TrueLife - Sabba Nazhand - The Last Sermon on Leadership

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

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/Sabba NazhandListen up, beautiful strangers and corporate pilgrims, because this ain’t your TED Talk and it sure as hell ain’t your quarterly earnings call.This is the last sermon at the bus stop—the one they told you not to listen to.The one where the preacher’s barefoot, bleeding a little, laughing a lot, telling you that your KPIs are killing your soul and your ROI is just another name for fear of dying broke and unnoticed.And standing at the corner of this psychedelic crossroads is Sabba Nazhand.He’s not here to scale your company.He’s here to scale your consciousness.Or maybe tear it down to the studs and ask you why you built it in the first place.Sabba’s not your sanitized startup hero.He’s the guy smuggling soul across the borders of AI, startups, and altered states—wearing the dust of Burning Man on his face, carrying the ghost of a blood transfusion in his veins, and whispering heresies into the ear of anyone still awake in this zombie economy.From the blood-soaked streets of Tehran to the glass temples of Silicon Valley, Sabba’s been playing both sides—tech and mystic, mentor and madman, capitalist and cosmic fool. He’s led teams, advised startups, burned through playbooks, and emerged on the other side with only one message:“If you’re still measuring success in metrics, you’re already dead.”This ain’t about products.This is about prophets.This is about dismantling the assembly line of your life, and replacing it with a playground of the possible.This is about ROI becoming R.O.I.—Return On Inner-fucking-anarchy.So light a match, kiss your five-year plan goodbye, and let Sabba take you somewhere your HR department doesn’t have a policy for.This is the conversation at the end of the world.And you’re late for the bus.http://linkedin.com/in/sabbanazhandhttps://www.joinsafar.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. Fearist 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, welcome back to the True Life podcast. Whoever is having a beautiful day. Hope the sun is shining. Hope the birds singing wind is at your back. Listen up, beautiful strangers and corporate pills.

because this ain't your TED Talk, and it sure as hell ain't your quarterly earnings call. This is the last sermon at the bus stop, the one they told you not to listen to, the one where the preacher's barefoot, bleeding a little, laughing a lot, telling you that your KPIs are killing your soul and your ROI is just another name for fear of dying broke and unnoticed. And standing at the corner of this psychedelic crossroads is Sabah Nashan. He's not here to scale your company. He's here to scale your consciousness, or maybe tear it down to the studs and ask you why, you built it in the first place. Sabah's not your sanitized startup hero. He's the guy smuggling soul

across the borders of AI startups and altered states, wearing the dust of burning man on his face, carrying the ghost of blood transfusions in his veins and whispering heresies into the ear of anyone still awake in the zombie economy. From the blood-soaked streets of Tehran to the glass temples of Silicon Valley, Sabba's been playing both sides, tech and mystic, mentor and madman, capitalist and cosmic fool. He's led teams, advice startups, burn through playbooks, and emerged on the other side with only one message.

If you're still measuring success and metrics, you're already dead. This ain't about products. This is about profits. This is about dismantling the assembly line of your life and replacing it with a playground of the possible. This is about ROI becoming R-O-I, return on inner fucking anarchy.

Saba, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? Monty, you fucking legend. That was beautiful, man. I am doing great. Goose bumps and ready to go. You are a woodsmith, man. Well, I mean, look, I'm just saying what you're doing, man.

You've been crushing it lately. And such an exciting time right now in the world of psychedelics and integration. And just it's a beautiful time, man. And there's one word that comes to mind. And I want to dig into this, man. Safar. What is it? Thank you, man.

So far is a journey. It translates to journey in Persian. It is the journey we're taking in life to become more connected with ourselves, with consciousness, and just become better versions every day. That's what Sofar is. That's why I built this company. And that's why I continue to get up every day and just grind my ass to, you know, make it happen, man. I left a very high-paying career. One would say I burned my career to the ground to go to that.

do this. And though I miss those paychecks sometimes, this is, this is bigger than that. And the abundance in life and impacting, and impacting people is more important to me. So that's why I'm here, man. It's bigger than that. Like, how do you get there? You know what I mean? Like, that sounds, I talk a lot about initiation and ordeals, you know, but to get to a point in your life where like, I can't, I'm not fucking doing it anymore. I can't do this. I'm, I'm, I'm people for something bigger. Why are we talking about the weather? You know what I mean? Like, what, how did you get to this point of like, I'm bigger than this? I got a quick side note. Yeah.

I used to tell my old sales teams when you get on a call with a potential client and the first thing you ask him is, how's the weather, hang up the phone and don't ever do this job again. Because it's got, it's deeper than that. You got to say something more. Like learn about them before you get on the call. Anyways, this is my old Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah. It's about, again, it's about depth. It's about understanding who you're talking to and building relationships. Anyways, sorry.

I had to draw that quick tangent. Yeah. Where do you want to go? Listen, man, I, to answer your question, I spent 20 years in, you know this, but I spent 20 years in tech, navigating through startups. You know, I started as a sales development rep. booking meetings and went all the way up the ladder across New York, Hong Kong, London,

Bay Area, D.C. And as I got older in life, there was this thing that happened. And it happens to many men. It happens to many people is you start questioning, like, I don't have a lot of time on this earth. I want to do something bigger, more important, more impactful. And when you have a child that amplifies that. Because you want your child to grow up in a world where they are doing better than you did.

Not just like materialistically, but just emotionally, consciously, spiritually, et cetera. And that was just those moments that all came together from working on my mental health to getting out of these toxic environments. And what happened to me was a. a culmination of not just psychedelics, it was doing the work, thinking deeply about who I was and why I was on this earth, going through traditional therapy, writing, journaling, crying. I mean, you name it. Like, it was, it was tearing me inside. And psychedelics happened to be the catalyst. There was the tool that opened me up to expand what it meant to be on this earth. And when I found out

that I had a connection to God and to this universe and love kind of evolved into this all being. Like nothing else matters but love. When those things came into my existence, I was like, oh, my God, of course. Of course this makes sense. Of course I need to do something that is going to help people. I went through the depths of hell and back and I know I can help. And that was kind of like the overall, like the things that that happened. that brought me to where I am today.

And I will also say, you know, not to make it a sob story, but I sacrificed a lot. I sacrificed a lot to become my most authentic self to be my true self. And there's still a lot of pain there. But in the long run, I know that when that pain turns into healing and turns into joy in love that I did I did it for the right reasons and those sacrifices won't go you know unnoticed and and won't you know there will be there will be compassion around it so there's there's that too and so I want to acknowledge the people the things the soul the things that I did in my life that I had to do to get here so I love it man thanks for sharing do you

there seems to me, in my opinion, I think that there's something so similar about psychedelics and AI and technology. I almost feel like they're the, you know, they're a gentle whisper coming from two sides of the divinity's mouth. And like they seem to go hand in hand on some level. What do you think is the relationship between like AI and psychedelics?

Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at, so AI is, I mean, the simplest form is a set of, set of data that is being aggregated to make assumptions on the answer. And those data points are continuously being trained and taught and learned. So it becomes this accumulation of consciousness. It becomes this consciousness of information, data, knowledge, aka data.

And that's what AI generally is. So the more that AI is being, becoming more in tune with its consciousness, with its data, the more it can provide information and wealth of knowledge, etc. Psychedelics is kind of similar in that way where it's doorways. It's doorways to other parts of your psyche. It's doorways to other channels of your brain. It's doorways to the consciousness, to spirituality.

And those doorways open you up to knowledge, to data, to information that you need. and sometimes don't expect that come to you. And that, that I feel is kind of that the emergence of, I'm actually doing a talk on psychedelics and AI in a couple months. And it's very much around this very, very touchy subject of this, of AI and psychedelics. And yeah,

I'll stop there because there's more to dig into. But that's probably at the highest level without getting too granular there. Yeah. I think it's beautiful. I use them both in conjunction with each other. And it does, on some level, I feel like AI is teaching us to communicate more meaningfully. You know what I mean by that? Like when you, especially if you start using like large language models and you start using those to rewrite things or you start asking it questions and build a relationship with it.

On some level, I almost feel like the answers I'm getting are psychedelic. Maybe that's because I do so many of them or I'm in that space on level. but I just can't escape the sort of right-left combination of how similar they are and how much both of them have to teach us. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Let me, I'm going to read you this journal prompt. Please do. This journal prompt that came to me.

I should say came to me. That sounds too. That's fine. Something that I was really thinking about of like how do you activate this? Because there's this thing, right? AI is here and it's not going anywhere. And it's a part of our life. It's going to continue to embed in our life.

Some argue it's going into this realm of transhumanism. I argue that it's going to actually bring us back to humanity and consciousness. I love that. And here's what I wrote. I wrote psychedelics and AI are not just tools for transformation. There are reflections of the same evolutionary impulse. Each in their own way accelerates the expansion of consciousness. Together they form the most powerful synergy for human healing,

intelligence and planetary evolution we've ever encountered. And what I want you to say, I want folks to sit with that for a second because that goes back to the original of like data aggregation and consciousness, right? And that's how I structure. That's how I structure my thought process, my soul around combining psychedelics and AI. And yeah, more to come from that. I love it, man. Can you send me a copy of that?

Absolutely. That sounds amazing. Yeah. You know, I think it also speaks to behavior. And I think this is one of the reasons, Saba, that one of the many reasons why you are where you're at right now is you have an incredible understanding of behavior. And maybe that comes from your time growing up. Maybe that comes from all the tragedies or the obstacles or the winds that you've had in your life. But how do you think that psychedelics have helped you personally shape your ideas on behavior?

Yeah, that's such a great question, man. I think for me, this, it's still continuing. learning, but when you understand the root cause of the behavior of like, why is it that I'm doing the things that I'm doing? It's not what I'm actually doing. It's why am I doing it, right? It's similar to addictions. I'm not an alcoholic because I'm a terrible human and I enjoy alcohol. I'm an alcoholic because I'm trying to sue the pain or a trauma that happened to me, and this is the only outlet that I know. And when you, when you differentiate it that way or when you think about those behavioral patterns that way, then you start getting to the root cause,

right? And that took me decades to figure out through my own personal learning, through sitting in therapy and specifically psychedelic work where you are, I hate the word confronting, but you are confronting these behaviors in a place of love and curiosity and acceptance. And it's like, oh, of course, of course my behaviors were like this. of course I treated people this way or of course I do this because it's that, right? And so what I have been thinking about is like, what does that mean? How can people have access to, again, I'm not going to sound cliche, behavioral transformation.

How do you change behaviors in a way that is healthy and doesn't make people feel like they're, you know, terrible or bad or, you know, whatever the adjective may be? And that's been for me how I've done it. This behavior turns into a why. Why is this happening? And I'll give an example. Okay. When I get overwhelmed, positively or negatively, and this is part of my, also because

of my neurodivergence, is that I seek immediate gratification. I seek the quickest, fastest dopamine to make me feel like I'm in control, to make me feel like I got to win. Okay. So the behavior is social media or doom scrolling or doing something that doesn't feel maybe productive when I should be productive. The reason why I'm doing that is because my nervous system is telling me Saba. This is something big is happening. You're not handling it well. And I'm going to take you to your comfort zone. And whatever that comfort zone is is going to make me calm down and relax, at least initially. Long term, it's not. But initially it's going to give me that quick dopamine hit, and it's going to make me feel that I'm safe.

So the behavior is, oh, Saba, you know, the implied behavior is Saba, you're lazy and all you do is spend time on social media. But the cause of that behavior is I'm not regulating my nervous system in the most positive way because something big has happened. And the big is okay. That is okay. It's how I'm doing that. So when I start thinking about the how, it's like, okay, I can pick up my phone and do what I would always do, Instagram, scroll, Twitter, and just flood my dopamine receptors. Or I can go move my body. I can go put my feet on the grass outside.

I can go meditate for a second. And then, again, drop down, be present and come down to earth. Same thing. I'm finding an outlet to calm that behavior down, but I'm doing it in a way that is, is productive. that is healthy, that it doesn't, it doesn't deplete my dopamine. And again, going back to the negative, what happens when you deplete your dopamine? It feels good, but then 30 minutes, one hour later, you're drained, emotionally, physically. And then it becomes this vicious cycle of continuous dopamine hits.

And the next thing you know, it's four hours. You haven't done anything. And then you start spiraling of like, oh, I'm terrible, blah, blah, right? I'll stop there. But that's how you, that's for me. me, I shouldn't say how you, but for me, how I've recognized these behavior, behavior of patterns and then, and focused on the why behind it and then made those changes in that way. I love it, man. I think it speaks to so many of our, our inner dialogue and how hard we are

on ourselves. Absolutely. You know, what is, what is, when you look at the world of psychedelics we're in right now, what is one pattern that you would like to disrupt or the one that you think needs disrupting within psychedelics or using psychedelics to disrupt patterns um within the world of psychedelics today yeah um you said we have no i may i may get i may get some hate mail uh no no welcome to the club i would say um one is that we put psychedelic on this pedestal, that it's the all-knowing, all-healing, only way to transform, grow, heal, etc. And that's dangerous. And it's dangerous for so many reasons.

One, because that's not true. And like factually, physically, scientifically, spiritually, whatever you want to call it, it's not true. that part of for me in the psychedelic space, I find a little bit cringy because there's a big contingent that their life revolves around, not just doing psychedelics, I do psychedophics all the time. It's not that.

It's it gets the why behind it. It's the seeking of, of that mind expanding, that profoundness and feeling like, oh, I have these issues in my life. I'm going to go take a bunch of psychedelics and everything's going to be fine.

And it's this vicious circle, right? They're all chasing that. And then because of that chase, you want to go tell the world. And when you tell the world how great psychedelics are and it's the only way to heal whatever, insert issue, that becomes problematic for many reasons. So I have a problem with that. And I wish we would continue to think about that psychedelics

are just part of the path to enlightenment, healing, growth, etc. It's just a part. It's just a tool. It's everything else we do outside of that, aka integration, aka behavioral disruption, aka behavioral changes, that's more important. So I wish people did that. That's one of probably a dozen issues I have with our space. But I'll stick to that one for now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for throwing it out there. Yeah. It's such an opportune time. I feel like on so many levels, we're laying a foundation of what is possible. Yeah.

And it's sticky, it's messy and we're not going to get it all right, but it doesn't mean we can't have the conversations about how to make it the best way out there. Exactly. On so many levels. What, when I think about behavior and I think about psychedelics and integration, what is it that you are working on with Safari to change things? Like, what is it about integration? Is it about behavior?

Like, what does it do? And why is it important? Yeah, it's, thank you for asking that. It's bigger than integration. Okay. Tell me how. Yeah. It's about human-centered transformation.

And what does that mean? It means that we are building tools that in transformation between sessions, meaning when you're working with practitioners, coaches, guides, you're getting exactly what you need because that's where systems fail. That's one part of it. As a client to practitioner model, it's amazing when you're in a session and you're getting great advice and feedback and everything. What happens after the session, what happens in between sessions is really critical. That's where you're on your own.

That's where you are holding their self-accountability. So that's one part. The other part that I think about is as a whole, holistically, integration being the most impactful thing that matters to us. And what I mean by that is how do we think about a world where integration helps you focus on taking these insights and implementing them every day in your life? So I'll give you an example. Okay. I'll give you multiple examples. Nice.

You'll get to this answer. In mathematics, integration means summing tiny pieces to get to the whole calculus. small changes repeated until they create something bigger. Okay. So I want people to kind of see this path. In healing and in growth, it's the same thing. Integration equals the tiny daily choices that slowly rewire our brain and reshape our identity.

Philosophically, let's go down that path. Yeah. Integration is wholeness. You're not fixing. You're not forcing, but you're learning to hold old parts of yourself, light, shadow. mess and magic. You're holding those plates, just holding those cells. And then let's get nerdy for a second. Scientifically, integration is where neuroplasticity needs intention, right? So in neuroscience terms, it's about LTP, long-term potentiation, the strengthening of synaptic connections through

repeated activation. So every time you revisit, revisit, that's the key part, a new insight, a behavior or an emotional response, you're reinforcing a new. You're reinforcing a new. neural pathway. So over time, that repetition that shifts the brain architecture from short-term awareness to long-term change. So you're following me? Yes. This is why that's so, this is why integration and behavioral transformation is so important when it comes to psychedelics or doing any kind of deep work. So what does that mean? It means that integration is what we know. it's what we live. It's the real work is not the breakthrough.

It's what you become afterwards. That's kind of, you know, I guess full circle to one of my issues with this space. You take true integration, what we just talked about, synaptic consolidation and embodied repetition. And you connect those together. Then now what you've done is you realize that your nervous system starts to believe. It starts to believe in this change. It starts to believe in this integration. and these behavioral adjustments that you are not your past.

You are not your inner child. You are not those issues that you've had in your life because you're doing that. So again, that was a little bit of a tangent. But when I think about why Safar, why we're building, that's how I think about it. I'll stop there. I love it. You know, I think one of the biggest issues, in my opinion, that I see in the medical container in psychedelics and sometimes in the space is this inability to.

measure the subjective, the subjective things that happen, you know, the tears of a wife whose, whose husband finally gets out of bed and it's starting to speak again in a way that's meaningful or able to face some of these dreams, you know, and I think, and let's be clear, like you got some giants on your team, man. Like, you guys are, you guys have put a lot of work into this. You and I don't want to mention the guys on your team, but they're giants. And so it seems to me kind of what so far might be bridging is this, is this idea of the subjective. And like, we know from the Pythagorean theorem, you have to measure all the variables in order to get the right answer. And it seems to me what you guys are working on is sort of defining these fuzzy variables

that people have left out of the equation for so long. Is that fair to say? Wow, spot on. I might have to steal that. I might have to steal that for our marketing. That's spot on. Look, integration and that, you know, that husband's tears who has learned something, to some extent you can't measure that. That's just like love, deep, emotion and it's just embodiment. You can't always measure, measure embodiment, right? And it just becomes a part of life, ideally. However, when you get to the intersection of embodiment and outcomes, there's this interesting

thing that happens. So let me explain. You're looking at what we're thinking about is a couple things. emotional and psychological trend lines. And I'll talk about that in a second. Okay. And then psychological scales. So when a client has, let's just use that husband, for example,

when that husband has just come through that session and he's in tears and the wife is kind of in awe or questioning something that's happening. And the husband gets to work with a coach or a practitioner or therapist, etc. Our tool enables the coach to measure emotional states through their voice and their tone. Wow. Wow. And if you want to get spiritual, that's part sematic. That's part somatic, right? So we're measuring through AI, voice and tone and providing that feedback back to the coaches and making recommendations that, hey, this husband, though he said, this is the greatest time of my life,

and I'm so happy, his tone suggests otherwise. His emotions are probably in this area because of how we're measuring that. That's number one. And it gets deeper than that. I'm just, I'm just scratching the surface. We're kind of tittering at the line of like haptic systems and measuring biometrics. And then the other part is psychological scales. So there's one, there's emotional state, which we just talked about, but then there's psychological scale. So if you look from a traditional model, so psychedelic therapy, you have the MEQ 30, you have the integration engagement scale, the GAT 7, right? And then from executive coaching, you have the leadership circle profile. And then wellness you have like who five and ppsS etc so when you take standardized scales that have been very

effective and you and you connect that to emotional states somatic body you start getting to that point of like when embodiment meets science or when embodyment embodiment meets outcomes and now the coach the practitioner can provide real-time outcomes and feedback to their clients, like, oh, they are heading in the right direction or they're not. And here's how we can make some changes. So it's, this is insane work. And we're just scratching the surface. And you're right. I need these beautiful, amazing, brilliant humans on my team. Because what we're doing is not just some app that someone gets to go say, oh, I had a great day. I ate a bunch of mushrooms and I feel happy. It's deeper than that. And there's a place for

there's nothing wrong. Sure. But what we're doing is is transformational work where science meets spirituality. Yeah. Does it translate to all like the different medicines? You know, I don't, I've been fortunate enough to get to experience a couple different, you know, types of psychedelics on some level. Is there a way to measure that or is that necessary or is it dependent upon the kind of therapy or what are your thoughts? Yeah. Great question. So the original thesis was that it doesn't matter what modality or medicine you're using. It's about the intake information, pre-information, during information, and post-information. So when you compile all of that, no matter what the modality is, you can build protocols and you can get back to that outcomes

regardless of the modality. So that's still true in many ways because the tool is built around that. Now, where we're starting to go towards as a, I shouldn't say an add-on, but something that we are going to 100% implement is how certain psychedelics are impacting neural pathways are impacting specific, you know, emotional states, et cetera, because there's obviously so much research around that, right? Yes. There's obviously some overlap, but certain psychedelics are connected.

to certain receptors and are focusing on different neural pathways. And we want to know that. We want to know when a client is on LSD and they're going through these emotional states or they have expressed this certain trauma. How is that impacting the work? And then can we compare that to psilocybin or ketamine or MDMA and so forth? So we want this information. Yeah.

And not just we as in Safar, but with our partners, our research partners, There's a universities that we're going to, we're in talks with. Because, again, it's back to providing that data and information for the greater good and open sourcing that. It's so, man, I get goosebumps when I think about sort of the double helix of spirituality and science sort of merging together on some level. And I know that science doesn't like to use that word spirituality, but I don't know any of the better way to describe it. And when you start talking about neural pathways and language patterns, I really think you are beginning to, walk that path of those subjective results that are out there, man. And I could see why not only like treatment centers, but universities, hospitals.

I could see why this would be such a valuable tool in their hands, man. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And you know, yeah, you know, science calls it pseudoscience when you start getting spirituality. Here's the thing. Okay. And I'm not a scientist by any means. But sometimes when I'm on psychedelics, I think I am.

I, and I'm not, this isn't my state. This is something that I believe and I've heard as well is that science is starting to catch up to spirituality. And science is, look, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, it was the Newtonian law. There was standard science and standard physics. And that's what we knew was true. This is how you calculate and measure the world, the universe, and that's it. And everyone's like, that's it. Great.

And then you started seeing scientists looking at quantum physics and like, what is this kuku shit. And it was quantum physics was super science for many, many years. And then now you're starting to see that, oh, wait, it's not just standard physics or Newtonian models. Quantum physics is a thing. And what is quantum physics from a spirituality realm? Well, we can go down that rabbit hole, but the mystics and the ancients knew about quantum physics. And it's an old text. It's an old books. It's like it's passed down through wisdom keepers, through ceremony, etc. And science has just recently in the last couple of days, it's finally caught up to like, oh, yeah, there's a spiritual component to science. And science is literally the measurement of

spirituality in my perspective. And so, yeah, it's really interesting. I love it. I love it. I, you know, when I think of quantum physics, I think of the Upanishads. Just like butter exist in milk and liquidity exists in water. I exist and all that exist. You know what I mean? It's all right there, man. It's been with us the whole time. 100%.

The mystics, the ancients, new, man. Yeah, they do. I got a bunch of questions stacking up here, Sabah. Oh, great. Just, FYI. No, I got them on a panel. I got them on a moderator. Oh, beautiful.

Great. But just to warn you, I got the greatest audience in the world. And thank you to everybody chime in over here. All right. Thanks, everyone. This is coming to us from Betsy. She says, Someone with experience in both tech and human-centric leadership,

how do you envision future tech startups balancing the need for human connection with the increasing integration of AI and automation? Thank you, Betsy. It's a brilliant question. Betsy, brilliant. That's such a great question. So our whole premise of our tool is that. Our whole premise is building adaptive tools with AI.

and tech and data, but doing it in a way where we're keeping the human touch at its essence, that at the end of the day, it's the connection between the client and the practitioner. It's the connection between the client and themselves and the tool. And just like psychedelics, our tool is just a tool. It's a tool to get you back to community and nature. And I say this all the time. This is such a contradiction. but, and it's in my manifesto, I think I told you this last time, but in the manifesto, it says

that we are building tools that gets people away from technology. It's very contradictory. But when you start using tools in a way that is healthy and the way that is giving you this deeper connection for knowledge and for people, then it's this natural progression. I'm going on a tangent and I'll get back to the answer in a second. When you start hearing all this stuff in the news that tech is taking jobs away and all of that, yeah, there's 100% some truth to that, right? Like, it's almost impossible that it won't. But there's this natural evolution that I believe is going to happen with mankind.

Mankind is going to start becoming more creative, more in the arts, more things that AI is not necessarily going to be amazing at. Like, yeah, you can go build AI music and it's good. but at its core arts and creativity and and that comes from soul it comes from deep soul and consciousness and AI is not there yet or I don't know if it ever will be so those jobs are going to get those non art soulless jobs are going to be replaced by machinery and AI and the natural progression of humankind through knowledge base through education is going to get people most likely on making assumptions here back into this state of how it was hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago.

So I say all that to say, Betsy, the important aspect of this is staying true to empathy, staying true through conscious leadership. I can't speak for other companies, but for our company, again, I'm surrounded by amazing souls. we know each other deeply as humans. We have shared our stories, our struggles. And that to me builds this connection of like, it doesn't matter how many tools we use,

how many Zoom calls we are. We're on, you know, we're on fuck, man. We're on base camp. We're on Slack. We're on Notion. We're on Zoom. Like, there's all these tools that we're using connecting us for information by the end of the day.

When I'm sitting face to face or on a Zoom call and we're talking about life and depth and connection, that is what drives the business forward. And companies need to realize that. And a lot of them are, they need to realize that that's the important part is that deep connection with your people. And I don't know if that answers your question, Betsy, but it's about like getting back to like making sure that there's community

within the companies that we're building and staying true to what that means. It's a beautiful answer. Thank you, Betsy. We've got the great Ranga Padamanabon. Ranga, get at me, man. You still got to send me some things. He says, what is the biggest lie that you've ever believed and did it burn you to the ground? Oh, my God.

Ranga. But should I go smoke some D&T? Totally. What is the biggest lie that I believe in did it burn me to the ground? I'm going to say the first thing that popped in my mind. The biggest lie that I believed for, I'm 43, for 37 years of my life, was that the only way to be happy and successful and impactful in this world is you work a lot, you make a lot of money and you buy a bunch of shit. And then you continue to build that wealth in that way. And that was the biggest lie ever told.

It's still the biggest lie ever told. and it literally burned me to the ground physically, emotionally. It took me to the depths of depression and sadness because I didn't have it. It was never enough. I can make it all the money in the world. I can live in a beautiful loft in Tribeca. Didn't matter. Like, oh, it has an elevator that goes into my own apartment.

It doesn't fucking matter. The apartment's too old. You know, there was always something that kept pulling me, dragging me down. So that was the biggest lie for me. I mean, I have a few more. That gets a little more eccentric, but I think that's the one that maybe most of the, most people can resonate with.

Yeah, it's a brilliant answer. And I think we all feel that on some level. Society dictates to us that if you don't, if you're not this, then you're not anything. And we fall into that trap. A lot of the times it helps us, you know, really see the bigger picture. And sometimes do you think it's necessary? Do you think that you can't really become who you're supposed to be

unless you get burned to the ground? Yes. That was a very, for me personally, I was very adamant of saying that. I can't speak for everyone. Right. But I'll use kind of an analogy here. Like if I'm going to work with a facilitator, let's say, or a guide in ceremony or a therapist, I want to know that they've been to the depths of hell and back. Because they got themselves out or they at least know how to get themselves out in order to help me or guide me. If they've never been in that world or never have gone through that, through that burn, then they would not know how to, you know, help or guide and say like, here, here are the things that, you know, you can do. And same thing for me.

Like, how can I be the best father I can be to my children if I haven't gone through the shit that I've gone through? If I haven't learned that, you know, my parents weren't the best, but they also did some things that were really, really amazing and I'm able to balance the two. I think it's important. I think it's important to go through that experience. And the thing that will differentiate someone from fall, in my opinion, from falling into the depths of like burning and depression and sadness or whatever, like is when you are so in tune with yourself internally, when you know thyself, when you have. belief systems and that you value internally as your foundation, then you can walk that

path into the into hell knowing that like this is just the journey versus like that if you don't have that internal stuff, then you feel like that is who you are and that's part of part of what you are. And it doesn't become a journey. It just becomes a stagnant place. So I think that's the differentiator that would be an ideal. outcome, if you will. I actually have one more greatest lie. Yeah, let's hear it. A more greatest lie.

And this could be a little controversial is that we need to have external validation to tell us that we are spiritual, that we are children of God, or that we are God itself, i.k.a. religion, I have nothing against religion, but the way it has been used and demonized for the most part of the human history has been detrimental to people. So the greatest lie is like you are just a mere human and you need to go and repent or you need to go read a script or you need to go and worship something bigger than you to feel whole, to be connected to faith in spirituality. Where the opposite is true.

What I've learned is that I can still. feel connected to God, universe, religion, or whatever it may be, but know that it's all within me, that my temple, my beliefs are internal, and everything else, you know, doesn't matter. So that's the other greatest lie that's been told that might be a little controversial. I love it. And I think that that's so connected to external validation, when we seek a higher version of ourselves outside of ourselves. And it's been, it's just been, man, it's institutionalized, at least in the Western world,

it seems to be, to look for that. higher thing. And that's kind of what psychedelics teach us too. You know, whether you're talking to God or whatever you want to label that experience, like you are really in touch with yourself and you really begin to stand your personal power on so many levels, man. Yeah. What do you think is the biggest difference, Saba? Like growing up where you grew up and coming from Tehran and then coming to the West, do you think that that's given you a unique understanding about how to build something meaningful? That's a great question. Yeah. I'm thinking because I also want I don't want my answer to discredit folks who have built meaningful stuff that maybe haven't had a similar path.

So I want to acknowledge that. Yeah, I was born in the middle of the war. My parents lived a very comfortable, wealthy life. My dad had amazing jobs and we had our family and all of that got taken away. and we had to start over. So part of it was the classic immigrant chip on your shoulder where you just got to make shit happen no matter what. Sometimes to your detriment, like fuck your feelings, fuck your emotions, go get shit done.

And that's kind of how unfortunately my culture and many cultures, especially for men are, especially in like working environments. But that gave me that chip on the shoulders to want to succeed and grow. The other part is watching my parents, watching my dad, both my parents, but I'll use my dad because I'm watching my dad lose everything and then come to this country and start over with literally like dollars in his pocket and work his way back up into a middle, upper class life of like 20, 30 years of grinding and stress and heart conditions and cancer and all of that, Gay showed me that, like, I don't know, this is cheesy.

Anything is possible. Like, he literally, like, built his own startup, personal life startup from scratch by force. It was taken away from him. And he said, that's not going to hold me back. Fuck that. I'm going to build my life for myself and my children. And I'm going to start, if I have to start from scratch, I will, and watch me prove it. And kind of that.

I mean, that's in my DNA, man. Like, I'm not going to fucking give up. Now, am I doing it in a more empathetic, conscious, spiritual way? Yeah, absolutely. But am I, do I not, I'll get on a fucking call. And we need to get shit done to move the mission forward. We're going to get shit done. But again, it's this balance, right?

And it's a healthy balance and you have to have that. So yeah, I think my upbringing and then also my career, I spent 20 years in startups. There's a point in a startup where you fucking run out of runway. You're chasing runway at a startup. And that means that when your runway is done, I know most of you know this, but when your runway is done, you can't pay your people. You can't pay yourself. You're chasing that. So I grew up in that working environment for basically my whole career.

And of course, some were better than others. But so you start to build this kind of like muscle memory of like, man, I don't this, I'm not at Microsoft. Like I don't have abundance of like I need to grow. I need to build. And of course, there's negative impacts of that as well. But there's also a lot of growth and learning. And I'm a better person and a better founder and CEO because of that.

And I can't I can't discredit it just because it was hard and it and it and it messed me up in some ways. Man. Your dad sounds like an amazing man. I can see why you are who you are, man. And thanks for sharing that story. That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you.

You know, what about being where you're at now and the struggle, the fights, the wins, the losses? Yeah. What are you responsible to the community? Like when you're building this, what are your responsibilities to the community for like maybe there's a young Saba or a young George out there? What is it that you're responsible for in building a new product or service? The fact that this is your question almost makes me cry. should be your answer.

It's like a script. Insert cry. Insert the crying moment. I could have went and built any product in any industry and just been another tech bro, raised a bunch of money and ride that wave. There's no doubt about it. I could still do that now. I can still drop what I'm doing with Sapphire or move on

and go, I have 100 ideas and I probably, 97 of them are terrible, but I believe that three of my ideas I can scale a business with that are not in psychedelics or somewhere like impactful human transformation. And I can take that path and it will be great. The reason why I'm doing this is not, and this is not me being a martyr by any ways, trust me, like this, there's many aspects of this that really is hard and sucks. Like I said, I made some really hard sacrifices these last couple of years. The reason why I do this is we have to meet people where they are.

Not everyone has the luxury to go to the jungles of Peru and sit with ayahuasca. Not everyone has the luxury of wealth to have a team of people. helping them out, coaches, therapists, etc. Many cultures, people of color, do not have the luxury of working with these gray area markets or these illegal substances, specifically the people of color because the laws are written against them. And when that happens, I may be a person, I'm Iranian, I may be tithering in this line, of like I'm not going to be as impactful, but I have resources. If I get caught with a certain Schedule I, one drug, I guarantee you I have a better response or you, George, have a better,

an easier chance of getting a good lawyer and getting your sentence drawn or whatever. Yeah. This is someone from a underrepresented culture or people of color. They're going to get the worst sentence because of how the laws are written. It's just that simple. live, our laws are systematically racist. And that to me, all of these things that I just mentioned, it's about access, is about giving people access to be better without, you know, repercussions or without saying, like,

I don't have the money or I'm scared. That's a big chunk of it. The other part of it is from kind of just a professional standpoint, I have spent in, I shouldn't say enough time because it's never enough, but I've spent plenty of time with practitioners in the psychedelic space, psychedelic therapists, above ground, underground, coaches, facilitators in my own personal journey. I've sat with, I've listened to executive coaches, health coaches. And there's something really clear here. The systems that they are using, the systems that are using are broken. And at the end of the day, if the systems are broken,

they are failing their clients. So it's a full circle. Like, I want to, to build something, I am building something that is helping from a professional standpoint to help practitioners be better at their craft so their clients have better outcomes. And I also want to provide tools that allows clients access to practitioners and functions that helps them grow. And very soon, we will also have a fund. And our fund is going to help people in the disadvantaged worlds have more access to psychedelics, executive coaches, leadership coaches, health coaches, et cetera. And the last thing I'm going to say is it's about acknowledging the ancient

wisdom keepers, the indigenous practices that have brought the psychedelics to where they are now. And reciprocity is important. And I have a, and I am literally today, or as we speak, like assembling a council of elders and wisdom keepers because they are the ones that are going to guide safari into the right direction that we are ethically building AI the right way and we are doing it in a way where we are sacred and respecting the practices of psychedelic medicine, ceremonies and traditions. I just went on a ramp. Sorry, hopefully that answered your question.

That's beautiful, man. I would expect, I think that the answer fit the question. It was well done. I appreciate it. You know, I know Denver's coming up, and I think Christian would punch me in the face if I didn't say that Psychedelic Playhouse has got an incredible set of events coming up. And I know you're going to be there. I'm going to be out there. What are you doing over there with Psychedelic Playhouse? Yeah.

So Faris sponsoring. So we were fortunate enough to sponsor the Playhouse. So I'm going to be there both nights. I believe it's the Tuesday, Wednesday there. I'm excited about it. So aside from just mingling and seeing you, person and giving you a big hug. I'm there to talk to practitioners. I'm there to talk to folks that are either newly in the space or have been in the space a long time and just learn. I just want to

learn. And then hopefully have the opportunity to pitch Sapphire to some people through, I know some of the folks at the playhouse are doing like a shark tank style thing. Yeah. And then lastly, like it's going to be good music. There's going to be snacks. Like just have a good time. And I think, you know, I went to psychedelic science last year. It's, it's a behemoth of a conference. And it's so overwhelming. And it's, and it's also amazing, like great speakers and all of that, but it's overwhelming. It's a lot. It's an intense. Being able to go into a more contained space where the plant magic cafe is beautiful space that was there last year. It's lovely. It's nice, but it's contained, it's intimate.

It's not as intense and relaxing. So your nervous system isn't shot. You still get great contents as going to be speaking and all of that. But it's going to be in much more relaxing environment. And that to me is like, man, I'm excited. And that's why I'm going to spend both days there. And this isn't a plug. This is like literally like I'm going to spend both days there because I want that intimacy versus like, you know,

500 booths and 3,700 talks, you know, throughout the day, which has as time in place for as well. Yeah, I love it. It's like the end of a mushroom trip. Like in the beginning, like you just get, you know, you're bewildered by everything. But as you start coming down, all of a sudden you start like making some real connections. That's so true, man. Well, I know there's going to be so many great speakers there. And they got some epic music, the Shark Tank event that Kyle and Matt and Richie are throwing together, man. There's going to be some epic people there. And just can't say enough good stuff about it. And I'm super stoked. I should have, I should have booked like three hours with you, Saaba, because we're all to come in. I, I It's like an hour, man. Like we'll do some live stuff from there. And I'll get you back on on a panel I got coming up. But, uh, amazing. Thank you. Before, uh, we land the plane, man, where can people find you?

What do you got coming up and what are you excited about? Where can people find me? Um, so on Instagram, um, it's at Saba SABBA underscore get G-G-E-H-N. Um, and then LinkedIn is my full name on LinkedIn. Either one of those, send me a DM. Uh, you know, happy to talk to any. anyone, anytime. Sorry, what were the other two questions?

What do you got coming up? What are you excited about? Yeah, what do I have coming up? Obviously, we're continuously building and growing a business. We have already have a bunch of users that are on the platform now. We have some big partnerships that I can't speak about yet, but will soon announce that I think will be a game changer inside and outside of psychedelics. And from kind of a personal standpoint, yeah, I'm excited to be at psychedelic science.

I'm going to be part of the global psychedelic week events. I'm excited about that. And yeah, it's just kind of doing that, man. I'm just moving along. And if anybody has questions about the company or, you know, wants to test it out or whatever, you know, please reach out. I'm always having conversations with folks. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, everybody in the chat from Neil, Tracy, Ranga.

Betsy, thank you guys all so much for chime in and hanging out with us. I hope everybody is a beautiful day. Go down to the show notes. Check out all the links down there with Saba. And Saba, hang on briefly afterwards. But to everybody else, have a beautiful day. That's how we got. Everyone.