Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2742: Can Music Make You Smarter? The Science Behind Brain-Boosting Sound

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Engineered Music for Fat Loss & Muscle Gain Dan Clark Travel mode. (2:15) Engineered sounds that induce brain wave states. (3:47) Increased blood flow in the brain. (9:48) Effect level. (11:53) Productizing leading-edge science. (15:47) Interesting fields using their product. (19:15) Finding the strategy that works for you. (20:48) Workout mode. (22:50) Plugging in and plugging out. (28:53) The soundtrack of your day. (33:25) It's a spectrum. (36:17) How he found out he was dyslexic. (39:19) Why entrepreneurs love us. (41:54) Highest conversion rate. (43:42) Is the Pomodoro Method effective? (47:01) The myth of working on your hardest task first. (48:27) Word of mouth. (51:18) Wearables are the future. (52:47) Attention war. (54:39) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Brain.fm for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners. ** Get 30 days of free access to science-backed music. ** Visit MASSZYMES by biOptimizers for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **MASSIVE Black Friday sales are on now! ** Through Dec. 6th, 50% off a Reverse Dieting Strategy call with a Mind Pump coach. Visit: http://www.reversedietcall.com/  ** Code DECEMBER50 at checkout ** Mind Pump Store Rapid modulation in music supports attention in listeners with attentional difficulties Our science - BrainFM Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest Dan Clark (@dclark._) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we have Dan Clark from Brain.fm on. They engineer music and sounds that change your brain waves, literally.

They can induce states of mind. through sounds. They're the only ones in the world that do this. And in today's episode, he goes through the science. It's pretty remarkable. By the way, if you go to brain.comf, forward slash mind pump, you could try it out for 30 days for free.

They have stuff that helps you focus, relax, meditate. They have, for our listeners only, a workout mode that induces brainwave states that improve things like your performance, reduce pain perception and focus. It's pretty amazing. It's brain.com.

forward slash mind pump. Now, this episode is brought to by our sponsor, Mass Zyms. These are digestive enzymes for people who love fitness. Take these when you eat your food to break down your proteins, fats, and carbs for better digestion, less bloat, and better nutrient absorption. Go to masszimes.com forward slash mind pump. That's M-A-S-S-Z-Y-M-E-S dot com forward slash mind pump. Also, right now, if you go to Reverse Dietcall.com, you can schedule a call with one of

our coach is a mind pump personal trainer, and they will set you up with a 90-day customized reverse diet plan. If you want a reverse diet, don't know how, get on with a real trainer, one that we approve of, and they'll customize a plan for you for 90 days. This entire thing is 50% off, by the way, right now.

It's normally $99 to do that. Right now, it's $49. So if you're interested, while we have space, because once we live with the space is filled up, we can't do this anymore, go to reverse diet.com. All right, real quick, If you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats,

mugs, or training gear over at MindpumpStore.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to Mindpumpstor.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Dan, welcome back to the show. Hey.

Hey, thanks for being here. Off air, I got to share this. Off air, you were talking about how with Brain FM, you guys have a new category because of the story I told on the last time we had you on the show. where people aren't familiar, you run the company Brain FM. You guys engineer music that essentially induces states of mind. And I talked about this crazy story of how I was on a flight. I was with these guys.

We were flying from, was it spoken to Seattle. What of the scariest flights have ever been on. Very short flight. A little tiny plane. The most frightening flight ever. I mean, it was shit. If I had my seatbelt on, I would hit the ceiling a few times. And people are crying and praying.

And I don't like flying anyway. and I put Brain FM on and I put my hands in my lap here and it like saved me dude because it was terrifying and I guess you guys got a lot of messages and you guys so now you guys have like a travel mode like explain that yeah we put so your story we had a lot of people said I had the same thing I had the same thing and there's so many people that are stressed especially now with the holidays around where they're traveling and the best way to get there is through planes right And what we did is we just put inside the relax that a specific mode that helps you with a click of a button, you listen to calming music, resets your brain, allows you to be relaxed and just feel more at peace, even with turbulence and all these things that are going on around us. And you just kicked that out. By the way, for people listening right now, it's not just calming music.

No, it's not. Okay. So explain if someone doesn't know who you guys are. Because this market can be a little competitive. There's a lot of white noise type of things that you can find on Spotify or YouTube. This is not listening to meditative music or white noise that cancel. This is engineered sounds that induce brainwave states. Did I say that right? Yes, that's right.

Yes. So break it down a little bit. What's happening when I'm listening to something that's fighting anxiety or counteracting anxiety or giving me the brain waves that if you were to give you, me a scan, you would say this is a relaxed brain. Yeah, so let me start off with saying that Brain FM is music that's made to enhance the activity that you're already doing with a click of a button. And the way we do that is we basically see music, right?

We know what your brain looks like in focus, relaxed, or sleep. And we develop specific rhythms and patterns that we put into the music that when you listen, actually align your functional networks together in your brain. that allow your brainwaves to sink and blood flow to shift as you're listening to the music, allowing you to go into focus, relax, or sleep. So we're doing that through a novel process called amplitude modulation. It creates a neural entrainment in your brain, right? And really, it's just a fancy new technology that allows you to shift from one state to another. So in that, in that, And the mode that you're listening to when you're freaking on an airplane, right?

What's happening is in the base frequency of the music, right? We have an on and off pulse. And your brain, by listening in that pulse, it sinks to it. And it guides your brain into being a more relaxed state. We take the same technology, and we can do that for focus or for sleep or for meditation. And really, our bread and butter, a lot of people use this for all these different things. but our bread and butter right now is focus, and that was actually just validated in nature when they came out and they saw all the science that we did, saw all the peer reviewed studies

that we did, and they validated that we can help increase focus by 119% for people that are trying to get into that zone. So what else improves your focus by 100? That's insane. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, if you look... This is like pharmaceutical.

I wonder how that ranks against traditional things like caffeine or what everybody else would traditionally. But you're now in the realm of pharmaceuticals, if I'm not mistaken. That's a big impact. And I'm sure you can't say. Yeah, that's a big claim. But what I would say is what's really interesting is the way it works from a neurochemical level, right, neurotransmitters, is that because we're aligning it in an electrical way by listening to music, that music

transforms into electricity in your brains and then that's changing these patterns on the way our brain literally operates right it allows you to change how your neurotransmitters work right so um things that increase your focus are more dopamine in your brain that's how some of those medications work and brain FM by adding stimulation, it also is changing your dopamine, your dopamine, your dopamine, your fancy word. Yeah. But the way your dopamine is processed your brain, allowing you to get into that very heightened focus state that you can't just do with caffeine and you would have to go more on the medication

angle. But the cool thing is, because it's through electricity and electrical impulses, right, you can't normalize to it. Like you can with caffeine and these other kinds of things. things, we're targeting it a completely different way. Oh, so in other words, you won't have like down regulation from receptors or anything like that from using it too much like you would from a pharmaceutical. No, if anything, you just trains it better.

You get an enhanced effect. So what happens to me with Brain FM is when I would listen to focus in the beginning, and this is me personally, about 10 minutes in, I'd feel the kick in. And I could feel it. Like I'm listening to it. I'm, you know, writing, this is back when I used to write all of our content. Now we have writers, but I would write blogs, and I'd listen to Brain FM. And it was around 10 minutes in, it felt I'd start to feel locked in.

And the best way I can explain the feeling is like when you're really into something. Like flow state. Yep. Yes, almost like tunnel vision. But it's, yeah, you're just so focused. Like nothing else really matters. You're just completely about. Can I ask you a question?

Yes. Do you even listen to me, do you even hear the music anymore after that 10 minutes? No, no. It's just there. That's so true that I remember the first time that I used. I use this to read, which just blew my mind that I could, I would be, so one of the reasons why I do better with audio books than I do actually reading regular books is if I start to read a regular book, I have to go back and read the pages. My brain trails off with that.

And I remember after first getting introduced to brain, if I'm like, I wonder if I played focus while I try to read. It seems counterintuitive to have noise going on while you're trying to read. And it did exactly that, did the opposite. Noise melts away. I got hyperfocused. I could focus reading even better. So what happens now is if I listen to focus, it's like four minutes. And so there is no down regulation. It's like I snap into it quicker. And I think it might have to do with just the way that your neural connections develop after you practice something.

But I'm not chemically inducing. You're not chemically inducing, but you're priming yourself. So there's all these other things that are happening in your brain. Functionally, right, from those electrical and blood flow changes, there's also this, your brain knows what to expect, right? So the more you're listening to it, the more... It anticipates? Correct, correct.

And then you can drop in faster. Okay, talk about blood flow. What do you guys see... You guys are using an fMRI studies? Is that what you're doing? Yes. Okay, so for people aren't familiar, this is an MRI that is like real time. So I can put someone in fMRI and I can see where the blood is flowing through the brain.

And so through that, we can see executive function, fear. It's pretty good. I can't tell exactly what you're thinking, but I can tell that you're anxious. You tell what state you're in. Yes, I can see. Oh, there's anxiety inducing or the thinking of a fond memory

or they're processing something that's requiring logical thought process. You'd see this in FMRI. This is all. Based on where in the brain it's lighting up. So what do we see? Are they going in there? And they're like, okay, let's watch their brain.

Then we're going to put on focus. And then you can see, like, what are they looking at? That's exactly what's happening. So you will see the brain. in a resting state, right, where blood flow is not as much in your prefrontal cortex, where our higher reasoning and thinking is. And as you listen to the music and your brain sinks to it, you can literally see the blood flow go to your prefrontal cortex.

And then also in EEG, which is the electrical headsets that you're wearing, you can also see that electrical activity change as well. One thing I mentioned before was neural phase locking, right? And your brain has this phase, and that phase is really just this pattern of, you can kind of think of, this is kind of a broader version, but how your brain is like oscillating, like turning on and off, right? And you can see those patterns start syncing together, which is that phase lock, which allows you to, again, be in that mode that we know is deep focus or deep concentration or create a sense. or learning, reading, and by playing with those states just a little bit different, by changing those patterns, we can bring you from deep work to having some of the best ideas that you've ever had or just feeling like you're on fire.

Now, is there a, like, with all three of us, because obviously under each category, there's also all kinds of different, like, kind of sounds, modes, there's just tons of variety. is it normal that like oh this song or whatever is better focused for me than Justin and his is like it resonates more to you yeah or is it is it pretty universal it's like everybody who listens to this is going to get that I mean what is it or is it a spectrum like it's it's a spectrum so what we do is we when we you you come in first what we're trying to do is figure out where are you on an ADHD spectrum right we're trying to figure out how sensitive you are to distractions right if you are if you are extroverted or introverted, right? What kind of music you like? Because just by asking you a few basic questions, we can extrapolate a bunch about you. Oh, okay.

So most people that have ADHD really like electronic music, right? It's linked together because there's high texture. There's a lot of sound. There's a lot of things going on. It's very stimulating. Yeah. Yeah. So we ask you a bunch of these things.

And then what we're doing is we start. start matching these things that we break down into activities into stuff for Adam or Justin, right? And then inside of that, we actually start personalizing the music for each song that you're listening to for you. And we call that effect level. And what's happening is if you have more ADHD, or I'm actually, maybe you guys both. But I don't know. I know. Where are we at? I probably win.

I'm pretty distrable. A second, third, probably. If one person has more than the other, what we're doing is we're actually changing that specific track and song to a higher amount of that pattern. So it's more intense. It actually, that amplitude is not just louder. It's actually a stronger signal. So it will basically affect you a little bit more. We can do that because people with ADHD can handle that signal stronger.

They actually need it. But if people that don't have ADHD, they'll actually get a. headache because it changes blood flow so dramatic. That's right. Wow. So is there like an AI component to this that's figuring us out as we listen or how do you adjust that? So there's a lot of algorithms that we're using, you know, we could call them AI.

We could call them smart algorithms. We could call them a bunch of stuff. We have a lot of really cool stuff on the pipeline that has more to do with that. Yeah. But for right now, we're really using these models that we've created. Okay. That are about, okay, how does this person perform? on this pattern, right, and studied things.

And then how do we see over thousands of individuals, how they're locking into flow, et cetera, and study. And it's also what you like and what you don't like. Yeah. So it picks up like, oh, he likes this many. Classical music all day. And it's, I love that, too, because there's this association already I have with that. But then you guys layered on top of that, the background noises to keep me locked in.

And what you said about effect is, so what I noticed is if I go, extreme effect on some sounds. It's too much. And it can actually make me feel slightly nauseous. Yeah. This is, it's very powerful. For people listening who haven't tried Brain FM, it is very powerful. And if you go too hard, you'll know you're going too hard and you back off and you get the

right dose. And then you get what you're looking for. I mean, this is how I knew it worked because I was going too hard and I was like, whoa, scale that down. Now I'm focused. Which, by the way, another tip is when you find one that works, practice that same one. over and over. There's a particular one that I listen to for the plane rides that will put me to sleep so fast. And it's the same one every single time. And now it's like, I put it on and three minutes into it, I'm out. Yep. It's, it's pretty remarkable. So talk about what studies was

the Nature magazine review. What are they looking at when they said, oh, this is legit? Yeah. So we did a study. We did it with Wesleyan University in Northeastern. And basically it was some of the things that we were quoting earlier with EphemerI Studies with EEG, where we're basically looking at people with and without ADHD and we're seeing how do you work over a 10 minute block of time, right? So you actually, we would give people video games to play. Some were very boring. And somewhere more, you know, exciting and interesting. And you basically try to start measuring how they start erring out as they get more bored, right? And you can start seeing that when you play, you know, our music compared to a placebo or a, you know, just regular music. Yeah, just

regular music. There is, there is a very large difference in effect that is reproducible and measurable. And, you know, that's really, the founding story of Brain FM. Like we are, there's so many, like you mentioned before, there's so many white noises, binaural beats, there's so many things out there that say, you know, do this and you'll get this result, right? And for some people, they have really good effects on them.

But if you already like that stuff, you're going to try us and you're going to feel it dramatically. Right, so you're another level. Yeah, we're really trying to product, productize, bleeding edge science. So there's a lot of times, where, you know, you have really smart people in academia, and they figure this stuff out.

But it takes 10 years to get in your hands. Make it marketable. Yeah, exactly. So we said, hey, what if we just actually fund the research ourselves? Our top neuroscientists, he literally has a dual, he's for MIT and Harvard, right? He has a dual program. And a super, super smart guy. And what if we just tired him instead of some other company, right?

and he can do that, all that work here. And it's through that kind of production by finding that value in organizing it and then distributing it to people that we can stay on that bleeding edge. And that's how we're making focus even better. We have, you know, really cool stuff wearables soon and just continuing to push that edge of this is what known science is. How can we apply it and get into people's answers? What do you mean wearable? Yeah. So there is wearables are.

really exciting because they track your HRV, they track your heart rate, they track your, you know, your skin temperature. And from that, we can start creating even more enhanced models of, well, what's going on personally for you and how are you responding to this music individually? Based on the biometrics. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's really cool stuff. Like some wearables coming out right now are, like there's EEG headsets that are coming out that are in headphones,

Apple just came out with the blood heart rate in headphones. So the whole technology is now starting to evolve. And we are playing with a lot of things. So when it finally comes out that we can just start using it and giving that to people quickly. Now, you had an idea already of like what percentage of the people said they either have ADHD or think they have it. So you have a good hold on that. do you have any idea of like do military people how many military people use this like I could see like snipers I could see like fighter pilots I could see you know athletes I could see snowboarders like do you do you have an idea of like the people that like is there a big is there a genre of people that like maybe you didn't see and you're like yeah there's a lot of people that use it are you seeing stuff yeah there's a lot of high performers that uses for sure we I know for certain we are on the um on the um International Space Station because we got asked from NASA to put a special download mode

so they could only download it once and then bring it up because they don't have, you know, a lot of bandwidth. We have a lot of professional poker players that use us because you're sitting down for hours. And you don't want to give tails away. That's one of the normal things. Interesting. You have to pace yourself. And like I have a few friends that are pretty high up in the rankings.

and what they'll do is they'll do focus and then they'll relax and they'll modulate it themselves. Yeah, depending. So, because you can't just, like, that's like a common thing that people just try to ramp focus for eight hours a day. And some people can do that, but the normal person really can only sustain that for so long. Oh, interesting. So a better, a better strategy would be dip in and out. So if someone really, I'm glad you brought that up because I think somebody could be listening to this and go like, oh, cool, I'm going to slap this. and listen to it all day at work.

So what would be, so let's say you have a job, an accountant, right? So it's a laborious, like just plugging numbers away all day or something like that or maybe an engineer or something. How would you typically, and I know that there's individuals, but I mean, typically recommend like how to use that through the whole day of work. Yeah. So I think first thing is always starting with momentum. It makes everything a lot easier.

And we'll get into this with tips and tricks and stuff later. But really, it's thinking about your day and focus. blocks, right? So for me, personally, I'll do like a 90-minute focus block in the morning of some of my most challenging work, right? And then I will dive into more of a relax or recharge block, which allows me to, you know, just kind of downregulate. I'll reset and then I'll use some of my maybe more laborious or kind of monotonous work. And I'll put like a different type of music on and get back into it to just try to crush it. And I actually try to game fight a little bit, right? So, you know, there's some time where I'm, I'm just trying to do my best and trying to have my deepest work and others where I am like, okay, I got 60 minutes. Let's see what I can do, right? And I think it's finding what strategy works effectively for you, right? And really trying to be curious around, you know, what that works. So for the count it, for example, it would be, okay,

what do I have to do? And maybe, like, I'm not an accountant, so I'm not sure. But think about it in like, okay, this normally would take me, you know, X amount of time. I'm going to try to shrink that down to 60 minutes. I'm going to try to like bang through it in a way that, one, I'm rewarded at the end because I collapse time. But two, it makes it, you know, as more as exciting as you can, but you're still entertained and able to kind of get into that flow to do it. Dan, you were you were talking earlier off air that there's like a workout mode you're coming out with. Yeah. Yeah. Explain this. Yeah. So why wouldn't it just be focus? Well, you know, it's really funny. So, you know, I've been on here a few times and we've talked about it. And we have a lot of people that write in

and they tell us we, they use focus. And, you know, that works, right? But the, the interesting thing about focus is it's literally made for desk work. It's made to be. And, you know, that works. It's made to beat, you know, you're in front of your computer. Still. And yeah, you're, it's, we have all these things that we're not getting into. Like, we actually make it so it sounds like the music's coming in front of you to direct your focus even more. And then we're trying to make it so that you kind of don't even hear the music after a while, like you guys have said. It's just, yeah. Yeah. So we're doing a lot of techniques. We're at, we're, you know,

changing. We're making it so that there's not strong salience, like differences in sound, right? We're just trying. Everything is designed about just getting you into that state. But workout is the complete opposite of that, right? So we said, hey, what if we flipped it on its head? We actually started experimenting on this in the medical side of the business for some pain management. And we discovered that if... Are you guys engineering music to reduce the perception of pain?

We have a few things that we're researching. And that's a yes. That's wild. You didn't say, yeah. We have some really cool stuff. We actually, on a quick on the side of the medical, we actually did a clinical study where we woke people up from anesthesia faster and got them out of the hospital. And there's, you know, a lot of people, you know, they look at our science. We have a lot.

But, you know, there's always a question. This is placebo. And, you know, if you look at the double blind and you kind of excuse all that stuff, even if you go further, there can't be a placebo if you're asleep. Right. Right. And in this, we were able to get people out of a hospital. hospital after anesthesia 30% faster, right? Instead of waking up and you're like kind of drunk, you're actually coherent and you can just, you know, you're like, oh, wow, that was great.

Really, really cool stuff. That's a, that's a whole other thing. You should have an anti-drunk. Play this. Yeah. You won't fail. Sovere you up. I'm just kidding. Music. Yeah. So talk about this workout one because I'm tripping right now. My mind is spinning. Because I'm already thinking to my head. So how's it different than focus? That you could change how someone perceives pain, exertion, you can improve the perceptions of pleasure, which would just make the workout way more awesome. We're trying to add more dopamine, like way more than focus, right, where it's distracting. We're trying to add a lot of texture and a lot of, you know,

events that basically take your energy away from how much, like, maybe pain you're in, right? but also at the same time by adding stimulation, which allows you to have that muscle connection, right, that we're all trying to get, right? And we started experimenting with us. This has actually been something in the making for like four or five years. And it's close enough now where it's not, we're not putting our metal and saying it's as good as focused or sleep yet,

but we are releasing beta. And we wanted to release beta actually with you guys because of the relationship that we have. So people listening can go and try. Yeah, they can go and try it. And it's been crazy. So I wanted to, you know, get fit. And I started doing, you know, a bunch of different diet.

But I realized I really need to start doing some cardio. And my friend signed me up for a high rocks. And I don't know if you guys know about high rocks, but it's basically a running competition. Yeah, they suck. Yeah. What are you thinking, dude? Yeah.

Full on circuit. I was like, I'm going to try it. And I basically, I was like, never a runner, never thought I was going to be a runner. I don't understand runners. And my experience was always running was the most monotonous thing. It was boring, right? When we started, when I started playing with this and testing it, I now am a runner. And now I can run six miles.

Explain. What do you mean, you're just not bored? Yeah, what's happening is we're adding. this energy of the music, and now I can run where I'm not, it's, it's funny because we're not, like the music is something that's, you know, it's just guiding you, right? And eventually, you reach the same point where you're not really listening to it anymore, but it's kind of like just this giving you, like the best way I can describe it, it's kind of like drinking a pre-workout the entire time you're working out. And you feel this thing, instead of feeling the pain and like,

oh, I want to stop and all this stuff. it kind of gets you through this that first like five minutes of cardio where you're like, oh, I can do this. So this is interesting to me because anybody like, I mean, I wouldn't call myself a runner, but I've ran a lot in my life.

And you have that the first 10 minutes. And then you hit what most people call the runners high. And that's, it's like once you get past that, you break that kind of first sweat, you hit the 10 minutes. All of a sudden the run becomes so much easier. It would be so cool to see a study.

Yeah, like I, I know because I've ran enough times that it's about 10 minutes for me. To know that I could get there in five would be like a huge deal. That's the goal. That's the goal. So that would be dope to be able to go like, you know, get your runners high in half the time. Well, if you can induce catacolamine production or dopamine production, you probably can induce endogenous endocannoid production, which is what happens.

That's part of the runners high is their body actually producing cannabinoids. Like you've obviously felt that. right? Like you, I know you're not a big runner, but I mean, you run and it's like, yeah, it's like that once that kind of first sweat and I, after 10 minutes, like the first 10 minutes, it's like, I don't want to do this, this sucks. And then after that's like, oh, I could go for another hour. I got to add to this though, Dan, because someone who's never experienced Brain FM is like, well, yeah, there's music that'll do that to me. Like I'll listen to my favorite song or that, you know, for me, it's like, like Rocky Four montage music, you know, and you get the chills. That's not what we're talking about. Wrecking ball, right? We're not for Justin's wrecking ball. Crushes. That's not what we're talking about.

This isn't bringing you back a memory that's giving you a feeling or that's motivating you because you're like, oh, I like the song, although the music's good. It's the sounds themselves get the brain to operate in a way that mirrors what you would see in a scan if you were looking at someone who's enjoying the workout. Totally. Or who's focused on, you know, reading something that they realize. or who's meditating or whatever. So it's literally telling the brain through sounds

and sounds have a very profound effect on the brain. If you just know how to engineer them, it's making the brain operate as if you were, which then makes you... What about... It sounds a lot more deliberate, too, with the workout version of it. Like, it wants to get your attention

and to get you focus on these sounds more to distract from what's going on with... Yeah, your pain signal. Yeah. So, you know, those patterns that we talked about Because, you know, sounds, there's so many things inside of that, right? Inside of those sounds, there's a lot of how the music is, you know, compositionally. If you like it, you know, whether it's EDM or it's, you know, heavy metal or whatever. But inside of that is that pattern that we talked about before.

And remember that we can adjust that pattern per user and per track. And when you're working out, you already have a lot more blood flow going on. So we can ramp that up even higher, which gives you that effect even more. Another way to think about what we do is plugging in and plugging out, right? When you focus, when you work out, you're trying to plug in, you're trying to get jazzed up. You're trying to do something, right? And then when you want to relax, you're trying to plug out. You're trying to not be anxious on flights.

You have too much energy. And what we're doing is, again, we're shifting those patterns that shift blood flow. So we're shifting blood flow into your prefrontal cortex, and we're shifting blood flow out. out of your prefrontal cortex, which allows us to regulate how you feel and enhance, you know, your goal. Have you guys ever had any studies or tested, like, stress hormone responses with this? We haven't done stuff like that. Now that we have this nature paper and we were successful. And it's kind of cool because we're a small company.

It's like winning the Oscar and, like, not many companies do this. We're like an indie film winning something. but now we're like, okay, we've done it. What's next? Right? And we have a lot of different, you know, ideas and things that we want to do our next study on. Most people don't realize that this study costs us a million dollars, right? So it's not, when you turn on the fMRI machine, it's a quarter of a million bucks.

Plus you got a half a million every time you just turn the fMRI. Well, you better make sure this is a good study going to do it. Well, you have controls, you have people, you have placebo. Well, you got to, it's all, it's a lot. You've got to do it the right way. Because at the end of the day, we want conclusive evidence that what we're doing works. And we want people to trust us. And we can say, oh, yeah, do this and all these great things and users.

And that's true. We have, you know, four plus million users using us. But what's even more powerful is if you want to look at the study and want to look at it and read it yourself, you can. Right? Yeah. in this new functional music category and really help people just, you know, be their best. Yeah, I just immediately think about performance and I'm thinking about, like, getting into that sympathetic state as quickly as possible. But then also, like, after I'm done, like, being able to recover in parasympathetic state and kind of shifting that, you know, if there's a way to do that musically through, you know, your guy's product.

There's a lot of ways to hack what you guys do. people with digestive issues listen to meditate or relax while you eat wake up in the morning I'm groggy put on a little focus or maybe now the workout like there's a lot of ways to use this to kind of move through the day because you don't

you're not always going to be focused or at least that's not ideal you're not always going to be relaxed that's always not ideal but there are moments when those are ideal states of mind are you guys because there's a lot of fMRI studies on we can look at a brain and we can pretty reliably predict whether or not that person is feeling a particular way,

at least the major feelings. One of them is like being in love. Another one is euphoria. Have you guys looked into engineering music to try to induce some of these? Because I could see my, I would be very interesting like, oh, this is euphoria. I want to see what this feels like.

Yeah. Have you looked at some of this stuff too? Right now, we're kind of really focused on activities, right? Because we want to, like, I would love to make everyone euphoric. But if I'm assuming if I had a euphoria button, and I just press that thing all day. So, so addicts.

Let's go. I think really, you know, the first thing is just trying to enhance and get people to, you know, unlock that part of themselves. That's what we hear a lot of people say is that they're like, once it get going, I'm unstoppable. But I need that button to start. And that's where a lot of people start with us in the morning. They put on a motivation track. They put us on a deep work.

and, you know, eventually we want to make the soundtrack that if you wanted to, you could list us 24-7. We don't expect that necessarily, but we actually already have people that listen to us every night for focus. Or sorry, every night for sleep, right? They start their day. You know, they use this for relax, workout. You know, there's so many other things there. And there's also these really cool use cases that still are being used by people that, we're not really intended for.

So for example, a lot of people solve their focus problem and maybe they don't need sleep. But they have a brand new baby. And they're like, you know what? Why not? I'll put sleep on. And now they put it every night for their kid. And those moments are the really cool times. So you guys are okay now playing it on speakers.

I remember for a second they're like, it has to be on headphones. But we experimented on the speakers and it works too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It still works on, you know, we're. always learning new things, but if you want the highest effects for focus and for workout, speakers are going to be not as high as headphones, but it still will work. But for relax and for sleep and all those downstates, because it's so slow, this waveform, you can put

on speakers no problem. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Because you always were talking about how you play for Max. Oh, yeah. Always. That's how we use it. I've always used it through a speaker, even when we were told that we're not supposed to talk about it like that. I was like, which is where it works. I mean, obviously, if you put noise-canceling headphones,

so there's no other distractions and you're only getting that input, it makes sense. That's the highest level you can get. But it's super effective with a little bow speaker putting right towards you. Are you able,

I don't know if you're even able to comment on this, but do you guys have parents who are using it for their kids who are struggling with school? And, hey, I don't want my kid to have to go on medication. Are you getting users? Yeah, we get a lot of users to do that.

We have, So we have a lot of people that want to use this as a first reach, rather, instead of going right to medication. They're saying, hey, let's try this first. And people write in, they say, oh, my gosh, there's a huge difference. We have this, we have teachers playing this in classrooms, over speakers, things like that. That's cool. We also have what's really interesting, too, is people that are, or kids that are very neurodiverse, right? So you're talking that they have autism or, you know, other kinds of learning disabilities.

And they put this on. And they're like night and day. We, we, it's, you know, again, there's so many interesting things. Like we have a lot of, like an autistic community of people that use focus to go out, to go to parties. Because it helps regulate how they feel, which allows them to be more social and things like that. I have family members. I need to, I need to. I can't believe.

I haven't introduced this to it. That makes a lot of sense. Wow, that's remarkable. And you have a friend that you, have you recommended? No, I haven't. Literally, why he was talking, I'm like, I'm so going to send that to them

and get their son on it before they even consider doing something like that. And I could just see that. That's one of the things that they, like getting him to sit down and do homework and sit still for like 10, 15 minutes. Exactly. It's really tough.

Dan, off air, you were talking about how you recently, because you had, you've talked to, you've told us her story on previous episodes of how, you know, and you had struggled with focus because you have ADHD. You said you just realized a few years ago that you had dyslexia as well. Yes. How do you figure that out a few years later?

How did that discovery? So there's so many different forms, right? And actually, before I get on to this, I'll just say that, you know, what we're learning or what is not commonly told in public is that it's just a spectrum. And some people are shifted this way or this way, right? So I think it's, you know, really important for people to recognize that for, you know, different kids, right? Instead of just going to medication, let's try this because maybe they're just here. Right.

And some, and not that medication's bad, but what if you use this in and medication? Could you take less? Because you do, you know, more, you know. And because this is not pharmaceutical combining it with Medicaid perfectly safe. The only down effect of this, the negative effect would be you put it on too loud and it hurts your drums. There's no other. Our brains are designed to eliminate a lot of things going on. And that's actually one, again, that pattern we're trying to get through that elimination network.

And that's, again, you know, why it's effective and why there's no downside from it. So back to how did you figure out three years as an adult? Yeah, so I, you know, I can read fine. And numbers have always been hard for me. But whatever, math is hard, right? And it wasn't until I was actually, I think I might have been on TikTok or something like that. And someone started talking about the different forms of dyslexia. And I was like, wait a second, I have that. I thought that was me having like a part of ADHD. And, you know, they're blended together. But, you know, they're blended together. But, I have this hard time remembering audio, right? So, you know, someone will quote a classic movie line or say a song or whatever doesn't work for me, right? It's so hard for me to remember facts and figures and, you know, like sports team names and things like that, like stats. I'm not a sports guy because I can't hold any of that information. And again, growing up, I just thought maybe I was dumb, right?

And then finding years later that, oh, it's actually, I have dyslexia, it allowed me to like, you know, have a little bit more power over that. And I think that's, again, why my story with Brain FM and, you know, selling everything I have so I could go all in as a user, you know, that's why. because it's the first thing that really worked. You know, okay, this is why I'm so interested in this. I had, and I haven't looked into this, but now I'm going to look into it. I had a woman that was a client of mine, and she was, I want to say, either a psychology professor or I believe she was a psychology professor. And I was talking about how, so I read fine, no problem, numbers.

I'm not good at math, but I don't think that's an issue. Yeah, it's hard. But I have the most disoriented sense of direction that I've ever heard of. I've only met one other person who I would say is like me. I could literally get lost by turning around and going back around and then I don't know which direction is right left. He needs the map quest to get out of his neighborhood. It's really bad. True story.

It's frustrating. It's frustrating. And she said that it's a form of dyslexia. So I'm going to look into it to see what's the deal. Because I also have ADD. Yeah. And I know that there's a kind of a crossover. There's definitely, I mean, some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world have.

Thank you. I made me feel better. Yeah. Yeah. Richard Branson, you know, I can name a few. But, you know, and that's what we're like, again. Do you have a lot of entrepreneurs that do, Brandon? You got to have a huge percentage.

Oh, huge amount. Well, I imagine. Yeah. It attracts people with ADD. I mean, the positive thing in that, because I know it's always talked about is such in such a negative light. The positive side is that. You have also the ability to crazy obsess and focus about things, right?

Yeah. I mean, that's the part. That's why entrepreneurs are, so many of us have, so many of us have. that is because, oh, this could be a super power too. We're also seek out novelty, which makes us less risk-averse, which is what you need as an entrepreneur. Not to be so afraid to take risks. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many cool things in the whole entrepreneur landscape. Like your novelty seeking, you are trying to also make up for feeling less than a lot of it, right? And that, again, comes from, you know, maybe being told that you can't do something or you're not smart enough or whatever.

And it was really one of the reasons why entrepreneurs love us so much is because to this point, they figured it out, right? They're able to function by pure will alone. Yeah. But now you give them a tool that allows them to go to the next level. Yeah, we just got a, I mean, I just read a love letter, right? We get thousands of them a week. And I just read someone and they were saying how much of a change that they've had from using Brain FM. and they're trying to create a healthcare startup

that's going to try to change the world. And they're like, you are allowing me to do the thing that I need to do so I can help people. And I thought that was really cool because I've always thought of, well, we're just trying to help people. We're trying to change the world.

But we're also doing this we're helping other people compound effect change the world through the things that they make, which is pretty fun. So you guys do something interesting, and we talked to Off Air, the conversion rate you guys have is insane. So you guys let people try it out for free for a month. Yeah, for 30 days. For 30 days. And you were saying that at least half the people stick around.

Yes. Which for anybody who's listening, like when you give away something expecting a conversion, 50% does you don't, nobody gets 50% out. No, no. I think, I think industry rates are like 30%. You know, we do the whole thing. It's really interesting. If you want to get into you like user psychology. and things like that. So we used to give Brain FM out for free, no credit card, and people could just try it. But then when we did that, people were like,

oh, I'll just try it later. I'll just try it later. Because everyone has ADHD. Right? And so what we did. You market to those people. Totally. It didn't work.

And what's really, and you see this in apps a lot where you have, you know, put in your credit card, you get seven days or 14 days or for mind pump listeners to get 30. And when we did that, our conversion rate spiked

because then people are like, I have to try this before it charges me. And you can cancel any time. And if it doesn't work for you, cancel. But we find is that people when they sign up and they're motivated to try it, they'll actually sit down and be like, I'm going to try this for 60 minutes.

And in that 60 minutes, their first session will be 60 or 90 or some people do it for three or four hours in your first session. Yeah. And those people go from basically zero usage to three hours a day every day, and they're still using us, you know, three, four, five. We're coming up on 10 years, you know, late. I have yet to find anybody who I've introduced it, actually tried it. It said it didn't work. Yes. This is what I always say to them, wait 10 to 15 minutes. Just wait 10 to 15 minutes and then let me know. And then sure enough, they're like, what?

Yeah. This is wild. And every single one of them ends up. converting. Are you allowed to talk about famous people or athletes or people that are using it? I mean, do you guys have users like that? Are you allowed to talk and disclose that stuff? I know we have people that have written in and shared a lot of

success, but I don't have their express permission. But I will say there's a lot of people that you would recognize, right? Like some very large celebrities, some very pro athletes. And I think it's, again, And it's for the high performer that wants to consistently be on their best, especially, you know, pro athletes and things like that, this is part of their repertoire.

Yeah. You know, I always think of Brain FM as a tool, but not a, not the all solution. So you add this with the other tools that you have. Add this with your caffeine. Add this with your energy drink. Add this, you know, like for me, I would, I would say that like the best, my best hack for me is, right, take an healthy. drink a cold brew, put on Brain FM and just sit down. Boom.

And you're going to find this really cool effect from this energy from the caffeine and then guiding that energy from Brain FM. And the results are really remarkable. What's the Pomodoro effect? What is that? I see that in your notes. Yeah. What is that exactly?

So Pomodoro is this very widely known method of focusing, where you focus for, I believe it's, 20 or 25 minutes on, and then you take a five-minute break. So you're just back and forth. Back and forth. Oh, okay. And that's really good for people with the ADHD that, like, you know, working on a task for 90 minutes is really, you know, hard and scary.

The thing is, though, that a lot of people think that that's the best, most optimal way to work. And I would say that's really good for monotonous tasks you just have to get through. But for really deep work, like developing or writing, we have to. have a ton of writers, I think 90 minutes, 60 to 90 minute blocks is really the best. Because by the time you are right about in that flow state, why would you leave? Yeah, why would you stop it? Well, I think that's, that strategy was used without Brain FM, right? That's typically what we figure, we found is most people's tension span was really strong in the first 20 minutes. And then they

trail off. And so you're better off, breaking up. But that's assuming you don't have a tool. like this. You have a tool like this and 20 minutes now becomes 60, 90 minute blocks that are far more successful. That's really cool. That's a selling point and a half by that. Because I've seen the studies and stuff that say that. What about like, you know, when you have a bunch of tasks to do, do the one you hate the most or the hardest one first. Get that one out of the way. Yep. You have in your notes that that's a myth. Explain that. No, I was saying, so in my notes, a lot of people think they have to work on their hardest tasks first. That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah, the one that's the hardest first. So that's really hard because you're basically like, okay, I got to write this chapter or do whatever.

And what happens is you just stare at the screen, right? And one of the best ways to get started is to start the dopamine, right? Oh, good point. That's what you want to do. Because if I have to start with anything that's the hardest, I'm less likely to want to start. Yeah. You should all, I mean, so all focus is controlling energies, energy management, right? but it's also learning how our brains and our bodies work.

And while you certainly want to do your most intensive tasks on Monday morning, right, if you just cold start, just like going to the gym and doing a deadlift, you don't just rip five. Yeah, you don't max out, right? You got to warm it up. You got to give your body or your brain in this case some dopamine. So what I'll usually do is I go through my day and I go, okay, this is the number one thing I have to do. it's A, right? B, C, D, and E, right? And then I'll just do D for 20 minutes first. I get that

away. I already won something. Cool. And then here's a thing. Then you lock in. Yeah, you have to lock in because a lot of people will answer those five emails they have to do and then go to start their writing thing. But in today's world, they'll be like, oh, let me just reward myself by scrolling on TikTok. Ruined. You only have 60 seconds to switch into the next deck. to keep that going. So you really want to start off with something small, like an appetizer, right? Get yourself ready.

But you have to stay in that focus zone and then immediately switching that harder task. And you're going to find it a lot easier to stay consistent and build, you know, productive work days. That's interesting. What comes to mind for me when I think of like my days then it would be like, knock out the quick open email stuff,

right? Get to my emails real quick and answer, respond, whatever, cash out. Yep. And then that's like kind of, because it's easy. It's mundane. It takes me probably 20 minutes if I do it every day. Yep.

And then lock into the thing that I got to really get it. But I want to be ready to go right away. Sounds like so. You don't want to delay minutes or a long time. It's like you want to have that big task ready to go so you can transition right into it. Totally. And you want something that you know you can hit. So, you know, email works for some people because they're like, yep, like clockwork.

Other people, they open their email. And it's like, I don't know, it could be 10 minutes. It could be three hours. So you really. want to find that task that you have to do that's you know just like doing a warm-up rep. How are you, how are users finding you? I mean, I know we talk about you guys, but how are you reaching out? Because I'm always tripping. I'm like, you know, 4 million users is a lot. But I'm like, why isn't it, you know, 40 million? Like this is so, again, if you try this, if you're listening,

you try it, it blows your mind. It's really weird. Are you self-funded? What are you, what's the funding like with you guys? We did a, what is it called? A safe note. So like a pre-seed funding round. But now we're completely bootstrapped and we're scaling on top of that. What you see is companies like Binary L'Eats,

which have got hundreds of millions of dollars behind them that are probably pumping ads at a loss just so they can get people, right? Well, you know what? It's actually funny because a lot of the, there's not a lot of funding in Binaryal Beats. It's just there's so many copycats that they all look the same.

Oh, interesting. So when you compare us to, you know, I can name like 20 binaural bead companies, they all are, you know, basically trying to steal each other's lunch. And that looks like, hey. Oh, I see. But what's really interesting, what's been helpful for us is it's still showing people that there's music made for focus. And then eventually they try us too, and they go, wow, and they stay with us.

Our biggest source right now is worth of mouth. It's still, and it always is. and what's really cool is internationally, we're really starting to grow. That's cool. So, you know, obviously this works in any language. It's music, right? Oh, good point. Any studies you want to fund or, you know, that you'd love to maybe do?

Oh, man, so many. I would love to, I mean, first, I think a lot of the wearable stuff that we want to do would be really, really cool. Again, there's some really cool wearables coming out. Like, you know, if you're O'Ring, you have Apple Watch, those are, those are some cool stuff. But you also have E, G, stuff where it's these, these things that we actually are in all of our experiments. But now they're like putting it down into very small form factors. You also have FNIRs, which is, it's a headband and it's shooting a laser, like a very, very tiny penetration into your, your skull, and it's just reading the blood flow, like, from, like, the few millimeters in,

and it can estimate how focused you are. Like, there's a ton of really cool integration stuff there. I think there's also really cool stuff and, like, the wearable and fitness component. Like, I remember talking to you and you're like, do a study with CGMs. Yeah. Right. And there's, there's a lot. There's actually so much, you know.

And what we're trying to always balance is how do we, you know, stay focused, right? It's really ironic. I own a focus company and I need to stay focused, right? And that's actually what's been allowing us to grow and succeed. This year we've doubled in size. Oh, wow. And it's really because we're focusing on very specific, you know, problems. And this problem right now is how can we help people focus no matter where you are in the world,

no matter, you know, where you are in the spectrum, right? And we want to help you. and I think the next one is probably now going after people with insomnia or panic attacks. If you were to give me, I'm assuming that what led you guys to that, you probably put it on a pie chart and, you know, say last year and said this is our greatest pie piece of the pie. Yeah. So is that right. 70% of people that come to us is focused. It's focused right now.

See, that's so interesting for me because I'm more of the sleep guy as far as how I use it. Although I use it for focus. So you guys 70% are focused. A big part of it too, though, Adam. that we, you and I, well, most of us don't do the kind of work where we have to sit there and focus. Oh, yeah. No. If I do is in here. And this is pretty engaging. And, you know, so, but if I was, like, when I used to write our content, I would use. No, we all have. You know, it makes sense when, you know, I just, like, what a, what a brilliant thing in an era where, I mean, I, I remember reading, like, just a decade or two ago, the attention span of the average person and, like, you know, what it's down to now. it's like goldfish. Yeah, it used to be like a minute.

Then it was like 30 seconds. There's like 15. And it's like six seconds now you have to get grab somebody's attention. And we're in this attention war, right? Like that's more valuable. The money today is grabbing people's attention. Yep. Which is also another way of saying we're distracted.

Like so we're massively distracted as a species in a society. And so you guys coming out with something or focusing on something that helps people stay not distracted and stay focused. But here's the thing too. Because of the way that it's training the brain, even without playing the music, your brain now gets into these states easier. Because it's moving the blood flow, because it's conditioning the mind or the brain through these sounds, you have an effect that lasts in between listening to it. So use it regularly. You're more focused even when you don't use it, which I think is very interesting.

Totally. Yeah, very cool. Dan, this is great. Yep. Thanks for coming back on, man. We appreciate what you guys do. Easy to talk about your guys. Can't wait to try the workout.

Of course, yeah. I mean, for all mind pump listeners, if you go to Brain FM slash Mind Pump, you guys are going to get the extended 30 days, right? And also, you can try, focus, all the other activities, and you'll automatically be signed up for beta. And we're looking for feedback, right? This isn't finished, but we want to hear people from cardio. We also want to hear workouts, weightlifting.

I have my PR for deadlift while listening to it. So it works for both. Would you hold? I hit nothing compared to you guys. But I hit 415. That's great. That's a big deadlift, dude. Yeah.

Great job, dude. That's awesome. That's awesome. So it's brain.fm. 4. slash mind pump. Yes. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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