TrueLife - Cultivating Profit and Purpose: Matt Ritchey’s Visionary Approach and Plant Medicine Advocacy

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Introducing Matt Ritchey, a distinguished CEO, devoted father, visionary venture capitalist, and advocate for the transformative power of plant medicine. With a keen focus on businesses that prioritize leadership and the human element, Matt believes that sustained profit in today’s world arises from getting the human element right.As the driving force behind www.InnerCircle.biz, Matt has established a groundbreaking platform where plant medicine leaders and pioneers converge to learn, network, secure funding, and grow alongside vetted industry experts and dedicated service providers.Drawing from his experience as an advisor to unicorns like Facebook and Airbnb, Matt specializes in the art of “Scaling Culture Profitably.” With an acute understanding of what it takes to unite and guide teams through rapid growth phases, he shares cutting-edge insights on leadership, venture capital, and team-building. In the evolving landscape of the new economy, Matt emphasizes the importance of leaders being both plant medicine-aware and trauma-informed, coining the term “Elevated Executives.”Stay tuned for Matt’s impactful contributions, and don’t miss the opportunity to participate in the $10,000 Elevated Business Accelerator Grant giveaway, a testament to his commitment to fostering innovation and excellence in the business world. Follow Matt for a journey into the intersection of visionary leadership, venture capital strategies, and the cultivation of an Elevated Executive mindset.https://matt-ritchey.com/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Friday. It looks like we made it. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. I hope if you feel like you're down in the funk a little bit, I hope you realize it's a silver lining out there.

I hope if you get a little bit grateful, you realize there's people in your life that love you, and the miracle is right on the other side. You just got to take baby steps towards it, and life is conspiring to help you out. But you've got to want it. That's all we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Let me introduce to you an incredible guest and incredible show and some incredible ideas of which we're about to talk about. The one and only Matt Ritchie, aka Mr. Cannabis. He's a visionary leader at the intersection of business, venture capital, and conscious leadership.

as a seasoned CEO, father, an advocate for plant medicine, Matt has cultivated success by prioritizing the human element in every venture. His commitment to scaling culture profitably is evident in his role as an advisor and as a unicorn whisperer. Matt is the driving force behind www.w. InnerCircle.biz. Everyone go check it out. A groundbreaking platform fostering collaboration among plant medicine leaders, industry experts, and service providers.

With an unparalleled ability to navigate rapid growth, Matt embodies the essence of an elevated executive, where leadership meets plant medicine, awareness, and trauma-informed insights. Follow Matt for cutting-edge content on leadership, venture capital, and team building as he continues to shape the future of business. And I'm so excited you're here today, Matt. Thanks for being here. How are you? Great, George. Thank you for having me.

Really appreciate you opening your desk to me, and we can have this conversation. I think we're going to have a little fun today. Yeah, we are. I really think we are. And I gave a little bit of a background, Matt, about who you are and some of the things you got going. It was small, but I thought we got some good points there. But I was wondering if maybe you could just build us a little bit more of a foundation of who you are and where you're at right now.

So we can continue the conversations. Sure thing. I'm located here in San Diego, California. I've been here for about 17 years now. So it's kind of my new home from Pennsylvania on the East Coast originally. you know, I grew up in the DARE era of, you know, cannabis and, you know, prohibition of all that. So I had a lot of programming early on around what cannabis and or drugs were. And, you know, I didn't, I was a pretty serious motorcross racer at a young age.

I didn't drink alcohol or do anything until I was 21 years old. And from 21 to 26 or 7, I drank a decent amount of alcohol like most people did that age. And realized pretty quickly that it wasn't really, my body didn't like it. my body, my consciousness, just wasn't really, you know, viving for me. And, you know, someone introduced me to cannabis. You know, I'd been in California for like five or six years until, you know, I saw everyone, not everyone, but I saw a lot of people using cannabis. And I was kind of like, oh, you know, those, who are those losers over there?

You're doing using cannabis as opposed to drinking alcohol, right? And that was just my program. I had school on programming that alcohol was okay and or safe. And the cannabis and other drugs were bad. So anyway, had some close friends that used cannabis. And they were successful. So I was like, well, I kind of broke my mold of like, oh, if you use cannabis or use these drugs, that you're going to be a bad person or they're going to be unsuccessful or they're going to be a loser or whatever it was. And, you know, I actually didn't use cannabis again until I was, I actually went back to Pennsylvania and I was hiking.

And me and a friend of mine were hiking with our backpacks, you know, overnight. And we literally just ran into random people that offered us a nug of cannabis. So we had an apple with us. So we took it. That night, we bored out the apple. Had our had my very first, well, let me back up. When I was 13, I tried cannabis like twice. And, you know, it was very, you know, I was the snowboarder.

So, you know, I had some friends that, you know, did it snowboarding. And I tried it like twice. And it didn't really have tremendous effects on me. I don't remember being good or bad. It just kind of was. And, you know, right after that, like, right when I was 13 and a half, 14 years old, right when I started getting serious about motocross. So I kind of got out of that group of friends and never went back.

So my first real experience was in the woods, 27 years old, you know, with a good friend of mine. And we had an amazing. experience. It really kind of opened up my senses, really opened up, you know, I felt so connected to nature and I just felt so alive, if you will. And so from then on, I was kind of like, wow, interesting. This is a different experience than I was intending or than I thought maybe these plants had for me. So fast forward, you know, I didn't use a lot of cannabis for probably a year or two after that. But, you know, coming back to California was very prevalent. So I would, you know, have a hit here or there, whatever. And it kind of, it always like brought me back to this really

introspective self-awareness space. And it, you know, it unlocked an unconscious memory for me. I had an unconscious memory, a suppressed memory, if you will, from childhood, around, you know, being abused as a child, some parents' friends and stuff like that. So about going too far into that, it was a really good awakening for me to really see what had been driving me unconsciously and to really unlock some of these memories and or thoughts that I had been suppressing for, you know, a good portion of my life. So for me, cannabis was a gateway.

It wasn't opening to a higher state of consciousness, a higher awareness of my own power and my own abilities. And then from there, you know, I got introduced to ayahuasca and some other, you know, psychedelic in the world. So I got to do my first ayahuasca ceremony about a little over 10 years ago now. And, you know, tremendous transformation and healing powers. And, of course, not just the experience, but then the integration and the continued coaching and the work that I got to do for a couple years after that, really, really, you know,

change to I am as a person as a man. You know, for me specifically, I was very more timid. I didn't really have the confidence that I really needed to be successful as a man, as a person, you know, in business. And so up until that point, I was really, I was really playing small. You know, I was really not really living up my potential in a lot of ways. So for me, cannabis and then specifically plant medicines really helped to unlock my power and really to help me give me some vision and some guidance onto what was possible for me

and how I could really step into a greater, greater vision for myself in my life and what I wanted to create. So from then on, you know, for a few years that I would use, you know, psychedelics periodically, maybe once or twice a year just to get, you know, to stay in tune. It's kind of like a checkup, right? You go to the doctor, you go to the, the shaman and get your dose. And that really has served me in a capacity for the last 10 years, doing, you know, once a year, at least having one some sort of psilocybin experience or some other, you know, deep work experience. where I can check in, make sure that I'm not kidding myself,

not make sure I'm not lying to myself about some stuff that's been happening, and really use these plants for transformation and or introspection. So, you know, I credit, you know, I say my personal transformation to that. And then, you know, about six years ago, I was with my, you know, with my now wife. And we just gotten married and she was really wanting to have kids. And I was really, I was really on the fence. I was kind of like, you know, I could have a kid, but didn't really feel like it was my highest excitement just for many reasons, for selfish reasons, mostly.

And then, you know, I had a really strong, my strongest, you know, that probably ever actually, psilocybin experience. I took about three, three plus grams of psilocybin. And it just completely, you know, opened me up and had a really, really beautiful dance with the, with the medicine around who I was going to be in my next iteration of life and who, you know, what my next evolution of, you know, what I was creating was. And that included kids. And then so now I have two young kids.

I have a five-year-old and a two-year-old. So I really attribute, you know, me even wanting to have kids and me, you know, powerfully stepping into that proposition to can't area to psychedelics and specifically psilocybin so for me these compounds have really guided me and given me you know the guidance that i was really looking for in times of need in times of feeling uncomfortable or unsure of myself these you know i can't contribute all the the stuff to them of course it makes you go inward and make you really tune into yourself but you know these are the the tools that i've used to really uh to really change who i am as a person and to really shape where I'm going in my life.

So I, you know, fast forward now for the last four plus years, I've been cultivating a community of people in the CBD cannabis and psychedelic space who are operating businesses, who are entrepreneurs. And, you know, we do the, we have a mastermind community of people who we bring people together. These are, you know, leaders of high integrity from around the globe. You know, I'm here in Southern California. So there's a lot of people in this area. But there's people all over the world that are both getting into these compounds,

both on a personal level, but also in a business. this sense as far as how can we bring these compounds safely and how can we educate the masses on how to use these compounds and these medicines as medicine, you know, with intention with the power that they deserve or the, you know, the reverence they deserve because they are powerful, right? Yeah. So for me, the whole industry, you know, let's say, been about five years now. I've been in the industry a little less. When my daughter was born, I was exiting one company and, you know, deciding what I was going

to do for my next sort of project. And, you know, I'm a daily meditator. and I kept getting the vision that everything that I've been building around leadership, everything I've been building around team building and really transforming people's lives was needed in this space, was really needed in this industry, because it was kind of just very early, very nascent in that sense. And there's a lot of, you know, we're coming out of a black market, we're coming out of an illegal space.

So a lot of the early operators are people who are coming, you know, people who are operating in the space are coming from the illegal space. And so it's like a really interesting community of people who, don't necessarily trust each other. There's all these factions of the industry. And one of the goals that we've been having is to bring people together and to really build that trust and build those connections and seeing how we can, you know, how a rising tide can lift all shifts together in a sense of how do we bring the legacy

players in the market and, you know, that mindset into the, you know, the modern business and, you know, capitalism and how can we really shape that in a way that not only benefits the people, you know, working in the space, but also obviously, of course, benefits the consumers and really educates the consumer so that we can, you know, I think the biggest untapped market is those who are still not using cannabis, right? And there'll be these low-dose drinks and there'll be low-dose, you know, capsules and there'll be, you know, ways where people can smoke in smaller doses. Because that's, that's truly the untapped market for the future of these medicines and for the future of cannabis and psychedelics is how do we really educate and bridge that gap from where we're at

currently with all the propaganda that's been spewed over the last 50, 60 years to, you know, a more safe, more, you know, more educated place where people can have a higher perspective of these plants and how they can really come to use them in a good way that really helps their life and really, you know, gives them medicine in some sort of way, whether it be mental health, whether it be physical health, whether it be emotional and spiritual health, all these things can be positively impacted when using these compounds in a way. So the, you know, the drug war was started by Henry Anslinger in the 1960s. Basically in the 1960s, Richard Nixon's, you know, main guy, Henry Enslinger, he was from my hometown in Pennsylvania. And

carmically, you know, coming full circle now, being this karma, feeling like I get to do, you know, a lot of the work to undo a lot of the things that he, you know, implanted and really propagandized in the culture, in the, in the great, you know, in the mass of people in the, you know, not only the U.S., but in the world. And so feel like this is part of my mission, part of what I get to do is to re-educate and re-centered these complex. so that we can use them in a safe way and that they feel like they're not taboo and they feel like they're not outside of the mainstream. And we have a little ways to go. Like I said, we're still not there.

We're still even federally illegal on a lot of cases here. But the dominoes are falling and people are waking up every day that these are not the danger that they've been led to believe and that they have medicinal value and they have potential healing value for people that are seeking transformation or seeking some sort of healing, whether it be mentally, you know, physically or spiritually. Thank you, man. First off, thanks for being honest and vulnerable about your relationship with cannabis and psychedelics. And I think that the best stories of transformation always lead with the individual beginning to tell their story about their relationships. And when you tell me the story about being in a relationship with cannabis and using the infamous Apple Bong, that everybody who has begun a relationship has experimented with as their first step into engineering. is how do I make this, how can I smoke something out of this, you know?

I'm an engineer at heart for sure. And that's the way my brain is kind of wired, you know, how do we reverse engineer what we want, create the outcomes in your mind and then reverse engineer the steps, you know, you need to get there, right? Yeah, okay. So doesn't that speak to the idea of when you say, you know, you have this revelation after smoking cannabis, like, holy shit, something did something. Somebody did something to me when I was young and I pushed that away. Like on some level.

Do you feel like that's nature? Maybe your nature, maybe nature as a whole. But somehow the plant or nature communicating to you, like, listen, you have fucking trust issues and here's why. And you fast forward all these years longer. And then you look at your wife and you're like, oh, she wants to have kids. You're like, I don't want to have kids. I got all these things I want to do. Boom, another trust issue.

And now you've built this business where you're bringing people together and what do they have? Trust issues. You know what I mean? Like it's fractal. The same way that you can look at the. veins of a leaf and see the way that that plant grows, so too can you look at the fractal things that happen in your life and understand why your relationship's the way you are. You can look at your business and be like, look, it's growing in the same way that my life is, the same way my kids are.

What an amazing thing to have a relationship with a potential exogenous neurotransmitter like cannabis or psilocybin and realize, dude, I have been leaving out a giant part of the picture. Maybe you can flesh out a little bit more about your relationship to cannabis and how it has expanded your relationship with the business and people moving forward. I love that question. And I didn't really actually piece together the trust, kind of the vein that kind of goes through all that, right, around everything being a lack of trust. Because that is such a big thing in our life, no matter what we're doing, right? If we don't believe we can do things, if we don't trust ourselves to be able to execute whatever it is it's doing,

then you're going to have issues. You're going to probably not take the action because our unconscious brains will only do things that we essentially know that we can succeed on. That's what we don't take action on a lot of things. That's why we procrastinate. That's why we don't do certain things, right? Yeah. So I love that connection that kind of vein through there. But, you know, my relationship with cannabis has definitely evolved. You know, like say when I first started using it, it was definitely in smaller amounts because I didn't need as much. But then, you know, once I got through, honestly, you know, even doing the work, I was using cannabis as a crush to a certain degree as far as, as you know, as you're going through these traumas and whatever, like, sometimes you just need

to get away from it. Sometimes even on a daily basis, you know, you can only do so much. So, I don't say overdose, whatever, but I've used cannabis more than I should have at certain points. But everything's contrast. If you don't go that far, you don't know how far you need to go and or you should go to have the experience and whatever the titration you're looking for as far as how you use the medicine to properly get the experience you're looking for. So for me, cannabis, I've kind of done it all in a sense. I've been in a period of life and it's been probably eight years now that I woke up and would

smoke cannabis and, you know, smoke it throughout the day and it would be sort of my crutch. And then I definitely got to a point where I'm like, what am I doing? Like, why do I need to do that? Like, what am I not facing that I need to be having these external substances to cope and to deal and to be, you know, normal, right? So for me, it's definitely a journey and evolution of how I use it, how, you know, what type I use. I've gotten pretty good with what my current regimen is. Like, for me, for me now I don't use any cannabis until later in the day for sure. I use it like a coffee.

I don't use coffee. I don't use caffeine. So for me, sometimes in the middle of the day, you know, even, so what I use is I like dry flour. So I've used oils, I use all these things, but oils are strong and they're too convenient. And so for me, I like flour. And I've been using CBD flour. Actually, I've been using some THCA flour, which is actually a little bit lighter than your traditional, you know, Delta 9 THC flour. So that for me is like usually if I'm going to use it in the daytime, like, you know, one, two, three, four o'clock, sometimes in the middle of the day, that's what I'll use.

I put a little bit of my packs, you know, get a little quarter of a grain. put it in there and you know CBD and and this THCA or normal THC but either way I usually mix CBD flour with it and that kind of feels like a really good balance where you know heightens my awareness is kind of gets me back online giving me some focus and it definitely gives me that energy to like take on the second half of my day because I get up early and I have young kids I'm like 30 6 o'clock every day so usually by like 1 o'clock 2 o'clock I'm kind of hitting that that midday you know wall where you need something to kind of get you to that next level so certain people will drink coffee or certain people will drink a Red Bull or whatever.

No judgment, whatever you want to do. But cannabis seems to be the tool that helps me the best as far as unlocked my energy, gives me focus. Now, of course, if I use too much, then it kind of takes me out of that, right? If I had to go and just smoke a big bong, then I would probably be not nearly as productive. I wouldn't be nearly focused or as clear. That alone has its own space, right? It's an ultimate state. So for me, using cannabis is all about contrast.

You know, when I would use it daily or use it the same every day, it wasn't getting that contrast. That almost made me just feel normal. What now, like I'm using to feel normal in the day, whatever, and I use that for contrast, for a heightened sense of, you know, like focus or even just heightened sense of creativity. I say, for me, I kind of break up my days in, I kind of break down to what I call masculine,

feminine experiences, because the plant is more feminine, right? So it's more creative. It's more flow. It's less, you know, less structured in that way. So you kind of feel different or you're going to be act different when I'm on it or I think I want to act differently when I'm on it. So for me, if I'm doing sales calls or if I'm

you know, doing whatever, like this interview with something I need to be more on point or whatever, like I'm being more in my masculine energy, my more, you know, focus, aggressive, sort of not aggressive, that feels like a negative word, but like aggressive being, you know, moving stuff. Being impassioned, right? For me, I need to be, or I get to be having less cannabis in my system for that. And then I'll, you know, like I said, the inverse of that is when I use cannabis, makes me a little bit more introspective, it makes me more creative. I can write or I can do certain things where those are all part of my business.

I need to do all that. So I can really break up my days to be, you know, masculine, feminine, even if it's just half the day here, half the day here, or it's a whole day here. Like all day, Wednesday, I'm going to be in my masculine doing this and that. And then maybe all day Friday or Saturday I can be, you know, using more cannabis and being more of my feminine energy, if that makes sense. So for me, it's been a really long journey here for 10, about 10 plus years, 12 years now of what works, what strains work, what consumption methods work. You know, and the whole indicator statib, as you know, is definitely not a good guy. I've been really breaking down on what turpenes really work best for me, you know, like piney. Yeah.

And, you know, some of those ones for focus are really the best for me. And I know if I, you know, have something too much mere, mere scene and, you know, some of the, I can't, I can't pronounce some of the cannabinoids, but some of the ones really kind of bring my energy, not down, but just inward. I just feel like very, like chill, right? It's kind of that couch, if you all. So for me, the, the titration portion has been awesome, but also, like I say, I'm going to probably, I'm writing a couple books, but the one of books I'm writing is around, you know, how to use cannabis as a tool and how to really, you know, use it in a way that is, you know, beneficial for whatever it is you want to accomplish in your life as far as, like, say, when we think about these plants, they have a certain energy, right?

Sure. When we consume them, we take on that energy to a certain degree. And that's where, like, say, the whole Indica Sativa kind of comes in because they are different plants. They do have different features, like, say, different turpines, different, you know, even different percentage of cannabinoids. So for me, really figuring out the ones that work for me has been a game changer for me to daily, you know, take or not take and be in certain states. And especially with young kids and all this stuff kind of going on, there's a lot to manage and be present for that these Ken Ibonne always really actually help me with.

So for me, yeah, for me, this has been been an interesting, fun journey to figure out how I can be my best self and what I can use, what tools I can use to help me on a daily basis to stay there. So like even before this, before this, you know, the interview I jump on, I have a, a psilocybin spray. And then, you know, two sprays is like a microdose. Two sprays is about 200 milligrams of psilocybin, which for anyone out there is low. Like 200 to 400 milligrams is usually what they consider a microdose where I don't feel anything per se, but I feel like almost gives me a little bit of like that mental clarity, a little bit of that mental focus, stuff like that.

So for me, I use all these different tools in different ways so that I can be at my peak or be in and do whatever state I need to be in. You know, these are just basically putting you in altered states, whatever state I need be at whatever a certain time, then I can kind of, you know, tailor that to whatever I'm doing. I love it. You know, there's, I think that as our relationship with different sorts of plants mature, you know, we can, we can see it in the way in which when I was young, I used to buy a dime bag from chewy called like White Widow. But now in the world, you know, you flip it over and you can see the turp profile and you can begin to understand the complexity.

behind it. And I think another thing that people who are beginning to climb the second mountain realize is that there's a difference between state and stages. And earlier in the conversation, you said, look, George, I overdosed on things or I used it in this way. Well, that was a, like, that's a stage. And you probably have to go through that stage in those states to get to the next stage and the next state. And I think that the evolving journey, at least where I am so far, is that there's a great book by, everyone should check out Sebastian Marancolo. This guy's a genius,

and he wrote this book called Elevated Cannabis as a tool for mind enhancement. He was mentored by, like, Lester Grinspoon, and he tells stories about Carl Sagan using, you know, cannabis in order to come up with all these ideas. It's fucking mind-blowing, man. But he talks about stages and states, and much like you, he's talking about cannabis as a tool for elevated thinking. And we haven't thought about that.

You know, for so long, we've been conditioned to think that these guys are potheads, these guys are burnouts. But look at all the people out there that have created amazing things, not only in the tangible real world, but people like you or me that have come up with creative ways to deal with trust issues, have found creative ways to face the very things that have blocked them in life from succeeding. That's incredible. And the tools you're using now, whether it's psilocybin or different flowers, it's amazing to me to get to see the evolution of people creating things on cannabis.

And I'm thankful that you're speaking about it. What is your thoughts on the difference between states and stages in cannabis? Yeah, that's a great awareness. You know, I've heard of that book, but I've never actually read it. I actually, you know, probably need to put that on my life. I'll hook you up with them. You guys would have a great conversation, man. I'd love that.

Yeah, I'd love that. Yeah, of course. I'm a big reader, so I love to find new books that can, you know, open my mind even further or give me new information that I can process and put into my daily life. You mentioned stages, you know, everything's cyclical, right? That's what I found out, you know, even just, you know, being a father or, you know, being a business person or just being a person, and everything is cyclical. Like, you know, what we did for one year may not be what we want to do for that next year or even

part of that year. Like, say, we talk about the seasons, right? We have four seasons. No, San Diego, we don't have four seasons. But I don't know why either. Wet and dry. Yeah, exactly. We've got about two seasons here.

But either way, we still have seasons, right? So our stages, there are seasons of life. And you hit it on the head. you know if you don't if you never have that experience of using too much then how do you get to the season of knowing exactly what too much is or what what the right amount is right so not to say you need to spend years of your life over you know dozing or using too much cannabis and you know whatever but maybe there's a six-month period or a year period or a month period whatever there's a period of life and i say stages are relative to the person going through them or to whatever it is that's

going through right the state can be i say it can be literally you can be you know if you're a adapter, maybe you can go through a stage in a week or a month. Some people might take a little longer. It might take six months. It might take a year. But for me, stages have been, like I say, you know, it's always good looking back because you can connect all the dots and you can, you know, map out those stages and you kind of see the ebb and flow.

But the stages are real. And for, you know, specifically at saying business, like you can't, you know, we're, we're kind of at stage two now with this business where we were at startup mode for like two and a half, three years, right? Now we're out of that stage and we're at a whatever you want to call the next stage from startup, but it's like that next evolution of business and what got us to this stage, you know, is not going to get us to that next stage, right? We've got to change who we are.

We've got to change sort of how we approach people. We get to change our pricing. We get to change everything, right? Because we're evolving with the, you know, with everything. And so those stages are important to recognize because a lot of people, I think, get stuck in a certain stage that work for them at a certain time period. And then all of a sudden it's not working anymore, but they don't realize that they change with it or something needs to change to, to, you know, move out of that cycle, move

into that next stage. So I think a lot of people do get, you know, just there's just a lack of awareness around the, you know, the abs and flows of life and the stages in which we kind of go through. So for me, it's been, I've been pretty aware of the fact that I'm, you know, moving through stages, like, say, even just, you know, my youngest son, he's just two and a half now. We're kind of moving out of the baby stage, right? He's getting rid of his afternoon naps, who's becoming just a normal human now where he's just sleeping at nighttime, after stuff, there's all these stages.

I say from kids to business to cannabis to our. relationship with my spouse, like saying my beautiful wife, like we had an amazing honeymoon stage. And then you have like your kid stage and now I had the early baby stage and now can I kind of hopefully come back into a more of an us stage where we can kind of come back together and kind of, you know, rekindle our romance and all these sort of things that, you know, fall off. And you have to kind of side when you're raising kids and when you're doing certain things. So everything is stages and, you know, having that awareness. It's nice because it allows you to realize that this is only temporary.

Whatever I'm going through isn't, isn't like this. This is going to be like forever. This is only a state, only a portion. And you get to enjoy it, right? I get to enjoy this state. I'm never going to have it again. I'm never going to have an under two-year-old. That's true.

I'm not going to have a baby, right? So to really be present with it and to really enjoy the journey. You know, that's one of the, I've done a few men on psychedelics and the message is to learn a sense of like, hey, you're here. You're powerful. Enjoy whatever it is you want to do. Whatever it is you're doing, you're creating. You're the master of your domain, so to speak.

And that's not to say things don't happen to us. Right. But in general, it's 90, 10, 90% of things we're creating or reacting to things that happen to us. And then there's 10% of things that kind of come in or happen to us. So really, you know, having that empowered view, that perspective is important because I feel like it lets us enjoy these stages, enjoy whatever we're going through, knowing that it's temporary, knowing that it's fleeting and knowing that there's probably something

better on the next side of that stage. Man, I love it. I can't help but think about. Maybe cannabis, maybe psychedelics, maybe nature. Maybe the teacher shows up when you're ready. When I'm listening to the words you're saying, it seems almost ritualistic to me. And I don't mean to bring the esoteric into this,

but how can you not? Like on some level, we've been conditioned our whole lives. And if you look at what alcohol does, you know, it makes you be okay with having less than the true authentic nature of yourself, man. It just fucking erodes that creative spirit on some level. And I think that the healing power of psychedelics, and I hope I'm not grandstanding too much because I'm a giant ad for gift.

I love them. And I think that they can really be helpful if they're used in the right way. And it just seems that the conditioning that we're brought into this world with, maybe it's culture, maybe it's society. You know, think about the language, drugs and alcohol. Like that's, who came up with that? Like, that's a PR move, drugs and alcohol? Alcohol is a drug.

Like, look at the way we're conditioned to see it. You know what I mean? Like, there's drugs and then there's alcohol. Like, no, it's not. I didn't see it. I never saw alcohol as a drug. Growing up, that was not a drug. Of course.

Because in the literature, it's in everything. It's been legalized on some ways. And I think it's imperative to look at prohibition, to look at society's relationship to alcohol so that we can move forward. And especially you, Matt, with this incredible community that you've built, I'm not sure that you thoroughly understand. I don't mean that in a pejorative way, but like the impact that you're having on people,

like you are creating a new awareness for people to approach cannabis with. Like nature has chosen you to help be that person. Like that's an incredible responsibility to do. And when I look at the community that maybe we can shift to the, I'll give you some thoughts on what I've said here, but we should shift the idea of the community you've built, how you've built it and the people that are coming together. But I'll let you respond to that any way you want.

I think it's important. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of... Yeah, there's a lot of impact. Yeah, there's a lot of impact. But, you know, the community specifically, like I say, I feel like I have a perspective, but there's probably more to it and I know there's more to it that I'm even experiencing at this point. I mean, we have about 75 members currently, which isn't huge, but it's definitely like 75 people

were having an impact. You know, we've had people come in and different things they're working on and then they work with us for a year. And then something shifts within them and then they're, you know, automatically they're feeling better, their mental stress is less, they feel less, you know, pressure in a sense of like, oh, I have to do this. It's more of this. But a lot of things we do is around reframing and how we have perspective and how we set up our mindset and how we take on challenges, you know, challenges are opportunities, right?

You know, the way we see things, it's not I have to do something. It's I get to do something, right? It's like this is what I'm choosing to do. And if you're not, and if you're not, you don't like the things that you have to do, then you choose, you know, you can make the decision to choose differently and, you know, do things that you get to do, right? So it's a different perspective on how you do things. So, but as you mentioned, the community is huge and it's going to be, you know, bigger than me and it is

bigger than me. And, you know, I'm rarely the smartest, I'm almost never the smartest person at the table or in the room because I like to surround myself around people who are, you know, big thinkers, people who are doing big things, people who have big ideas. And those types of people are, you know, it's like say you hear about, you know, the people you know, the top five people, whatever it is. Specifically in business, though, that is, I mean, it's every, it's always true. You look at your friends, you look at your wife or your partner, whoever you spend a lot of time with.

And or in business, you know, if you're not thinking big, if you're not have these, you know, if you don't have people around you kind of talking crazy in a certain way, like, hey, like, we're going to do these big things. I'm around people who I think, you know, I think I'm pretty crazy. Most people, most of my family thinks I'm pretty out there and what I think. But then I get around other people, maybe like yourself, then we have a conversation. He's like, wow, this guy is actually, you know, thinking bigger or thinking differently than I am. And that, that to me is inspiring in a certain way as far as, you know, you don't realize. how you, you know, how you inspire other people or how people inspire you until it happens. And sometimes it's just, you being you, showing up, you know, being in that, like say, even just jumping on here with you, high energy, super whatever.

Like for me, that automatically pulls me into that state. And we need that sometimes. As good as we can be and as disciplined as I am, sometimes I need inspiration. Sometimes I need someone external for me to really light me up and really give me an idea or even just motivation, right, to get shit started or, you know, to stop procrastinating like we mentioned earlier. No one's perfect. We're all just human and we all have the same, you know, set of emotions. It's just, you know, what order they come in or how quickly we process them and how we're able to move through from one motion to another. So the community, coming back to the community,

the community to have this support system. That's essentially what I want to build is a circular economy that people are not only doing business together, but people can lean on each other and ask for advice, you know, feel like they can open up and share things that are beyond the normal what people share because once we share those things they become you know once we once we like say when I had my repressed memories once I got them out you know external from my thoughts and I went through them with somebody to really help me have some perspective on stuff I realized that you know I had been blaming myself for a lot of those things that had nothing to do it you know I had no control over a lot of it

right so really just have that reframe and have high level thinkers high level you know high perspective people give us feedback you know even speak in the same group it's healing and it's inspiring so to have those kind of communities are essential to really grow and to really intentionally grow i should say you know you can be a community that maybe we're you know getting more business and doing this or whatever maybe you're neglecting your health you're neglecting you know something else well this is you know our community specifically is something we're we're building that's holistic you know how are you showing up for your family how you're showing up for your teammates how you're showing up for yourself and how is that how's that rippling out

you know, what's the ROI on that for your business, for your life, for everything. And to really kind of have a holistic view of life and business is one of the things we really approach people because I've been, I've worked with Facebook, I've worked with Airbnb, and I've worked with all these, you know, large companies of people who, they have big visions, whatever, but they have a very narrow focus and their health or other things suffer because of that. And not good or bad, it just is. So if you want to have a holy rich life where you feel amazing, where you have amazing relationships

with your partner or your kids or whoever and you have a thriving business that makes you money and gives you the life you want you need to make sure you're focusing on all of it you're really building systems and surrounding yourself around people who are supporting that because like say whatever is around you is essentially what you're going to fall into just because we're that's the essence of being human like we want to be around or you know the people we're around we want to be like or be fit into so you might as well fit in with a group of kind of misfits that are doing great things or doing thinking big as opposed to you know people who are just no that's too that's out there that's you know people who down your dreams you need to you know

separate yourself from those people and that's not always easy that's been a decade long process for me as well as like how do i you know how do you trim the fat how do you trim the fat in a way that you know is respectful and or true to yourself like if you're not you know if you stay in certain situations around certain people you're really you're doing yourself as a disservice so if you're at least selfishly want to minimally say hey like i want to have a great life i need to surround myself with good people because that's one of the main ways you're going to have it with life. Yeah, I think that speaks to like the idea of incubators and the calling. And when I speak about incubators, I think about life, like where you end up in life is sort of an

incubator. Like if you end up at Facebook or UPS or any of these corporations, you're in there. And like for a while you believe in this thing. Like you're being incubated. And they start realizing, like, you know what? I'm just a number here, man. I like this vision. But whenever I try to bring up my idea, like no one.

wants to hear my idea. They just want to hear their idea. They just want to grow in this way. And I'm thankful that I got to be here and experience this, but I'm no longer interested in that. And I equate that to the calling in that even when we're younger, like sometimes like, dude, who these guys smoke is a reefer? They look kind of cool, man. This guy's little dangerous. What the hell these guys are thinking about? You go over and start talking to him a little bit, and you're like, hey, not all of them. People don't get it twisted. Sometimes you move into a circle of people that are bad people. But when you hear the calling sometimes, it's used. Usually, maybe the calling gets muffled.

But sometimes when I grew up in it, I remember getting the calling, you talked about, do these people think differently? This is exactly how I think. I think different too. And you start being called to these different ideas and these different relationships. And it seems to me that cannabis plays a big part in opening up your mind to not only thinking bigger, but to thinking differently. And sometimes those two things are synonymous.

Thinking differently and thinking big, you know, new ideas or the way we think of it are very similar, but, you know, I, I, first time, I love talking to you, man. We could dig into philosophy and we're digging into communities. And but I got like a list of like 15 questions here. And so I'm going to ask you a couple of them here just to get moving here, man. And thank you for this. It's, uh, it's really wonderful. And the hallmark of a good discussion is when time flies like that.

So thank you. Okay. In the evolving landscape of cannabis, how do you see the intersection of medicinal and recreational use influencing the industry's future? Great question. Thank you. Yeah, I think when we, like I was in California and you look at, we had a really robust medical program here and it's essentially been wiped away with, you know, the recreational

market that can't come through, right? And, you know, I personally have a certain way of thinking about this and I don't think everyone necessarily thinks the same way, but I think that the use, the intentional use, right, how we use it, and I say the intention, our thoughts behind why we're using, things to have a conscious thought of not just to say wake up and you know use cannabis because they feel better and it's an unconscious use but to be intentional with my use saying hey i'm going to use this to be creative or i'm going to use this sometimes it is i'm just going to use this to feel better because i have pain or i have whatever right i don't want to you know i don't want to like

you know shit on someone's current use of medicine because it is a medicine and it came it can be needed all day every day for certain people right i think the majority of people overuse it and or using too much of it to get the desired effect they really want So I feel like, you know, I feel like the recreational medical thing is an interesting conversation because I feel like the untapped consumer is going to be medical in a sense of they're using it for mental health, right? Like maybe I take a capsule because I mean, I don't want to smoke or I want to taste the cannabis, but I'm going to take a capsule with CBD and CBD or something else in it that's going to give me that state of like feeling more normal or feeling more relaxed, feeling less, you know, you know,

heady or, you know, rapid thoughts, whatever you want to call it. Or, you know, just whatever people are using it for, I think when we're coming, we slow it down and we'd be more intentional with the use, the amount we use and how we use it and the strains we use, the more detail-oriented as opposed to, like, say, just buying a dime bag off someone on the street, go and smoking a bunch of weed, it's going to have an effect, of course, but it's not going to be maybe your specific desired effect.

So the more detailed we can get and more specific around the plants and the cannabinoids that we can get, the better outcomes and experiences will have, which what I consider, that's a medical thing in a sense of, like, that's being more intentional, that's using it in a precise way. Like I say, it's not just a party thing. And I say it's not that you can't use it for party, right? But I think the untapped market of the next consumers are that medical kind of side of things.

Because right now, you know, especially in California, 80% of, you know, the 80, 20 rule kind of rules, right? 80% of your sales come from 20% of your consumers that consume all day every day, right? And that's the current, you know, largest target market, specifically in markets like California. But there's a whole untapped market in the U.S., in the world of people who don't want to use cannabis. They don't maybe they don't even want to feel high, right? They just want to feel different. They want to feel better.

They want to feel less anxious. They want to feel less pain or less whatever, right? So they want to, they want to alter their state in a way that, like, say, maybe isn't getting them super, super high or even feeling that strong THC feeling, right? So I think the shift towards a medicinal way of looking at it. the way we break it down from a, like say, for me, like I have a little scale. I feel like a drug dealer. I have a little scale that I literally weigh out. So it's like a quarter gram or less every time, right?

But that feels scientific and medicinal, right? It's not just actable as much as you can get in there and light it up and go, right? It's different. So it's more the intention behind it. So for me, there's nothing wrong with the recreational market. There's nothing wrong with using it recreationally in a sense of going to a concert or going with your friends or doing whatever, right? Because that's a healing thing too. Having fun and opening up and being crazy.

That's part of being a human. That's part of feeling the whole range of emotions. But I think the major, we're talking about, you know, the cross-Acean there, I think that the next wave of people, the next wave of consumers, the next wave of growth for the industry will be from that more medicinal side. Now, how we break that down state to state, even on a federal level, that's really messy right now. I'm like saying most of these states that have a medical market, they're even trying to figure out how do we conserve that or how do we keep that sort of medicinal side without, you know, blowing it up with a recreational, initiative, right? I don't have a great answer for that other than education. No one does. You know, really educating, like, say, educating people on why these things work or how they work and what doses they work and, you know, what different terpenes, like, say, everything that kind of I've personally been doing for the last decade, how do we educate people to have their own

titration experience to figure out what worked for them and what the ultimate experience they want to have is, and then how can they replicate that? And so I think the more education we can have around that, the more medicinal type of use people will have, and the more open people will be to having, you know, to trying it or having a new experience with it, as opposed to this whole i think a lot of people look at our industry or the you know the way people use it's kind of like these are just a bunch of stoners i just you know wake they wake and they have this and that and i'm not here to do that it's just it's just a different way that most people don't want to experience that's not how most people want to use the plant so i think the future is medicinal in a

way of we can educate and really get people to be more specific and how they want to feel and what's going to get them there and of course then we need to have a you know companies and people who are driving products and services that are you know catering to that and have different specific, you know, I think like the brand dosist, D-O-S-I-T, you know, they have these specific little, you know, car, or, you know, inhalers that, you know, you can, you can turn the knob and make it point, point two or two, or two point five milligrams or ten milligrams, right? And you just take that hit and gives you that dose. So the more of like, sort of like that, we can really focus in on how much we're consuming

and what that experience is going to give us, that is the future, I think, of, you know, medicine in general, specifically cannabis and these plant medicines. Yeah, I like that. It's fascinating to see the containers in which we keep certain ideas or certain substances or certain cultural aspects that we hold. I saw this really funny cartoon. It was more of a comic than a cartoon. And it was like these two guys and they were on the couch and they have these little blurbs above his head. And one guy is like, I've often thought that people that use cannabis for recreation are actually using it from a discipline.

use. And the other guy's like, which kind of wheat is this? Is this recreational or medicinal? You know what I mean? Like it's somehow, it's like this framing of, of what we do. And we do it, I just bring up that because we do it with everything, whether it's our relationships, whether it's cannabis, psychedelics, alcohol, sports, whatever you think of, it's all framing. You know, and like it blows my mind to think about that. And shout out to Etienne from Aetian from Oakland, who told me this. this that word on the street is we're about to see interstate commerce like happen soon probably 2024 like what do you like what's going to happen then man like what do you think happens when

we have interstate commerce all of a sudden it goes from being hey this is illegal by the federal level to the federal level been like all right everybody get on board well i don't think the federal level is going to get that on board yet but i think once the states start interacting they have here's a yeah as a kid you think about these laws and whatever it's like laws are only as good as the people who enforce them, right? So if they're not going to enforce them, if they have these large economies like like California and maybe Oregon or whoever we're going to start trading with, if we start just doing it, what are they going to do? Are they going to come and try and shut it all down or are they going to try and work with us? And that's the whole point of even

say these states coming online and saying, fuck you to the government, we're going to use this as as a compound. You can't stop us. They haven't really stopped us. I mean, I said we've been moving forward. Of course, there's been bumps and they say it's not been perfect and it won't be until we get some more cooperation on the federal level. But I think the interstate commerce is just that next step of saying, hey, we're moving forward. This is what we need to do. I think it'll help with pricing.

I mean, here's the thing. Every market has its own pricing, go to a bad. And if we get a federal, you know, if we could be trading with all the other states, it'll stabilize it, at least in the US, right? You can have stable. What does that do for business? If you don't have stable pricing, it's hard to run a business. That's why some of these people go out of business year to year.

That's why I just talked to someone yesterday, and I don't, you need a fact check this. Right. It's 70% of all the licenses in California are not renewing for 2024. 70% of all the people who grow and distribute, you know, whatever, cultivate cannabis. 70%. So that point is, is that there's an unstable market, which creates for an unstable business, which creates, you know, instability within the whole industry, right? Yeah. So I think that can help really stabilize the product, you know, the pricing for these products that we can have more stable business in the future. And the federal government just got to come. I mean, they're going to come along once, once it gets to a certain point.

I say California is the largest economy in the U.S. us, you know, top four in the world, right? So it's like, once this kind of happens here, it's inevitably going to domino and like that we're going to have some sort of, hopefully, movement on federal legalization or decriminalization or descheduling or something. Probably won't happen in 2024. You know, I don't definitely get, don't keep people's hopes up on that. I'm not a big Joe Biden fan on that. I don't think he really wants to do it. He could get his hand forced doing it. Right. He can't get reelected. And the only way would be to do is to, you know, get to these younger

constituents or something and decriminalize it or take it off schedule or something to that. So it could happen before the election, but I wouldn't bank on that. I wouldn't put my business around that. But it could be still five, ten years before the federal government really comes around. But it could be a year. You never know. That's the whole thing. That's what all this instability really shakes up the industry.

And there's just, like say, there's just lack of, you know, standardization in a sense that we can do business when we know things are going to be a certain way or we're going to get a certain price or we can do a certain thing. There's none of that right now. So it's just very wild west and it's very, you know, volatile. Yeah. Yeah. It's so prohibition in so many ways. It's mesmerizing. There's so much chaos, but opportunity, but also tragedy.

And I don't know. It's fascinating. I love talking about it and learning about it. Perhaps you can elaborate on the potential societal impact as cannabis becomes more widely accepted for both medicinal and recreational purposes. Yeah. Well, if you take my blueprint, then hopefully we can have more people become more awake and more self-aware, more empowered in their own state, and they can use these compounds as a way

to day-to-day, live a better life, be more, you know, have a higher energy, have higher health, have higher focus, have better, you know, better, I don't say better intentions, but like say, when you feel better, you do better, right? I mean, anyone who's felt like shit, you know, you don't want to do anything. You definitely want to do anything good or anything good for other people. It's about self-survival. It's about feeling better yourself. That's true, right? Right. So when we feel good, we do good. So if we can get people to use these compounds in a responsible way, like I say, I like to say more of the medical side as far as how do we, you know, how do we figure out the titration and the specific things of how we want to feel and what experience we want to have, the quicker we can get to that, I think the more society will be open to it and or, you know, adopting these things as something more normal and something, I think the more normal it becomes the, you know, the better off we are as a society in a sense of people. A, people will use less alcohol. Like, that's the number one thing.

Every market you see from Colorado to wherever that has legal cannabis, you know, alcohol sales go down. That could be generational as well. You know, I just turned forward last week. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. Millennial and younger are just overall consuming less alcohol. So that could be somewhat generational, but it's also in a way, you know, they have an alternative. They have cannabis, something that makes them feel much better.

You know, say, they don't have to go all the distipulations between alcohol. And cannabis, it's like not even a comparison when you really look at them as far as the way they make you feel, the way you make you feel the next day, you know, all of that, the way your body interacts with them. You're getting, your body is getting poisoned with alcohol with your body, which is an altered state. You're getting, you know, you're poisoned. Agreed. With cannabis, it's locking in with your system and it's giving almost heightened awareness and heightened sensitivity of certain things, right? So it's a heightening awareness as opposed to alcohol depresses your your awareness and really, you know, tunes you out of your senses. And so my point is the more people we can get attuned as a, as a, as a, as a point is, as a point is the more.

opposing detuned, the better off we will be both from an introspective mindset point to health and wellness and like say, you know, the last people we have having alcohol, the less we have around, you know, just all the, all the negative alcohol or negative effects from alcohol and all that ripples down, both from relationships and how that deals with, you know, domestic violence to, you know, your physical health. Like say, when I quit drinking alcohol, I mean, I wasn't overweight at all, but you know, automatically just tightens up your body. You feel like you get rid of all that, all that bullshit, all the, all the excess calories that don't do anything for you. So it's just you're automatically going to feel better. And like, say, when we feel

better, we do better. So I'm very confident that once we get more mass adoption that we'll have better health and wellness overall, if, and then this is, like I say, this is the big if. And this is one of the reasons I came into the space is, I had a vision. I say, when I was meditating before I became into the industry, I had a vision that cannabis can either go the way of alcohol and just be the next alcohol or it can be this tool and this medicinal, you know, this medicine. And I say that's how I use it and that's how I really feel is used best. And that's why one of the reasons I came into this industry is to how can I be an example or how can I bring out, you know, how can I shine light on other people using it as an example for medicinal slash more intentional use. So that's the vision and that's the way that I'm pushing everything towards that we're doing, all the people we're working with.

I'm not like I say, it's not to say we won't, you know, people who, you know, their sales are going towards that person that is, you know, using cannabis all day. It's not to say that certain people can't use it that way, but it's like, well, the more intentional we can be and the more mindful that we are around our usage, then I think the better off will all be as a collective. So I think I'm very bullish on the implications of how this can really impact our society and our culture. Yeah, that's really well said. Thank you for pointing out a lot of those points.

It's fascinating to see. And if you, if someone's so inclined to step back and look at the big picture, you can see a lot of cannabis companies that went full tilt and tried to enter into like the market and they went with the intention of making as much money as possible. And I would say that the majority of those companies fail because it does come back to intention. Why are you using it? The same way in which you had the epiphany of from recreational to medicinal or the same way in which you move from state to stage at some point in time in your mind using cannabis. You're like, I really like the way that I think about this. I really like the way that this makes me see something different.

And I think that that is beginning to manifest itself and the way people use it to do business or the way we may be evolving as a culture is like, hey, why are we doing business like this? The successive growth for this reason. Yes, it is a rare, slight definition of success. But I love what you said about when you feel good, you do good. How often do you want to help out other people when you feel like shit? Never. You don't even want to help yourself out. we start feeling good about who you are and what you do all of a sudden you look at that guy next you're like that's just a different version of me man and you know what i've been through what that guy's going through i see what these couples going through they're working so hard and they're caught up in

this negative feedback loop let me go talk to them let me see if i can help you know just because i'm a good human being yeah that's where community comes from and i i can't help but understand the relationship or at least begin to investigate the relationship between the different plant medicines who we are and how society runs. If you look at what society runs on, if a society runs on alcohol, you have what we have. It's very destructive. The same way our country goes out and fights wars, so too does a drunk guy at a bar go out and look for someone to punch in the face. You know, what if we ran on a different substance? What if he fueled up with something a little bit more medicinal, man? I love it, man. I'm super thankful that you're here. And I've only gotten

three questions. I know time's coming up. I'm going to get one more in here before you have to go, man. Of course. What are we got? I'm open. From a medical standpoint, how can cannabis play a role in addressing specific health conditions and what ongoing research or developments excite you the most? Well, that's a great question. Thank you. You have great questions here today, by the way. I'm enjoying these.

You know, the medicinal side, you know, one of my business partners that I, you know, started this organization with, and he runs our correct consumer brand. We have a new tropic product and other CBD in health and wellness products. You know, him and his wife helped to legalize CBD and THC in the country of Brazil. back in 2014, 2015. And, you know, it was for epileptic children, right? They smuggled in CBD and they're giving it to these epileptic children, and they couldn't deny the results they were having, right?

They couldn't, you know, they couldn't deny that these kids were not having seizures or only having one seizure of the day as opposed to 200, right? So in a year, they were able to, you know, create this PR move and really, like, pressure the government to legalize these substances so these kids can have access to them, right? Because how are you going to deny dying kids? It's really challenging, right? Yeah.

So going back to your question, I don't follow a ton of these studies really closely until they come out into the open. But I know there's tons of people using, you know, creating different studies around, even specifically around with psychedelics, right? Yes. More of a pulse on that and everything going on with ketamine and MDMA and still aside. There's tons of, you know, from John Hopkins to the maps, people to, you know, even other people in between who are doing studies now around, like I say, obviously the biggest ones you know around PTSD

and people who come from military backgrounds, but also addiction, right? I think that's one of the biggest things I think these could help with is actually getting people off of alcohol, off of other potential opioids or other drugs that they're addicted to. And it's not to say you can't get addicted to cannabis. You can. And it's a totally different. It's a better addiction. It's a much, much better addiction than opioids or alcohol or anything else. But you can still be addicted. That's where psychedelics, I think, come in and really give you that over the top. You know, if you're using cannabis, then you come in and do a psychedelic, you might realize, like, oh, I just substituted cannabis for alcohol, right? I just made that switch.

Now, maybe it was a good substitute and it's a good stepping stone. But like, what's my next stage? What's my next evolution? So I think there's a lot of studies coming out. They're going to really, I think the studies really just enforce what we already know to a certain degree. And it really, we have two sides of our brain, right? We have our left brain and our right. And our left brain needs to have the logical, you know, scientific, grounded information

to have the emotional, right, you know, creative brain really buy in and believe something. So I think from a greater standpoint of the, you know, you know, the collective consciousness and all the, you know, the mass people in the U.S., to have these studies is crucial for them to even adopt it or even try it to have an experience with it, because without that, a lot of them kind of like, oh, that's, you know, that's recreation or that's something I don't need, right? So I think shifting these studies can really help shift the consciousness or the perspective of how people see these compound and how they potentially could then, you know, let themselves

use them and have an experience with them and maybe a good, maybe a bad, whatever, but they can at least have that experience on their own and figure it out. So I think coming back to your question, I don't really have any specific studies that I'm really excited about, but I know that are people doing studies around specifically like say ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin, those are the kind of three big psychedelic ones that they're studying, even though like I say we won't get into the details, ketamine is not technically a psychedelic, it's a dissociative, but it's still under that umbrella, right? Sure. Compounds are, like I say, from my experience, and I've never done ketamine, but similarly, like with

psilocybin, it pulls you out of your current. state and gives you a heightened, elevated perspective and experience. So the more we can give people in that state from time to time, I think the better off people will be both taking, you know, taking responsibility for their own life, both, you know, seeing a creative vision of what's possible for their future and, you know, like I say, bringing all that back into the present moment to do things that, like say, you know, they're feeling better, they're doing better. Ultimately, that ripple effect, you know, goes into our families, goes into our communities,

goes into our businesses that ultimately, you know, ripple into the world. So a long way of saying is I think a lot of these studies are going to legitimize these compounds to the more normal people, the normal or average, but like the not us, the not the people in the industry can have a greater sense of feeling confident or excited about potentially using these compounds in a way that's positive in their life. I love all the language you use in there, like elevated and high. And, you know, on some level, I like to think of all of us, like the human species is like, one organism. And some people are out on the front and they're like, okay, like, and so many people yourself include that I've spoken to, I think are at the forefront of this industry because it has

had radical and profound changes in a positive way on their relationships, not only to the relationships outside and the world that they're making, but the relationship inside to themselves. They really found a way to look at themselves in a way that they're grateful for. Like, that gives me goosebumps to think about because I want everyone to do. do it. I think that's a big part of why we're so trapped in some of these old thoughts is that a lot of people may not have had the opportunity to or the time to sit with themselves and be like, why don't I trust myself? Why don't I care enough about myself to do these things that I love to do? You know, and it's it's not like a pejorative or it's not something that we should

look at somebody with sympathy with. It's something that we should look at like, okay, this person, much like you and I have spoke about states and stages, this person is currently at this stage. And so as we look at the cannabis interview, the stichesdelic industry unfolding, like we have gotten a pretty cool view. And there's people miles ahead of us that have, that can look back and that's where George and Matt are now.

The same way we can look at some of our friends of our family and be like, that's where they are right now. And I just, I think it's really wonderful. Yes. Yeah. And you need everything, everything's, they say stages, whatever. I don't know if you've ever heard of the,

I'm blanking all the time on what the name of the book is, but it talks about the cycles of, of consciousness. The fourth turning. Oh. No. I'm blanking on the time. It doesn't matter.

But either way, you can't skip stages. You can't go from stage one to stage three or stage five. You have to go through, even quickly, you have to go through all the stages. Yes. Because if you skip, and I think that's what even psychediles can do for certain people in a negative way. Like, oh, I'm beyond that now. I don't have to go through that stage. I, you know, whatever.

Like, like, well, maybe you didn't do the work. Like, say you didn't, you did the psychedelics is like a short cut, is somewhere of a short cut, but you still have to do the work. Yeah. So it can compress the time when you do it. It may not only take a month or two as opposed to a year or two. Right. So it can really help you in that timeline, but you still have to do the work.

So you can't skip those stages. Right. Because then you don't have the, even if nothing else, you don't have the empathy of like, oh, I went through that. I see where they've been through. I can empathize with them. I can be more sympathetic or I can be in a way where I can know where they're going through and help them or even like say with business or whatever, you'll have to be one step ahead

or one stage ahead from somebody to help them pull them up, right? Like, hey, I've been there, do this and that. do this and that or you know make sure you're giving yourself this whatever right and and that's where we as a community can all help each other grow all these different stages and all these these different levels of either business life relationships mindset all these and i'm like say i'm rarely the you know the the person at the highest stage in my my groups because like i surround myself with people who are doing things you know as big or bigger than me or think bigger or differently than me so i think that's one of the coming back to the things we talked about earlier having your

group of people and those people that you can really count on to really take that next level and to really grow your business and your life and whatever it is you're doing, that's crucial to moving through those stages as quickly as possible with the least amount of time, energy and resources to get there. And that's part of what we do with the masterminds. Like, hey, how can we lift people up? How can this rising tide lift all the shift together? And, you know, it can cut your time in half or it can cut your expenses in half

or you can cut your pain and suffering in half as far as what you go through and to get through that stage. Yeah, it's fascinating to me. And just like that, Matt, hour gone. We barely even scratch the surface, man. We barely scratched the surface. I got so many cool people I would love for you to meet and have a bigger conversation under a bigger tent, man.

So let's make that happen. I'll talk to you briefly afterwards, but maybe before you go, man, please tell people about what you got coming up, where people can find you and what you're excited about. Yeah, like I said, we're heading into a new year here, super excited about the community we're cultivating. Obviously, you know, we have 75 plus members around the globe.

50% of them are here in Southern California. Obviously, if you want to check us out, about inner circle.biz. Check that out. Matt at inner circle.biz if you want to directly reach out to me. You know, if you're an operator or an entrepreneur in the space and this is resonant with you, then let's connect because that's really what this is about for me is really finding the, you know, the elite leaders in the space and the people who think differently and or in that growth mindset so that we can build together and we can really collaborate and you know, you know, synergize whatever efforts we have, both from, you know, our community,

but also like individually within our community, how can I connect you with the right people to to really synergize these efforts. And you know, amazing, you know, overall, the community has been amazing. You know, I met a lot of great people, you know, people, like I say people at different stages of growth and of life and business. But then there's the sharks.

There's definitely some sharks still in our industry. And there's definitely a lot of people, not a lot, there's definitely people who are out there who are only looking out for themselves and really only looking for, you know, wind-loos scenarios as far as how they can get ahead and how they can make more money and this and that. And, you know, we're a vetted community.

So it's, you know, I have one-on-one conversation with everyone potentially before they have you know even talk about membership just so I can see where they're at mentally I can see where that with their vision I can kind of get a feel into how they operate just as a human and as a business person and then from there we talk about you know hey like maybe this is considered as with our community or you know whatever that is so if this is resonant with you this type of you know perspective and mindset and growth sort of orientation is what you're looking for honestly I've not seen another community in our space that is doing this specifically now there's other people to do masterminds that are specific around business and that's great

We need more of it. I'm not, you know, everyone, everyone needs to join a group of some sort to be, like, say, to have this type of community. But if this is the type of language, like say, if you heard all the language we've talked today, and if it feels out there and, like, it feels out there and non-resident, then you're probably not a good fit. But if this is something that's, you know, you're like to talk more and that or learn more about that or be around more people who are doing that, that's the type of people we're looking for. And it's a slow and steady race for me. Like, say, we're about 75 members right now. We're on our march to 300 members. We only went about 300 members worldwide, you know, in the different communities and the different. from markets, doing different things, everything from plant touching and growing the plants to media and communications to, you know, SEO and marketing. We want the best of the best leaders and, you know, people who have great skills and great hearts and who are open in my, you know, want to sort of, you need to have a pay it for it

mentality, knowing that, you know, in a mastermind setting that I'm going to, you know, give my best in a sense that I'm going to get the best from everyone else. And whatever my genius is is really going to help them and what their genius is really going to help me because, you know, that's, that's what a mastermind is about. what a community is and should be about it. Like how do we really help each other and how do we really collaborate in a way that synergizes both, you know,

creating win, win, win scenarios, right? We talk about quadruple bottom line. You know, people plan its profit, purpose, right? How can we really connect people with what they're truly meant to do, what's really lighting them up? And fortunately, I find a lot of people in this space have that purpose part down, but then they may don't have other parts of it down.

They're not great business people or they don't really have to, you know, whatever. They've never, everyone's had their own journey and everyone's had different stages. they've gone through around building or not building a business or a life. So just figuring out where people are at and connecting them with the right people with the right stages and figuring out those sparks and creating the synergies, that's what we're all about. I love it.

Isn't it interesting to notice the things about other people that you notice in yourself, man? So beautiful, man. It's like a mythology unfolding in front of us, man. Well, hang on briefly afterwards, man. I'll talk to you briefly afterwards. But ladies and gentlemen, go down to the show notes. Check out what we had to say today. check out Matt's page, check out his community.

And like, if it resonates with you, reach out to him. He's a fun guy to talk to. And he's a passionate person who cares about purpose and building a community that's worthwhile. And look, it's a great conversation. So that's all we got for the day, ladies gentlemen. I hope you have a beautiful weekend. And I hope that you decide to become the best version of yourself.

That's all we got for the day a little bit.