Habits and Hustle - Episode 559: James Beshara: Top #2 Angel Investor Shares Why He Backs The Founder Not The Business

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

When you want to understand someone's success, you look at what they built. The company, the exit, the valuation. But James Beshara says you are looking at the wrong thing. You are studying the fruit when the real story is in the roots. James has built three separate companies to nine-figure valuations before 40, ranks as the top #2 angel investor on AngelList, and has made over 100 startup bets. He is also the founder of Magic Mind and after 14 years of investing and 18 years of building companies, he has learned that the founders who get funded are not the ones with the best pitch deck. In this episode of Habits and Hustle, James shares why he backs the founder and not the business, what he looks for in the first 7 minutes of meeting someone, and why a product that is merely liked will always lose to one that is loved. He also breaks down the science behind Magic Mind, why your coffee habit may be working against you, and the morning philosophy practice that shapes how he makes every decision. If you have ever wondered what investors are really evaluating when they decide to bet on you, this conversation gives you the answer, and it starts with looking at the roots. What's Discussed: (02:53) The roots versus fruits reframe and why copying success usually backfires. (10:14) The 7-minute window that tells James whether he wants to work with a founder. (16:41) Why investors back the founder, not the business, and the 40% likability edge. (25:33) Magic Mind: Why caffeine shuts off your fatigue signal instead of giving you energy. (45:30) The Bezos rule: innovators must be willing to be misunderstood. (1:07:51) What selling a company for less than he raised actually taught him. (1:17:59) Why a product that people buy when it is “ugly” is the only kind worth scaling. (1:28:55) Why running toward failure is how you avoid the failure that ends you. Thank You to Our Sponsors! AirDoctor: Head to AirDoctorPro.com and use promo code HUSTLE to get up to $300 OFF today! AirDoctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, plus a 3-year warranty (an $84 value) FREE! Kion: Visit getkion.com/habits for 20% OFF Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com and use code JEN for 35% OFF your first subscription. Therasage: Visit Therasage.com and use code JEN to get 15% OFF your order. Your skin deserves this level of care. Magic Mind: Head over to magicmind.com/jen and use code JEN at checkout. Prolon: Prolon is offering listeners 30% OFF sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use the code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Rho Nutrition: Go to RhoNutrition.com and try Rho's Liposomal Glutathione. Use code JEN20 for 20% OFF sitewide. Manna Vitality: Try it now by using the code Jennifer20 at mannavitality.com Find more from Jen Cohen:  Website: jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Find more from James Beshara: Website: jjbeshara.com   Instagram: @jamesjbeshara Linkedin: James Beshara X: @jamesbeshara  Find more from James’s Yoga For Your Intellect Podcast:  Website: yfyi.co Instagram: @yogaforyourintellect  YouTube: Yoga For Your Intellect Podcast  Spotify: YFYI - Yoga For Your Intellect   Find more from Magic Mind: Website: magicmind.com YouTube: Magic Mind  Instagram: @magicmind Podcast: Magic Minds Find more from APT AI Career Test: Website: tryapt.ai   Instagram: @apt_ai Find more from James’s Passions:  Open State Music: @openstate_    Daily Vedantic: @the_daily_vedantic 

Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. Okay, you guys, we have a big treat today. We have one of the most fantastic founders, serial entrepreneurs on the planet, and not just my opinion, but actually the opinion of many, because we have James Bishara, Bishara. Okay, that's it, right? Either works. So the Americanized version is Bishara. Bishara. The Lebanese version, my family's Lebanese, Bishara, but our family's like, we just go with the flow. So Bashara works.

That works. Okay. James Beshara or Bashara. He is the founder of magic mind, one of my favorite, favorite habits, daily rituals of all time. But also I just found out that James is also considered the number two most best angel investor on the planet by, of course, Angie's List, you said, said that. Angel List, yeah. Angelist, which is the biggest. And there's also an Anguilist.

There is. Angie's list, if I was a home cleaner, I hoped to God I'd be in the top three. I would. I'd work my ass off to be in the top three. But alas, I went the angel investing route instead. And through a lot of, honestly, Jen, through a lot of failure and in building things that learning what not to do, it got me into the circles of really great founders and started to make a couple investments.

And then I was like, I think I could do a few more. And it started to take off from there. But wait a second. So you have had three exits of companies that have 100 million and more, right? I've built three companies the ad to evaluation of 100 million or more. You were also voted number two on Angels list. Yeah, Angel lists. Every once in a while, they put out data. And the last time they put out the data of their top investors on the whole platform, which is the biggest platform for angel investors. They did have main list number two. So why you? Like, what are they looking for? What are the kind of qualifying?

qualifications are saying that this guy is the top angel investor. This one's not. Like, what are they looking for? That's a great question. What are the data points? It's done by height. Yeah, I was going to say, for sure, because you're what, six, five? Yeah, so it's all done by height. No, the, uh, the, uh, the number one, actually. They don't, yeah, thank you. Thank you. They actually do not release exactly how they compile their data, but they do have more data than than anybody. And it's built on performance data. So how your investments have been an angel I've been an angel investor for 14 years now. And so they compile all of the entry points

of when you get into companies, where those companies are. But the reason I say that it's hard to know exactly what data they're using is because, let's say a company is private for 10 straight years. They haven't gone public. Maybe they raised around two years ago that says they're a $10 billion company. But two years later, maybe they've grown a lot.

Do you make it a $12 million company? Do you make it a 14? It can be a bit of a bit of a, art at that point. So yeah, that's kind of a lot of people like, how do you compile your data? And I don't even know how they compile it. Well, also, though, let me ask you a question that, why do you think you are, why do you think you're a great angel investor? Because you've raised a ton of money over the last many years. I always think about this Warren Buffett line in this realm where he said, I'm a, I'm a better businessman because I'm an investor. I'm a better investor because

I'm a businessman. So when I think about my investing, the lens, and I look at about 1,700 deals a year, and it usually invests in about 20 years, so it's 15 to 20. And these days, it's less and less because Magic Mind keeps growing, and we've got three little daughters and just want to be as present as possible for them, my number one kind of like waking hours, goals to spend 20,000 hours with them before they're all 10 years older above, because I can tell you the, the story behind that goal. But that quote from Warren Buffett is so, I think so brilliantly encapsulates that building startups, and you know this as well, by building your own operation because

you have team members, you've got just a really well-oiled machine. That then helps you notice when you're working with a company. Like, well, how responsive are they on an email that I sent them five days ago? Why is it taken five days versus, wow, they replied five hours later. You see these things and it's like, I wouldn't necessarily hire someone that takes five days to reply. So would I want to partner with a company that takes five days to reply? And it's a very similar lens where I'm thinking about in terms of just the people that I, something that I think about is when a, when a founder is pitching me, I guess I'm invested

something like 100 something investments. I've never counted it up. But when I'm chatting with the founder for a potential investment, I'm thinking, And does this person make me want to work with him within seven minutes? Minute nine, minute 19, it's too late because you meet someone great at a networking event, at a dinner, at a house party that could be an amazing co-founder, potential investor, a partner, a brand ambassador, a recruit for, you know, let's say an open role that you have. If you can't hook them, even if you do have 30 minutes on a Zoom, but if you you,

You can't get them engaged. You know, for a dinner cocktail serendipitous moment, you might have six minutes before they decide whether they want to chat with you. Why seven minutes, though? That is a great question. I settled on seven because I usually know within seven minutes. And I think it goes back to this, this intuition aspect of, you know, like, logic is 11 data points, intuition is a thousand data points that you're pulling on to recognize, do I love

being around this person? Like, for instance, do I get great energy? So I get amazing. Every time we hang, I'm like, dude, I just love Jen. And everybody does. And if it took eight minutes, you might not have those eight minutes. Like you have learned probably since you were nine years old, since you're five years old. Like, it's probably not, it's part learned and part just who you are. It's like, I want to make this person feel amazing on minute one and second 30. And what I've noticed in the best founders is they're wired to make someone else feel amazing minute one. Really? They're already looking into, and this is how I, when I'm, I've fundraised probably 100 and maybe 150 million for different things over the last 15 years of building companies, last 18 years of building companies.

and I recognize early on, like, I am so wired to want to figure out what does this investor care about three days before the call? What am I thinking about that morning, the shower before, calling three hours, like, for Jen in this podcast, I was showering early thinking like, okay, what would she, I'm on the drive here thinking, what would she care about this? Okay, she loves this. I'm looking this up. And it's a total empathy thing of like, whether founders, the best founders, whether they know it or not, they're so service oriented. Yeah. And this is obviously very different than what the press would say about founders. But like Steve Jobs, I heard this about two years ago.

This is so, so cool. His chief of staff that had been his chief of staff for 22 years, James Higa. He's an investor in Magic Mind. And he was chatting with our team two years ago, and he said, I was like, well, what was the, what was the underlying mission of, of Apple? Like, what was the, because I actually never heard their one-line mission for Google's organized the world's information, Facebook, it's connect humanity. And I was like, what's a one-line mission for, for Apple?

And he goes, oh, it was how best to relieve suffering. And I was like, what? It was like, oh, yeah, we never really like caught up. it but you know in our executive team meetings that was kind of the decision maker was which route would lessen suffering the most and i was like wait james what wow i was like i've i've consumed nearly everything that there is to consume about apple steve jobs i never heard that He goes, well, yeah, I think he got it from his guru, something. I'm like, wait, what?

And he's like, yeah, well, you know, he had his guru in Tokyo that give him a lot of advice on these things. And I was like, you can think that, all right, billionaire, Apple, Edison of our time. You think of those things. And this is, I think, the mistake that young founders get caught up in, or any first-time founder gets caught up in his, you get caught in. is you get caught into the fruits instead of the roots for examples in life.

Never look at the fruits. The fruits of what a tree is bearing has nothing to do with if you wanna replicate those fruits. It is ever, like you go to a great vineyard, the wine maker would be like, yeah, you can't look at the grapes and get that much information. It is all about the soil we chose, the climate of exactly where we are on the hill.

you would never just look at the grapes and be like, that's, that gives me the whole playbook. And yet we do that with examples in history all the time. That's so true. That's such a wise thing to say. And it's so true. And we are programmed to do that so often. But I like what you said about, you said so many good things in the last few minutes. I was trying to like remember them.

So I can, I can call back. Speaking of, let's take a magic mind. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So we could focus more. This one's caffeine free. This is the caffeine free because it is about 1 p.m. And this is, speaking of the roots instead of fruits, well, you can have half a few ones.

But yeah, this is part of my roots. This is the best. You guys, I do it all the time. And they're, they're. God, just smells good, too. We're going to talk all about this. We're not there yet. And that's our sugar-free version.

That's, um, it is so delicious. And caffeine-free. Yep. It's good. It is, uh, so good. First, uh, caffeine-free shot that we had ever heard of. caffeine-free energy shot. So it took a while to develop.

This is amazing. They all taste so good. But wait a second. Before we even jump into MagicLang, because you know I'm going to have a bazillion things to talk about with that, you said a couple of things that I want to make sure we don't forget because I think they're really valuable pieces of information. There's a lot of wisdom there about founders.

Because if we have entrepreneurs or people who want to start businesses, you're a really great person and a great resource to give people some very tactical, actionable things. and things that people just maybe not think about. But you said something that really kind of resonated because I did a whole talk on this, and it kind of went viral on the fact that I believe, and from what I've seen from my purview,

that companies or investors, typically, they invest not in the business or the company, but the founder. And if you're likable, you're going to have a 40% more chance of not just raising money, but getting more money. And you just kind of said that. You prove that that hypothesis, right? Because you said, if you like somebody or they give you that feeling of energy or that

energized feeling within seven minutes, you know if you like them. And then all these other things, of course, make a difference. So basically, I totally see this because now that now I know you, I see why, you know, you're able to raise money. You're able to like build this business and be like, because it all comes from with, from the top. And you exude a great energy, a great, very empathetic, your kind, you're likable. So that is exactly, that is your secret. That is your secret sauce. It's all magical. It's all magic mind. I do say I'm like, people are like,

maybe you have such great energy at, you know, 4 p.m. 8 p.m. I'm like, that's the magic mind. It could be the magic mind, but it's also part of like we say in the Jewish world, like Nishama. Like, it's part of like who you are. Like your DNA is very, very, much that way. I do. I love people and I love nothing lights me up more than figuring out what someone once needs is struggling with and then I can I can get so quickly emotional think about it and then jumping in to help them. It's a I was chatting about this with Theo Fon, the comedian. Yeah, I love him. He's good. He's so great. We want his podcast? No, we were just chatting and he's a, He's been a friend for years and he and I were chatting about, I was like, you know what's so weird is growing up, you remember the King Arthur stories? He was like, oh, yeah, I love those. And I was like, did you want to be King Arthur or did you want to, was there any party that liked Merlin? He was like, Merlin, no. Yeah, I wanted to be King Arthur, of course. And he's a nut for like childhood thing. But yeah, he mentioned that so quickly, you know,

I was like, man, I always wanted to be Merlin. And I always loved Merlin. He's the wizard that, like, helps the Knights of the Roundtable. He's kind of like a side character. Yeah. But what I loved about that character is, and I was doing this, like, a non-associative drawing exercise where I was just drawing and seeing, with my eyes closed, like, where would my mind go?

This was, I don't know, a year or two ago. And I was drawing Merlin. I was like, God, I always forgot. I loved Merlin. when I was a kid. The product is called Magic Mind. I loved performing magic when I was little. You did. I did. And I loved this aspect of this character that would help these nights. He didn't necessarily have like some big challenge of his own, but he loved helping the Knights of the Roundtable succeed in their challenges. I wake up each day and I'm like, I don't really have that much to,

I don't have like this drive of like I need to make this happen in my life. But once I hear someone that I know and love has this or that problem, dude, I'll go on a walk for 45 minutes thinking about how can I solve it. It's the reason that we were saying just before we hit record, like both of us are wired to where we don't, people think I'd be good at sales. I'm like not if it's only if it's something that I really believe in because then I can't wait to tell people about it because it's going to benefit you. So, yeah, that was the, I mean, the whole founding story of MagicMoy was these 12 ingredients. Well, they will ensure that you feel like you're in flow state within 15, 20 minutes. These are the 12 things. And I was doing that years before ever starting a company.

Tell us about it because you're, what you'd also said, what's interesting is that you are one of these founders with MagicMind, but you're like intricately involved. Like you were at that, like, you know, at Expo West. You were there, like, standing there for hours, like, for, like, you're there at the booth. Like, you really, you so believe in this product. And on top of that, you also are investing on all these other projects that you also are involved with. Like, you are, like, do you sleep or does Magic Mind keep you up on? Like, how does it work? I sleep. I'm in bed at like 8.30. I wake up at 4.30. Yeah, Magic Mind Sleep. It is, yeah, we did launch Magic Mind Sleep because it's, it is, it is, we launched it, um, a little bit ago. And it's great too. It is so, I know. And in fact, one of our. And in fact, one of our. other partners and friends. Do you know Pete Holmes? You got to have a money podcast. By the way, you just mentioned him before the podcast. I have no idea who this person is. Oh, he's a great comedian. Hilarious comedian. Oh, he's a comedian. I like him already. Let's book him. Yes, you know, you would love him and he like you get stopped on the street

because he's like talking about magic mind all the time and he'll send me texts of like, I'm on the streets at Baltimore. Someone just came up to me saying their life was changed with. one of the things that he said that was that is so so I guess interesting around this topic and by the way I also yeah this morning I was like I need to go surfing and figure out this thing where we're about to launch I'll let listeners in on this we're about to launch a new version of magic mind sleep and how do we launch an improved version but we still have this inventory we got to mine every penny we sell this inventory of version 1.0 and so it's it was a uh like i'm very involved to where i was like i was like i have to figure out this tetris in my head and i need to go

clear my head i'm going to go surfing to try to figure it out to help the team i don't think so maybe but then i was on a 30-minute call on the way here with our team member joe just trying to think through this these logistics my co-founder william who's just so brilliant in the same way he and i both love, we can't, we can't not be involved in these naked details. I'm sure we, we piss off team members. I don't think you hired me to be the expert in this. And they are experts that tell us how we should be doing things. But then every once in a lot, it's like, there's five years, yes, exactly, five years of, you know, just like institutional knowledge that says, I need to jump in here and help with this. And that was kind of one of those examples today. But, but yeah, there is a,

Pete, he wrote me this text, he's like, okay, Magic Mind Sleep, how has one company done it twice? And this sounds like a commercial. I know. It's not even a commercial. This is like legit. He's like, there's no,

usually companies nail one product. You know, you guys actually nail two with Magic Mind Sleep. No, by the way, you did nail two because I will, I'm saying this because it is legit. And Ed can even vouch for this, my cameraman over here,

people come here and they say to me without any type of conjoling, oh my God, I'm obsessed with the sleep one. And people legitimately love that sleep one. What is in the sleep one? Yeah. Because it's true. Like you did knock two out of the park.

Well, thank you. And I could talk about this stuff. The people that are interested in the ingredients, I love, love talking about this. And this will be generically helpful whether you buy Magic Mind or not. So with Magic Minds, the daytime shot, The morning shot was all built around, at least the key insight was the leading cause of procrastination is low-grade pervasive stress and anxiety. It's not fatigue.

It's not lack of motivation. We think it's those things. Yeah. But the leading cause and the research actually shows that it's low-grade pervasive stress. You actually, you're motivated, extremely motivated to nail that big paper you got to write or that three-hour project you've been putting off. but your low-grade pervasive stress just of living in the world that we live in of 25 text messages every hour and 50 emails every day we're like I'll get to it later I'll get to it later but if you can decrease that stress that low-grade kind of just like I want to get to it but like it's got

to be perfect if you can decrease that yep you can actually your your to-do list just melts away And when I figured that out in my morning stack, just my personal morning stack, this is probably seven, eight years ago. And I was like, oh my God, that's the unlock that when we're drinking excessive amounts of caffeine, the sad side effect of excessive amounts of caffeine. First, caffeine works. Its primary function is that it blocks our adenicine receptors that tell us we're building fatigue. It actually, it doesn't produce that much energy in the body.

To produce energy in the body, you want to produce the fuel currency of the body is called ATP. And you can do that with things like cordyceps, mushroom. which is in Magic Mind. Or you can feel like you're awake by shutting off the check engine light. The adenicine receptors that tell us we're building fatigue. But that fatigue, and everybody knows this,

from chugging a coffee, it's building in the background and when that caffeine wears off, you crash. But it is, like I said, it's just like turning off the check engine light when you chug another cup of coffee or a Red Bull or an energy drink. It's turning off the check engine light

instead of actually improving the engine. So the first insight was like, well, I want to improve the engine. What are the ingredients that actually produce more ATP and produce the fuel currency of the body? That was the first set of things in the beginning. Then I learned that when we consume, and this was, like I said, 7, 8.

I mean, really, the beginning of this journey is about 12 years ago. End up writing a whole book on this subject before starting Magic Mind. Oh, yeah. And I would just love this. It was kind of this Merlin kind of story where it was like, when I tell people about, hey, you should try Ashwaganda,

you should try rhodiola you should try bucopomenary they would notice such a better lift in their productivity for years and then i found out about okay decreasing stress and let me let me let people in on this this secret that most biohackers know which is when you consume a lot of caffeine you are turning off that check engine a check engine instead of improving the engine but also critically also you're spiking cortisol the body's stress response the very very very very thing that you think like if I chug this red bum and knock out that project maybe for the next hour and a half you're good but then the very thing you're chugging to get through that next to do list on is the very thing that an hour and a half later your stress is spiked you're like

I don't want to do anymore I can't now I got to go into you know being a great mom or a great dad after where I'm so stressed and people would rarely make the connection of oh it's because I had those two three four extra cups of coffee that I shouldn't have had also what I noticed because I'm a big coffee lover. I love ice coffee. I love cold brew. I love that whole thing. I love it too.

I love it. And the problem is not even necessarily a, well, it's actually, I drink it because I like the taste. And I love the ritual of it. I love a great, I drink a half-calf in the morning. I love it, the warm, and then I add my magic mind just alongside it. Take a magic mind next one. Well, what I was going to say is that the coffee for me, the ritual of pouring the cold brew, putting in the almond milk, doing that whole thing is more of the ritual.

and I don't think it gives me any more energy. I'm doing it for the taste, not for the effect anymore. In fact, I can probably drink five of them and probably fall asleep because my body has acclimated. You build a tolerance in about 30 days. You really do. You build a toll. I can have now two, three cold brews and people could be jumping off the, I guess, the rooftop. But I'd be like, whatever, what I found with magic mind, what I do, my part of my ritual is I drink it before I work out.

because it will actually make me work out longer, and I'm, like, in, like, I'm focused more. The cordisps mushrooms, and specifically the supplier that we get our cordyceps from, we're like, we are nuts for how much research, it's the most over-researched beverage, rinova, and it sounds, that sounds biased, but, like, anybody can email us for the third-party testing that we do across every, contaminants, heavy metals, microbials, mycotoxic, It's, it's, we, we give it to everybody.

Everybody, we know our own family drinks it daily. So I'm just like, I'm going to go as far as you possibly can. Our operations manager, Blake, when I, as said, it made a request for the latest test that Tim Ferriss asked for. He was like, uh, we can do it, but that's like, we're the only beverage I know of that would do it. I was like, great. That's a, that's a reason we should do it.

Yeah. But, um, but, but yeah, the, the corticeps, specifically cordyceps, so great for endurance athletes and for anybody working out that wants. 15, 20, 30% more endurance for their workout. Yeah, well, and also, like, I'm focused more, and I have my best ideas, like, when I work out regardless. But coffee doesn't do the same thing. It does not work as well.

It does not. I mean, I'm just being honest. And caffeine is actually, this is where we get into the fun, I think. But there is caffeine in this. There is, not in this one. Not in the caffeine-free, but we do have 55 milligrams in our original shot. And we have a magic mind max, which is 165 milligrams. which is that is about a cup of coffee,

but it's time released over the course of eight hours, which is so cool. You couldn't do that until about two years ago. It's amazing. Time release liquid. You could do time release pills, but not liquid until about two years ago. As soon as we saw that,

William and I were like, we're going to make the first time release energy shot. And Max is that. Now we've incorporated time release into original. But, okay, the generic, I definitely want to oscillate back to the generic, helpful information that's so independent of whether anybody drinks

a magic bar or not. And on the caffeine side of things, the neurochemistry and the biophysiology of caffeine is really interesting. And it's so poorly understood. One, what I was saying of people think a cup of coffee gives them energy. It gives you a tiny amount of adrenaline. But its primary function is shutting off the neurot receptors telling you that you're building fatigue, the adenosine receptors. And then three hours later, those blocks wear off and the indecine rushes in and you have that crap. But there are actual things that nature and science give us that do build up the body's fuel currency and produces more energy

But the other thing that's that is poorly understood about caffeine at least from the Mainstream audience it's very well documented in the in the literature is that caffeine is a vasso constrictor So it restricts the blood flow to the brain So you get less oxygen to your brain with something like city colin which is in magic mind City Coaline improves blood flow to the brain and brain. Why is that good? That improves lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is the scientific term, the academic term for creativity. Lateral thinking is being able to switch context, be able to combine

this problem and this problem or this potential solution with this problem. So city coloning, we use this the best version of city colonel is called cognizant. It took us like two years to get on the wait list to get cognizant because it's, it's always in such high demand. But that product, And you, anybody can buy a cognizant or a citicoline on their own. They don't need to get through magic wine. But that is a great approach to improve blood flow of brain, which improves lateral thinking, drinking a lot of caffeine, drinking a second cup, a third cup of coffee. Not only do you build a tolerance within 30 days, my parents, my mom and dad have been drinking coffee for 50,

two cups for 50 years, for 49 years and 11 months, they've been in maintenance mode. Exactly. Just maintaining, getting back to new. with those two cups and they feel when they're out of neutral, they're like, oh, those these two cups, I need them. Well, you do need them to get back to neutral. But you're not getting anything more than that maintenance mode when you drink those two cups after 30 days. If you add in a second cup, a third cup, if someone's listening to this and they add in like a fourth cup, they'll feel it for 30 days and then they're in maintenance mode. You can take about 12 days to get off and then get back

into, you know, feeling that. Cycling it, you mean? Yeah, cycling it. But all this is to say that you aren't getting much of the benefit, you're just getting back to neutral. But every time, 50 years in, five years in, 55 days in, you are getting the negative effects of the vaso constriction, the limited blood flow to your brain. Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentus 3. I've been using their protein, their creatine, and omega-3 combo for months now, and the results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long-term health and performance. but hard to get enough of through diet alone. The crea pure creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance.

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Okay, I have a question for you. Can your body acclimate to drinking a magic wine? Everything in magic wine outside of caffeine does not build tolerance. Really? Oh, it's like I say, it's like the, you know, I almost tell, people like, if you can put aside the knee-jerk reaction of thinking this might be a commercial for some guy's own product. Yeah, it's not even. If you can put that aside, the ingredient choices are so fascinating. Yeah. That it's why we have you, you've had so many people take it from elite

athletes to the person that you wanted that you wanted us to send it to Italy, Italy recently. Right. Like, they've tried everything. Oh, I've said it to A-less actors, and actors and actresses, athletes, moms, entrepreneurs, all alike. Everyone's obsessed with it. Maybe the best cyclist of all time. We won't even mention it. That has tried everything else. That's right. And yet they're like, can you send more of that? And it's a, that is a result. Did I give you him too? Yes, I did. I'm giving you a hundred. My God. I know. My rolydecks for you guys is pretty vast. Holy crap. What was so nice about that one, too, was he took the time to also write a note back. said, I've got to say whatever you've done.

And this is so impressive because my wife actually loves this. And we get all these products sent our way. Of course. And she doesn't love any of them. It's rare for our actual love one. So that was really kind. But when I say, you know, if you can put that aside, it's a really fascinating dive into the ingredients that, like I said, like I said, you could buy on your own. You don't need to, cordyceps mushrooms you can get on your own.

Cognizant, you can get on your own. Also like stuff like rodeola, stuff like this. Rodeolas. You could buy. But is it as effective on its own? or is it the combination and sequence together that makes it. They call it the entourage effect. Yeah.

So, yeah, biohackers and all of our formulators, and we have a scientific advisory board of these Titans in this space. That's been a constant trek is how do we get the best minds around the table, like Dr. Andrew Weil, if you've never had him on podcast. He's great. He's amazing. He is so amazing. He's like the OG functional doctor that, you'll cover the time.

I actually really like him. I would, yeah, I love to. Can you put me in touch with him? I really do like him. He's the best. He's the best of all these people. I know. And he's like, goes on to Joe Rogan.

He doesn't have like a, he doesn't have some commercial interest. No, he's just, he's just like, hey, macha is great for dot, dot, dot, dot reasons. A rodeo or rosé is great for dot, dot, dot of reasons. I'm like, mention magic. And he never does. He just keeps it so cool, you know, objective and independent. Yep. Yeah.

Okay. He's the head of our advisory board. Oh, he is? Yeah. After a while's ahead of. Yeah. Shut up. Dr. Dan Engel, who also goes on, you know, all the big podcast.

He's a brilliant. He's a unique because he's neuroscientist and he's a MD and Ph.D., and he also overlaps with a lot of psychedelic research, which is really rare to get two of those, but all three is really rare. So great neurologist and neuroscientist. And just has, he's so open to all plant alternatives to things. And there are no psychedelics and magic mind, even though the name. That's a lot of people always ask me that too.

I'm like, no. So then, okay, so obviously clearly people love it. There's 12 ingredients. You made it. You basically concocted this whole thing in your kitchen. Yeah. It's been around for how long now, like seven years, you said? About five years.

Oh, five years. I've been doing it at my own for about 12 from, it started all started with a heart condition that limited how much caffeine I could have each morning. And that's how it all started. About half a cup of coffee. Yeah. Or I was like, coffee is. And I was drinking six to seven cups a day.

And my doctor was like with the air condition, you can't have more than half a cup. And I was like, there is no effing way I can get through it down half a cup of coffee. And then he said this one thing, then we can wrap up the magic mind content. And the long, you know, the long ass commercial. It's not even a commercial.

I think people should know about this. It's bad good. Yeah, and this is a great point around green tea and or anybody that wants to add Elthene to their their morning ritual he's the this doctor this brilliant doctor in in San Francisco he said you know with your condition really can't I'm one and a half a cup of coffee because it'll trigger your irregular heartbeat and I was like dude there's no way I can get through a day and half a cup because

like a true addict I was my yeah it was the only thought from the day of hearing out a heart condition we're gonna go next door to the ER and have your heart shock back into rhythm like I didn't care about any of that stuff versus him saying that. And he said, well, have you ever tried green tea? It has this compound in it called Elthene that extends your body's absorption of caffeine over a longer period of time and dials down the stress response for how much caffeine for the caffeine that you're consuming. And I was like, wait, this althea stuff, wait, there's a stress response. And I could add this aletheist stuff that he just mentioned to my morning ritual to get more out of my first cup of coffee. And that was

12 years ago, that was the beginning of my engineering brain going crazy down the rabbit hole of what else does nature and science give us to add to the morning ritual to get the most out of it? And so how many do you drink a day just out of curiosity? I drink one original and then in the afternoon every once in a while I'll have a magic mind free. And then the sleep one. Okay, what's in the sleep one? Don't go into the whole. Just tell me like, okay, you have the best ingredients, my favorite ingredients in sleep are magnesium, camomoneal, there's valerine root, and then I love lavender as well, but it's a low-dose lavator.

So why does it work so well? Like, why are people so crazy for it? Okay, and this gets back to your question of the 12 ingredients. Yeah. So, rodeola. So rodeola. On par. It's been shown in large-scale studies to be on par with low-dose pharmaceutical stimulants.

Which means, I can say this, correct? You can say whatever you like. That rodeola is supposed to be. And this is what a lot of people I know who are on Adderall or on all these ADHD medications, the natural, the natural occurring version of Adderall is supposed to be Rodeola. And so I know a lot of people. Rodial is so good for that. And then if you pair it with Bacopa Manari, then that decreases impulsivity,

about to 40, 45 percent. Really? Yeah, so that you really feel locked in. Your energy is higher and you feel super locked in to the task you're working on. And no one knows these things. And in India and China, Bacopa is given to kids and adults way before they would a pharmaceutical. That's incredible.

This other one you just mentioned, what's it called? Bacopa. Bacopa. Can you buy that on its own? You can. Tastes awful. That's where three different food science teams have helped us. Probably 700K, three years, three different food science teams to get it to taste good.

Yeah, you guys spend a lot of money on the ingredient list. I mean, there's a reason why it's a very high quality product. I think organic. Three months ago, it became the number one hell shot in the natural, in the country, an entire country, in the natural grocery channel. Really? Yeah. I'm surprised this.

Whole food spousing. I feel like it's been on a rocket ship for the last couple years, maybe a year. It's been fun to see it go from D to C in e-commerce. Yeah. And biohackers and influencers and Silicon Valley loving it to now, yeah, it's been cool to see it in grocery stores and the same time. Where's that era one? It's the number one shot at Air One, by the way.

I think, do not quote me on this. Ed, you can clip this out if I'm wrong. I'll look afterwards. But I believe last time I checked, it is the number two revenue beverage at all of Air One. And it is the number one shot in the natural channel, which means whole foods and sprouts and Air One and natural grocers around the country. And now we just started to get into conventional grocery, which would be places like Kroger and Albertsons and Publix and the Southeast.

So yeah, now you'll start to see it in those kinds of, which is so fun. I love it. Most of my family and friends back in Texas, they're not going to Whole Foods for every grocery. No, they're going to regular grocery stores. Right, so it's fun. That's amazing. Okay, so that's amazing. So tell me more about what your other rituals are daily to kind of keep on point.

So we know that you do this. What else? Because I know you're very spiritual and you're into all sorts of like meditations and stuff. So we talked on, we talked about looking, I love your show. shoes, by the way. Those are so cool. I've never seen shoes like that. You have it? You know, you know what these are? They're called Sneaks. Do you know Sarah Blakely who did Spanx? Yeah. So she sent me a couple of her. Those are so cool. For listeners that can't see, it's a high, high heel, like running shoe. They're basically a high heel riding shoe. They're not the most

beautiful to look at, but I will tell you, they're the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn. I thought, like, I thought like, when I first saw them, I'm like, oh my God, they're so horribly ugly. And then Jesse, her husband, Itzler, who is a friend of mine, sent me a couple pairs. And I've been wearing them ever since. They are amazing. They are the most comfortable shoes ever. And people can make fun all they want. But listen, put your foot in there.

You'll never not walk around with them again. And then do you end up talking about it all? All the time. Because people are like, that is so unique. People are usually guys are like, oh, yeah, those are so cool. Girls are like, they're so ugly. How are you wearing them? Really?

Yeah. But they're selling, I think. I mean. Function over form for guys, I guess. I'm like, that looks so much more functional. It's a functional. Like, for me, I mean, I don't know how to like walk in real high heels because I'm like a, I'm like a gym bro, but with long hair, I guess. So for me, I have to, it's true.

So I need to, I can't wear like stilettos. I will fall over and break my face. So I need to wear shoes that are very comfortable. So I wear these. And this is also not an ad. This is legit. This is something that I've been wearing and I really like them because I can. wear them with jeans and not like a boy.

Sneaks. Dude, so I took an anagram test and said I was a seven meaning an Epicurean loves to go find things and tell the community. So I love like that. Like just knowing someone's made a really high quality, cool looking product and now you attesting to the comfort. I'm like, yes. I want people to know, sneak, sneak, sneak, sneak.

Sneak, sneak, sneak. I'm telling you, I, you're like the fifth guy on this podcast to mention them. They look like shoes from straight on. And then on the profile on the side, I was like, wait, what, those are heels? I know. Very cool. So people stop making, girls stop making fun of me. They're all going to be, you're ahead of the curve in a lot of ways.

Sarah's actually, Sarah Blakely is ahead of the curve. I'm just a follower, apparently. But I mean, they're really great shoes. Well, you know, one of my favorite quotes I think of in entrepreneurship and in life. This is a Jeff Bezos quote. He said, innovators must be willing to be misunderstood. Yes, totally agree with that. I think about this all the time where if you can cultivate a willingness, where it's not a bug,

it's a feature if you can cultivate it. It's not like, oh, it's something you got to put up with. It's like, that's your edge. You are willing to be misunderstood. You don't really care. You can go from being six months ahead to two years ahead to three years ahead. And that can allow you all kinds of affordances in life. You become the maven where everybody just starts, you know, what's next?

What should I be? I'm sure everybody. network asks you, it's like, what do you think about this product? What do you think about this supplement? What do you think about this? Cold plunging for women? And you're like, because I just didn't need to fit into, I wasn't striving to be understood. I got the answer for this three years ago. Also, it's funny. I said that, James, because that does happen all the time. People like said me stop for my opinion or whatever. And many years ago, actually, like 10 years ago, maybe eight. I was actually, was it like the LA Times or some magazine like put me as like in the

top 10 tastemakers in like the health and wellness space because I have like, you know, I created this whole thing called no gym required before no gym required became a thing. I created weighted shoes before like weight, you know what I mean? Like I was always doing these things, but I was always like, like five years before it became popular and then it kind of exploded onto the scene. You know what I mean. So people who know me know it's like kind of like yeah, like and people laugh at me in the interim. They're like, oh my gosh, she's like, what is she doing? She's what she's talking about. Like I was doing fitness stuff way before fitness and wellness and longevity became popular, you know? Have you started your own company brand product? I had. I started two. I had a, I had a shoe. My first one was a weighted shoe that was basically the weight was like base the soul or the was like a weight. So you can interchange.

You can take out the weight and have a regular sole or have the weight. And the weight was evenly distributed so it would be easier on your knees and your ankles. And it was like, I sold, I don't know, like 100,000 pairs of these shoes on my own. What happened? Where did you go? So what happened was, oh, my God, this is like, this is a podcast on its own. I got acquired by a big company. So what happened?

I sold so many shoes on my own. I factored the money. I didn't raise any money. So I was like paying a ton of interest on the money. And the shoes were coming from Korea and they were heavy. So because of that, like it was costing me a lot. But all these, like the top five, because in the business of shoes, there's not many, there's Reebok, Nike. You know, people were like, oh, my God, how is this like girls selling all these shoes without a big $200 million a year marketing budget without all this?

But I was giving out these shoes to every celebrity and they were wearing them around. And at the time, like those magazines like, you know, Us Weekly. and life and style were really popular. So everyone was capturing these shoes in these magazines. So, like, all these companies were going to incubate me. Do you wear them out and about and people wouldn't know that they have weights? I would wear them out and also, like, yeah, like they were cute. But they would be in the shoes so you can't see it because ankle weights are really bad on your joints.

And they look weird to where it's like you look like a prisoner. I looked like it was, they were heavy, but they were cool looking. Yeah. And so, like, everyone was wearing them, like Jennifer Gardner was wearing them, Jennifer Annes and whoever, like everybody. And so people are like, who the hell is this chick? And so I was getting offers to be incubated by all of these companies. And then I ended up going with this second tier company because I really liked the man who was like who owned it. And he, this guy, this company owned a bunch of these like tier two, tier three shoes that you'd find like at T.J. Max.

It wasn't like a Reebok or a Nike. And I got the deal with him. And then once I did the deal with him, he wanted out of the deal. And he basically like kind of screwed me. And so I, it was like, and the whole deal last, took so long that like by the time I was like legally okay, I already lost momentum on the shoes for so long. And it's still one of those like bees in my bonnet. Like I still think about that. Let's bring them back. I want to listen, I just had this conversation two weeks ago because I was like 10 years ahead of my time. And those shoes today in the wellness space would kill. Yeah. I'm going to show you a pair. That's the first. Because that one to this day, I should have made, I was young and naive.

I trusted this person. Dude, I tell young founders all the time. First time founders, you might be 55. First time, get your first startup out of the way. It's a burner brand. Your first pancake is the messiest. Get it out of the way. If you're successful, great.

Otherwise, you've got a cheap MBA. Oh, you've no idea. I learned so much. I also have an MBA, but I learned so much. But the truth of the matter is, like, if you get into business with someone who wants to screw you who has more power, money, money and power, it's really hard when you're like this young girl. Choosing your partners. Choosing your partner. That's the first lesson. So for it's like, in life, in everything in life. The second business I did, the second company was

sold, got acquired by Weight Watchers. So I developed a fitness app. Wait, how is this not come up in our conversation before? But I don't talk about it. Because I, when I, with this podcast, I talk about the person who's here. I don't talk about myself. And weirdly enough, as extroverted as I am, I don't really talk about myself in that way. Like, people always laugh at me, like, my friends and family. Like, I'm super, like, low-key and stuff like that. But people who know, no, you know, there are people who only know me as the entrepreneur. There are people who only know me as a fitness person who, like, does squats and lunges on Instagram.

People who only know me as, like, the bigger, better, bolder person who does, you know, the TED Talks. I'm very segment. Yeah, I'm similar in that, uh, and I think that all of those different. a beautiful song is made of three or four chords. And I think they'll come together so beautifully over time to where you're like, oh, that's why it just felt destined that I would invest in these different areas that come together. Because they certainly are coming together.

But I also add that I'm wired very similarly from building companies to investing in companies to making a lot of music, make a lot of music just for fun. I love that. And magic. Yep, and I love magic. I was telling my wife two nights ago. I was like, yeah, I stopped doing magic because my friends made fun of me in eighth grade. But I'm going to start bringing that back.

You should. Yeah, especially the little kids, they love it. You should bring it back. And by the way, that's the willingness to be misunderstood. That was the beginning of bringing it up. That was the beginning of me being like, oh, I want to be understood. So I'm going to get rid of these things that I'm naturally, that I naturally love. But everybody listening, if you can lean into the things that you loved when you're six, seven, eight,

you will uniquely be preternaturally wired for that thing maybe took 30 years off but finding a rediscovery that playing music was one of those things there was no commercial reason it was just if i do this you know you know uh told me this that got me thinking in this direction it was two experiences one i saw our six-month-old daughter dancing to music she didn't even understand what music was six months old Her face, it would, her face didn't even, there's no smile. She would hear music and within half a second, her body would start moving. But her first daughter didn't have that response. And I was like, I'm wired that.

I always start tapping on everything. And I've kind of been like repressing music. Yeah. And when I told my dad, I was making more music lately. He goes, oh, this is his response. Maybe two years ago. He goes, hmm, does that make any money? And I was like, oh, God bless you.

That's been the influence in my life. Totally. For different pursuits, like it doesn't make money, so I shouldn't do it. But, man, Jen, when I started to make more music. And when I leaned back into making music, all of these other things started to flourish. Because, one, 70% of our brain is wired for movement. So you're lighting up the, the idea that you're going to sit at your desk front of a computer screen and become creative and find creative solutions for things.

It's so laughable when you look at the science that you want to be walking. around the proverbial like throwing the ball against the wall, that's way better. Go on and play basketball, not because you're going to play basketball, but the randomness of where the ball is going to go, where you're going to have to dribble it around is so great for lighting up the brain or music. And Einstein was actually like famous for leaving his office, playing a couple notes of the piano or on his violin, going back with some insight. Also, think about it. People who are not talented like that, even just going for a walk, lights up your brain. The cognitive power that you get just from moving your body in a walk.

Like, again, you get way better ideas. Probably why you get great ideas at the gym. I do. That's like, I, to me, I think there's a lack of the ability of people just to be with themselves and their thoughts because that's where like brilliance happens or that's where like ideas happen to me. You know what I mean? I really believe that's like a very important piece of it.

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it's portable, and it's really effective. Head over to Therisage.com right now and use code be bold for 15% off. This code will work sitewide. Again, head over to Therisage, T-H-E-R-A-S-A-G-E dot com, and use code B-B-B-B-B-Bold for 15% off any of their products. Also, I wanted to say to me, I think you said something that was very true, which is being okay with being misunderstood. The other thing that I think is really valuable is that being underestimated is also very valuable.

Tell me more. People don't even know what they're getting. Well, because you were saying to me earlier about, like, this whole, when I was, when I was in the bathroom, I was just thinking about this. Some of, like, some of my secret powers have been being misunderstood, right? Because, like, people don't really know where to fit you, right? Like, you can't pigeonhole me. I'm a podcaster, but I'm also an investor. I'm a fitness person, but I'm also had two successful exits.

I'm a this person, but, and people don't know, so it's, like, constantly this ball with, they're like, what do you do? I don't know who you are. What do you do? I hear that all the time. But that ability to be underestimated all the time, right? And then people get to know me in one lane, and they're like, holy shit, how do you know all that? And that underestimation or being underestimated has served me so well in life because you shock

and awe and surprise people constantly. And they don't see you coming. Well, you know what's so great is that I think it's in building any identity, you can catalyze an identity by focusing on something early you can catalyze an identity by getting tattoos you know dyeing your hair purple you can do expedient things to catalyze an identity and it doesn't usually last that long like you can be the eccentric friend that has purple hair and a face tattoo and it's like yeah you know christine's really like you know really creative and then they look at the output but they're like, I don't know, and not very reliable.

And your identity, you can really undo your identity on the other side of whatever shortcut you took. But the long-term investment into a unique singular identity, then it's like, and this is how I already talk about you with other people where we're mutual friends. I'm like, we already know it's Jen Cohen. Like there's no other way of describing Jan Cohen. That is the, that's the pay dirt.

Like that is, that is the, Golden territory to where it's like, oh, you don't know. I don't even, I'm not even going to try to explain it. Go look her up and you need to know her. And I would hope that for my daughters. I would hope that for the founders that I work with, where if it's just like, this is the founder of Instacart. I know that he also feels like that's limited identification.

Maybe he did that for 10 years, a friend of mine, Corvus and Max, the two founders of Instacart. I know damn well that that would suck if seven years later, that's just how they're- That's how they're known. 15 years later, it's how they're known. But that might be the way that they're known because it was so burning hot so quickly early in their life. But I think if you invest in these other areas, like the last area that I am somewhat followed

for and known for is on philosophy in Venice every month, every first Friday, do this thing called Philosophy Fridays. And it's this thing that started in our backyard with five people, and now it's 200 people, and it's 110 people that meet up every first Friday, because the room capacity is 110 people, standing room only, and it's around the 5,000-year-old philosophy of Vedanta comes from India. And it's, but it's really a perfect container for any, you could bring up Socrates, you could bring up St. Augustine. It's the perfect container for anything philosophical. Kant, you could bring up Hegel, Nietzsche, and anyone and everything in between, because this is a great little container for, like we were talking about before, roots instead of the fruits.

The stuff that I think about, you asked about my morning routine, it starts away waking up at 4.30, and it's an hour and a half philosophy and spiritual, just stillness. So it's about a 45-minute lecture of some kind or reading, and then it's 45 minutes of journaling, reflecting this ancient, in terms of continued studies, oldest philosophy on the planet. It's called Advaita Vedanta. And I have a daily podcast on this that like 11 people listen to. But I'm like, man, no one is, people would really benefit from an accessible approach

to this very ancient cryptic philosophy. And it's the source of nearly all Eastern philosophy. Buddhism comes from, as it's described, the adage goes. Buddhism is Hinduism made for export as it leaves. India and enters China. You have Zen as a derivation as it leaves China and enters Japan. But if you follow it all back, they all go back to these four philosophical textbooks called the Vedas. That a thousand years later, Hinduism and all the rituals and things get built on top of it. Really kind of distractingly get built on top of it, hence Buddhism strips a lot of that

a way to get back to this simple philosophy. But this philosophy, these philosophical principles, things like one principle is love is seeing no otherness in the world. Another one is, wisdom is the capacity to see the end in the beginning. Another, which I've never heard definitions on these things. Another is reflection is a hundred thousand times more powerful than listening. The reason I mentioned that one is not only is that morning ritual, just it's all reflection time. I'm not reading anything new. There's a three-year course on this philosophy that I've done now, done it four times on the fifth cycle through.

It's nothing new. It's just reflecting on these things because, like I mentioned, one of the principles is reflection is a hundred thousand times more powerful than listening. If there is a listener to this episode, this conversation that got anything that resonated with them out of the conversation, if you don't reflect on it, maybe it was the Jeff Bezos quote of innovators must be willing to be misunderstood. If you hear that and you're like driving your car, you're like, that was really cool. And maybe you tell a significant other spouse that night over dinner this cool phrase,

but you never think about it again. If you're not spending seven, 10, 14 days, just reflecting on that for five, 10, 15 minutes with your morning coffee, with your magic mind, for 10, 15 minutes before you get started with your day, it is like it never even happened. Because you know this,

when you click on something so inspiring on Instagram, you like it, maybe you even send it to a friend. But if you don't reflect on it, two days later, it's like it's in one year out the other, It's like it never happened. It's like it never happened. The reflection in this philosophy so brilliantly and precisely, the words around the philosophy,

they're so precise. But it so precisely enforces this, reinforces this, this beautiful notion that reflection isn't just like twice as powerful. It's 100,000 times more powerful than listening or reading. So I, every morning, 90 minutes of just reflecting on these things that now it's a decade into this philosophical pursuit, these studies, but that will serve the conversation that I'm having, like the conversation, what I'm coming to with this,

the investor meeting or a podcast conversation is seeing no otherness in the world. What is Jen interested in? What would make this a fun conversation for listeners? That kind of, even asking Ed, during the quick bathroom break, what are the things that we said that were interesting to you?

And that's, it's so ingrained in how I operate. So someone might see multiple nine figure businesses. By the way, the first one didn't stay there. It was valued at 400 million before a fire sale to Airbnb and total PhD and triple PhD and what not to do. But there was so much reflection on what not to do. What mistakes did I make? So much reflection on that that then it allows for this beautiful clarity to where

Magic Mind has been like a five-year journey where every night I'm going to bed just being like, how did this all happen? I've never gone to bed feeling like stressed about it. Not a single time. Really? No. Not a single night. I've never had, I've had maybe stressful hour of how do we figure this out, a stressful three hours of like, oh my God, our financial model is wrong. We're going to run out of money and have to solve for that in like three days. But there was like two hours and then it was Clarity, literally go for a walk. And then I'm like, oh, we can, well, this investor loves us. This customer loves us so much.

He's been a subscribe for three years and he loves investing in companies. Maybe he would want to invest. Maybe she would want to invest. And, yeah, maybe max three hours of stress. But I've never had a stressful day. Never woken up in the middle of the night thinking about some existential thing or some made up pretend thing. Oh, you're lucky.

And I, my previous lives and my 20s. There's failure after failure after failure and every night stress waking up in the middle of the night about this, that or the other kind of stress. Well, how to tilt, like you just said it yourself, it was evaluated of $400 million and then it was a fire sale at the Airbnb.

What the hell went wrong? Oh, my God. It is. Part two of the episode is. I know, right? It's kind of like when you get a PhD asking somebody gets a PhD, what'd you learn? I know.

So there's so many things, but I'd say the number one thing that I crystallize it down to where it's helpful for. There are a lot of things I learned where I utilize it every day and utilize that reflective learning for anything, even how I run a meeting or how I elicit feedback from somebody. Like I'll ask people, what is your brutal, honest feedback on that product?

That is a total learning where I was so scared of the truth in my 20s. I never asked people. I wouldn't, and what do you think? But I'd be like, how do I couch this? something that's going to be pleasant to hear. Like non-confrontation. Yeah, exactly where it's like, no, gin, be as brutal as you possibly can because it doesn't help the company if, and then for two years it was iterating on the product before we

ever launched Magic Mind. And it was two years of me wanting that versus my 20s with something like Tilt, a payments platform that we were in through a skin of our teeth. We were able to sell to Airbnb, but certainly not at the heights of our valuation that we achieved. How much did you sell it for? Are you allowed to say? It was about, the cash in stock was about $55 million.

$55 million. But we had raised our previous round of funding was at $385 million. You guys raised $385 million? No, we raised a total of $70 at the last valuation. So you raised $70 million. Yeah, we raised $70 and sold for $55, which ain't a good. That ain't a good equation. No, it is not that good.

So did your investors talk to you still? Every meaningful investor has invested in me multiple times. In fact, so I was thinking about this on a run yesterday. Justin Kahn, the co-founder of Twitch. I'm sure you've seen this in your entrepreneurial journey too. You think they won't talk to you. I thought I was like, I'm a failure. I was teasing you.

No, but you, I bet you've seen this. You're like, the best investors, they're like, you've just got a PhD. I want to invest in you again. And again, Justin Kahn, the co-founder of Twitch, he's investing me four times. Mike Maples, maybe the OG seed investor of all. all time, the best, the first investor in Twitter and Lyft and a bunch of companies, he's investing four times. Because it's you.

People invest in the person. So many variables make a company break, right? Make or break it. Like you said, it was like on the skin of your teeth, you sold it for 55. But like the line between excellence like, like unicorn to like a complete failure is like this, this thin. You know what I mean? Crazy, crazy margin.

Airbnb had to launch three times and still had like the year that they were going to go public. And where I was like, all the stock is going to finally be worth of 10 years of doing things. The year they go public, the first global pandemic in 100 years that shuts down travel, the year that they're going public. And I'm like, why does everything I work on just fail? It's just like once in a hundred years. Oh, my. The biggest travel company is going public.

and then this happens. Yeah. So it's and then luckily they ended up having one of the best IPOs of all time. But that and it's every company has these near death experiences. Facebook, Uber famously just dragged in the mud for three years. Uber like that. You didn't think they were going to survive. I can't. They came back like with like they came back on a rocket ship. Right. Because do you like they're a CEO. He's a really good CEO. Right. Yeah, Dora. Dara. Did he really kind of take that company and he did made some amazing moves? And, Honestly, just a lot of these companies, Apple famously almost died a couple times when Steve was there. Multiple times, for sure.

They had six weeks of cash when he came back. Tesla famously, almost at death store. And that's another learning that I had was I just was so scared of it failing that I thought, well, it's going in the wrong direction. We should find a place that we should sell. Not realizing, no, every company, if you're lucky, you get a third act where up in the right, then it comes down and then the third act you rise again like the phoenix and then you're unstoppable and until the so that i was mentioning that there's so many things that i use each day like how i elicit uh product feedback but the thing that i tell early found maybe the first or second time

founder the thing that i say most often is wait until your product is loved before you try to scale out your business and obsessively, biopically, tunnel vision focus on getting to that point and nothing else. With Tilt, it was a payments technology. That was lukewarm light. People kind of liked it. It was good, but as soon as they liked it, it's free. As soon as we try to charge for, it's kind of like Venmo. As soon as you try to try to charge for, people like, well, PayPal's free or Zell's free. People bounce. And you could have a good product, but a terrible business. And we had a good product, but it wasn't loved enough to wear any time we tried to charge people 2%, 5%, they would bounce, and we realized way too late, we're scaling a product that people like, lukewarm-like, but they don't love.

Like your shoes, how do you try to sell shoes where it's kind of a derivation of what's out there? People don't really love them. You're such a charismatic, persuasive person. You could force 10,000 pairs to be sold, but you'd get to 32,000. like, this is just getting harder and harder, and it's because the product isn't loved yet. And with Magic Mind, I literally was like, I will put my own capital into this, and I want to be told in the first two years that people don't want this because these journeys are so brutal that I want to find out in two years and not six or seven, like I'd found out before, that

people don't want this, so that I can go on to the next thing. Luckily, that, by the way, is another really good piece of advice. You've given a couple of really good, like, good solid, like more than couple like probably four or five solid gems here that's another one which is if a product's just liked it doesn't have the threshold to me the gravity that pulls it yeah it has to be loved you're a hundred percent right and this does so that's interestingly right because tilt like yeah whatever they liked it kind of like Venmo but it's also you can do it with 12 people it was it was a real learning of do not rest on your superpowers reserve those superpowers so true how do you get a product to be massively loved.

That's super simple. Time. Time and a obsession with the truth. Brutal, honest feedback from people. First-time founders, we, myself included my 20s, I just wanted to be. Not only did, I think it was like, this is a shortcut to ego engineering.

This is a shortcut to the career that I really want. This is a shortcut to financial milestones. Yeah. And it was like, I'm doing this selfishly because I would have some cool articulated mission, but it was really just selfish on three different, you know, channels. And I was so, I was so impatient to get there on those that I was like, I'm going to brute force this. Like one of my superpowers was being persuasive or being really persistent. And with magic mind, it was a beautiful thing to reserve those cards and say, yeah, I have these cards.

but I only want to apply them. It's like a surfer. You could surf multiple waves. Wait for the wave of the day. Wait for, and surf some great waves leading up to that. That's how you find the wave of the day is you surf a few. But wave selection, that is an art form all in its own, whether you're a surfer, whether you're an art entrepreneur, where you could do anything.

You can't do everything. And if you are really good at, let's say, three paddles popping up on a wave and you who ride it for 300 yards, 300 meters. This set's coming. Choose the best wave, obviously. But if you're so eager to just prove that you could ride a wave, then the other people are looking,

they doubt you, and you're going to prove it to them. You're going to jump on a shit wave. You get detonated, and not only not get the validation, but also you're going to be hesitant to ride the next set that's coming. Great analogy. And I think with, if you can have time,

recognize that it's a, it's so much of it is, like you said, you can have the same foundation. that chooses the wrong wave in a dog market and that market is going to destroy them same founder that waits for the right wave maybe is really paid with magical when i was two years of like universe show me that you don't want this to exist because the last go around was so freaking painful nearly killed me i want to be shown early this is a bad wave and luckily that patience allowed us to iterate i was iterating on the product to make it better and better and better before it even has

had like a name to it. I just called James's Magic Potion. James Magic Potion. James's Magic Potion. Yeah. That sounded like, that sounds like a horrible name. And I wanted it. That's brutal honesty. Yeah. And Jen, you know what was funny is I was like, this tastes awful, doesn't have a name. And I'm shipping people a little, these little bottles with powder that you have to add your own water to. And I was like, I luckily with investing or someone that has other jobs, if you have another day job, then you don't have this undue, unnecessary financial pressure. What was so fun about those two years, or what was helpful about it, I should say, is I was like, if people want this when it has a dumb name, basically no name, tastes awful, and they've got to

add the water themselves, that's when I'll know that I have something that's worth. And I say this in product building to founders all the time. If they'll buy it when it's ugly, they will pay a shit done when it's pretty. Wow. So that's what you did. And that's exactly what we did for, it's what I was doing out of my kitchen for two years. And so are you constantly iterating the product. So was William's job to like run the operations? Yeah. So like once I knew we had something. Yeah. You're like, I was like, I got to get a co-founder that's really great on all the things I'm not great at. And this is part of the PhD, too, of my 20s, triple PhD because there's three failures. My 20s, just failure to failure to failure. How old are you now? At this point, I was 32.

Okay. How old are you now, though? 40? So, I guess it was 32. Seven and a half years ago was the beginning of the two-year journey. Is there something here? Yeah. And we launched about five and a half years ago. Okay. And so I brought him on about five years ago. And I was like, all right, I know what I'm great at, which is I know this world of products like the back of my hand. Yeah. I know e-commerce like the back of my hand and brand building. But I do not know supply chain management. logistics of these things. Cash flow. You mentioned with the shoes being so expensive

coming from Korea. It's a whole art form in his own right, of cash flow management. I was crushed. And then retail, I know nothing about expanding into grocery

and retail. And he knew all there was is to know about that with brands that he had built before he's brilliant Princeton grad and just like

where did he come from before that? He was building a brand called Brami. If you've ever seen Bramey in Air One that's a protein protein pasta.

Yeah, I have seen it. He was a co- co-founder of Bromi, yeah, co-founder of Bromi and was on the operation side. So he just knew his superpower is all of these things that are managing a retail sales team, looking at a spreadsheet for financial modeling. So he understands us all really well. It is a really powerful one plus one equals three. But this gets to also one of the PhDs is knowing what you're not good at, knowing what you're good at,

and then also knowing what makes a great partner or what makes a bad partner. The only way to learn these things, it's like surfing. I can't tell you can't read a book and know how to do these things. That's why I tell everybody, get your first business. If you have inclinations, I want to start something, get it out of the way to get the, which was more valuable for you? The businesses you started or the NBA you got. The NBA got for sure. Really? Tell me more.

Oh, I'm so surprised. Oh, the NBA got from school? No. Yeah, which was more valuable. Okay, this proves you have no clue who I am. I just did an entire TED talk called. I'm not on social. No, no.

My assistant does all, nearly all of my social media. By the way, it hasn't been released yet, technically, but I just did a whole TED talk on. why your barbell is more important than your MBA. Because I have both and I learned almost nothing from my MBA. I mean, except like how to memorize and to, you know, spend a lot like the amount of money it costs to get the MBA. But everything I've learned that has been valuable to me has been way more valuable in being like practical experience.

And doing it. And fitness stuff. Like fitness has actually taught me way more. gave me the best MBA I could have ever had because it taught me discipline. It taught me a ton of things, but like patience, discipline, hard work. Perseverance. Perseverance. Persistence. Doing something even when you don't want to over and over and over and over and over again. To me, that's the best training ground. So, like, I learn more on the, like, at the squat rack than I did in my MBA program.

And I tell everybody that. And people like, a lot of people like poo poo me, who have like Princeton degrees and Harvard degrees, honestly God, does it teach you, does it give you some type of status? Yeah, it can give you some status to get you in the door, but it will not make you successful.

It will not teach you the fundamentals and the foundation of what real success is in life. I don't think so. Yeah, it's, you know, we can, we mentioned that the Warren Buffett quote before on better business, person makes a better investor,

being an investor makes him a better business person. And it actually ties closely to his longtime partner, Charlie Munger, who is one of the best, both of them, two best investors of all time. And they're talking about having multiple perspectives and multiple pursuits and how they help each other. Charlie Munger had his own version of this where he said, everybody should have a cross-latus work of mental models, that you should take how you play bridge or poker,

into how you run a business, how you run a business, into how you parent your children, how you parent your children, into how you, maybe it's play tennis on the weekends. But the cross lattice work is so different than our academic notion of mastery

where we think it's go deep into just playing the piano 24-7 for 30 years, and then you'll be an amazing officiato. And it's like, well, that's the most boring person at the freaking dinner party because they can't apply it elsewhere. They make for great employees. They make for great playing and replaying Chopin, but they're not a Chopin. They're not a Chopin. And you look at someone like Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton, perfect example. We know him for physics, maybe the greatest scientific mind of all time. He spent a third of his time on theology trying to prove

God exists. A third of his time in alchemy, trying to turn lead into gold, and a third of his time in math and physics. There's no like removing those other two. They all fed into each other. Absolutely. In the same way that, yeah, working out, I, when I'm, when you're saying that, I think about me playing music and writing a song, that is one of the biggest, I said one of the biggest things that I'm doing that then informs how we're working

on the, let's say, Sleep 2.0 launch is it's a story arc and every song is a story. And if you, I don't know, mismanage that story for a song and the different characters of instruments that come in, you're going to mismanage the listener's perception and the same way you mismanage a press release around a new product. It's interesting you say that. I think fitness personally is like a microcosm of life. I really do. And I use it as that. So like people think when like I talk about fitness being so important, they think because it's for your abs and for your glutes and for it.

I think the fitness element for me anyway and what I've seen from a lot of people is that, that it's the mental that it builds. It builds, it makes you more mentally strong. It shows you that you can kind of go beyond your limit and surpass your limit and with your goals. And I think that like if you can take that same, those same principles and apply it to everything in life that you want to be good at, you will thrive. And so to me, that's why fitness has been such an important piece of my life and why I tell people early on, like young people who contact me, if you want to be successful, start working

out now. Start exercising right now. Amen. I think about in the same way I think about these kinds of things with surfing where it is such a beautiful, I mean, the truth rhymes everywhere. You see it everywhere. If it's the truth, it's going to show up everywhere. And it rhymes in the way that you learn to surf. It's going to rhyme in the way that you run. a meeting, it's going to rhyme in the way that you build a company or build a relationship. Talk about choosing the right waves. The relationships you're building, like, send a great human into a really toxic relationship. They're not going to come out too great on the other side. Totally true. But if they chose a different wave, a different partner, a different friend, a different

business partner, then it can be the most beautiful ride of their lives. And it's a... So true. And with the working out in the fitness approach of fitness, one of the things that I think about so often, and this comes from Tim Ferriss, where he said, just one push-up. He said this randomly in a podcast episode where he's like, if you are wondering where to start, right before bed, right when you wake up,

right after lunch, close the office door, right when you get home from work, just do one push-up. And that was an entry point into now everything that I'm doing and working out started with, God, that's such an easy entry point. Because once you get down on the ground and do one, you're like, I'm going to do 10. That's why it's a gateway drug for everything. It's like, the hardest thing is the beginning, is the start, right?

So a good mind trick that I tell people all the times, you don't like to work up. That's okay. Do one minute. Go outside and jump around for one minute. Just jump. Yeah. Or just walk around your block one. or do one squat.

I don't say one push-up. I say one-squat because one could be easier. The point is, once you start, then chances are you're going to keep on going. You know, once around the block will turn into like two or three. Totally. You know what I mean? Because it's about getting your shoes on and starting the process is the procrastination is what stops the start, you know? Totally.

Once you're in there, you're like, well, I'm already here. I'm on the floor anyway. I might as well do another five push-ups. And you're not working against your other goals of Smith. And it's so beautifully harmonious when you recognize your fitness is going to feed your other goals, like you getting the best ideas you get when you're at the gym. Or move it, 70% of your brain's wired for movement. Get out and move. That'll help you, not only will it help you problem solve the thing that you're working on, but so beautifully might help you avoid the mistake that you're this close from making with some suboptimal decision. It also makes you so much more resilient. There's been a study that shows that people who are like fit or like work out regularly. they are much better at like dealing with struggle and with, of course, like setbacks and all those things.

Like they're able to bounce back. Is it like 80% quicker than people who are more sedentary? Because they've primed their brain. The neural pathways of like, go further, go further. They've primed their brain for like for failure. Because every day you're going in the gym and the purpose of the gym is to like get to failure. So that is like you're already primed for that feeling. So when you can take that and transfer into anything else in life that may not go your way,

you can bounce back much quicker. Yeah, there's a great investor that he was on our, he was a board observer for our previous company, Mark Andreessen. And one of the conversations we had one time was around this idea of to avoid terminal failure. like let's say losing and being the last on the PGA tour to avoid being last on the PGA tour you want to consume like crazy non-terminal failure you want to go and hit as many balls as you can't you want to miss the cup over and over again from 5 10 15 25 feet you want to hit that failure point at the gym as often as possible it's not about avoiding failure at all if anything it's the exact opposite of exactly what you're saying it is not the exact opposite of exactly what you're saying it is not the

exact opposite of what he's saying, but it's the exact opposite of avoiding failure. It's running towards failure so frequently in the non-terminal sense where it's like, who cares if you miss a three-pointer in practice? If you miss the free throws and practice, eat that up, like a bit of poison to where you're completely immune to it. Ammute to failure. By the time you get to the free throw line with 11 seconds left in the fourth game of the game seven finals, you're like, dude, I'm not only, I know I'm going to make these. But I'm immune to... They're desensitized if you don't make it. Exactly. Desensitized to it. And getting to that place where you are avoiding terminal failure, paradoxically, it's through chewing it up every day

at every chance you can in the non-terminal sense. You know it's really, well, I'll tell you over again. My first TED talk was on this idea. It was called a 10%. I've seen that. I've seen your TED Talks, but I was maybe, I saw one, maybe two years ago. With that on parents and resilience for kids? I didn't reflect on it. So it was a email out of the other. I should have, I should have reflected more on it. But it was, it was beautifully articulate. But I don't remember. I just know the setting. I know the setting. The first one went crazy viral and it was about this idea of asking for what you want in life. Yes. I do remember this one. Yes. And so, and the whole idea and basically being bold and and saying it out loud. Yeah. And like the 10% target is based around this, which is the idea that you become

immune to failure because if you make 10, my whole thing is 10% target because you make 10 attempts of whatever you want most in life and either two things happen. Either you get that thing or another opportunity presents itself that you didn't know existed because you went and did it over and over and over again. But the secondary thing that happens is you become immune to the feeling of failure because now you're used to it. They're doing it so much. Perfect example was I wanted to know and I still do all the time. People's brutal, honest feedback on anything I'm creating as soon and as early as possible and as frequently as possible because that's the way to avoid. Well, I know the alternative. My 20s avoiding that leads to terminal failure and a whole lot more pain. A hundred percent. My gosh,

this has been a really good podcast. Thank you, Jen. Thank you for the conversation. No, this was really good. Well, you're a great host. Thank you. You're a great guest. You actually gave some, I shouldn't sound surprised. I'm not surprised. You have some very valuable information for people on every level. You gave some really great wisdom, great gems. I'm really happy that you came on. Well, for a simple Texan with a little drink company, I aim to serve, especially on a podcast. You serve beautifully. Well, you're a great host, and you are interested in these topics in a different gear because you apply them instead of just a podcast host that's kind of a journalist that doesn't really.

know where they apply. So thank you for being such a great share of this wisdom. No, no. I really have loved this conversation. You were such a good talk. Thank you, James. We have to do this again. Let's do it. We'll do it on your podcast. Whenever. James has a podcast. That's right. Yeah, if people want to find out anything of my projects, from Magic Mind to the philosophy podcast, just James J. Bichara on Instagram is the best, best place for all of it. And try a Magic Mind. You guys will not be disappointed, as you know. we've worked hard to make sure that people get to say that all the time. Absolutely. Thank you. Bye-bye.