Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Tero Isokauppila, Four Sigmatic Founder

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

This week’s conversation is with Tero Isokauppila, the founder of Four Sigmatic, a wellness company helping people nourish their bodies inside and out.Tero grew up in Finland working on his family’s farm.He earned a degree in Chemistry, Business, and a Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition at Cornell.I’m stoked to be partnered with Tero and Four Sigmatic and I think you’ll see why in this podcast-- I can honestly say this was one of the more unique conversations I’ve had since we fired up Finding Mastery.I wanted to learn more about the impact mushrooms have on overall wellness but this conversation ended up being so much more than that.This conversation is about the process of self-discovery: how Tero invested countless years of his life working to better understand who he is and what he values most – and how you can apply those same lessons to your own life.Tero’s core values are: wisdom, connection, purpose, and time, but he didn’t know them right away.He did the hard work and is still working on it today.I hope this conversation inspires you to do the same._________________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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as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. The whole idea behind these conversations is to learn from the most extraordinary people on the planet, how they organize their inner life, and how they use those skills to excel at chosen craft. And what does that mean? Like their inner life? What is their psychological framework? How do they make sense of themselves and events in their life? How do they organize their way

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Okay. This week's conversation is with Taro Isokapola, the founder of Four Sigmatic. It's a wellness company helping people nourish their bodies inside and out. Taro is a 13th generation farmer from Finland, and he grew up working the farms with his family. He earned a degree in chemistry business and a certificate in plant-based nutrition at Cornell. And I'm stoked to be partnered with Taro at Four Sigmatic, and I think you'll see why in this conversation. I can honestly say this was one of the more unique conversations that I've had since we fired up Finding Mastery.

And I wanted to first learn more about the impact mushrooms have on overall wellness, but this conversation ended up being so much more than that. It was about the process of self-discovery, how Taro invested countless years of his life working to better understand who he is and what he values most. And the whole idea is that hopefully you can apply those same principles, these very same principles that he's used that we talk about in your own life. That would be one of my deep hopes is that this is not just a passive learning kind of fly by experience that you have that you're just listening to it, but you're actually with pen and paper or stopping and pulling over or getting off the treadmill for

a minute and like really thinking about and writing down how can you apply these same principles in your life. Tarot is on it. And not only from a human perspective, but also from a business perspective as well. So some of his deep values are wisdom, connection, purpose, and time, but he didn't know them right away. He had to earn them. And he did the hard work. And he's still doing that today. I hope this conversation inspires you to do the same. So with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Taro. Taro, how are you? I'm good. So having me on in your beautiful office with this amazing view. It is something else, isn't it? To be able to like, look at the Pacific, it just changes the way

that you feel about natural light. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah. So good for you. You've built your whole business, your whole life on things that are good for you. Yeah, I try. Where did that start? It started growing up in a family farm in Finland, in a small Nordic country, in a small town, just outside of Nokia, that most people know for the cell phones. But it's actually a city, not really a city, a town in the kind of southern part of Finland. And our family's had a farm there since, at least since 1619. We don't know any longer, but at least 13 generations. And my mom taught physiology and anatomy to nurses. So that's how I kind of started learning about the human body and also agriculture.

So mom was not a professor, but she was teaching anatomy and phys to folks. Yes. Okay. So where, where did that get passed on? I want to go way back because you've got a, you've got a lineage, right? I don't know how far you know about your family. So the lineage that I know better is on my father's side and it goes down again, 12 generations before me into this area that is very well known for herbalism. Like one of our

neighbors is one of the most famous herbalists in the Nordic countries. And one of our other neighbors is one of the most famous organic farmers. So it's like, it's a quite famous area for natural healing, natural things within the country. And we've been there for a few hundred years and in farming. And during that time, obviously, life of a farm has changed a lot. And even when I was a kid, our farm was big. And today's world, it's tiny. So it's kind of the world has changed around us. And I think primary industries like agriculture are one of the most wild examples of how life has changed in the last 50 years or so okay all right so why was it okay this is interesting because i want to ask why but let me see if i can answer it first yeah is that maybe this is a great example of how environment

shapes lifestyle so your family was in an environment that was fertile for herbs is that fair to say yeah yeah and mushrooms yeah yeah that's actually an important distinction right herbs and fungi are two different biological kingdoms yeah that's right and fungi is its own unique kingdom that is unique in of itself nothing else other than fungi lives in that category, right? Yes. Okay. I need, I need you to coach me and teach me on fungi. Assuming you know a lot about it, right? So, okay. But let's, let's stay with the family dynamic for a minute. Is that environment shaped lifestyle? Sure. And we know that there's these things called hotspots. There's regions around the world where like in, um, Maryland is a hotbed and a hotspot for basketball, Russia, you know, there's, there's towns in Russia that are world

class for ballet, Southern California. We're out here with a water polo and beach volleyball. So is your neck of the woods like internationally recognized as a hotbed for fungi? Yes, I would say it's pretty famous for mushrooms. A lot of mushroom research comes from there. That being said, Japan and parts of China are probably even more famous. A lot of mushroom names are Japanese. So even mushrooms that a lot of people might know like shiitake, maitake, enokitake, the take, T-A-K-E, means mushroom in Japanese.

So definitely, I would say Japan is the hotbed of mushrooms and mushroom research. That being said, Scandinavia and the Nordic countries are right up there. to follow up on that hotbed, um, on my dad's side, one of my, um, one of my ancestors had won gold medal in decathlon and had a world record in decathlon. And that was a time in the, I've never heard anyone call it decathlon. How would you say it? Decathlon. Sorry, English is a not first or second language. What was your first uh finnish and swedish and then second uh swedish swedish and then uh german but i've well stylishly forgotten that one so yeah both complicated i've got some friends that are swedes like they're complicated

it's a complicated language yeah uh once you learn swedish it's easier to learn norwegian danish german because they're Germanic languages, but Finnish is very different. But yeah, back to the point is like back then, like just a couple of generations ago, Finland was a hotbed of track and field, particularly endurance running. Some of the best endurance runners of all time came from there. Pablo Nurmia, I think, still has the most amount of Olympic gold medals along with Carl Lewis, nine gold medals. And he was banned once from the Olympics because he was a professional. So he only attended, he attended one Olympics too little when he was too dominating.

And he raced, he came to America and raced a train. And I believe he won and therefore he got banned from the Olympics but this is just like you don't even have to go more than like 70 80 years and Finland it was all about grit and hard work and agriculture so even my ancestors like they would be professional athletes and farmers at the same time which is obviously in today's world you can't be do two things you gotta just focus on one usually and and back then

it was known for grit and living with nature so if something finland is known for is like having guts and grit and that is great for if you're a 10k runner or something and the other part is living with nature so those are the two things and in that mindset, foraging or natural farming kind of fits quite well in that mental mindset. Beautiful. Did you play sports growing up? I did. Yeah. Soccer, or as we call it football. That was my main sport. And then I was in the Boy Scouts, which doesn't sound like a sport, but part of the Boy Scout, if you're a competitive boy scout, then you do these like 12, sometimes 24, 48 hour, you know, 72 hour races where partly it's like an endurance race or like, it's like a multi-sport race, but you make fire and you get points. If you don't make fire, you have to do an

extra lap or you orient here. And so those are the two things I did and then at 18 i tore my acl twice and i was like okay maybe this is not for me but the soccer part um i don't think i would have ever became um i was too much of a thinker and i was always thinking like how can i make it better so when a lot of sports you just have to kind of not think and you've got to get those 10 000 hours in and you have to be a little obsessed oh yeah for sure in a you know in that context it's positive maybe other contexts of life sometimes i'm not sure if it's always positive so one of your natural strengths and proclivities is thinking and trying to solve like how can i make it better yeah even in soccer like uh i hated warm-ups and stretching and running and all the um string and conditioning and i just knew where the ball would be like the classic 10 spot in

soccer is like just behind the striker kind of like you could be a playmaker and passer but you could also you know you can score you just know where the ball is gonna go it's like the you know it's almost like a point point guard in basketball but you're kind of as you're forward but you're behind the striker and that was just very easy for me or i could even play defense because i just knew where to position better so i don't i can't explain it it's like probably a lot of people cannot explain it why they can do it but i just didn't have the work ethic in that regard when I was a kid. And I think the work ethic came in other forms of my life. Okay.

Because this is really important that I'm asking this is because you're giving a hint at a bit how your brain orientates objects in space. Yeah. Which sounds like it's a natural skill for you and then the second is that the analytical abilities that you have like to be able to conceptualize to think to be able to strategize are both skills that you're using now right you're using at least the strategy one and ability to think different i guess which is um partly on my business, but in general, in entrepreneurship, you have to find the quote-unquote blue ocean. Like if you try to do what everyone else does, you're probably, it's the race to the bottom. You're just trying to, this is a common concept.

You could call it something else. But red ocean is competitive land, place where there's a lot of blood in the ocean because there's a lot of fighting. So if you make a t-shirt and everybody else makes a similar t-shirt, it comes down to who can sell it the cheapest or whatever it may be. Blue ocean, when you figure out how to create something that is not being ever created, the classic example is Cirque du Soleil. When there are circus, but there's no animals, animals created it quite expensive to have a circus. And also that only kids were most interested in coming there and not so much adults. And then theater was something that adults enjoyed, but then the kids wouldn't. And so they basically combined those where there's, you go to circus with the acrobats that both kids and adults can enjoy. And then there's a storyline.

So there's still like, there's acrobatics and you're like, wow, but then there's a storyline so there's still like there's acrobatics and you're like wow but then there's also a story and like you enjoy that nobody had done that and that was pretty wild back then but instead of trying to compete with other theater or compete with other circuses they figured out a way to combine that and i i didn't know as a kid but that's how my kind of brain worked i was like okay how can i even in soccer how can i like i can run less if i'm positioned correctly and it was partly almost through laziness that you could because i still loved competing and playing like i loved playing part i was just like a like a lazier than other kids may be on running well then you better use your brain and your mind. Okay, good. Yeah. Do you consider yourself high on a competitive scale?

Yes. And I've actually found later in life that I have to be more conscious about that. I'm trying to not be a competitive person because it works when there's clear rules and it's a sport, right? The competitiveness is, versus in a society, you want to be maybe a little more collaborative, and it's not a zero sum game, and everybody can win. And when I was like, late teens, early adulthood, I realized that this mindset wasn't probably not productive. And actually, I learned a lot through nature where even though there's competition like survive eat or be eaten right but it's

not really the case like there is a cycle of life and you know there's even though if an animal or plant dies you know there's a cycle of life and I think there's a more collaboration and respect that maybe sometimes in sports sometimes depending on sport and it depends on the nature of competition like there's a more collaboration and respect that may be sometimes in sports, sometimes, depending on sport. And it depends on the nature of competition. Like the tone of competition can range from I'm going to celebrate your loss, right? Like that classic, iconic Ali poster where he's standing over his competitor with all the kind of rage, competitive rage that you can imagine, which is like it moves me. When I look at that, I'm like, oh, my God, look at that fire can imagine, which is like, it moves me. When I look at that, I'm like, Oh my God, look at that fire. It's an iconic photo. It's iconic photo for

a lot of reasons. I'm, I'm much more inclined for competition to be similar to cooperation, meaning that I need you. I need the men and women across the field to be as sharp as they can be to get the best out of you. That's right. Yeah. And so competition is really an internal mechanism or it's an internal philosophy about how you're going to organize your life to get better. And then the tone that I think you can put on it is better than others or better than you are today. Yes. And so if you can make competition like, okay, I'm going to compete with myself. That doesn't mean like in a scratchy, edgy way, but I'm going to compete with myself to get better than I am today.

And it comes down to a lot of expectations. And if you can't have those expectations, unless you have some sort of respect. So if happiness is where reality meets expectation, therefore, if that is, let's assume for a moment that that is the case. Happiness is where reality meets expectation. Either it's better or worse than you expected. In this case, in order to compete with yourself, you have to Anthony Davis played basketball against me, like, no fun for either party. I think you see it the most in like tennis or squash or something where it's a really fun game if you're like roughly close to each other.

And it's really not a fun game if the other party is like a little too good. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a psychological construct that would support that yeah well that's actually you need that back and forth yeah there's a psychological construct that would support that as well yeah what is that and so what came out of chick sent me holly and so that's actually a name right you're looking at me like what's that yeah right what do we talk about yeah so uh he was the original researcher of flow and what he found is that there's a relationship between

skills and challenge. Oh, yeah. Right. And so if you're if, if the challenge is high enough, and you believe you have the skills to match that challenge, that's the sweet spot. And if it's a little too high, you have anxiety. There you go. Yeah, you've seen kind of that model before. Yeah. and people that love challenge, let's say, but on a sliding scale, they don't believe that they have the skills to match that challenge. That's where we get anxiety. You might actually have the skills, but if you don't believe you have it, if you don't trust yourself, right. If you don't make an assessment that the challenge meets my skills, that's where we get sideways For sure. Yeah. So, okay. And

you're, so you're right on the, you're right on good science right there. All right. So let's go back to dad. What is this main message, the main philosophical gift that your father has given you or insights you as well? I gave you three questions all embedded in one, but what do you give? I was just thinking about this quite recently um my my father's getting older and he has some health issues and it's really brought me back to like the male role model and the lessons he's given it's just like when something drastic happens you often start to like reflect right and in my case i started reflecting is like you can easily focus on the stuff that you know you were not happy about childhood or your parent relationship.

But I started thinking, what are the biggest lessons? And he definitely is this classic stoic farmer dude who has traveled around the world, so he's super well-educated. So he's not like an uneducated person. He's lived in many countries speaks many languages but happens to love the soil and loves happens to love the farm and some of the stuff that i've been reflecting lately is this idea of a quarter is like we're focused on this economical cycle of four times a year you get a scorecard on how well you did or the company did or whatever

or how the economy is doing right q1 this q2 that and i remember since a kid he said in nature the quarter is 25 years and that's the first time you get a scorecard and because because life and nature doesn't move that fast necessarily and as I've thought a lot about that recently, how we lack this patience to work hard and have those results. But that is a mindset he embedded on me for sure. And then the other part is just like practical skills. Now that I've lived the last 10 years around the world in big cities, I've realized that like a lot of people are practical,

excuse my French, practical idiots. And I've like realized that in a city, you don't have to have nearly those a lot of those basic skills that you learn when you live in a farm, that seemingly are not productive in a modern society. Like, what can I do with those skills, but they do teach harmony. And also way to think to solve problems because like there's you can't call task rapid or amazon to solve those problems necessarily at the farm like if the machine breaks and you have to do the work today you have to figure out can i tinker this to make it work again and just i think it think it teaches a certain mindset of like, Hey, I'm in, I can control and I can do mastery. Like in, I'm in the driver's seat is like here,

uh, of my own destiny. And I will solve these problems. I don't need to use an app or an external service. And those are two things that I've lately been very grateful to learn from him is the idea of a quarter being 25 years and then the idea of like you can solve problems yourself it's almost like in a city environment or modern society we do become like very narrow specialists and we stay in that lane versus having this polymath or very this like more practical approach to life and i think when you have that more wide range then that actually helps even in the specialist role like you can then solve problems even on the specialist field if you

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without digital fatigue creeping in. Plus, they look great. Clean, clear, no funky color distortion. Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code findingmastery20 at felixgray.com for 20% off. As you're speaking, I'm thinking about the richness of that thought, right? And so thinking about the richness of soil as a corollary, but 25 years, there's actually a parallel on brain health and brain development. So the first 25 years is really when we're forming our brain. So there's this big swell

early on in brain connections. And then around early to mid-20s is when a pruning starts to take place, as well as our prefrontal cortex starts to really become online and formed, if you will. So at around the mid 20s, we're different humans than we were the first humans. Around 50, we're different humans, there's radical pruning that's taking place. But at the same time, our life experiences has created the opportunity for deep wisdom but isn't it also true that like based on what we know today dementia and other things they do take 20 30 years before you start to see the impact like they actually start way before you actually get the symptoms correct and that's

correct and I also think that that is a pretty fascinating thing to think about. And I think it's true for just about all biological systems. All is too big of a word. But let's use skin as an example. If we look three, four, five layers underneath your skin, I don't know the exact number, you can see the damage. The damage is already in there. And then over time, it starts to build and push out. Same with heart health. Same with fill in the blanks health is that it takes time. And there are some things that are like quick bang, you know,

they get you. But most biological systems are not overnight. Yeah. And most businesses are not overnight either. No, no no very few things are okay so let's stay with mom and dad was this is this middle class is this um upper middle class is this upper class like lower class yeah so that you grew up in his first disclaimer is i nordic countries are probably i wouldn't equal, but from a societal part, quite equal. Everybody gets free education. Even if your dad is the president of the country, you will not get into the good school unless you pass an entrance exam.

But there's definitely levels to it. But I think when I was a kid, we had zero billionaires. I think I was in my 20s when the first Finnish billionaire was created. There's no homeless people. Basically, you get a house from the government. So it means slightly less in the society then, but with any group, there's still levels for sure. And my father came from a more prominent family with Olympic gold medal winners and ministers and stuff. And they lived in this more famous area. Still farmers, but, you know, they were on the boards of banks.

And my mom came from one of the poorest areas, from poorest families. And, uh, actually my, even to, uh, to share a really personal thing is like my dad's side, grant my grandparents didn't really expect my mom approved my mom because she came from, you know, a lesser, not a cast, but you know, it was not, didn't go to fancy, um, schools and had not done that. And it took a while for her to win them over but when you were growing up was there that kind of tension in the house yeah you were aware of it not between them but between my cousins and uncles and and so it was fascinating because i was still very protected like now i realize how how protected you are in a nordic system where there's it's pretty

much um because it's so equal comparably to the rest of the world or most places in the world but it was funny to see what they talked about when my dad side of the family would always ask for my grades if I how did I compete in sports and then my mom side of the family was more poor was always curious about what about my girlfriends and who was I dating and was I in love? And there's like me, like eight years old. They were asking me, was I in love or something like that? So it was funny. Their interest areas are different and where the focus goes, the energy flows.

So it was also fascinating as a kid to realize, which I only later kind of reflected, is like what they were mostly focused on created their reality. And even though I don't say it's necessary, but you often become the product owner of your environment. And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where, you know, my dad's side of the family was focused on classic powers, like money, power, fame. And my mom's side of the family was more curious about feeling and love and connection and you know group and it was just as a kid you don't realize it but you when you get exposed to both it's it's pretty fascinating so who are you um a blend of both i guess you know but then when you travel the world,

you realize that every Finnish person kind of is very different than when I lived in Asia or you live in North America. They were still, both of those families would have been quite different than the other extremes. They were still more closer to each other. So I've now lived in 10 countries, and when you travel and live in different places you slowly do shift because that environment slowly will impact your thinking and

will give you perspective and new ideas and new ways of thinking so it's you become quite the blend how are you different now than you were growing up what are those differences? Because you went from a cooperative country where it was relatively flat with a high range of variability in the messages that your parents gave you. And then you come to America, one of the most competitive countries in the world, and you're kicking ass. You've built a multiple million dollar business that is thriving and doing good for the ocean based on your roots of you know fungi yeah like fascinating so how are you different because i really want to get to like how have you managed this transition well well there's probably many ways i'm different that i'm not aware of you know the johari window or however you want to look at

it but there's what i don't know johari window i don't know like um so there's a part of me that is visible to me and to you that is what is my public persona that you see and i know of myself then there's also the part of me that i i know but i'm not sharing with other people that's my personal part of myself and then there's the part that you see that I don't see that with other people's observations I'll probably become more aware of myself anyway there's probably a lot of stuff that I don't even see that I'm blind to but a couple things that my friends have noted to me both in Finland because they've seen me you know since as a kid since I was yay high to where I'm today and they've noted a couple things like oh have you noticed that this has shifted and then also my friends here have noted like hey have you noticed that you do this differently than

we do here and one of the things that the Finnish people would say is I talk way more and are a lot more social in Finland there's a saying is like what is the difference between an extroverted Finn and an introverted Finn well the introverted Finn who's all shy, when they'll have a conversation with you, I will be staring at my own feet. And the extroverted Finn who was more comfortable with this social interaction will be staring at your feet. I'm just gonna say, I love your approach to life. Like we've been, we just met and I love your approach to life. Like there's a sensitivity love your approach to life like there's a sensitivity there's a nuance there's a texture that is organic and real and open and thoughtful and i can't wait

to see where you're going to take this part of the conversation but do you get that from folks do they do you have the response that i'm having to you on a regular basis i do it was actually funny because when i moved to both la and new york people who had lived here or who i kind of knew they warned me they say like hey be careful like americans at the end of the day care about themselves and these are the two cities where they're most people career focused and focused on themselves so just you know you know check your six you know just be mindful but i feel like when you are not to say that i haven't come across those people but i think when you are vulnerable i think other people are vulnerable when you are honest and authentic people show that and i think

people yearn deep connection around the world everywhere. And maybe I've been lucky. Maybe you just naturally gravitate people towards you. But I've been lucky enough to meet a lot of awesome, authentic people. So vulnerability is important to you. Yeah, I'm not great at it always. It's, it's or I hope I could improve on it. Because you often, I feel I catch myself being vulnerable in a way that are comfortable to me versus vulnerable in a way that is uncomfortable to me. There's like go-to vulnerability moves. So it's something I'm consciously practicing. I write morning pages, try to write the first thing I wake up, whatever's in kind of

my subconscious, just writing stuff, you know, shadow work that, you know, things like that. I'm sure you're very familiar with, but, um, I could, I feel like I could tell that you've done a lot of introspective work. Yeah. Yeah. And so is that how you're practicing vulnerability first with yourself? Like saying the thing that's true, that's hard to say? Yes. That was, I like, I congratulate myself when I say something out loud that I'm thinking that society or normally you would think that you shouldn't say. How do you congratulate yourself? It is going to be sound. This is one of those vulnerable moments to admit. So I think normally you would think that you shouldn't say. How do you congratulate yourself?

This is going to be sound. This is one of those vulnerable moments to admit. So I think sometimes that my shadow is on my left side because I'm right-handed and that's kind of my weaker side. And the shadow is like a nerdy fat kid. It's like the shadow to me is like the person I don't want to be that I fear I am, even though I've never been overweight and I don't necessarily think that I'm nerdy, but I sometimes fear that I am super nerdy. Can I be the judge of that? Sure. Right. Yeah. So that's okay. So make it totally awkward. Why not? Yeah. No, like that. Okay. I,

this is introspective work. I've never heard anyone talk about it this way. Yeah. Right. Which tells me that organically you arrived at this thought that, okay, I've got this particular image of myself and then I've got this shadow image, which is what I'm afraid of. Right. And that fear has probably come from a place, some scar early on, something that happened early on. We don't, we don't have to roll that up some scar early on, something that happened early on. We don't have to roll that up. But like there was something that said, don't be that dude or you're getting too close to that person. So then you probably pushed it away in some kind of way.

And now you're exploring. Yeah. I mean I can probably say one at least aspect where it came from is I played sports. And in Finland, if you played soccer, you also played hockey. And I didn't play hockey because my mom said I'm not allowed to play hockey. But I played soccer with all the hockey dudes. And they were the misbehaving kids who were like super bro-y in the Finnish way. And they hated school.

Almost all of them hated school. Super them hated super bro I'm still like yeah hated school school is not cool you couldn't study and then but I I was into it so I had like good grades and I was into it and I was like constantly teased for being nerdy within that community but I also love sports so it was also my circle. So I think a lot of it comes from there is like being in my group of friends and then being the one kid who was like into school and studying. You are different. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't met anyone like you.

Yeah. You are different. Aren't we all though? When we do it right. Yeah. You know, and what ends up happening is media takes over and family structures take over and we start to mute, um, our individuality. Right. And it sounds so technical when I'm saying it, but it's one of the crises of becoming is that these pattern, these abrasive thought structures that we have become non-conscious and become

automatic. And then we never really find freedom from those non-conscious habits. And as soon as something becomes non-conscious, habitual, if you will, it runs us. Yeah. I've thought a lot about that in the last couple of years because I feel like it's one of the hardest things is to be you in a world that is constantly trying to evolve you similar. And I think social media and internet have allowed us to get access to inner information around the world really quickly, but it can also force us to mimic each other a lot faster than ever before where we get exposed to these ideas and then this mimetic desire that

we probably evolutionary have to mimic our parents and our friends and people around us gets highlighted and i've caught myself a couple times mimicking behavior and then i was like why do i do that i don't even like i don't even care about that but it is powerful and if you're not aware of it happens so easy if you let it happen that's right and so examining the shadow parts yours is uniquely your shadow right and but examining that getting to know that and saying okay well am i operating from the shadow part of me am i operating from this other shielded shiny part? Or am I really operating from this authentic integration of the two? And we get to choose. Ultimately we get to choose who we want to be and how we want to be.

But automatic processes, things that are non-conscious, when they run us, which they are running us right now, when they run us unexamined, we become something that others oftentimes want us to be. Now that's not to be, not to forget that we can program our non-conscious. So those that have done deep work, right? Those that have done deep work that have really done the work you're talking about to really examine, we can rewrite. That's what I i mean even with sports is like in a in a small non-professional setting in youth sports i was good at something but i was

not aware why i was good at it and i think that's replicated in professional sports and if you look at a lot of the best people at who have received achieved mastery of a sport american football and you have i don't know um quarterback or a coach belichick as you know can he always explain why he knows to play in advance or does he just know it and somebody can be good at a certain set a certain defense certain offense but can you have that level of subconsciousness where you can adapt really quickly because you've achieved this or yeah okay let's do this let's pull on that thread before we get to how you got here yeah and how you've made that shift from cooperative side society more to a competitive side okay what do you do so we got one that you practice vulnerability yeah then you

celebrate in a unique way. You know, like when you say something out loud that you've never said before. And what else are some of the practices that you do? Because I think one of your crown jewels, if I may get ahead of myself, is introspection. Right? Really deep work to understand authenticity for you and then to set your sights on who you want to be and what you want to do with your time here and it's not lost on me that your company probably one of the reasons i was so attracted to it is designed to help people at scale okay so all that being

said what are some of the other practices that you have and truth be told i'm a little less interested in the practices however i think they're a great gift that you have. And truth be told, I'm a little less interested in the practices. However, I think they're a great gift that you can give other people. Yeah. So it all comes down to, in Finland, we have to go to the army. I went to the air force. It's mandatory. I go there and I get out of the army and I actually realize or have this epiphany for the first time that I'm probably not living my life. I'm living someone else's life to my parents, to my family, to pop culture. Do you remember that moment?

I do remember that. It was a particular moment. It was a particular moment. And I think. Where were you? I was at this army camp. You go like overnight and I'm like lying on the ground how old were you um 18 i think 18 what were you wearing when you're on the ground you wear this basically like army forest outfit

it's like green i'm lying there and it's kind of cold what time of day or night uh it's so this is like winter i want to say like february i had the army forced me to go to this camp even though i had broken my knee in soccer or otherwise they would kick me out and i had to come next year which i definitely didn't want to do so i had to wait a year to finish it and my knee is hurting so i'm like i should, you know, crutches, but they were, but then you couldn't go to camp. So I was basically injured, but I couldn't say I was injured. And I'm like lying there and it's snow cold in the winter and the arm in the forest. And I'm like, it's just such an odd moment. And it's like, it kind of like sometimes you need a shock, like, like something needs to come and wake you up, like wake up. And he just I was realizing that, like, are my thoughts and my dreams about life, because at that point, I thought,

you know, I could work in the army. And I realized that that's such a one machine of like, that's probably the most extreme version of you know doing other people's work and other people's life not to go into that rapid halt particularly but you're like wearing everybody wears the same outfits you're just a mask you're just a number you're just a last name and a rank and you're following a process and a system and for a good reason it's needed in a time of crisis but i i was like all my thoughts are probably from some other people or from a book or from a like have i ever like stopped and and i didn't have the answers at that point but i made a conscious decision is that i'm gonna start peeling

the onion kind of layer by layer and i'm gonna say no to things that i'm not gonna do one of the first things i was i'm not gonna watch tv so until last I'm not going to do. One of the first things I was, I'm not going to watch TV. So until last year when I moved to an apartment, there was a TV. But like for a good 14, 15 years, I didn't have a TV. And not watching TV, I haven't seen The Sopranos. I don't know The Breaking Bad. I haven't seen Game of Thrones. I probably missed out a lot of good art but it also given me space to think my own thoughts

and I decided that every year I would give up on something okay god bless it like oh I want to get to the what you're giving up because this is the thing I'm going to get animated right now because okay because I spent I get to spend my time with tip of the arrow

in multiple disciplines yeah okay they're the half percenters the best if you will in their craft yeah a per mil I get to spend my time with tip of the arrow in multiple disciplines. They're the half percenters, the best, if you will, in their craft. Yeah, per mil. Say it again. Per mil, like even better probably, I would assume. No, no, no, wait, hold on. You're on to something really important.

And I will tell you that what they do that is fundamentally different than the other 99 whatever percent is that they organize their life based on the principles and ideas that matter to them. Yes. So let's take that. Let's say it's winning or it's getting better at something or whatever their thing is, right? That they fundamentally orientate their life around that. for non-performing based approaches to life, like rearing a child or being a family member. And so to speak, we're all family members, you know, in some respect, but let's say that outside of the performance arena, that there's a core principle that you want to live around. Let's say it's love or vulnerability or fill in the blanks, aggressiveness. It doesn't matter. I'm not judging in any way, but they fundamentally do it. And most people don't. It's too fricking hard. So they'll get the word down. Maybe that matters most than the principle,

but then don't really put in the work around it. I'm listening to you. And I like from moment one, I'm like, Ooh, he's different. Where's that coming from? And that's why I wanted to go backwards to figure it out. But now you've organized your life based on the principles that matter most to you. And somehow TV didn't fit in that. I want to know what the principle is. Yeah. At that point or even today, I think it would be a little arrogant for me to say I knew what was the full principle,

but what I knew that I wanted to explore it. That was like pretty obvious to me that there was this yearning of exploration and figuring out myself. So self-discovery. Yeah. How can I live my life my way? Not my life in other people's way or not someone else's life in my way? And I had these core principles. You are right.

I had principles, not to say that why did I get there, but I wrote down things with my best friend after the army. Hold on. Pause. I want to know what they are, but it almost doesn't matter. That's my point. Yeah. To my point is like I did write this down. I wrote my five fly values, and then I wrote an action plan of like doing something about it.

But that was my first is like I'm not sure what they are. Right. And it doesn't even matter. But it was enough for me to start doing the work. But you did the – okay, this is what I want to celebrate. You organized your life based on the intellectual work that you did yeah mostly the first step the lead domino and like what happened then and what happened then and then it goes somewhere and so clear and you just have to to your point about those top achievers is like you have to believe in it if it's's right or wrong, you'll figure out

over time, but if they have conviction and confidence and drive to then go after that, whatever that is to them. 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.

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So for you, what were some of those core principles? Yeah. So first of all, I wanted to cut. It was like I had to commit and i don't know if even if this is true but i read long long time ago that that comes from a latin word of cutting like commit means like you cut off other alternatives oh interesting i don't know that yeah and it could not even be true but then i was like oh okay and i read it i was like okay i need to cut the fluff away

before i can add stuff like yeah i need to wash my tea bowl before i can add more stuff into it and and i started cutting thing and i thought like kind of like one by one so it was tv then um i caught alcohol caffeine by the way now i do consume alcohol and i consume coffee but i took time off there was even more on a radical point of view sex as you're like 20 and you're like at your peak testosterone i cannot agree with these principles but it was important for me they're yours and it was it was important for me to take them off before i added them back in just to see what happened look at that and that was like important for me is like, Hey, you know, if I remove this from my life, what happens? Because in order to question

a lot of the core principles, like I said, peeling the onion and like, okay, layer by layer. And then if, okay, it's kind of like the elimination diet. Okay. You have digestive issues. You don't know what's wrong. And then you read this book and they say it's gluten it's this it's lectins and you're like could be gluten could be lectins but kind of in the only way to know is like remove it all and then one by one you start if you truly want to know what's up that is kind of the bulletproof way to get it get it down and it's like okay And it could be something super surprising. Like I'm not allergic to anything, but my body doesn't like carrots.

And, and you kind of have to figure out those things and carrots are healthy. There's tons of carotenoids and like, it's not a bad food just for some reason, raw carrots don't fit with my body. But if I do a test, it will not show up as something i'm allergic to i'm not allergic to carrots but it's clear time after time that raw carrots like don't sit well with me that's cool okay so self-discovery was the main principle then you had some things one of them was like elimination what were you searching for So you're removing things to get to what? To who I am and what I believe in. That's the main quest. Who am I and what are my core beliefs?

Yes. And to these principles that, again, don't matter, but I'll list them out. But practically, it's good because it's giving some context to you, but it could be anything. I want to live my life my way, but I need to first figure out what I want from my life. I want to see the truth as is, not the real truth, and accept it, which is pretty dumb hard sometimes as well as seeing the truth and accepting it. And then I want to respond to negative energy with positive energy or Or for fear, with love. And these were some of the things that were like core principles at the baseline.

And obviously living to them is so hard. You know, when somebody honks at you and cuts you in traffic. And in that moment, subconsciously responding to that with love is pretty freaking hard. But those are the things that i was going after and then there was all these tactical things like i wanted to live in different places to see how other people do it and and i wanted to help others and obviously nutrition and my understanding of the soil and mushrooms and other things were were my channels of contributing for the betterment of the world i'm not saying in any way me or my company are changing the world because that would be pretty

Dan are like really arrogant. But I wanted to be like at least like net positive and not spend my time and energy and passion, you know, making the planet consciously worse. And that was those are some of the things I changed. And in that and in that process you end up having these fun discoveries and learnings and things and it gives a lot of humility as well you realize the stuff that you believed in and you were convicted like this is for sure it and then you're like uh maybe not and but yeah what a journey what an an adventure. For me, the big takeaway is you did the intellectual work and then you fundamentally organized your life to go explore, to figure those things out.

I've been saying this lately because it's, I don't know, somewhere it has hit me like a ton of bricks just recently that the best, and I don't think about this. I don't think this way often because having an appreciation for science, like definitive statements are an error, right? Like, you know, because it's, because it's the search of the truth, not the truth. It, thank you. Right. And here's the thing that I've been really clear about lately, which is the best, which is a dangerous statement. I feel like I got to put an asterisk. This are so thirsty for the truth. They are committed to the truth. And when I start going

around in my mind, like, okay, who are the best that I've worked with? Yep. Yep. Yep. Oh, that one, that one's a difficult human, but still in his way, trying to get to the truth. So I hear you saying it right now. And this might be like, I'm totally biased right now. Cause I'm looking for it. You know, there's a, this is a bias that we can be caught up in. But when you say you're looking for the truth and the path is or the goal is that path right what have you come to understand that is true for you a lot of things but to make it relevant for somebody who's listening and provide value i i think one of the core principles that could be helpful to someone right now listening and how they could maybe apply to their own life is the idea that the

mind is the black belt. But you don't become a black belt in something until you've done the basic work. And I think, so physiology, let's take two steps back. We can be three weeks without eating, like roughly. Some people can probably go a little longer, maybe some a little shorter. We can be three days without drinking water. Again, somebody can be an outlier,

a little shorter, a little longer. But three weeks without food, three days without water, maybe three minutes without breathing. Again, David Blaine and a bunch of other people can break that rule. And then at best, maybe three seconds without having a thought. So this rule of three that I learned as a kid through my mom has really taught me that I understand I was like okay so like nutrition that I'm quite passionate about is is really the basics and the mind is is the ultimate black belt but you need to kind of get the blue belt to get to the brown belt to finally get to the black belt and then you could say that in I think in karate after the black belt you could get a white belt and jujitsu you get the red belt but that would maybe some spirituality soul deeper even

purpose thing so i've come to realize that what you put inside of you is what comes out and therefore daily habits are so important and although your mind is the ultimate tool, in order to master the mind or even try to control the mind or live with the mind, whatever your goal is, requires a lot of small practices and habits for what we eat, what we drink, how we breathe, how we move, and those set the tone for the mind. But the end goal is, in a way, the mind or the spirit. And that is kind of a core principle. And then the other one, to your point about science, and I love science, like I studied chemistry first and then nutrition. And I was brought up with this principle that as the baseline physics is the mother of all sciences particle physics and there you go to biology and from there you go or chemistry

and then you go to biology and then you know you go up and then psychology and the pyramid gets thinner and then maybe somewhere there is like theology at the top, but like psychology is after all these core principles. And in life, to me, the truth has become that it's actually the reversed, where it's that psychology, philosophy, theology, whatever, is actually the widest part of the pyramid. And the particle physics is the small part of the pyramid and the particle physics is the small part of the pyramid but to get there often you have to do a lot of work to have that conversation with the physicist it's hard you know but in a way it's like i spent a couple years in switzerland and most of my friends worked

at cern and they were looking for the hicks boson and capturing neutral antimatter but if you look at their language of the universe and energy it's pretty much the same conversation i have with the the sound healer in venice beach who believes in crystals like the language is not that far from each other energy and energy talking about the universe and energy and vibrations the other one is the most scientific phd from berkeley or columbia and like full science hat on and the other person like like sages you when you meet them and then has crystals and does tuning forks yeah right right yeah but they speak the same language yeah right don't they kind of their similarities one you can

see and when you can't that's a big part of the difference in psychology we can't see thoughts and that's what makes it scary and that's what makes it challenging and difficult we can see the artifact of thoughts but leave behind the hrv by the way i love hrv oh you do yeah yeah yeah and so like we can see the artifact of thought but not the original source no different than gravity though we can't see gravity but we can see the artifact of it you know and in the world of psychology meets physiology it's like hrv it's blood pressure, it's skin conductance, it's temperature. There's lots of things that we can see that we know that thoughts impact directly. But so right now we're limited to the artifact of thought, not thought itself. And there's probably a lot of events in the world that we don't know why they happen.

Or we might have a theory why they happen, but we know they happen. Right. we're not there yet we don't have the tools ready to measure them however with introspection due to your earliest point is that we can examine we can look we can understand and explore thought but they're invisible and only available to us right until we share them all right right. All that being said, you said it takes work and habits. What are they for you? What are some of them? Before we started, you asked me,

what did you have for breakfast? I hyper-index or over-index hydration over food, and I love food. I love eating, love a good meal, love cooking. Hydration is key. The quality of water or liquids, but also I'm kind of always drinking water. I have like multiple bottles of water, and I think that is really important. We are made out of water.

Are you interested in particular types of water, meaning like oxygen-rich water or pH water? My philosophy is that nature got it right and don't get it from the spring so if you go i grew up showering in spring water drinking spring water spring water is almost always ph neutral close to ph neutral it's not alkaline and uh you can add salt to it and lemon and other things but like just spring water is i think although quality definitely matters because you consume a lot of it um i think the key point nevertheless is is be well hydrated i think sleep you're like you can replace recovery and sleep with any supplement or nutrition hack. You cannot. Cannot. That's correct.

And often the simplest things we ignore. For me, napping is, someone who is like obsessed with their work and workaholic and their purpose and the company and everything I do, that has become a lifeline in the last 10, 15 years. It's just napping every day and for me physiology does drive the mind a lot or the mind drives physiology both ways and so i nap on a nail bed and i do sauna and cold therapy things that are sound very radical and extreme but if you're stressed out and you have worries in life which

we all do but then you go to an ice water or you go to the ocean here and even in california people don't realize that if in the winter when you go to the ocean it's pretty cold yeah 64 62 degrees yeah it's enough to like what am i doing you get to your breath again, just something that you can hold maybe three minutes. So the breath and you get to that breath and usually you're not worrying about emails and taxes and your body says, Hey, figure this out. This is hard right now.

Right now. Breathe in, breathe out. Yeah. And same with this nail bed and nail mat is like it's acupressure and he will like put you into that moment sympathetic dominant 100 hijacks the self-referencing which so you're familiar with the um default mode network you're familiar with that so you're hijacking if you will the default mode network which is a self-reference checking in am i okay is this okay am i okay which

is thought to be like at the the core seed of suffering am i okay am i okay we missed or we yeah that part of our brain has just i guess evolutionary grown too big for our own good right now right now right now because we don't have as many real dangers as we once had they are contrived and make believe and they're still dangerous humans in the world and we have natural disasters but one of the great dangers is what people think of us that's one of the great modern risks in life and so you get on a nail bed actual nails or plastic actual nails it's from eastern europe i've tried the plastic once i don't know am i just an odd person but it doesn't

do the trick yeah and and again this is like it's a little bit of a hack but for me my mind is racing a lot to the intraspector and everything and through physiology i've learned since a young age that there's certain things in physiology that you can use to shut that down and quiet the mind. And through the body, you can enter the mind or balance the mind however you want. So you're using that, not deprivation, not like a tank? I've done that, and it is great. I'm supportive of it. For me, it's just I like things that are easy i can do every day or

almost every day if i have to go to a tank like laying on a bed of nails like laying on a bed because i have it and it's not that expensive but like i going to salt water and like going to some place it's a little more involved you have book it and yeah yeah so even on a workout level it's so much easier to do simple exercises every morning, sun salutations or whatever. So you wake up, hydration. Are you doing a sun salutation? Yeah. So that varies by my age.

Now I have a lot more focus on mobility and shoulders. I sit down a lot in computers or airplanes. There's a lot of things that I know are not good for me. I stare at a screen, phone, computer, but I do them because there's a purpose that is bigger than me. That's my belief. That could be total BS,

but I believe that I'm trying to help a lot of people. And therefore, I'm willing to sacrifice this thing. But in order to keep it somewhat sustainable, I'm trying to open my shoulders, my hips in the first thing in the morning. So I pee, get a lot of water. And then before looking at emails, computer, start my practice. I put a clock for 32 minutes, which is pretty like 30 minutes, because it takes me a moment to get settled. Sometimes I go over after it. But it's something I feel I can sustain every day. If I try to go for an hour, you know, then it's so much that, you know, sometimes I don't feel I can achieve it. It's achievable, but I do it every day. And then depending on the day, kind of go from there.

Those are the things I do. And it is a form of meditation. It is a form of other things. Sometimes I do listen to a podcast. During it, if I feel like I don't want to be introspective i want to be inspired it's this thing of consuming creating and sometimes i want to be in my own mind creating my own thoughts but sometimes i feel like i need something external and then i listen to a podcast or something while i do my mobility practices i used used to be a huge fan of early morning workouts

and go early into the gym or go for a run, which is great. I love them, but right now my body is definitely asking for that first thing in the morning, the mobility stuff and movement and kind of more yin calming. And that's probably a reflection of the rest of my day and my life is that I have a lot of... Hai of my day and my life is that i have a lot of hi yang yes and uh i live in a city or area of the world that has a lot of that so i feel like i need i'm i'm craving that's why these cravings sometimes we get what craves salt or we crave

sugar it's it's not really the salt of the sugar it's like reflection of of the balance that our body is wanting or our mind is wanting that we just have to somehow listen what are you craving more than anything um what is that deep crave and the buddhist approach is i can hear in the back of my which is mine which is like my that's a really unhealthy question because we're not trying to crave anything you know but do you have not be attached to the craving that's a really unhealthy question because we're not trying to crave anything. Not be attached to the craving. I think you should listen to it, acknowledge it. The fact if you react to it is different. Actually, it's the same stuff that I've always craved.

I mentioned I wrote down these, my life values. One was wisdom. It's something greater than knowledge and that can you can achieve it many ways uh connection and that's friends family love you know anything that uh purpose that was a big thing for me is like i guess we all want to know why are we here what do we do for me it's not as high of a bar as I need to figure out why am I here. I just want to know that I'm contributing somehow to the betterment. And in the center of all of that is time, which is the ultimate value. It's like I try to value time. It's the one

resource that I don't think is infinite. I do think energy is quite infinite and other things, but time is something I'm trying to be very precious and mindful of. It doesn't mean I have to rush things, but I'm trying to respect my time. Meditating the other day, I had this insight, this insight burst that happened. And I know this is not a new idea but it hit me in in an intense way which is we spend time we can't save it and so like when we think about spending time meaning that it's it evaporates you know it's not something we can store up then it just it backed me into like okay if if all humans are spending their time where are we spending it and how are we spending it was super simple idea but the idea that we can't save time was new to me you know

counterbalanced to the spending yeah at the end of the day if you want to see how people live look at their calendar or track their spending how they spend their time and then where do they use their other resources like decision making power and money and these are like the resources we have is we have time and like a finite amount of how we can make decisions or spend that conscious capital that's right like you have this subconscious that can just cruise, but then the conscious effort, where do we spend our conscious effort, our time, our money, tells a lot about humans. And the words tend to be quite the, sometimes they contradict where we actually spend our time. The words. The words. It's like the lowest form of communication almost.

I love that. How are you practicing wisdom? It's changed a lot over the years. But let me say where I'm not practicing wisdom is TV and books. I didn't read books for years. I read a lot growing up and then I took a break on that. That was one of the things I cut, not reading. Not to say that there's anything wrong with reading.

I'm super supportive of reading but i realized that for me this fucking love this i don't know should i even curse but i love this i love connecting i love in person back and forth like this is what gives me energy and inspiration i love in person i don't know i maybe i'm romanticizing this but i want to see is like us humans learning from our grandparents who told the stories by the campfire and like there's something powerful about tribes and connecting in person and learning through one-on-one and i think the technology has helped in it like podcasts, but it has also hurt it a little bit by making it more shallow, more similar in many ways.

So I feel like there's less unique ideas. That might be a very controversial thing to say, by the way. I think in books, there's less controversial ideas. And I think when you're having this energetic exchange, you have more unique, truly unique ideas. And I feel better leaving it. Sometimes I'm inspired by a book, but almost always when I have a deep connection with a person, you leave the connection feeling better than when you arrived. I love everything that you are saying and how you're organizing your life. To be able to articulate it so clearly right now, it's evidence of the work.

It's the artifact of the work, the investment you've made. And one of the ways that I've come to understand practicing wisdom is threefold. One is books of wisdom. But just because you read the book doesn't mean that you have wisdom. Okay. Inspire conversations with wise men and women, but just because you're in the conversation doesn't mean you have wisdom. And the third is investigation. So mindfulness, right? Like really exploring the inner domains of what is true for you. And then I often talk about writing, you know, to be able to like a forcing function to articulate what you're understanding. All that being said, is that the only way to really reveal wisdom is by stitching together

the present moment. And when you can stitch together enough of them, you can get glimpses of what is true, what's beautiful, what's good. And if you can do that enough of them you can get glimpses of what is true what's beautiful what's good and if you can do that over time you reveal wisdom you have to spend time in the present to be able to reveal what is true and that's really the essence of wisdom right making the complicated as simple as possible to you and maybe to others but those are the basic practices of wisdom it sounds like you're doing all of them and there's a concept of signal to noise ratio right so signal is the essence of the wisdom and the noise is all the other stuff that you've been cutting out for much

of your life okay i'm stoked to meet you likewise yeah i'm stoked to meet you yeah okay now go back let's do the business thing really quickly and then let's get into the science of mushrooms okay you know and fungi so the bit so you come from um finland to get to the states eventually it sounds like you've had some travels it sounds like you've got a little bit of influence of some zen traditions in there maybe not it was just the empty the cup metaphor that you talked about before but you eventually get into this uber competitive environment and how did you build business how did you start this venture that you're on right now four sigmatic was there an early venture that turned into four sigmatic or did you there right. Yeah, it was a completely different company.

I had a co-founder. Yeah. There's even, even within Four Sigmatic, there's been iterations of, and so common with businesses, you know, there are, there are those exceptions that get it right on the first time. We were definitely not one of those. And there was an earlier venture. There's actually a nonprofit sports club that had two founders that one of those. And there was an earlier venture. There's actually a nonprofit sports club that had two founders that one of them and another one of our team members, we had a sports club

that the goal was to inspire adults, try new sports. So that sports club had this premise is that like, Hey, if you're an adult, it's scary to go play tennis. If you've never played tennis, when like a nine-year-old little girl will beat your ass and you don't know what to do. But if you could go with a group of 10, 20 other beginners to try it out together, if you don't like it, it's fine. And then next week, we'll go try something else. And that was the idea. And from that group of friends, one of the members plus the other founder, we started

another venture. We made blenders among all things. And there was lessons of herbs and superfoods and mushrooms in it that then later became Four Sigmatic. And some of our early employees in the previous venture became like the founding team of Four Sigmatic. And even within Four Sigmatic, starting it overseas and bringing it here with the premise is that I want to get all Americans to drink mushrooms. Or I wanted to... Four Sigmatic is a super geeky way of saying that

I'm focused on the 50 most researched foods in the world. So the world of wellness and nutrition being part of it is very much, there's a lot of hype. There's a lot of like things that are not proven, right? And my belief was always that natural is better than synthetic. At the end of the day, you could have a synthetic substance, it can work really well. There's often a sacrifice of side effects. Sometimes the sacrifice is very worth it. If you have cancer, you might want to take that bed of that synthetic compound, but there are side effects and everybody who's had

a deer one who's had chemo or something like that, you know that those are real. And the stronger the substance, usually the stronger the side effect risk, right? So there's risk benefit ratio versus when you eat kale or dandelion, you have a lot less risk. The problem becomes is that there's always these marketers who say that this is the super-er from the Amazon and he does these things. But we can accept that some foods have higher nutrient density than others. So if you take all the world's foods and you compare their nutrient density against each other, like in many other sciences, it will form a normal distribution a bell curve where some foods are really nutrient dense some are really nutrient poor but most foods are in the middle and every standard deviation is called a sigma and if you

go four sigmas you would get to the 50 most researched foods in the world and that was the premise and that was like the anti-hype Like what are the currently the 50 most evidence-based whole foods, not isolated compounds, whole foods that are in the world. And often they are the cultural stones of various societies in the world where these societies would have generation after generation elevated this food above other foods like in the nordic culture where i come from nettle uh chaga mushroom that was used as a coffee substitute rhodiola that the vikings took before going to battle that improved their energy and the cognitive function those are culturally important

to us but they also been later been shown to have tons of health and beneficial compounds. So I wanted to get those into the mainstream audience, but the challenge is that most people don't know what they are, or some of them are, they taste bad, often bitter, and you kind of have to like figure out like, how do you meet people in the middle? And like you said, it's super competitive and i knew that if i wanted to make a global impact i had to impact the us whatever you say about america you know the good the bad the ugly the one thing this country has it is the number one cultural cornerstone of this planet like you can go to a place in North Africa, they don't even speak English, but people wear a 50 cent t-shirt.

To the power of American culture. And there's so many examples of that when you travel around the world. And I knew that if I wanted to make a global impact, I needed to be here. But it's a wild idea to get people to drink mushrooms or adaptogenic herbs. And we didn't have venture money. We didn't have capital. I don't think I would have even received it if somebody would have, who would have given, invested in a mushroom beverage company. And when you don't have resources, you have to get more clever on how to do it. And I was fortunate enough to have domain expertise that very few

people had. I knew things that people wouldn't have. About mushrooms. About mushrooms and nutrition and herbs, herbalism. And basically how we did it was I would credit three things that really moved the needle. One is that I figured out that people don't like bitters in America with two exceptions, coffee and chocolate. Those are the two bitters that are commonly accepted in the society. So the idea to incorporate and hide these nutrient-dense things to people that people already enjoy the flavor and especially in the case of coffee you consume it on a daily or near daily basis versus trying to trying to replace a habit is really hard and you know that from psychologies versus super tricky upgrading or replacing a habit that you already have with something that is better for you is a lot easier still requires work the

other part was that and this was not planned, is that through my own story and just living my own life in my own way, attempting to do it, I'd become friends with your favorite health influencers, favorite health influencer, someone who was considered an outlier probably in the society or you probably have friends with a lot of these people and what happens is that these people will tell other people and in a way how you found out about a product is yeah world-class athlete carrie carrie walsh jennings yeah you know we're having a conversation and she goes hey you got to try this and so she's the best in the world for a long time at what she does and i I was like, oh, okay. Superfoods, I'm into it.

I try it and I go, this is a game changer. And she was super pumped about it. So you have people that are enthusiastic. I'm not breaking any code of confidentiality. This is something that she would be stoked. And she and I have talked about it. So that's how you've built it. So it's been this organic thing.

Yeah, and she found from a person who arguably makes the world's healthiest smoothies. And the smoothie maker found out from… Who is that? Sun Life Organics. Okay, yeah. And Sun Life Organics people found out through one of the most famous music producers in the world who found out through one of the most famous music producers in the world who found out through one of the most famous biohackers in the world that you know it's it's like that good old word of mouth but it was

from people who knew it was legit and nutrition ends up being often something very personal everybody has an opinion of what you should put in your body, and some people have maybe more credibility than others. And it was not planned. It was not a marketing strategy. It just happened is that we ended up a people who really, really, really were obsessed with health and nutrition. They geeked out about what me and my team were building. And that was the initial thing. And, um, so you're a founder. Yes. What's the second part of the role? CEO, president, CEO, CEO, and whatever that even means. But yeah, small companies, but he was like, you have an M one employee and your CEO is like the chief executive officer. And yeah, I know, but an assistant,

do you have real chops at building business or did you bring in folks that understand because obviously ceo about vision setting i didn't have money i couldn't pay myself even myself a salary let alone someone else for how long for how long for like over two years so how'd you live um i before that between ventures i worked in switzerland and a high paying job in Switzerland, you pay very little taxes. So I had savings and then I moved to Asia and to a low cost country where I would cut down my base expenses quite low until it got off the ground. So yeah, savings and low cost. Of all the places that you could put up shop you put it up in california with a high tax

base yeah and i the previous business was in um hong kong with zero taxes and before hong kong i lived in switzerland with zero to low taxes but the reason was that there is you pay to play and like there's just this is the ground zero this is where carewell's chenning is this is where soundlife organics is this is where this is these are the tastemakers these are the people who are on top of the game not to say that actually if you look at a lot of the biohacker companies like or people who are really interested in herbalism a lot of them are from finland and you can find them in other places in bali or hawaii or other places but through and through southern california it is the highest taxes in here in in america but like it is also the spot the spot when it comes to next level you know it's easy to like have this thought about southern

california hollywood los angeles you know i'm we're in a subdivision in the south bay here by the beaches but i'll tell you and i've lived here most of my life the creativity that runs through the veins of this region of the world is so stimulating like it is fantastic like how creative and that doesn't mean that there's not people here that are hustling, that are just trying to keep up with the Joneses that want to look good rather than feel good. Like there's all those things, but the creativity that runs through the veins of this,

or this community is stimulating. There's a lot. And I mean, I've only been here a short while, but people who grew up here say that even in when the times were very different in the 80s and 90s, the amount of musicians and authors and writers and thinkers that have come through, either grew up here or moved here, is quite impressive. This is for spirituality and for many, many things, California for sure, but also Southern California, is many ways a very advanced group of people. And it's very inspiring.

So that's why I came here. And the third thing that we did was just education. What you're doing right now is sharing information from the best people in the world did you just include yourself in that room no no more on the people on your previous no but i'm joking because i i'm seeing you this way oh okay right as a great disruptor to myself i was like you had very impressive guests and i'm sure it's, you're only getting started. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, and you work with some of the best people in the world and right now that information is free of charge. You don't have to go to Stanford or Stanford or Harvard and pay $200,000 to learn from these people. And it's also not done through some large media company.

You need to get good mics, but, and lighting cameras and edit it but like it's not a huge amount of money it's not cnn or whatever organize mega organization running this right now this is made available and web 2.0 social media podcast early days it was blogs and then now even publishing books uh or knowledge is so much easier than it used to be and i realized that and through podcast and new media uh it was able to share an odd message that otherwise new york times would have not written about mushroom drinks i now they have many times but it takes a moment. If you have a radical idea, now there are more ways through new media to share radical ideas. And there will be people curious to hear what you're saying, where maybe 10 years ago, if you had a radical idea,

it would have been a lot harder to get it out into the world. Yeah. It's exciting times right now for psychology, for disruption, for lots of different things. And you're disrupting the health market for sure by introducing the value or reintroducing, you know, it's not like I would imagine new things. Yeah. And I imagine most people recognize that mushrooms are healthy, you know, like, I don't think you have to get over on that piece, but we, okay. So take a moment. If the third, what are the three pillars education? What was the second one? Um, word third what are the three pillars education what was the second one um word of mouth or just and then what was the first one just form factor is repositioning something so people sometimes reporters ask me is like tarot is like right now mushrooms are all the

craze and what do you how do you think how long do you think they'll last? And I say, well, um, mushroom has been here about 2.4 billion years. We've been here maybe what, a hundred, 200,000 years. I'm sure next year they'll go away. So, um, they live in every level of atmosphere. There are mushroom spores. I don't, I don't in the every, almost every plant requires mushrooms to, uh to collect water and nutrients. Half of our DNA is shared with fungi. Animals and fungi used to be part of the same super kingdom way, way back when. Mushrooms can be the worst thing for our body like molds in buildings, but they can also be amazingly healing. And the pharmaceutical industry has known this for a long time it's estimated that half of the best-selling drugs in the world utilize fungi

which is where a lot of amazing research around their benefits also come from is a lot of these drugs are related to immune system immunomodulatory benefits immunosuppressant benefits immunostimulated benefits but without going into the deep science like they've been around a long time. They've helped us a lot from penicillin to using them in Japan for just general wellness. We can use them for immunity, for adaptogenic, these more relaxing, calming benefits. We can use them for productivity purposes. And I think that's only going to get bigger soon. And I think there's a whole another wave of psychedelics now as well related, which is separate from what I'm building with Four Sigmatic, that people are getting aware again, is that, hey, what our ancestors, you know, what our grandmother or great grandmother aid was actually kind of like sauerkraut and, you know, mushrooms and things like that are trendy again.

And people are getting back to the roots because, yeah, I don't think the modern solutions have supported us enough in the demands of the modern life. Okay. Before we get into a psychoactive properties, thank you. What are you most bullish on? Lion's mane, reishi? Like what are the ones that, I mean, teach, will you teach about this really quickly? Sure. Yeah. So right now, nobody in the world knows how many mushrooms there are. So it's like, we don't know how many plants there are. The estimates are somewhere between one to four million but we know that there's at least at least six times more fungal varieties than there are plant varieties so for every tomato there's six different kinds of mushrooms and we're discovering more of them all the time and some of them are you know incredibly nutrient dense as said and out of the ones that we've so far discovered that we've so far identified we've also realized that

they've been used for hundreds if not thousands of years by societies so i think those are two good indicators if you're looking for anything in health is that, hey, is there evidence and research to show that they work from a more modern point of view? And do we have like generation after generation cultures been using them? Where we've been forced to believe a lot often in wellness and nutrition that you have to choose between these two. You have to choose the scientific latest and greatest technologies that was invested a year ago with nasa and or you choose this hippie woo-woo thing that was used by the shamans in amazon where in reality if you drill down the best substances from the traditional chinese medicine from metaria medica 2000 years ago was the reishi mushroom which is also the most clinically researched

functional mushroom or shiitake so and there's many examples outside of the fungal kingdom lemon cinnamon black pepper coconut coffee green tea and out of the roots ashwagandha and and a lot of these things are incredibly well-researched and time-worn. And out of the things that I think I'm most bullish on is I think if you look at sales data on nutritional products, energy products sell at least three times more than sleep and stress-reducing products. But if you talk to any expert, your friends, they all will say sleep is important. We have too much stress. Talk to any expert, they will say stress is one of the biggest problems we have. We don't sleep enough, right?

So what are the things that combat those modern problems? Things that have always been problems but modern life has highlighted. I would say reishi mushroom, which is the queen of all mushrooms, and ashwagandha from the herbs. So I would say those should be your evening routine. You should at least try those in the evening, ashwagandha and reishi. Okay, ashwagandha from the plants, reishi from the mushrooms. Then modern life has forced us to have more thinking, less doing. A lot of factory jobs are going away. They're being automated. It's more about knowledge workers. And for that reason, out of the mushroom kingdom, lion's mane is by far the best for that. And out of the plants and adaptogens, rhodiola, that I mentioned that the Vikings took before battle, but it's also incredibly well studied for like cognitive function um and then generally i mentioned immunity which is so unsexy actually sleep is pretty unsexy as

well even though people complain it's changing now though immunity people only care when they're sick they only is like oh now i have the flu or the cough and now i gotta go get this and that but cancer is already now second leading cause of death after you know heart disease cardiovascular health and i i met this cancer researcher recently at one of the best in the world and and uh i was talking with her about nanotechnology and like stem cells and all that stuff but one of the things is that like like every second person will now get cancer apparently or close to that in a western world but in a way everybody will get cancer but have people have an immune system strong enough to fight it and then there's these all these newer diseases autoimmune disorders where your immune system is too active it's

hyperactive ms disease crohn's disease arthritis and if we think just realize that not to say that mushrooms heal either of those or focuses on those but just to know that like immunity is something you should do daily not just when you have a problem gut health is related to it but just protecting your, having a shield every day, and the support that mushrooms can give for your day-to-day general wellness and immunity is pretty powerful. Out of those, the chaga, the king of mushrooms, is probably the best. Out of the herbs, eulithero, that a lot of people don't know,

but it's also known as the Siberian ginseng, is probably the best studied of them all but just general kind of wellness shielding um so those are probably my top six top three mushrooms and top three adaptogens you know caffeine is there's a purpose to caffeine it works right it's a stimulant that no doubt right for sure yeah and the half life is scary eight hours in the quarter life of 12 hours is scary so when you have caffeine at 12 and you're trying to fall asleep at 11 you still got some caffeine you know coursing through your brain so when i take um your products that one it's a different experience than the caffeine buzz that you get. Okay. The

stimulation to me, it feels like it's more of a smooth opening as opposed to an elevated push. Right. And so that's me. Like with caffeine, there's a scratchiness, you know, stimulation that is good. I'm not, I'm not mad about it by any, any any means but it's still in my body 12 hours later so what is the half-life and i don't know if you know this sure yeah is there a half-life for the mushrooms that we're consuming so two parts mushrooms half-life or effects will actually last 16 to 24 weeks based on what we know right now. So I'm never sleeping when I take a little. But it's a very different effect. Yeah.

Method of working is more tonic. But our flagship product is mushroom coffee, right? And I'm going to give you first a little woo-woo way of approaching this, and then I'll break it down, the science part. Caffe caffeine is very like a masculine energy it's very linear energy it's very like straightforward put the blinders on just get it done right but then it's like you said it's like it can it's quite stimulative and then often causing challenges on sleeping and relaxing afterwards. And then what, let's say green tea is already a lot more balanced because there is a amino acid

L-theanine in it and it's a lot more gentle. So mushrooms tend to be more closer on the kind of green tea type of an energy. The problem is a lot of people love that productivity spike of caffeine and they love the flavor even you know let's say decaf people love the flavor there's something quite nourishing about it and it is actually the number one source of antioxidants for americans so polyphenols are amazing in the beans and there are tons of meta studies on caffeine for brain health and longevity as well. So it is amazing. It just tends to have two negative side effects. One is that it tends to be tough for the digestive tract.

So a lot of people get heartburn. And then the other one is they get the jittery feelings that then carry on for hours and hours. On the come down. Yeah. So mushrooms are probably somewhere in the middle so our mushroom coffee has 50 milligrams of caffeine where a normal cup of coffee will be what is by the way a normal cup of coffee anymore that's a very loose concept but let's say 80 to

150 milligrams and um and so first of all you're getting half of the caffeine or less but you're getting these effects for your function from from these other compounds so like you're getting the productivity boost but you're getting a lot less caffeine so now to your half-life and quarter-life of that you're starting with a smaller amount but you're combining it with also these adaptogenic properties so you do still get the boost but the adaptogens you. So you do still get the boost, but the adaptogens you could take in the morning and the evening, like you could also take them at night. So you get a lot more, you don't get the dip at the end.

And that's pretty fascinating, I think, especially for modern life where we're yearning for productivity and output, sometimes but we want output but we also are so stimulated by a million other things where you got to really be careful about stimulation because there's a lot of it right now in the world so you can rest and recover and your hrv stays high and your heart stays high, right? Heart health stays high. Yeah. So here's how I'm using mushrooms is that sometimes it'll be the first thing I use. Okay.

And then afternoon, I love some lion's mane. So that's where I'll find it. And it feels like it's this nice transition moment for me. Afternoon, I love some lion's mane. So that's where I'll find it. And it feels like it's this nice transition moment for me. And then at night, what's the name of the blend that you have with the cacao? Rishi cacao. Yeah, Rishi cacao, like flat out. I hope, dude, I haven't looked at the original research that you guys have done,

but I really hope that I'm not on a placebo. Because I'm telling you, I put it together. together what it's six to eight ounces of hot water and i'm like oh yeah i'm ready and i like tell me it's not a placebo dude i haven't looked at the original research on it but when i brought you the pack this morning i was like oh damn i'm at home out of all our coffee products i was like snap because that's usually the one product people want the most and i was like i'll bring him samples i was like okay sports person get him protein and then i brought you a matcha and the reishi cacao great so somehow subconsciously or by dumb luck great that's perfect i brought you no coffee i brought you green tea. The matcha piece. The stress-reducing hot cocoa and a little protein.

That's what I'm about. Yeah. And your book is on point. I read that whenever it was six months ago or whatever. Yeah. And pass it on to my aunt. And she's like, okay, I get it. So you've already made a massive dent for me, for my family.

So I'm super stoked on that. And then, then okay where can by the way i i love that we got to meet each other in this way likewise and so thank you for your commitment to the planet to human wellness and performance and i'm super stoked for people to make this part of their rhythm of life. And so foursigmatic.com. Yeah. Super simple way, like your descriptions are all there. Where else can they follow you?

I'm pretty bad at social media. I've never had Facebook, but I have a really bad private Instagram account where I put mostly travel selfies with mushrooms in various places. You don't have a TV until recently. So I it's called I am tarot. I am T E R O on Instagram. That's pretty much the only place, but I do, uh, you know, and podcasts like these, I've done a couple of them. I've written a couple of books books one about mushrooms and how to use them for health and cooking and another one about the origins of Santa Claus a children's book that also is related to mushrooms

and those are Amazon for example you can buy those or Barnes and Noble and yeah that's it and I do write a. I try to do share my information online. Okay. Is that on Four Sigmatic? Yeah, we have a pretty popular newsletter. So I write information there, educational stuff. It's just a good way to people to keep loop. But those are probably the two things. Legend. I mean, seriously, making a dent. Legend. Love what you're doing. Thank you. And then last question that I really would appreciate if you'd grok with here is,

how do you think about, define, or even articulate the concept of mastery? Yeah. Mastery is definitely when something, when, again, words are probably the lowest form of communication but to in my mind but you're in control you're in control of the situation or the environment and you're in control to let's go back to sport so like you can be good at a certain play or certain thing but if you have mastery you're good at many or most of the plays and most of the situations and and you don't even need to make a number out of it um kobe bryan scored 81 points he was not thumping his chest and yelling after every point he was just focused and just he was in mastery he knew the play he could do run this plate that play and

if you're in mastery of life you're you are in control of the situation most of the time not all the time and you know how to react to different situations you've seen a lot of situations you're prepared for a lot of situations and um and yeah you're in control i think that's kind of as much as you can i i would look at it that way it could be a skill it could be an occasion it could be a mindset things could be thrown at you but you can react faster than others to them you you see certain things coming others don't see coming um yeah in time of crisis and difficult times i think especially when you see who has mastery over something situation are you more interested in mastery of self or mastery of craft or are they equal i think they are equal because like

how you do anything is how you do everything and i think that's why if you start to look at people that i respect like you said well, but the conviction is there. Are they right or wrong? You could debate that and maybe they will debate it, but they have conviction and vision and passion. And they're curious and they're searching and they found answers that they believe in and they follow those answers. And the mastery of self often comes from mastery of some crafts or multiple crafts like they make their bed in the morning and they have um they they take pride in their body as in their temple to take pride in their family and their relationships

often ensure their sacrifices no doubt but you know it's often the small things that spot, if they have, mastery of self by mastery of some craft. You're a legend. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me on. This was a lot of fun. hearing from tarot and want to support four sigmatic is a friendly reminder that they're hooking up finding mastery listeners with 15 off any purchase when you head over to four f-o-u-r sigmatic s-i-g-m-a-t-i-c.com forward slash finding mastery that's four sigmatic.com forward slash finding mastery or you can just use the code finding mastery, all caps,

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