The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - #116: Tero Isokauppila - Creating Your Own Category, Functional Mushrooms, Essentials To E-Commerce, Success, Failure, & How To Heal Your Skin With Food

Episode Date: May 29, 2018

On this episode we sit down with entrepreneur and founder of Four Sigmatic, Tero Isokauppila. This is an extremely wide ranging conversation that covers a gauntlet of topics including how to create your own category for your business or brand, functional mushrooms, success, failure, essentials to e-commerce and how to heal your skin with food. To connect with Tero Isokauppila click HERE To learn more about Four Sigmatic click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To try Four Sigmatic and receive 15% off of your entire order go to www.foursigmatic.com/skinny and use promo code SKINNY at check out. This episode is brought to you by WOO FOR PLAY  Even Better Sex. Imagine That. WOO FOR PLAY is the all natural and organic coconut love oil that is changing the way we have sex. With only 4 all natural ingredients WOO is the perfect personal lubricant to spice up your sex life.  All Him & Her Listeners will receive 20% off your entire order plus free shipping when using promo code HIMANDHER at checkout. Go to www.wooforplay.com to try WOO FOR PLAY.     

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.

Aha! What I think is really useful and always useful for me, especially being so passionate about what I do and so pumped about it, was to think about problems. Forget the solutions. Like, really, what are the stuff? So instead of me trying to hammer people as like mushrooms are awesome, which they are, still, I was like, hey, what are the problems that people have?

Like lack of energy, for example. Or people love having, for example, coffee, but they get jitters and they get heartburn, right? So in Finland, we drink more coffee than any other nation in the world, about three times more than Americans, which is insane, right? And in the Second World War, we were attacked both by the Russians and the Germans, and we run out of coffee beans. So we started brewing this mushroom that grew in our forest in a tree called chaga. And we made like a coffee substitute. And I'm like, yeah, that's actually makes sense. And I knew the research that it has tons of minerals and antioxidants, like a cup of chaga

would equal to like 30 pounds of carotene antioxidants. And combining half and half of coffee and chaga made total sense. And instead of trying to sell people this chaga mushroom they've never heard of, even if they're super health conscious, maybe it's like, Hey, do you drink coffee? Yeah. Do you ever get the jitters? Do you get like heartburn? Sure. Like try this and feel it on your body and see how you feel. Welcome back to the skinny confidential him and her show. If you're new to the show,

thank you so much for joining. That clip was from our guest of the show today, Taro Isokopola. That's a hard one. Who is the founder of Four Sigmatic. On this episode, we discuss how to create your own category for your online business and brand, the benefits of functional mushrooms, essentials to e-commerce, success, failure, and how to heal your skin with food. If you're new to the show, I'm Lauren Everts. I'm the creator of The Skinny Confidential.

The Skinny Confidential is a blog, a book, and a podcast, and it's become a resource for women all over the world, which has turned into this incredible online community. And I'm Michael Bostic. I'm an entrepreneur and business operator. What the hell has been going on, Lauren Everts Bostic? Well, a lot of margaritas. A lot of margaritas. A lot of margaritas. A lot of chips and salsa. We are back from Cabo down there celebrating Lauren's birthday.

We promised that we would tell them what happened before we went to Cabo, like right when we were about to go. So I'll let you just stick your tongue. Oh, my God, guys. You know, I think I need more help. I need to hire a couple more people to help me out. I am stretched too thin. I did something that I cannot believe that I did. And let me preface this, you guys, with he never, ever, ever, ever, ever does this. So

this is extremely out of character. Well, for those that know me and know me from the show and know me just in general, this was a nightmare scenario for me. Yeah, it was. So listen, I've been working a lot and I've been putting in a lot of hours. So when we were booking the flights to Cabo, a little spread thin, we were booking the flights to Cabo. When I was booking the flights to Cabo, we were going to leave from the San Diego airport, which is SD and I'm flying to Cabo. And when I was doing it in the middle of it, I got called into a meeting. So I left it midway through without completing the booking. And then when I came back, I must've accidentally hit the one right below, which is, what is that? SF for San Francisco.

And then for the one time that I didn't have anybody entered in my calendar and didn't look at it myself, I almost embarrassed to say, but I booked the fucking flight from instead of San Diego to Cabo from San Francisco to Cabo. Okay. So let me set the scene. I'm all dressed up. I'm looking so cute because it's my birthday. Michael's supposed to have like kind of a moment with me. He's dressed up. We're all ready. We have our luggage. We're good to go. We're on time. He's dragged me outside. He's running to the airport. He's ready to go. We get to the stand at the front with all of our bags.

And what did they say, Michael? They said, sir, this flight leaves from San Francisco, and you're in San Diego. And I knew immediately that I fucked up. And I don't want to drag this story out for too long, because it's not that interesting. I'm not going to drag it out. I'm just going to tell you this, that I had to get down to Cabo. There was no way that I wasn't going down there because I had work down there for the first day. And I wanted to celebrate my birthday and get buzzed and just

relax. It sounds like an easy fix, but the problem was we were on Alaska and they ran out of flights and then I had to put you on Southwest and then they ran out of those flights. Tell them what you had to do. Well, then I had to Uber up to LA and then I had to leave from LA anyways it took me 12 hours to get to Cabo very embarrassing guys this could happen to anyone um check your flights if you guys don't understand Michael and my husband how he is with time he was he was whining and panting and sweating upper lip was perspiring at least I got to go down to Cabo right away anyway that was our day uh went to Cabo it was amazing Pal, that was our day. Went to Cabo. It was amazing. Palmia was just incredible. As always, if you guys go down to Cabo, you have to check it out. We were down there to celebrate my birthday, but mainly to relax, to take a break off social media, to take a break

off the phone, to take a break off the computer. A lot of people were asking, I didn't post one picture. I didn't post one story because I needed a tech break, right? And my dream is, and my dream's been this year to take a few days and have no interactivity with any technology. So that's exactly what I did. I just stayed there and read. I'm reading a book called Mastery by Robert Greene. And I meditated and I worked out every day and I just chilled out and drank margaritas. And I think it's so important to take breaks once in a while. We're so connected to this phone and the computer all the time that, you know, that three to four days, I feel like I'm like fully reset and ready to kick

ass again, but I needed a break. For the first time in eight years, I didn't look at my email for five days straight, which is really nuts. Now, when I came back to my email five days later, that was an avalanche, but that's okay. But you know what? We were talking about this. I think the inbox is not a space that you have to feel like you have to work in, right? It's a space to be productive. I think the email inbox has become a place where people feel like they can come in and ask for things. And I'm not saying that that happens to us. It happens to everybody. I think anybody who's managing an inbox, don't feel obligated to respond to everything. While you want to respond, but try to respond to productive things, right? If it's like Cousin Joe asking for a cup of coffee, or it's somebody asking to submit something to you, or if it's somebody asking you to do something on their time, like you really need to ask yourself, is this productive for what I'm trying to do for my business, for my brand, for my job, whatever it is. And if it's not, then really question if it's useful to respond.

Because what happens is when you feel like you have to respond to everyone and then you can't follow through with a commitment to that response, then you're letting people down. I completely agree with you. And what I've done that's really, really helped if anyone's out there and they're managing a business is I've created sub emails. So I have asked Lauren for any questions like audience questions. We have a podcast email to book podcasts. We have a support email, we have a newsletter email, and we have a presence email for giveaways. And so what that does is when I get into my inbox, I can just forward those out. So that clears it up. And then anything that Mike, like Michael said, isn't contributing to growing the business. It's more working in the business. I try

to get to it later or just not answer it. I also have this thing called unroll me. You guys have to try it. It's amazing. This isn't an ad. I'm just telling you, you need it. And basically it goes through your inbox and you can pick what you want to be in this one email a day. So say you're subscribed to a hundred newsletters. Instead of getting a hundred emails, you would just get one and it would streamline everything. You know what else we did in Cabo? What? Oh, you're talking about me getting lucky or you getting lucky. Why are you smiling like that? I don't know. Maybe I'm thinking I'm going to get lucky again. Probably not. A lot of rose petals all over the bed. A lot of bubble baths.

A lot of woo. A lot of woo. We brought woo down there. And if you're wondering, woo is an all natural lube that's made up of four main ingredients, which we love. Organic coconut oil, beeswax, a little stevia, and a tiny bit of vanilla. It's really perfect. It's just all the things everyone loves. And why I loved it, especially on my birthday in Cabo, is because... I loved it because you'll use it with me. It's edible. And it really does make sex better.

Some people were saying, I don't need lube. It's not that you need it. It's that it enhances the sex. So think of it like a fake eyelash, okay, when you're doing your makeup. Like you do your makeup, you can curl your lashes, you can put your mascara on. But when you add a fake lash, it's just like that extra pop. Guys, don't get lazy out there because we were down there with our friend Arielle and she was saying that... Juicy Joe.

Juicy Joe, he just... Juicy Joe is her fiance. But Arielle was saying that Joe needs to put more effort in because he just pulls out the woo and that means it's time to go. So guys, if you're out there, I love that you're using the woo, but you still have to, you know, get your woman in the mood. Put some effort into it. Don't be like DJ Cal. Yeah. Don't just pull out the woo. Yeah. Come on now. Anyway, all of our friends have tried it and they tell us that it's changed their sex life, honestly. And it's definitely enhanced ours. I feel like it's a good gift for boyfriends, girlfriends, bachelorette parties.

Get creative with it. So we have a new promo code for all TSC listeners. And for those of you who have already used it, you can use this code too. So if you've already gotten frisky in the sheets with Woo, you can still use this code. The code is HIMANDHER for 20% off your purchase plus free shipping. All you have to do is go to www.wooforplay.com and enter code HIMANDHER at checkout. Again, that's wooforplay.com, promo code HIMANDHER for 20% off and free shipping. Enjoy, get frisky, use it anywhere. The way I like to use Woo is I like to start with a massage and see where things end up.

You never know. Or where things end up. All right, we're kind of on and off with the him and her tip because sometimes we're feeling it and sometimes we're not. This week we are feeling it. So my hymn tip this week comes from our conversation with Tara, which you're going to hear soon. So in this episode with Tara, we talk a lot about customer feedback and particularly customer reviews and how a company can benefit from reading a particular set of reviews. And it also got me thinking about how we take feedback from our peers in our personal lives or in our business lives. So you're going to have people in your life that are constantly giving you great feedback, telling you how great you are, telling how awesome you're doing, telling how great your idea is and how wonderful everything you do is. And those are typically

probably like the grandparents, maybe your parents, maybe your best friends. And then we're also going to have the people who are giving us constant negative feedback. I'm sure we all have somebody like that in our life who's constantly telling us how terrible we are and how fucked up everything is that we do. And with those people, you kind of want to zone them out. But I'd also say you want to zone out a little bit of what the other side of that is too, which is the people that are telling you how great you are. Because when you're hearing both sides of the spectrum from extremes to extremes on how great and how bad, it doesn't really give you an accurate depiction of how you're really behaving and how you're really performing. So I think it's really important for us to take both of those with a grain of salt. What we really need in our life

is three to four people that will give us honest and true feedback. So maybe that's a relative or a best friend that you can really sit down and say, hey, how am I really performing in this area? Or how am I really behaving? Or how am I acting in this relationship and have them really give you true feedback. And that may sting and it may hurt, but from that feedback, if you practice a little bit of self-awareness and you're open to a little bit of criticism and learning, you'll be able to really adjust and alter your behavior or your interactions

to improve yourself. I think if you go through life when someone patting you on the back and telling you how great you are all the time, it's difficult to grow. And same way if someone's telling you how terrible you are through life when someone patting you on the back and telling you how great you're all the time you can it's difficult to grow and same way if someone's telling you how terrible you are it's difficult to go there so we're gonna what you want to find is that true honest sweet spot in the middle and to do that you have to really get with some people that you really trust and say hey buddy I really need you to tell me how I'm acting in this instance

or how I'm behaving or how my performance is and take that feedback and really, really listen to what they're saying and work on improving. So I guess what I'm saying is don't believe all the praises and don't believe all the negative, but really try to find that sweet spot. Think about it as like if it was a three-star review on your life and from there you can grow. Okay. My tip is a kind of a plot twist from that. It has to do with Instagram. So when I went to Cabo, I decided that I wanted to put a twist on my Instagram feed. And so I think it's really important to make sure that you're evolving as a blogger or a creator. I know we get really stuck in our colors and our brand and our fonts, and that's really, really important. But at the same time, you want to find this happy medium where you're able to evolve. So I always like to say that I always want my content to get better. I never want it to get

worse, obviously, but I never want it to stay stagnant. So I sat down with my photographer, and I sat down with a Pinterest board and some pictures that I had screenshotted that I liked for inspiration. And I decided to kind of really pay attention to how I would take this trip and evolve my Instagram feed. Now, if you're rolling your eyes, don't because an Instagram feed, in my opinion, is your resume of 2018. Okay. It's very, very important when you're building a brand. It's what people look at and it's a choosing to follow you or unfollow you or consume your content or not consume your content. And like it or don't, it's where consumer attention is. So I wanted to give you guys some tips on how I kind of evolved

my Instagram feed while I was on vacation. And maybe these will inspire you to kind of shake up your Instagram feed. Again, I'm going to constantly keep it evolving and never really try to focus on getting stagnant, but more growing exponentially. So the first thing is you always want to match your mood. So if you're on vacation and you're in Cabo, it's going to be different than if you're on vacation and you're in London, right? London is a different story than Cabo. So make sure you're telling your story.

With me, I wanted to wear a lot of neons in Cabo. I felt like that went with the vibe of Cabo and it really told the story. We also added light flares. And some of you guys were asking, the ones that we used were from KD Pro or Hugi. And that's H-U-G-I. You could use either one and they're going to give you those light flares. It's also going to give you the date on the picture with Huji. I know that that's super popular. You could do that too. Another tip is to make sure you're color correcting your images before you use the filter. So you want to do a lot of white balance. Lately I've been doing my

tint a little bit pinker but you want to make sure you're matching your brand. So maybe your brand has a lot of blue in it. Just really pay attention to the brand that you want to convey to your audience. Also, what I like to do is I like to use this app called Snug. And what Snug does is it lays out your entire Instagram feed before you post. So you can really see that everything is flowing. Again, you want to tell that story. And with Snug, you can see if you're doing too many selfies in a row, you know, you don't want to do that. You want to mix it up. You want to show the full picture. You want to show what you're eating. You want to show what you're doing. You want to tell that story through your Instagram aesthetic. For editing apps, I highly recommend VSCO, Facetune, Snapseed, Darkroom, A Color Story,

KDPro like I said or InShot for Instagram stories InShot is going to give you that look for Instagram stories where you can post multiple pictures on one slide that's a great tip for anyone out there who's a blogger or an influencer check out that app if you want more Instagram tips head over to my Instagram, which is at the Skinny Confidential and click the photo of me wearing a pink long sleeve shirt. I did a full breakdown on it. Taro Isokopola is the creator and founder of Four Sigmatic, which is a company that specializes in superfoods, medicinal mushrooms, and adaptogenic herbs. Taro was born in Finland and grew up on a farm that his family owned since the early 1600s, where he learned to

forage for mushrooms and learn about the natural food space. As the founder of Four Sigmatic, he is making functional mushrooms accessible to any and everyone. Four Sigmatic products have now been used by over a million customers in over 65 countries. Taro is also a best-selling author and a total entrepreneurial ninja. With that, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Taro Isakopola. This is The Skinny Confidential, him and her. So tell us about your childhood. I grew up in a small country in Northern Europe called Finland.

Some people know it, some people don't. It's next to Sweden, and we were part of Sweden for a long time. And the town where I grew up is called Nokia, which is one of the world's most famous small towns. Nobody knows it's from Finland or it's a town, but the mobile phones made it famous. And I am a 13th generation family farmer and from Nokia, Finland. 13th generation, how far does that go back? Well, 1609, we know for sure. Might be longer, but like our old capital got burned.

From Finland to mushrooms. Well, mushrooms in Finland, right? Mushrooms in Finland, exactly. So my mom taught me foraging and her family's been foraging. I went to an environmental school where we forage for berries, mushrooms, shoots, leaves, whatnot. Showered in spring water, made nests for owls and stuff. And that's where it started.

And about my passion was always like optimal human performance and i was interested in like i studied chemistry first and then nutrition and that was my passion i wanted to become a professional soccer player got two knee injuries but i was never bummed because i was never that good but a few of my friends wore and they got into became professional athletes and i started coaching professional athletes models whatnot and then about 13 years ago randomly discovered a rare mushroom growing in finland and the government gave me money so wait wait wait are you like walking around and you see a mushroom on the ground one day you're just how do you discover a mushroom i love that we could say

you're foraging i've never i've never actually got to hang out with somebody that's that's foraging so we should go foraging. You can do it anywhere in the world. We can go get sage or something like that. We don't have to do mushrooms. We can get something else. I love it. So you're foraging and you just discover a mushroom.

How do you know it's something that's going to have these magical powers? So it's actually started as a joke. I found it with a friend. It's actually a really geeky mushroom story so i don't want to bore people with that i want to really give people something of value but it's um there's a lot of mushrooms in the world most of them are undiscovered even the ones i discovered get renamed all the time and that's just normal you know science or biology are not the truth they're the discoverer of truth and the truth

constantly changes so if something's scientifically valid might not be scientifically valid anymore a year year from now same with mushrooms or or plants sometimes they get renamed like one mushroom i've been working with the last 10 or so years have been renamed three times within this 10 years so that happens so anyway found this mushroom as a joke entered an innovation contest the nordic countries really support entrepreneurship and uh they gave me money and i was pumped because i was young and i was like oh free money and then they wanted to fund the business but i ended up donating to university because it was meant to serve michelin star restaurants with really really expensive mushrooms and my passion was always serving the people

in like more mainstream ways, you know, so. So let's talk, I know you get asked this question a lot, but let's talk why mushrooms and how do you figure out which mushrooms? Yeah, so mushrooms or fungi are a kingdom. So they're not plants. Plants are an own kingdom. Animals are a kingdom, bacteria is a kingdom

and fungi is one kingdom. And any balanced diet should have diversity. So often we talk about the battle. Should you eat plants? Should you eat meat? I don't know how much. What's the animal plant-based ratio? And we often forget bacteria and fungi.

And they're actually very synergistic. For example, gut health from kombucha to making beer, wine, yeasts are in the fungi family. So you eat mushrooms every day even if you don't know for sure. But there are certain types, like with every kingdom, there's the best of the best, the creme de la creme. It's not like all mushrooms are good. Actually, some mushrooms are really bad for you. But the best of the best mushrooms are actually incredibly nutrient-dense. They're within the top 50 most researched foods in the world there's multiple mushrooms and you can use them for skin stress reduction

brain power energy a lot of stuff that nobody never needs right I'm just wondering and this might be not even related but it's shrooms in this category like the drug that people do, so magic mushrooms or commonly shrooms is definitely affects your body and your, you know, physiology. And the most common one, the psilocybin is not really legal right now. So if the official verdict

is that it is not good for you. And then there's another one called Amanita muscaria that is legal, but it's actually more poisonous than the psilocybin so um they are very studied are they good for you you know the jury's out but they definitely are functional what's your personal feeling you're having like a smile on your face what do you what do you feel about this i am i'm a fun guy you know so in the literal sense you're a fun guy yeah yes correct and it's a pun it's a

it's a really bad mushroom pun apologies uh so um i'm i'm a fan but i am not a fan of recreational use yeah so we just had i don't know if you've ever are you familiar with aubrey marcus at all yeah he's a homie okay yeah so we we just had him on and we talked all about this and so yeah super interested in it yeah so we were talking earlier on and we talked all about this and so yeah super interested in it yeah so we were talking earlier when it comes to skin is there specific there's a lot there's a very big lack of education i would say in the united states around mushrooms and which mushrooms right like you think of mushrooms you just think of the little white ones in the grocery store or you know if you're at a fancy restaurant maybe um you know the fancy ones and and all that but if

you're if you were to kind if you were to give a tutorial to somebody who's extremely novice like myself on mushrooms, and I wanted to prepare my skin or I wanted gut health, where would you tell me to start? Well, I think, do you drink coffee? I do drink coffee.

I think coffee or chocolate are the easiest way to incorporate these top mushrooms because they're very bitter. They don't taste like a normal portobello or butter mushroom. They're very, very bitter. And usually bitter is better in herbalism anyway, but it's hard to consume it on a daily basis. Like we are not wired to have bitters. Like we're not used to it. You have to teach yourself to love bitters. But the two bitters that we do love is dark chocolate and coffee generally. So I would add mushrooms like chaga

and lion's mane to your coffee. That's a great way to start. And then for skin specifically, I think the whole concept of eating for beauty is just about to blow up. People are realizing that even though you will benefit from using topical stuff on your skin, when you do topical, you're focusing on

not the root cause of the skin. Yeah, well, basically you're mostly focused on fixing something short term, but the long game is to make sure that the largest organ in your body, which is skin, has the nutrients and has the building blocks to be beautiful and shiny. Like I sometimes go and talk here

and near West Hollywood, Beverly Hills to William Morris, IMG, and they always like, what do you put on your skin? What do you do? I'm like- Your skin is good. Nothing. Your skin is good. That's the first thing I noticed, guys.

I gotta say. And I just say, it's like, what do you eat? And there's a few things that you can, there's a million things you could do, but it can get overwhelming. So I usually give three tips on what to do when you wanna eat for beauty, right? Because there's all these expensive stuff as well.

So you don't have to. One that you have to really focus on, you mentioned was gut health. Like gut is super, super linked with our brain, but also our skin. So you really wanna kind of use gut health. And there's many ways there. I don't recommend expensive probiotics.

They're really hard to use and you don't really get bang for your buck. But what you can do is good spices spices like you really add spices to your diet or um like what i need specifics cinnamon cardamom ginger turmeric those are those are all within the most that you add them to you for example to your coffee and have a little cinnamon or thing and i brought you guys some uh golden latte so like turmeric but those are amazing and you just want to have spices spices are amazing for your gut you don't have something expensive something superfood everybody should have organic basic spices they're not gonna

break your wallet at all the second thing that i recommend is liver detox and i'm not talking about a crazy juice cleanse i'm kind of semi anti against those. But like just help your liver because your liver is really the mirror to your skin health and liver really purifies your body. So you wanna get some herbs or mushrooms or things like that that really cleanse your liver. What would you recommend for liver out of your product?

If somebody's in the grocery store and they- Shiitake mushrooms are found almost everywhere. For more exotic ones, I really like reishi, which is the queen of mushrooms. On the herbs, milk thistle is pretty good. Shisandra berries, dandelion leaves. So probably shiitake and dandelion leaves are stuff that you can find almost everywhere.

And those are amazing to cleanse your liver. So that's really big. And then finally, antioxidants. And it's a big word that you can find almost everywhere. And those are amazing to cleanse your liver. So that's really big. And then finally, antioxidants. And it's a big word that you find everywhere and not all antioxidants are created equal, but especially antioxidants like melanin that is found in chaga mushroom or certain polyphenols found in cacao.

So chocolate is actually one of the healthiest foods on the planet. Even coffee has antioxidants. It's the number one source of antioxidants in the american diet so black color is really good so you should eat the whole rainbow the purple and the red and the orange and all that stuff but black especially is good for your skin so olives black olives coffee cacao black sesame seeds chaga mushroom charcoal mushroom chocolate in front of me? Yeah. This looks so good.

Yeah, so black foods for the skin. So gut health, give your liver a chance, a little break, and then eat antioxidants and polyphenols, especially black foods. Okay, so out of all your products, is there something that can hit all three? Well, that's a very good question all three that kind of indicates that you do one and done and i like to indicate that it's a lifestyle right but i would say probably we make this chaga mocha that has coffee cacao and chaga mushroom so that's probably the closest you'll get and then you get a delicious mocha with one gram of sugar and you

also get stuff for your skin okay that sounds right up my alley because I'm getting my skin my gut health my liver my antioxidants yeah that's probably it but let's talk you know we got all these beautiful products let's talk about forcing matter because not only are you a wealth of knowledge in the wellness space and we could go on and on and we probably will but let's let's also talk about the business yeah i'm not in a hurry so yeah no i'm excited how did you start the business like what did the beginning look like for you so yeah that's a great question so i get asked all the time is like how do you get going i'm sure you guys as well and i don't think there's one way to the top of the mountain so there's many ways to do it it's also good to

understand like what kind of lifestyle do you want? So for me, it was important to have freedom. Like I never ended up raising like a venture capital and going crazy. I wanted to build from day one, something that even if it grew a little slower, it was like profitable, close to profitable. And that was really important for me. But then that means you do a sacrifice. So like in the beginning, I couldn't really pay myself a salary and my team

didn't either get paid or they got, so they got equity and now they're, you know, solid, but in the beginning it was like hard, right? So you just have to decide how you did it. I moved from Switzerland, which is super expensive to Philippines, which is not that expensive to support the early on so I could live more affordably. And then you also had to figure out the business strategy based on that. But for me, it was important that we could build products that were authentic and there would be nobody controlling the integrity of the product.

That was really important. And my vision was also so big or crazy or however you wanna say it is like, I wanted everybody to drink mushrooms, for example. And that's not something that five six years ago somebody would oh that's obvious if you just get people it was so out there and some of the best entrepreneurial ideas are out there but that just means that you're fighting against the masses in the beginning and you have to figure out ways how you can you know support yourself in the transition

before it starts getting traction those are usually the best ideas right the ones where everyone says you're crazy or it's not a good idea. If everyone's giving you a pat on the back from the beginning, I feel like you might be in a little trouble. It's just counterintuitive, because you want that validation. But, you know, and we're gonna talk about this

in a little bit, carving out a category, but I wanna still stick with the beginning, because there's a lot of young people listening to this and trying to figure out how to start a business. Going way, way back, do you remember the first resources you had, or the the first like the very first steps you took to get a product in the market yeah so i would say in the beginning if you overly simplify you have two things you need to do you have production and sales and sales doesn't mean you have to force sell it you just might

have to find a way to test it so production is i would say if you have a product business of any sort it's usually the way way way harder part of it so definitely talk to people who've been there done that i had expertise in formulation but still when you make a product make headphones or apparel or food that the production ends up being where young entrepreneurs get you know burned the most either they lose money on a bad run, they choose the wrong partner. So definitely there, ask for help, right? So I think asking for help is a huge thing and taking your time to really optimize the product, especially if you start and you don't have tons of resources. At the end of the day, marketing is kind of the tax for

a bad product. I'm not saying that all marketing is bad and and we do marketing but at the same time if you have an amazing product it'll market itself it will definitely help so much and you have to like you know so many things will be easier if you do an awesome product and product that you believe in you pumped you love it you tested multiple things so you only not only had a product that you liked, but you can also tell 50 products that you don't like and why you ended up in this one instead of the 50 other options.

Do you have any tips for building the right team around you when you're first starting out? Yeah, I think, again, there's many ways to achieve it, but I think it's really, really important that you give your team part of the business. Like as an entrepreneur, I think it's really hard sometimes because it's your baby. It doesn't mean you have to give out control, but if you want to have a partner, you have to give them a piece of the pie. And I think that's really, really important.

It worked for Sam Walton. Yeah. He did. He did all right. Yeah. I want to talk. Okay. So you get the business up and running. You figure out production, figure out marketing, but let's, let's talk a little bit more about the category because at the time when this was, and it still is, I would say a very new category. There was a lot like, especially in America, there's a very big lack of education around mushrooms, right? How did you, one, how did you go about educating?

And two, what were some of the hurdles defining a new category? So as an entrepreneur, it's easy to fall in love with your own ideas. Like, you know, it's like, or as a creative as well. Wait, what? That's never happened to me before. I don't know what you're talking about. Or if you're a creative, like there's a saying like kill your darlings, right? It's like, it's really, really hard. I get tunnel vision. I completely relate to what you're a creative, like there's a saying like kill your darlings, right? It's like, it's really, really hard.

I get tunnel vision. I completely relate to what you're saying. And that probably makes you an amazing entrepreneur because you can push through the vision that you had. But at the same time, sometimes it's good to take a break. So in this case, like, for example, I love like adaptogens and mushrooms and stuff, but it's easy to fall in love with like the reishi mushroom, the chukai, you know, all that stuff. But people don't care.

Like they literally do not care. Here's what you do. You have five kids and you name them after your favorite mushrooms. Yeah. That's what you should do. Yeah.

I want a couple berries there. I want a shisandra baby. So I'm single if there's any girls out there who want to have a shisandra. You know, I'm just sort of joking. Listen, get out there with your skin and your mushrooms and your successful business. I'm sure there's some girls listening that are ready to go. who want to have a schisandra. I'm just sort of joking. Listen, get out there with your skin and your mushrooms and your successful business.

I'm sure there's some girls listening that are ready to go. They want to have a schisandra berry, baby. Anyway, what a tangent. So what I think is really useful and always useful for me, especially being so passionate about what I do and so pumped about it, was to think about problems. Forget the solutions. Like really, what are the stuff?

So instead of like me trying to hammer people as like mushrooms are awesome, which they are, still like I was like, hey, what are the problems that people have? Like lack of energy, for example, or people love having, for example, coffee, but they get the jitters and they get heartburn, right? So in Finland, we drink more coffee

than any other nation in the world, about three times more than Americans, which is insane. Right? And in the Second World War, we were attacked both by the Russians and the Germans, and we run out of coffee beans. So we started brewing this mushroom that grew in our forest in a tree called chaga, and we made like a coffee substitute. And I'm like, yeah, that's actually makes sense.

And I knew the research that it has tons of minerals and antioxidants, like a cup of chaga would equal to like 30 pounds of carotene antioxidants and had these minerals that made it more alkaline. So combining half and half of coffee and chaga made total sense. And instead of trying to sell people this chaga mushroom they've never heard of, even if they're super health conscious maybe,

it's like, hey, do you drink coffee? Yeah. Do you ever get the jitters? Do you get like heartburn? Sure. Like try this and feel it on your body and see how you feel. hey do you drink coffee yeah do you ever get the jitters do you get like heartburn sure like try this and feel it on your body and see how you feel and i just think that the third cup of coffee is never a good idea like the first cup is a good idea and sometimes the second but the third one

never so offering people options to wean off of coffee or reduce that third or second cup with something else that was the way so you try to look at what's the problem? What's the use case? There is a habit of drinking coffee that really isn't a habit of drinking mushrooms or eating mushrooms in the society. So instead of trying to change something, you upgrade it. So if you're an entrepreneur, and you're like, I don't care about mushrooms, and this is not my thing, whatever you're doing, whatever you're passionate about, instead of trying to change the world, even if you are changing the world, think of stuff that you can upgrade or add or replace in existing habits and rituals and if you can tap into an existing ritual a habit and you can improve that your probability of succeeding goes infinitely up the language i like to use is an improvement on the

past right because? Because as individuals, nobody likes to be approached and says, hey, you need to change. You need to change your behavior. That feels very suppressive. It feels combative, right? But if you say, hey, you're going to improve yourself, everybody loves that. Yeah. I think that's some of the best entrepreneurial advice we've ever gotten on the show. High five. Yeah. I really, really, really like that, guys. Instead of trying to introduce something new, you just look what you can make little tweaks on. So what are your, for example, your favorite brand?

Like you look up to right now, anything. My favorite brand. Oh, I love Eminence. It's a skincare product. Do you know what that is or no? I'm not that good with skincare products, but. Okay, I love Eminence. So what made them extra special?

I think they did what you're saying. I think they took skincare and they made they they did little tweaks they made it very organic they added blueberry extract all these different things that i had never heard of so they still do serums or moisturizers or so people already were using whatever serum moisturizer and they just upped it right yes what's your favorite brand or I don't know if I have like, I was really trying to think about that when you asked. I don't know if I look to a favorite brand, but I think if I were to dumb it down

and look at brands that I respond to and respect, it's- Tell them about the sleep mask, Michael. Well, it's not a brand though. There's a product I like. Yeah, but tell them why you like it. It's exactly what he's saying. Okay, well, it is a good example.

There's a sleep mask that I use. It's super cheap. It you like it. It's exactly what he's saying. Okay, well, it is a good example. There's a sleep mask that I use. It's super cheap. It's like 10 bucks on Amazon and it's really strange brand. It's called Lone Froat, which is hard to remember or pronounce. But I like it because they, you know, the typical sleep mask

lays on your eyes and then when you open your eyes, like your eyelashes or eyelids scrape against the, even if it's silk, it's not that comfortable and it feels like you're stuck. This thing just lays on top of your eyes casually and it has like uh little globes or fly

eyes so you can open your eyes inside it's still pitch black and it's he wears it every night super simple but it's a complete improvement on something that's been done for forever and i use it every night now it's like nothing like when i get in my lingerie and like go to the bed and you're wearing fly eyes on your face no No, it's true. I'd be guilty. I literally cannot see anything. Let's talk about e-comm a little bit. You're obviously very good at it.

What do you think is essential to an e-comm brand? I think customer first, I guess that's same for everything. But in e-commerce, you have things that are easier and certain things that are harder. And if you focus on the stuff that is easier, one of them is data. Like you can really get to know your customer. Obviously, if you, for example, have a new food brand and you go to farmer's market, that's one way to test, but then you're still tied into certain locations,

certain demographic. Now in online, you can test stuff, you can split test and look at data and really look at what's actually resonating. It's not gimmicky, you just get to know your customer deeper. And I think that's really vital is from day one, you have to have the ability to look at data. For example, I have this great vision of a new ingredient. I'm like, Oh, this is I love it. I might have used it for 10 years. I'm like, I'm really into this. One of the first things I do, I go to YouTube and Amazon and look at how many people are searching that.

And I'm like, snap, like nobody's searching for this food because nobody knows what it is, right? So then I'm like, how can I use it? And then I look at what stuff people are already looking for. And using that data, I can combine with my vision on how to apply it into people's life so that it's more easily approachable. So I think looking at data is absolutely kind of the best part about e-commerce.

And the second is the ability to tell stories. I mean, it's so hard. And we're sold in like Whole Foods and we're sold in like retail as well, but it's so hard in store to tell stories. You almost can't almost like almost can't like you can put some on the packaging like we one of our team members is a comic book artist so he drew like a whole cartoon inside the box and you can do stuff but like it is it is so

hard and then you get into shelf space dynamics and competition yeah love it so what you've done really well though is you've utilized podcasting so the hosts can tell their own story about your product, which is genius. Yeah. And look, I mean, like with anything, anything else, education is so huge. And I think podcasting revolutionizing how education works. Like I come from Finland where education is free. So even if you go to the best business school or med school,'s all free you actually get a salary to go to school and so i was brought up in a system where education is democratized but then you come to the places like the u.s or

before i lived in places like the uk or france like it gets expensive like not everybody has access to education but what podcast is changing that everybody has access to free podcasts right so you can pick the best minds the best people in the world and when I was starting as entrepreneur I didn't have access to that I would try to get a book here and there and get that but like now you can hear and get to know some of the best people in the world and learn from them you still have to go and make your own mistakes but like podcasting is so amazing and then as a brand owner if you want to if you want to do an advertising get the word out on your product like what is better than authentic

people you know educating and putting it out there and also supporting this movement of podcast like new media in general it's just crushing like we've been lucky enough to be on like fancy magazines and stuff but it's still insane is like i'm not gonna talk bad about the media but like we've been in huge you know media outlets i'll talk bad about them they don't they don't convert yeah they there's yeah there's no clicks you know it's like okay buzzfeed had clicks but like most of the stuff the massive massive massive household names we've been on like front page of some of these and they're supposedly how they calculate is like the whole world is is is on there like oh we have 22 million visitors every

month like yeah we got four out of those but you know what's interesting being on the front page of a media that supposedly gets 22 million hits and you get four, I don't really believe it. Then you go on some small podcast. It was my buddy who gets like not nearly as successful as you. And we get like, you know, 10,000 people finding us through that. You know what? It's I, I boil it. Like this is one of my crusades. I boil it down to consumer attention and the way that we behave as consumers. Like even if you're on a big publication on their site or you're looking through a magazine or in a commercial, what do you do? You either flip past, you scroll down or you fast forward, right? That's just how we're,

that's just how we behave as consumers now. So yeah, you might have all this traffic to the site, but us as consumers, we're there for a specific thing and we're going to go through the funnel as fast as we can to get to that thing and skip over most of the, you know, the ads or the placements or whatever. I'm sure I'm not the first one to say this, but like what makes podcasts so amazing is that I can do it as a secondary activity. Like for example, I love cooking. I made up a name for this by the way. What is it? Passive multitasking, but gone. Yeah. That's amazing. Actually. Can I steal that? Yeah, you can steal it. Um, so I, for example, love cooking. Like I'm super, super busy running the companies,

but that's one of my forms of meditation. But at the same time, like sometimes I listen to music, but I sometimes feel like I want to educate myself. So podcast or YouTube or whatever, those are the ways how I do it. Like I don't have to read and focus only on that. I can do it and absorb information and discover new stuff as well.

Like some of my favorite podcasts are amazing because they curate odd personalities and people that I've never even heard of. Right. So that's also the beauties that somebody's curating that for you and finding new stuff that you don't even know that you're interested in. Everyone says that multitasking is bad, but I think when it's like that, when you're doing something that it's like you said, cooking's meditative for you, you're doing something that you love to do, but you're also able to consume knowledge at the same time. I think it's so funny because everyone says you're the top five people

you hang out with. And I'm always like, well, I hang out with Tim Ferriss and Gary Vee and Aubrey Marcus sometimes not to get, I don't want Michael to get mad because he likes open relationships, but you know, I think I'm hanging out with Aubrey too. But I think that you surround yourself with that knowledge all the time when you're doing passive tasks that make you happy. It's really a win-win. Yeah, and I mean, there's tons of studies

on just subconscious mind and how you just start feeding, like planting seeds to that. So even if you're not actively listening, the fact that those topics get brought up to your brain, I'm sure that like long-term is a huge win. So. Thinking about, and we'll jump off this soon, but I want to get one more gem from you with e-comm

or maybe a couple of gems from you. Let's do three. Yeah, if a young person's out there and they're like, was there a certain platform that you started? Was it like a Shopify or WooCommerce? Because it was funny, I got a request to talk about e-commerce because we were talking earlier, that's my background. Was there a certain platform you started on in the beginning

that was easy to access? I know it's evolved since then, but something that someone right now could get started on if they have something to sell. Yeah, we started with a really bad Wufoo form, selling and manually inputting, so I can't recommend that one. Shopify is great.

Like you don't reinvent the wheel. And one thing I can say about software and platforms and tools is that always choose the one that hurts a little bit to get. It's a little too expensive, and you're like, ah, I can't do it. It's not going to boot you out of business, but you always choose a little bit of a better platform. That usually ends up being a better customer experience.

You have less headaches in online fulfillment or so like if you're just like can i afford this better upsell app or can i afford this crm or online fulfillment things like get it like what is unnecessary in ecom like when people you're starting thinking back like what are some things you got they're like wait this was a complete waste of time like i equate this now to business cards right like you've spent all this money getting a business card i'm like like who the hell are you gonna get in front of to hand all these things out okay side story there i said when we started that we'll not have meetings managers offices or business cards we've broken every rule so far the last one we broke was the business card was like we're not getting business cards and then we

meet this sweet guy who makes business cards out of elephant shit and i'm like i'm supporting you like you are literal elephant shit yes they made because elephants you know eat grass and then poops out and there's viper and you can make it anyway now we have business cards as well that i never carry and use but i wanted to support the guy who makes elephant shit business cards hopefully talk about a category for you honey i'm gonna make a birthday gift out of that for you. Ray, we're going to get some Dear Media elephant shit business cards. We'll have to clear it with my partner. I think there's also sheep shit or something like that.

Oh, I can do like a medley of sheep and elephant together for you. If you're going to get a business card, a useless business card, make sure it's sheep shit or elephant shit. My team order them. Otherwise, I would say their name because they need, small businesses like that need support. So anyway, I can't remember it, but I'm sure if you Google, you'll find them. than otherwise i would say their name because they need small businesses like that need support so anyway i i can't remember it but i'm sure if you google you'll find them and um so what was unnecessary to e-comm like if someone's starting out and they're like oh i'm gonna get all these

different things to get my e-comm business up like looking back where there's some things you maybe you didn't get them but things you could think of now like you don't need that to get started the problem with e-comm is like what worked a year ago might not work now or a year from now so like you have to constantly keep i say there's like testing or drilling for oil to find like the good stuff right so it's kind of hard to say because of that what is it from a kind of theme and principle point like consultants like you get approached by so many people who are e-commerce gurus and experts like first of all of all, if you want to do business online, you have to learn it. You don't have to become the best in the world, but you have to understand it. There's no shortcut.

Like you have to talk, understand the process and the concept. So you cannot outsource that if that's your core. Like you can find talent later. So that's one thing is like a lot of people like start like hiring agencies and all that stuff. Not to say that some agencies are not good. But if you end up going with an agency, you really find the one that suits your scale and size and know how and then really build a relationship with them. Don then we learn from them and they learn from us. And it's really a partnership. But really the outsourcing compound, the style, I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan either. My agency friends are going to get pissed.

This is a good tip. I've never said this before, but go and approach some of the bigger agencies and ask them for a proposal or scope of work and see what they propose. And then don't go with them, but go learn everything they're talking about, right? Like if it's UX design or optimization, all that stuff,

like go do the research yourself, but you can use those proposals. And this is people get pissed, but you can use those proposals to figure out what you need to learn. And I agree. Like if you just have somebody saying all this stuff that's foreign to you, right. And language that you don't understand, then they're going to be in a position to take advantage of you. A hundred percent. And especially like with data, you can lie or misrepresent data so many ways in

e-commerce and online. So like you really need to know what's the truth. Cause if you don't know the truth, you don't know what you're improving. So you almost have to become a practitioner of every facet in your business. Totally. You need to know the language. Like if they speak a foreign language and that's when you can get fooled. But at the same time, you can also miss out on opportunities on partners that could really move the needle for you. I'm very interested in this store that you have.

So you did a store, but you can't buy anything there. It's all free. Explain the mentality behind that because I'm sure it's something really interesting. Well, we have a shroom room. It's in Venice Beach, California on Abbot Kinney and we're looking to expand that. So we bought a school bus that we're converting into a mushroom mobile that will travel around the country serving free drinks coming soon to a town or village near you. And the concept is like, all the drinks are free. So you can come there and we'll make you a free drink.

But what's your why for that? So there's actually three reasons why we did that. First reason, the most important reason, can I curse? Yeah. Fuck yeah. Because we fucking wanted to. So the first reason- Fucking love it.

When you are an entrepreneur, like one of the reasons I think you become an entrepreneur is also to like live the lifestyle that you want to live. Like have the freedom and the freedom to do what you want. And if you can, in like early days, you can't do stuff because like you're broke. But like when you have a little bit of resources, if you can do shit you want to do,

you should do them just because like it's fun, right? That's why it was fun for us. My friend Tini teeny has had a shop handle only would love like there for years i would go and hang out there see friends it was like a community right and apodkini and like many other places that are becoming popular get like gentrified and there's more like there's fancy fashion stores and whatnot so like having a good old school shroom room there is like kind of what i call the judo move like use the energy the opposing energy for your benefit and so that's the reason number one second is that i truly truly truly truly believe that our products are the bomb and they work and even if it's not our products i believe in the healing power of mushrooms so much and i've seen it for years and so many different facets. So I just want to spread that word and people to try it. And if that's the barrier of people to try

that it costs money here, take it for free. Like if you feel it like, then $1 a day or $2 a day, whatever is not going to be a problem. So I mean, in a way, it's kind of like a drug dealing mentality, but for good, right? You just give people the chance to try it. And then third reason is that the problem with online long term, which we've not yet faced, but I see that in the future is like emotionally connecting with people. So online, you can scale stuff you can do. But I want to build an iconic brand, an iconic thing that will change the world to be a better place, which a lot of entrepreneurs say that, right? But in order to achieve that, I think you have to connect with people in person.

I love online, use online, all that stuff. But you need this, like what we're doing right now, connecting in person, right? And it's so much more impactful. And unfortunately we work with some really good retailers, but still it's so hard with the Whole Foods is over the world and so expensive to really connect. And you can't really

control the experience yourself so why just not do your own shop and you can buy product at home if you want to take a whole bag of stuff and then you can buy it there but you can also buy it online somewhere else like you can buy it on Amazon or go somewhere on a website or whatever but there you know and we're not taking tips or anything. The whole point is just to educate and teach and share. I always say that when I launch Skinny Confidential product that I want a storefront and not because I want to sell shit. It's because, one, I think the advertising, too, that you get from the storefront is incredible.

And two, like you just said, you can meet the community and you can actually engage face-to-face. That's so important in this world. How do you run your social media? Do you run it yourself? Do you have a team? Well, my personal social media is a joke. Basically, I've never been on Facebook. Wait, what's your personal social media in case there's any single girls out there that want to name their kid after a berry? Blowing it up the DM. Wait, what's the berry name again? I might name my firstborn. She's Sandra. That's a pretty name.

Yeah, I think it's true. What if you ran into us and then. Shisandra. That's a pretty name. I think it's too. What if you ran into us and you met Shisandra Bostic? Is that how you say it? I won't steal your berry name. I promise. I have a lot of berry names. So if you take that berry name, I can do Cloudberry or Lingonberry. I don't know.

So I am Tero, T-E-R-O. And I basically post mostly bad dad jokes and mushroom puns. That's my niche. But we actually have a company, Four Sigmatic. And I put out content there, educational stuff. And now we have this sweet girl, Celeste. And she helps because like right now, in just in the last few years,

social media has become almost like a customer service. We get so many DMs from so many amazing people. It's not just about posting it's actually five percent posting and 95 engaging right which is awesome but it just takes a lot of time so we have this beautiful team of people who really live the lifestyle they shop at erwan and they go to places they know all the products not just our products but like the whole thing and they can really answer questions that people have is like hey can I combine these two what about this and that and they can actually reply really cool at

this point if anyone wants to go foraging out there yeah at Tarot yeah anyone wants a foraging date at this point with the business is massively successful distribution everywhere you come going well storefront what still what keeps you motivated now as an entrepreneur? What is the thing that keeps you going now? Because you've got it built out and of course it's gonna keep progressing, but what's keeping you going? That's a very good question

because I feel like there's certain dopamine rushes that you get as an entrepreneur, like the first retailer, like the first hire, you get that fancy story on Vogue or something like that and you're like, ooh, that's nice, you know? But like those don't really last, don't they? And we get a lot of amazing customer feedback that like reading. I still spend probably an hour a day reading customer comments and feedback

because like that's what really drives me. On top of that, what I found recently like is really like working with the team is like something that i really personally enjoy it's not for everyone and i'm not like the best people leader but i really like helping and teaching and coaching like i've always felt that i was like i would have been a good middle school teacher or something like that and that's what i enjoy with our team so my team is many ways infinitely smarter than i am but at the same time i can provide some of the picture stuff and obviously the product information and i really enjoyed that the second thing i love

doing is outlandish shit like that's just something it's like a rebel in me i like i love figuring out stuff that it's not allowed or you can't do what's the most recent one well the bus is probably the most recent one is like you shouldn't do probably do that kind of stuff but um um this fall i'm making a children's book about psychedelics which is that is amazing so actually i've not told that anywhere i don't my team is probably gonna get mad that i said that but it's coming and uh so i love doing stuff like that. Like that is not allowed. You're not going to be single for long. Children's book about psych. What is the, we don't, I know you don't want to get too detailed, but what is the motivation behind that?

I think it's, there's a beautiful story. And I think you can approach something that are difficult and you can approach, you shouldn't hide stuff from children. I'm not saying that this is for like toddlers, but like you want to talk openly about difficult things. Anyway, there's a whole philosophy around that. So I love doing outlandish shit. And then finally, now that we have a team, I can get back even more into product development. So I really, that's kind of where I started.

And that's what I love. So working on new recipes and you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince also on the product development side. And I love doing that and, you know, overdosing on something and then realizing

that you shouldn't eat that and making horrible flavors that have to flush through the toilet because it's so garbage. But I love that process. So those are probably the three things I'm currently enjoying the most. What's a mistake that you made along the way that at the time it felt devastating,

but it was later revealed to be a blessing? Yeah, I think the first time when you have to let go someone, especially if you care for them as a human being, which has always happened, that's really, really hard. And also acknowledging the fact that when you're starting out and you're scrappy, will those people be there five years later? It's also like, that's really, really hard, especially when you care for those people.

But at the same time, when you think of like, you're preventing them from finding the job that is actually suited for them, right? So that's, I think that's the hardest because there's emotions and feelings and friendships involved. And sometimes those friendships take a little hit. But you can only do is approach it with honest integrity.

But those are really, really difficult. Have you hired friends and family? A lot. Yeah, so have we. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it does work. It's either super rewarding or maybe it doesn't work. Yeah, it's very binary.

Yeah, I want to be careful because we still have something. No, the ones we have are great right now. My best employees are friends for sure. And the ones who were not friends before, they now, they become your friends, right? So I think it can definitely work. But like the criteria is slightly different. It's like a Venn diagram.

There is a point where they meet, but at the same time, they don't always connect. That's definitely a mistake I've done. And then I would say over committing is also as an entrepreneur please talk on this I need some help when you are entrepreneur or if you just type a personality or you have a big dream you sometimes you know you buy too much and and sometimes what happens is not the fact that you can deliver on it because you work hard and you're passionate but sometimes you some of the polishing is not there

right so you don't have enough time to edit and fine-tune the last mile and usually at the last mile is where the most value is derived and you already want to get to the next thing so it's partly like for me it's like just hiring people who can help with some of that polishing but also like pacing myself because the life of an entrepreneur is not like what can you done this week like or next month it's really it's it's a long long ass journey and having the patience to kind of polish and fine-tune at same time, you cannot make it perfect. You've got to put it on the market and ask for customer feedback, and that's fine.

But maybe that balance is where I've done a lot of mistakes. And then overcommitting, and then it's not that the business suffers necessarily, but it's like then you start to know social life. You realize that some of your best friends, you haven't seen them in three months, you know? And that can happen, and that's not healthy. I've never had problems with like exercise

or eating healthy on the side, but I know some people struggle with that. It's more like for me, it's like not seeing friends as often as I would hope and then over committing and then not polishing certain things as much as they should be polished. As a business owner or creative

because you're putting yourself out there or type A personality entrepreneur, you have to, in my opinion, develop thick skin, right? And you do develop thick skin as you're in the process. How do you, at this point, how do you deal with setbacks? Or where does your mind go? Well, that's where the shrooms enter the game. No, I'm kidding.

So there's many kinds of setbacks. So I feel like as an entrepreneur, you definitely build thick skin for mistakes there's a risk and reward thing like if you don't take risk you're not going to get anything done so you have to like put yourself out there and i'm comfortable with that problem like it stings a bit but it's like the good sting right and that's not a problem it's more when you don't follow your own principles and values sometimes when you catch yourself and those are the stuff like i knew better you know it's those are the places when

you're like hey i knew that this is not what i wanted those hurt and those are just have to take them in you just have to kind of like meditate on them however you do it i also like saturday sunday is going for a long hike And those are the usually when I reflect that, like, Oh, I fucked up big time there, you know? But then when you take a deliberate risk,

for example, if I'm, how long does that conversation occur in your head? Um, until you move on. Normally I'm, I can do that in about two hours of like hiking and then I get hungry and then I forget it. Maybe that's a guy thing.

Uh, but then few times it will like literally last for months. Like you, you, you know, but like most of the time, like you go for a hike with an empty stomach on a Saturday morning and then two hours of hiking and thinking about it, then you get hungry and they're like, okay, time to move on. I'm going to send you on a hike next time you get grumpy.

Make sure my belly's full. Yeah. How would you define a failure? Well, that's a great thing. Because if you find something, you test something, and you find out that it's not converting or working, that's not really a failure. It's, I think, probably when you don't live to your truth.

So some of my core philosophies in life is living my own life in my own way, not someone else's life in my way or my life in some other person's way. It's my life, my way, and then seeing the truth and accepting it. So I think those are the times. And third one is reacting to negative with positive.

So if any of those three I don't achieve, that's to me, it's a temporary mistake or failure. So for example, if I don't accept the truth, like I see it, but I fight it, that's to me, that's failure. The fact that if I make a mistake somewhere, that's not really a problem. So if I don't live to my truth,

and that's where I think failures happen. When you say fighting a negative with a positive, can you elaborate there? Yeah. I mean, the classic example is probably like road rage or something like that. So in LA, there's a lot of bad drivers. The worst.

Yeah. Are you taking notes here, honey? Yeah. Rental notes. Good. So like, how can you have compassion? And also sometimes you meet people that do bad things, especially in big cities.

I feel like there's like a lot of light, but a lot of darkness, right? And LA is a prime example of that. And when you meet that darkness, it's often easy to be judgy. Like my spirit animal is definitely a cat. So I'm like judgy in the corner sometimes. So like how

to respond to that with compassion because you don't know what shit they've gone through that day or in their life maybe you know what happened in their childhood what happened today and why are they that so like you don't know so having compassion doesn't mean you have to be best friends with them because maybe that behavior that they're demonstrating is not aligned with your values but at the same, you can always have compassion. So that's like what I try to practice. I'm nowhere near perfect, but like I try to practice that. And if I catch myself really not doing that at all,

that is a failure. Do you apply that to, if you have a negative customer review, do you kind of fight that with positivity? Yeah, I actually thrive of negative reviews for product development. I actually thrive of negative reviews for product development. I actually think that's back to the e-com. And one of the best things you can do is if there's an incumbent in your category, if you sell t-shirts or if you sell headphones,

or if you sell whatever phone covers and you go and look at what's selling a lot, go look at two things. One, look at the one-star reviews and look at what they're doing incorrectly. Genius. Secondly, look at three-star reviews because those people usually wanted to love the product. And there was something in the product or service that they loved, but something they left them unsatisfied. And those are ways to learn. For example, with us, right now, we get certain negative reviews on certain packaging. We created this new tin, and it was the wrong size, and like sucked like it was just straight up was not where it was supposed to

be back to the polished the product is dope but like the packaging was not correct so those all those negative comments like we like contact those people and say when when we fixed it it's like hey now it's fixed right so i think that's opportunity. And I think that's one of the best things about doing e-commerce is getting candid feedback. And real feedback. I think that is probably one of the biggest gems with e-com is you really have access. If you sell something in a store, you don't know what the experience was after that. With e-com, someone can write in and say, hey, I really didn't like this. And instead of being offended by that, you have an opportunity to fix it and then rectify it with the customer.

And 100%. really didn't like this. And instead of being offended by that, you have an opportunity to fix it and then rectify it with the customer. And a hundred percent. And there's always like haters, but like people that are not in your target audience. And sometimes when you market, like you, you market to an audience that was mostly for you, but also some that were not. So like,

that's not the end of the world. You just find out that you narrow the scope and you find out who's your true customer and who's your true fan. And that's totally okay you don't learn as much from from there like i didn't i don't like any coffee well that well that's not we you know you can't do anything about that right yeah so you can tell when someone's a bridge troll right for sure and that's totally different but especially that's why i love like a three-star review or two-star review is like those are the kind of the gems really they were trying to give you some honest feedback so that you could help them yeah

because they didn't slam you they're like i really wanted to like this but xyz and how do you when when that when that happens after that that process happens to get that feedback how do you then rectify with the customer you reach out personally or you reach out email or send them something like what depends if they buy from amazon or they leave it on social media because how do you then rectify it with the customer? You reach out personally or you reach out email or send them something? Like what do you do? It depends if they buy from Amazon or they leave it on social media because they bought it at Whole Foods

or if they buy our website. Depends how easy it is to contact them. We try to reply to all of them. We don't like, for example, outsource a customer service to Philippines or something. By the way, you live there, love them. That's not a hit against them, but like we really have people that are really knowledgeable and we refund fully if you're not happy we send you free product of something else

maybe you didn't like the flavor we send you something else for free like and if after that you're not happy we feel that it's okay you know so we try to contact them and do our best that we can and like i can't take any of that credit except like finding this amazing person who built that team for us and she was our first female hire and first hire in the u.s and she was just she's just amazing like just cares like she's 100 million percent in caring and all the stuff she's learned but she just cares so much and she hired people that also cared like she said no to job candidates that didn't care so like she holds this high standard on caring and do they make mistakes I'm sure but like she just cares and that's what you need in customer service I think so at this point we've talked about failure we've talked about

mistakes we've talked about econ we've talked about getting started how do you define success no well this is the same thing that the opposite of failure i think i think what is fascinating for me is like what is not success like money power fame okay so those are to me are not success agree there they can be hygiene factors for example if you don't make x amount of money depending on the city and where you live and if you have children or not and there's factors but if you don't have that baseline, you will be unhappy. After achieving that baseline, depending on the case, what it is,

it's not really gonna add a lot of value, right? And there's so many examples of that. It doesn't mean that money's bad, but that is not success. Like fame, like attention, like it feeds ego and keeps you going, but that's not gonna forever motivate you. It like it's gonna it's gonna wear you down so what does actually it's like purpose meaning um it's like the most classic books out there but i think it's a short read very useful as

wictor frankl's man's search of meaning have you guys read that i've read it multiple times one of the best books and i keep it on my phone and my ipad you've never told me about that book and i've read passages to you he survived he survived auschwitz so oh you have read passages out of that and that book is insane and that book is was not even supposed to be published or anything you cannot write that book ever again so what happened is that one of the top three people in psychotherapy the austrians freud frankel and then adler and this guy when he got was forced into a concentration camp was already the top minds in psychotherapy so he experienced it himself but also from the eyes of a professional so when something happened he could dissect that from the point of being an expert in the human mind and psyche and when he came out he

just like almost like scribbled his thought it's's not a big book, actually. But there's some so fundamental things to anything you ever do. I think that's just like the one of the books of books. And it's not a long read. And you can read the experts if you just sometimes we go and look at a quote, and we just Oh, that was nice. But like the benefit of reading and sitting down is that you really think about what he says or in the book whatever book it is you learn and i think that's one of the most fundamental books and what creates success is meaning for sure one of the things one of the passages in that book that still gives me chills is when he talks about the best of them not making it out of the camp right like in studying human behavior and all the atrocities that they had to overcome and some things that you had to do to survive through that camp you're saying like

the best people in there the the you know to the core didn't make it out of there and that's it's chilling for sure um let's talking about books let's you know we're getting close to the end here what are go-to products go go-to resources, things you recommend? Maybe something that helps you with your morning, your night. Yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with morning routines and evening routines because I think we all get bombarded by a million things. We have to be amazing. Boyfriends, girlfriends, daughters.

We have to do business. We have to know languages. We have to travel. We have to be cool. And I think if you have the right type of morning routine and evening routine it's it keeps you in check but the problem i feel like is then you easily if you have a too fixed routine you forget to connect with your intuition and how you feel like if you always do the same thing maybe one day you don't want to have that morning smoothie that you always have or maybe

you don't want to meditate like you also listening to your body right but i have like three themes that i really try to do that are fairly easy one is hydration duh you know it's like i always try to hydrate in the morning and there's different ways to achieve that but that's like kind of the first thing i do is that with water for you or is there like a water and lemon do you have a product that you use water and lemon with a pinch of salt is great if you don't have access to spring water so i think that's great i use a lot of herbs herbs are like kind of my herbalism is kind of my insurance policy i've now been like 10 and a half years without ever being one day sick and i fly like historically

like 40 to 60 times a year. Where do we get these herbs? Now you're really gonna get hit up in the DMs because I mean, I don't know who doesn't want herbs. Listen, if I don't have to be sick for 10 years, I'll do whatever the fuck you say. Yeah, well, herbs and mushrooms and stuff, I test out things and it's a whole nother conversation. I need to come back then with the children's book and we can talk about herbs for not getting sick.

But so hydration is key, but i hydrate slightly differently sometimes i do have calories in the morning sometimes i fast but like i try to listen to my body if i'm hungry or not if the hunger is just a habit forming but i always like hydrate that's really important um the other thing i do is is essentially like a light movement i used to work out really hard in the morning and just is not for me um so i like go into fresh air and i stretch but there's some sort of movement in the morning it doesn't have to take long it's not that difficult and then i connect and mostly i've been connecting with my mom like it's kind of like i realized that my parents are getting older and they're like studying to forget stuff

and their hands start shaking and stuff. So I FaceTime my mom pretty much every morning and I talk with her like five minutes and that's like one way, but you could also connect another way. Sometimes you have like a breakfast meeting or you see your friend or you go for a walk or sometimes work out with a friend in the morning

and that's fun. Have sex. Yeah, well, I'm working on that. Well, at this point, ladies, successful business owner, blonde hair, tall, blue eyes, calls his mother. Before we go, I do wanna talk about Four Sigmatic because I've been talking to your team and they were nice enough to create an offer

for our listeners. I started with the mushroom coffee. That's how I listened to Tim Ferriss' show, like I told you earlier. And, you know, that's when I started trying it. And I did it for about a month because I was having a lot of issues with coffee. I had like an adrenal gland thing going. If someone was new to your brand and they wanted to pick a place to start, where would you tell them to start?

I'll give a few options so if you're listening and you struggle with sleep i know it's the least sexy topic out there we make an amazing healthy hot cocoa evening time that helps you sleep deeper with reishi mushroom and cinnamon cardamom that's where i'm gonna start it's like a healthy organic swiss mist that helps you sleep deeper hopefully so that's one is probably one but i know a lot of people don't find sleep that sexy so coffee with lion's mane helps you kind of like have more cognitive function and that's probably that's probably the jam and then we make a turmeric latte that's good for the skin and then we make like for example chai latte that is good for the skin. And then we make like, for example, a chai latte that is good for gut health.

So those are caffeine free options in the afternoon. So once you've already had too much caffeine and you just need something to kind of calm, you know, energy without the stimulation, like a chai latte or golden latte might be fun options. Okay, cool. So to try that, go to foursigmatic.com slash skinny and use promo code skinny for 15% off.

That's F-O-U-R, Sigmatic, S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com and skinny. And Taro, you're a boss. Thank you for coming on the show. One more time, your Instagram handle. Pimp yourself out. Oh, my God. I'm like, we're going to put this in the show notes. Oh, my God.

I'm like, plushing on. Finnish people are shy. I am Tero. T-E-R-O. And your company? Four Sigmatic. Yeah, Four Sigmatic. F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.

Thank you for coming on. I can't wait to drink all the magical mushrooms. And we're coming to take a ride on the bus. Guys, do you want a short email from the Skinny Confidential?

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as always, if you rate and review the podcast, please, please, please screenshot it, email it to asklauren at the skinnyconfidential.com and we will send you my five top beauty hacks straight to your inbox. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week. If you guys want to check out at Woo for Play, which is an all natural coconut lube that's made up of four ingredients, organic coconut oil, beeswax, a little stevia, and a tiny bit of vanilla. Go to wooforplay.com and enter code HIMANDHER at checkout. Again, that's wooforplay.com, promo code HIMANDHER for 20% off plus free shipping. I promise it'll keep the bedroom

nice and spicy. And again, if you missed the offer from Taro and Four Sigmatic, go to foursigmatic.com slash skinny. That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C dot com slash skinny. And then promo code skinny for 15% off all orders. Enjoy.