. So I take mine in the morning to try to seed in the morning. And then, you know, eating the foods that are going to feed those microbes later. Okay. So you found a novel strain, acromantia. How did you find it? And then maybe start with what is it and why is it so important to the gut lining, the fence, discovered these strains was we were looking in healthy people versus people with metabolic issues. So people with type two diabetes or obesity, and really trying to understand what is different between these two people's microbiomes. And maybe, you know, looking at one of the most interesting things is to look at twins. So, you know, finding twins that are discordant where one twin is healthy and the other twin is sick and sort of saying, all right, these two people

are now genetically identical. What is different about their microbiomes that might be driving kind of these different observations of these different outcomes of phenotypes? And so we were doing those studies and I should say though, those studies were also being done by top tier academics, both in the US and around the world. And what happened was that were very clear functions in the microbiome that healthy people had a vast abundance of, and people who were obese or with type two diabetes were low or entirely missing. And then you could mark those, you could track those functions and, and, and link them to the strains that had those functions. And sure enough, people were lower missing those strains. And that's really where the first list came from. And so then we started trying to dig into like, well, why are these strains missing? What are they doing? Why are they important? And that's when you're getting

to the genetics and the biology. And that's where these strains emerge. And acromantia has really kind of elevated because I know you said you haven't really taken a gut microbiome test that felt like... No, no, no. I've taken many. Oh, so I'm sorry. I cut you off. It hasn't helped me. Yeah. It hasn't helped you. And so what I'll say is that, you know, now maybe you want to look back at those gut microbiome test results because what's becoming clear is that most of these gut microbiome tests are now going to call out specifically your levels of acromantia. And if you're low in acromantia, it's showing up for you in a wide variety of unhealthy states. And so the one thing I would say that's actionable from a gut microbiome test right now for sure is if you're low in acromantia, you can give yourself acromantia back. And one of

the great things I think that's exciting about what we've done is that we're the only company that's figured out actually how to grow and create this acromancy of product. So it is really now, I think at this moment, an opportunity to be able to take that test, say I'm low in this strain, and now I'm going to give it back to myself. And I'm going to look at whether I see these health outcomes that I've been looking for. Great. So prior to this conversation, I did pull up my most recent test, which was about nine months ago, and I was normal on it.

And so is there a benefit? One, why would I be normal on it? Like, how am I getting that in without supplementation? What is your best guess there? And then is there an advantage for me to also supplement almost like an insurance form? Yeah. So you probably have it because, I mean, you're a pretty healthy guy. And so, as I said, people who are healthy have vast abundance of these strains and people

who are sick are lower missing them. So, you know, you're healthy right now and you've got a healthy amount of acromantia and that is potentially not surprising. I think that I also don't have low levels of acromantia, but I take, I actually take the full glucose control formulation because I want to eat my donuts and help my body metabolize sugars. But the reason I take them is because we know that you do get depleted over time just through the aging process. And so as a way to maintain those levels, supplementing with the actual strain is one way to do that. Eating healthy is a good way to keep your acromancia high. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't

just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself, my family, and our team here at Finding Mastery. It's become part of my nightly routine. Throw on their lounge pants or pajamas, crawl into bed under their sheets, and my nervous system starts to settle. They also offer a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding, which tells me, tells you that they believe in the long-term value of

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And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Cal caldera lab it's not about adding more it's about choosing better and when your day demands clarity and energy and presence the way you prepare for it matters if you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it i'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the

code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. So then let's talk about the glucose control, blood sugar, glucose control. Why is that important to you? And why are you going after that specifically? As I said, I think the impetus is really my daughter and thinking about not only her food sensitivities, but also her metabolism. And so when it became clear that your food is digested in your gut microbiome and your microbiome can actually help you metabolize that food more efficiently and particularly help you metabolize sugars better.

That, that seemed like, oh, let's go after that. I mean, and so I think that that that's why we were interested in it. And I, I mean, I cannot be the only person that likes to eat donuts. So all of us would like to be able to metabolize our sugars better, I think. And, and so that, that seemed like seemed like a good thing to go after. I thought it was selfish. That's why I went after it. That is so good. That is so good.

So do you take it in the morning and at night, the supplement? Or do you take it right before you're going to eat something that's high sugar? I just take it every morning. And so what we're trying to do is colonize the strain. So I take it every morning. And so what we're trying to do is colonize the strain. So I take it every morning. Um, yeah. And I don't take it at night just because my, I have like a morning routine and I don't have like, it just, um, behavioral changes is hard. And so, uh, I just added it to the morning routine. Okay. Perfect. All right. And then, so, okay. Related, but not really related is the jet lag. And so I travel a lot. I think plenty of people do. And when it comes to glucose control and choices

and sitting, you know, if it's an international travel, like how has gut health affected by, let's call it just jet lag, the downstream effects from sitting in crossing time zones? Yeah. I don't think it's entirely clear kind of how those two things, like what's causing water, you know, how, you know, travel or jet lag might be influenced your gut microbiome, but what's very clear is that it does. So traveling to different time zones definitely changes your gut microbiome. Most people experience, you know, a change in your stool, again, going back to our, our oldest diagnostic marker, GI distress and things like that. And so, you know, it's changing your gut microbiome. And the question is, you know, what can you do about it? And I think that one of the, like, most amazing stories that

I heard was from somebody who is a physician who travels a lot for work as well. And he said, basically, he always brings, he has like his regimen of like supplements and things that he brings with him that help him with GI distress when he travels. And he decided to run an experiment where he didn't bring anything except for a bottle of acromancy at this gut lining strain. And he went on this trip and that's all he had on. And he said he had perfect digestion. He was able to eat whatever he wanted to. He didn't have GI distress. And this is someone who travels all the time. And so it has a pretty good sense of their baseline. And I thought that was so cool because it just really highlighted the importance of your microbiome. I mean,

now it's not gonna be a cure-all for everybody, but the fact is, you know, if it helps you, you could narrow it all down to one thing that maybe is going to help with that GI distress. Okay. Very cool. And do you, so in the last trip that I went on, most trips that I go on, I don't take a probiotic because, including yours, I don't take it with me because I always have the assumption that it needs to be refrigerated. And if I'm on a 12-hour flight, then I'm going to kind of, I don't know, kill off the strains. So maybe I'm wrong there. Well, the acromancy is room temperature stable. Um, but glucose needs to be refrigerated. Yeah. Okay. So I could take, I could take that. All right. So that's good

to know, but I, not the glucose control. Well, so here's what I do when I travel is I just take a few pills, um, throw them into my, my, you know, in like I have a insulated water bottle, um, not with water, but just throw the pills in there and put them in my backpack and just travel with them. You know, they're not going to be, they're not going to get all the way to room temperature and they're not going to be exposed to heat, but they can last, you know, a half day's flight. It's crazy that we're carrying around live strains. It is wild when you think that they're crawling all over us all the time, they're alive inside of us.

They were here before us, right? Like it's a bizarre world of bacteria that you live in. Well, and we're constantly trying to kill them with our antibacterial wipes and our antiseptic soaps and our antibiotics. We're just like really out to destroy every single one of them. And I would say if there's one thing people should keep in mind, it's that they're not all bad. So maybe cool it with the trying to kill them all. Okay. Let's drill in down one level deeper. What's the difference between aerobic and

anaerobic strains or organisms? So the word anaerobic and aerobic just refers to oxygen. So aerobic means there's oxygen involved. Like when we do aerobic exercise, like we're using a lot of oxygen and then anaerobic is when there's no oxygen. So when we talk about the gut microbiome, you know, your stomach has oxygen in it, your small intestines have oxygen in it, but when you get to the distal colon, which is where the gut microbiome is, and we talk about it, it is anaerobic, meaning there's no oxygen there. And so this is kind of one of the big revolutions I think that you're going to see happening in the probiotic space. All the probiotics that are on the shelves right now are aerobic. They're not these anaerobic

strains. In other words, they can live in some level of oxygen and they're easily manufactured because you can have oxygen in the system. Oxygen is everywhere. So the challenge to growing anaerobic strains and especially these strictly anaerobic strains is that you can't have a single molecule of oxygen in your entire manufacturing plant, like the whole place where you're manufacturing. So- Oh my goodness.

We ended up, so when we first started, I was like, we're not going to manufacture these things. Look how many people make probiotics. Why would we do that? We don't have to reinvent that wheel. And we kept sending out our strain and asking people to send us back, you know, manufactured product and everything was dead. And we realized that actually we needed to create our own manufacturing plant where we had this end to end entirely closed system that keeps oxygen out and that no other plant was actually in the world existed that could do that. And so the future of probiotics is going to be these anaerobic strains that are going to require people to make new manufacturing plants. And that's kind of sprouting up around the world

right now that keep entirely keep all oxygen out of the system to mimic your gut microbiome so these things can grow. So we got a little bit of a virtual tour of just kind of looking over your balcony into your facility. Is that what you've done? That is what we have built. It is a end-to-end entirely closed system where no oxygen can get into it. That is insane. Yeah, that's a big, that's a big undertaking.

Your daughter doesn't realize the lengths you've gone to to get her intestinal wall just dialed in. Yeah, that was a new thing of not only for us, but also our investors. Hey, by the way, we're also going to need to build this plant. But I think that, look, this is the thing is that if you want to make an impact in health, it's going to be, it takes a second to do that. And you don't even know around each corner, how many times you're going to have to innovate. And the microbiome around every corner, I would just say, there's just been new innovation needed. So how does the business model work? Because I can't imagine that a couple supplements can justify building a facility. Maybe it can, and because the price points and,

you know, but like, how does that work? Our theory about the company, about the probiotic space in general, was premised in the idea that people right now have access to a lot of probiotics. I mean, you go stand in Whole Foods, there's hundreds of probiotics on this shelf. But they're all kind of more or less iterations of the same thing. There's great marketing innovation. But if you look at, you know, if you are a label looker, you'll see they're all kind of lactobacillus and bifidobacterium. That's what every probiotic is.

And people take it because they think they're healthy and they're going to be good for them. Some people experience GI improvements, but a lot of people take probiotics because they just think like, oh, this is healthy for me. So the thesis of the company when we started this was, what if you could create a probiotic that actually gave you health benefits that were measurable? And to do that, it'd have to be innovative. It couldn't be the same stuff that was on the shelves. And you built it in a way that fit into your lifestyle. And so could you marry the best of the consumer world and the pharmaceutical world, create products that have the efficacy of a drug, but the safety of a probiotic, and then you are creating a game changing product that people actually experience benefit from and want to take every day. And so that was always the goal. And

that is the mission of the company. And so what we've learned since launching our products, you know, we spent the first eight years of our company as an R&D organization, building these products, doing preclinical work, clinical work, developing them like a pharmaceutical drug company would. But at the end, we're bringing these to consumers because this is a, you know, a probiotic at the end of the day. What we found is that we have an extremely high retention rate, meaning that people repurchase this product every month. And we even have customers who have said, I went off of it because I wasn't sure if I was just imagining the health

benefits. And then I had all these issues and then I went back on it. And so the product is delivering on the products, I should say, are each delivering on a promise for people that they are experiencing real health benefits from. And so they continue to buy the product. And we have these, you know, very high retention rates. And that's the core of the business. And to me, that's also the core of building a game changing health company. You know, the product is working when people are paying monthly out of pocket for something, because it's giving them a real health benefit. And they're sharing those stories back with you and with their doctors and their doctors are sharing stories with you. And you can start to see the flywheel turning and going because you've made a product that actually works. This is great. I feel like I'm learning about business frames. I'm learning

about kind of strains from, you know, gut health and then some applied practices. Are there other, when you, if you pull, push the chair back from the table for just a moment and say, okay, here's a set of best practices that are meaningful for me. And for, I think many people to optimize gut health, what would you say to do? Fiber, polyphenols, check, check. Is it, is it exercise? Is it what, what else do you lean on? Yeah. I mean, I exercise less, less for my gut microbiome and more for kind of mental health. But I think that the other things that are, you know, obviously I'm going to say you should, you should take pendulum probiotics in order to give yourselves a good bacteria. And then I'll tell you about another very interesting study, which is that these researchers were looking at people's microbiomes. Diversity is the key here. So

what happens over time is you lose the diversity of your microbiome. And so what you should be doing when you eat foods and you're consuming things is thinking about how do I get a more diverse diet so that I can have a diverse microbiome? So this study, what they did was they're looking at the diversity of person's microbiome. And they found that people who have dogs actually have a more diverse microbiome than people who don't have dogs. And then in that study, they also looked at people who have cats. And they found that people who have cats have basically the same microbiome as people who don't have dogs. And then in that study, they also looked at people who have cats and they found that people who have cats have basically the same microbiome as people who don't have cats. And the takeaway lesson here, of course, is that dog is man's best friend. You're hanging out with

your dog. They're giving you all these like diversity of microbes and cats are a little bit more aloof. They're not really hanging out with you. And so having them is not really changing your microbiome. But this study really shows us that having dogs, pets that you're actually kind of hugging and interacting with is actually good for your microbiome diversity. And so I thought that study was really interesting. So what about hugging and handshaking? There's a sensitivity to it because of COVID-19, but what about hugging and handshaking, the value? I'm a big fan of the hugging, the handshaking, you know, the cheek kissing, all of that, because not only does it diversify your microbiome, but there is, you know, pretty well-known documented responses that your body has when you have a physical contact with another person.

And so I think that it's not only helping your microbiome and maybe these two things are related, but it also helps us feel connected to one another. And I think, especially now, that's such an important part of, you know, feeling like you're part of a community, part of a circle of people and having that real, very specific contact. Outside of Pendulum, do you take other probiotics? Actually, I never took any probiotics until we started this company. I thought it was, frankly, a lot of snake oil. So, you know, I had this pretty hardcore scientific background. I cut my teeth in pharma and I really had this pretty

strong belief that, you know, pharmaceutical drugs and, and these are the things that are really going to have impact on your health. Those are things that are going to work. Now I also knew about all the side effects of pharmaceutical drugs. So I was sort of living in this place of like, I don't really want to take any drugs, but if I had a real problem, that's what I'm going to, that's what I'm going to go to. And I think you and I were talking about this earlier, which is that one of the things that I learned from that pharmaceutical drug experience was how to create products that have efficacy. And I mean, there's wonderful blueprint for how to create these products that pharmaceutical companies have

been using. And that's great. One of the things you don't ever think about as a pharmaceutical drug developer, at least, you know, on the science side is who's going to be using this in the end. And is it a friendly way for them to be able to use it? And that's how you end up with something like insulin, where you say like this thing works, you just inject it into your stomach, you know, a few times a day, every time you eat, you know, what's the problem thing works. And, and I think what I learned from that was, you know, if you really want people to improve their health and to use this product, you just think about them for a second. And so I think when we started this company, that was very much in my mind, how do we take the best of both of these worlds? Actually, my parents are immigrants to this

country. And a lot of ways it, this is the same thing. How do you take the best of different cultures, the best of different tool sets and start to create things that not only have efficacy in people's lives, but can also be something that they enjoy taking and are going to actually take and help them with their health. And so I think that that was, you know, such an important part of figuring out, you know, what is our path forward. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health. This is about creating the conditions for growth. Now, hair health is one of those areas

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choose from. So whether you're a side sleeper, a stomach sleeper, or somewhere in between, there's a fit designed specifically for you. And what I appreciate most is their purpose. They've donated over 41,000 mattresses to people in need. I love that. So right now you can get 25% off all mattresses at lisa.com plus an extra $50 off when you use the code finding mastery at checkout. That's lisa.com. The promo code is findingy for 25% off and then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. How big is your team? We're a little under 100 people, right around 100 people.

So how are you managing your deep understanding of science and then as well as leadership? Like, how do you balance those? Do you have clarity? Just like as a good practitioner or scientist, there's like, you know, there's a North Star or there's a key question that you're trying to solve. And so it helps to create some boundaries or some bumpers, if you will, for behaviors. Do you have a couple of those for leadership that you're employing across your company? Well, I think so.

First of all, I didn't start this company alone. I have two co-founders. We're all technical co-founders. And so I think that form, you know, the co-founders being all very technical and scientifically driven sort of forms the foundation of the company, which is to say, we're not here as a marketing enterprise. We are here to create health products that have real value that are quantitatively measurable. And that becomes actually the pillar for any product you put out where you say the requirement is it has to actually do something and it has to be scientifically based. And that actually in and of itself creates a lot of guardrails for the kind of

people who join a company like that and the kind of products that you end up putting out at the end of the day. I think probably the second thing that I've had to learn along the way is how each person can be the most impactful for driving the company forward and how that kind of evolves and changes over time. So in the beginning, I was the person in the lab doing the lab work. At one point, I went to go walk into the lab and there was a piece of yellow tape on the floor and a little sign that said authorized personnel beyond this point only. And I stopped and I said, well, am I authorized personnel? And all the people in the lab said, no, you're not authorized personnel. You can't cross that line. And essentially it was a physical barrier keeping me from going into the lab. And that was kind of a moment for me where I realized my team was basically telling me,

this is not where you're the highest impact anymore. Go out and fundraise or go out and, you know, figure out what the product is going to look like. Go out and talk to doctors or whatever the case is. That's where you're going to be more impactful. And so today I am not allowed in the lab, on the manufacturing floor, in the compute team meetings. Like I'm not in any of those spaces, even though I am a scientist by training, that's just not where my impact is for the company. And you know, you probably have a similar story, which is, you know, starting out in clinical practice and then realizing the way to make an impact in the world is maybe not kind of where you started.

Same. Yeah, very much the same. I don't have a, we don't have a lab like that where there's a yellow piece of tape, but there are clear demarcations about the meetings that I should be in and should not be in. And so how do you work with the marketing team? Because they, you know, they've got best practices. And oftentimes I've found that science, communicating science is outside of the realm of many or just different. It's a different challenge for most people that want to tell stories and bring people along a marketing journey. Yeah, it doesn't really matter how great the thing is that you made. If you can't tell people what it does in a way that means something to them, you haven't been successful. The goal is

not to create products that are meaningful. The goal is to improve the health of millions of people. And so to achieve the goal of improving health of millions of people, you can't stop at making the product. And so I think the marketing and the communication is huge. And this is a new category of probiotics, sort of next generation probiotics. And so I wouldn't say we've nailed it. I would say we're working on it. We're trying to figure that part out, but it is super important. And I think the other thing that I've learned about marketing is that, first of all, everybody thinks they know how to do marketing and myself included. And so I think it's actually quite hard to be a marketer because you definitely get opinions

from everybody on how to do it better. But that one of the things that I've learned is that being a marketer, it requires a very innovative and quantitative mindset. And the reason that I say that is because the way people purchase things today is different than even five years ago, right? We went through COVID and it's changed the way people purchase things today is different than even five years ago, right? We went through COVID and it's changed the way people think about how they interact with products and what they want to buy and what things stand for and how they want to buy them and what they want to put their dollars towards. As we think about the economy as it is now and sort of the uncertainty

of 2023, people are changing like what they're deciding to buy and how you message what your product does for them in the world has to change with that. So you have to be really innovative and creative. And because digital marketing is such an important way in which people purchase things, most people are purchasing a bunch of products online. They're not going into a retail store each time they want to buy something. So because people behave in a digital world, you learn about things digitally, you purchase things digitally. We now have the ability to track, you know, what is somebody's journey. And so you now as a good marketer have to be quantitative and thinking and actually look at that data and translate it into, you know, iterative improvements. And a lot of ways marketing now has become more of a science

than it ever was before. What is it like leading a team, being a scientist, developing a product that people don't know about, straddling motherhood, familyhood with building a big business, and being responsible for communicating a new product? What is that like for you? I mean, I think it's fun. I, I, I, but maybe that's the sickness of people that start their own companies say it's, it's a disease. I, I think I thrive in, in change. I love learning. So every part of building this company has been a learning process. I didn't know anything. I didn't even know what a venture capitalist was when I started this company. I didn't know how to do fundraising. I didn't, we didn't have a bank account. I didn't even know who did corporate bank accounts. I didn't know what a, an NDA was. I didn't know like a nondisclosure agreement. I didn't know anything about anything.

And so this whole process has just been a series of learning what is fundamental for many people in their, in their lives, but to build a company, you have to learn to some degree, all of it. You, you, you can bring in experts and all that, but it doesn't, because you're starting it from scratch, it doesn't allow you to just completely not know another space that is required for a company to grow. So I think it's exciting. It's really inspiring to me that you have held fidelity. When we speak, I feel like it's a pattern recognition that it would be smart to

trust your position. And so it feels like your company feels easy to bet on and easy for a consumer to want to bet on as well from a VC and from a consumer point of view. So like there's an inspiring nature about your intelligence, how quickly you can bring me up to speed on multiple parts of business development, including product development. And the humility that you have as well is like, it's noted. Well, first of all, thank you for all those compliments. I will hang out with you anytime if that's what it's going to be like. I think there's sort of two things.

The first is that it's actually maybe a paradox that I don't, I think I've never felt that I needed to be the CEO of this company. In fact, we started the company with three co-founders. I wasn't the CEO and I wasn't planning to be the CEO. And at some point, one of our advisors said, who's the CEO here? And I said, we're all just three equal co-founders. And they said, you're never going to get funding if there's no CEO because it's not going to look like a real company. At which point, my two co-founders sort of basically took a step back. I felt like I was the guy standing in front.

And they said, no, no, it's so obvious. You should be the CEO of the company. And that was how I ended up being the CEO. And then we actually hired someone, we brought somebody onto our board of directors who I wanted to become then the CEO to take it over from me. And I have had multiple moments in the company where I've told our investors, I don't have to be the CEO of the company at some point when it makes sense for the company to have a different CEO who's maybe more marketing oriented or financially oriented.

I'm totally fine with that. I just want to, all I want to do is to create a meaningful company. It doesn't have to be me at the helm. And so I think in a lot of ways, the key to kind of happiness is actually not needing any of these things and to feel happy having them or not having them. So, you know, maybe in six months I won't be the CEO of the company and that'll be fine because whoever's here better be the best, better be better than me though. I think that's- Again, I'm inspired by you. I'm inspired by Pendulum Therapeutics. I love knowing that this level of discernment and care has gone into not only building the company, but building products. And I think it was in the reverse order.

I know it was in reverse order of where it started. So listen, thank you. And I'm so stoked to introduce you to folks that don't know about Pendulum. And for folks that have been taking Pendulum, I would imagine they're going, I knew I was on it and they can't wait to go tell somebody at home. I told you, you know, so, um, can I ask another personal question? I don't know if you're about to reveal another vice. I don't know how to, how to, no, it's not, no, but how, but really, how do you do, how do you do home life?

How do you manage like intimacy? And like, how do you, how do you manage that with the full dance card that you have? I think balancing anything, including home life sort of requires a, I think this is a tool everybody should, should use a long time ago. I basically decided what the prioritization was for me and like literally write it down, write down, this is the most important things. And the second most, like, these are the top four things that are the most important things to me in this order. And then every second of every minute of every day, you're actually making decisions and you want to make sure that you're deciding things that are aligned with that compass of what you laid out for yourself are the most

important things. And so I, my husband is also has got like a very intense job. He's an ER physician, obviously going through COVID was pretty crazy times. And I think at the end of the day, because the number one thing on there is that relationship. As I said, I was willing to give up the CEO position at that time. He was willing to, you know, I mean, this sounds kind of also paradoxical. He's willing to move out of the house in order to not kill all of us with this new virus that was making its way around. But, you know, I think that that is, there's constant decisions. I work the same number of hours now as I did when I was in my first job. And the other hours, like people know here after six o'clock, they're not going to

hear from me because that's my family time. Unless there's some kind of crazy emergency or something really dramatic is happening. I'm not, I'm off the clock then. And so I think that's because, you know, just clearly articulate to yourself, this is my value system and I'm going to stick with it. Who tells you no? Everybody tells me no. This is the thing I realize as you move like so-called up in the ladder, there's just more and more people that just tell you no. I get told no all the time. Yeah. Because I'm imagining you standing toe to toe, so to speak, with some hitters in funding. Cause you're in round C you're in the third round. Is that right? Yeah. Funding. Yeah. And so they're sophisticated

in betting on businesses, building businesses, making money. And like, I just, I can see you going, that doesn't work, you know, but so I can, there's a strength that you naturally have, but I'm wondering who, like, is it your husband that says like, no, no, no, your North star is not true. Your compass is, is off here. Is it your, are your kids? Is it your parents? Is it like people that, you know, inside the office?

I'm, I'm, I'm being serious when I say it's, it's everybody. I think people, I think that most people feel free to give me their opinions and advice about what they think I'm doing wrong, knowing that I might not take it. And I would include our board and our investors and my husband and, you know, my coworkers, my co-founders are, I have some of the most, you know, kind of raw discussions with, and it's kind of, you know, goes back and forth. We're trying to build something together. If you can't tell someone what they're doing, that's not good. And what they're doing, that's good. You're not actually building a business together. And I think if you were to ask anybody in our company, transparency is one of the most

valued things. When we do our quarterly objectives, and we track those things throughout the quarter, I don't come down on people for anything unless you knew we weren't going to hit that and you didn't say something. So you've got to be able to call out what's not working. What can the person be doing better? We're all here to grow. That's not kind of a, you know, growth isn't reserved for the entry level people. And so I think if you want to grow and you want to learn and you enjoy that, you people will know you're receptive to to critical feedback. And and I get it all the time. And I mean, I don't always take it or listen to it, but I'm pretty honest with people like I'll listen to you. I'm not necessarily'm rooting for you in such a way. Like I really hope that our community right now turns off the podcast and says, where do I get it? Where do I, how do I support you?

And how do I support your family? And how do I support my family by, you know, buying pendulum therapeutic? So, and I don't, I hope that doesn't come off wrong to, to folks listening. Like I, it's coming from the bottom of my heart. This is why I really love partnering with you. And so where do we send them? What's the best place to go? So our website is pendulumlife.com.

And I would love for everybody to go to the website, check it out. We have a lot of information on there. And if you have more questions, please reach out to us. This is a new space, so it's natural to have questions. And so we're excited to answer those. And this is an early science. So we might not have all the answers, but we're trying. And so I really encourage people to go to pendulum life.com. Yeah, and we're super excited to help your listeners get a jumpstart here on their health. By using the code finding mastery at pendulum life.com, they can get a discount off their first

bottle of membership. And I also want to say to you, Michael, that, you know, when we talked about, it's not just good enough to build a product, but you have to get it into people's lives in order to improve health. You are the way in which that's going to happen. So your role in this play is to educate people in ways and to communicate this in ways that we're not doing. You're going to have a way to talk about the science and to talk about the products. And that's going to be different from the way I'm talking about it. And that's super important because everybody ingests information differently and you have a following and you have people that are really listening to you. And it's so important that you are the decider of what's real and what's

not. And you can help educate your audience and guide them on things that are really going to help them in health in tangible ways. And so I deeply appreciate our partnership and you're taking the time to really dig in here on the science and figure out what's real and what's not. Awesome. Let's go. Let's circle back at some point and celebrate where you guys are hopefully as a company and what you're learning as well. So thank you, Colleen. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

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So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening.

Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.