Jose Muñoz - Co-Founder of Wondermed | Healing Mental Health With Psychedelics

Welcome to success story the most useful podcasts in the world. I'm your host Scott DeClairey the success story podcast is part of the blue wire podcast network as well as the hub spot podcast network which has other great podcasts like social light hosted by Steph Taylor social light discusses all things online marketing Steph Taylor answers all your business marketing questions she deep dies into the nitty gritty of online marketing content marketing social media marketing marketing strategy for business owners if any of these topics resonate with you you're going to love the show. You'll learn things like how to scale your brand on various different social media platforms some of the biggest mistakes you can make with your launch of a new product or service the importance of nurturing and engaging your audience consistently. The importance of having your audience fully understand the problem you're trying to solve and why it's important to solve right now as well as why growing audiences across all social platforms feels so hard in 2022. You can go listen to social light wherever you get your podcasts or at the HubSpot podcast network at HubSpot.com slash podcast network today my guess is Jose Munoz he is the co founder and managing director of WonderMed a health tech company empowering the inner healing of people through psychedelic medicine starting with low dose oral ketamine. Jose combines his international experience in business entrepreneurship to develop business models that generate positive impact previously building self sustained desalination plants and underdeveloped countries throughout the world he has shifted his focus to healing mental health disorders with the help of psychedelic medicine raising 5.6 million dollars to date in their seed round he is determined to push the boundaries of our imagination to make long lasting change in the world. Now we spoke about his company the structure the history the mission the vision we spoke about ketamine how it works in the brain and the power holds to gaining new perspectives on treating mental health disorders we spoke about how people can actually start using it to heal what the process looks like the positive impact that WonderMed is trying to bring to the world that large the boundaries and limits of our understanding is human beings in terms of treatment and mental health and well being we spoke with the meaning of life we spoke about how to find purpose in living we spoke about the potential psychedelic medicine to revolutionize society at large no no no it's a fair assumption I think positive impact will be the common denominator between everything that I've been doing since a very young age I think I've mentioned this before probably I was 12 when I started on my birthday is deciding that I was wanting to conglomerate value from people so instead of making a birthday list of things that I wanted I started making a birthday list of things that people needed and so I would use the chance that people were just giving me things for the fact that I had just gone one more round around the sun and utilize that in given what a hospital so for example a lot of the time so what I did was soccer balls one year I collected 50 soccer balls and just started spreading them through a hospital network and so that was that's amazing I was there I don't want to presence as a kid hey fair no no that's good from a young age is what you're doing yeah shout out to my mother yeah it's the one that I started inflicting that value that we can make good even in the small decisions and I think that just a stick with me I've always been passionate about seeing the world from the big picture and understanding that if anything were just one more factor as humans in the Holocaust system of life and I think started clicking when I was in New York going on the subway I was going to school and realizing that the amount of people that I was crossing by every single day that were making very similar interactions with life that I was that it had something of value that nobody was capturing so I started getting very very curious about how to conglomerate human power to generate positive impact and so what I did was started studying socio economic development I found like a lot of people know money becomes the function of movement of development in society and I want to understand what he came from the structure to which it was being produced use a sword and I started to study things such as pills law the bank chart that I started in 1844 in England and realized that the structure of the financial markets and economies was a set of structure that was being tested a very long time ago and he has had not done much of a change and so when I started reading white papers like the theorem white paper or the Bitcoin white paper in cryptocurrency systems I realized that they were discussing topics that were for the longest time considered the only reality of economic systems we're talking about basic things such as reserve ratios in socio economic models and how much reserve do you need to be able to print additional value and so that just got me excited of realizing that there could be a new model that we could build where people could interact all areas of life not just all areas of life and so I started promoting technology I wanted people to feel passionate about doing good I looked at the nonprofit industry and realized that there's something integral that is missing on it and that is the fact that when you're producing value you're giving value you want to get something in return it doesn't necessarily have to be economic value but something and then no profit industry I think lacks from a fundamental standpoint how it is being seen and worked until today lacks that you give money you don't see it again but you really don't see anything else except that transaction that you did in the past the one you're going to positive impact investing something an area that I really really enjoyed there was a very big opportunity cost constantly being decided between capital gain or positive impact and I saw that as an unrealistic expectation in terms of comparing every single decision making between those two factors and so I started to develop something quite in the middle where you could be part of a larger circle a larger socio economic movement in which your interactions didn't necessarily mean higher revenue your expectation wasn't to generate additional capital but some would get back to you in addition to a positive impact and so one of the first things and currently still in the air is the salination plant to provide water from the ocean to people that don't have water in coastal places where escalability of water is very difficult wells don't work well when you're talking already in the sizes of three thousand to five thousand families and so I just like to start sticking things together I went to the best technology out of Netherlands elemental water makers put things together and I started to generalize this idea that if you want to belong to a larger community that everybody from the world can belong to in an equal way and be part of a positive impact movement you can you can actually generate value from it what's the reception to that so now I think that positive impact investing is actually very very invoked I think that's something that people really care about I think it's not the growth at all costs and I actually think that when people look at companies that do good there's a lot of underlying factors that and they can make substantial returns as well and the growth at all costs might set actually is starting to really fall out of favor not completely but I mean to to many investors it's very important when like time frame so when was when were you doing this because I want to understand yeah eventually but the sentiment towards what you were doing so when you first were trying to do good you were looking for investment or what was the what was the market reaction to what you were building winning to a competition of startups in the Amazon offices in New York one by a surprisingly largest storm given that I needed to have an MVP product in the Dito space already created and I didn't have it didn't have that type of technological yeah knowledge to be able to make it happen but I had a story I had the idea very well thought out and I remember the crowd standing up and applauding to the concept and I think that that really just made me realize it's not going to be easy investors are not going to be receptive at first or of an idea like this but what I just experienced of a reaction from a crowd is exactly what I'm looking for it's a type of value that I want to be represented in a system that hasn't been created yet so I started going for VCs and sentences like Kate I'm more interested in positive impact than making money not something you should say in front of an investor I mean it's not a bad thing to say but I also know I know investors exactly it's a tough one so that made me learn pretty quickly and that positive impact is still needed to embrace itself more in the mindset of traditional investments or VC and so that just made me realize that a lot of it was going to be coming directly from people the concept of crowd funding the concept of being able to generate one plus one equals three if it comes from multitude and I was actually in the middle of of building this when I got to meet Ryan Magnuson the co-founder of of wonder sciences and wonder met and he'd really put everything together at the time I was studying astrophysics I was doing a thesis trying to understand the boundaries and limitations of the observer aka ourselves as humans in understanding what reality was what the concept of the universe was and I started to find very interesting statistics like for example humans can only perceive 0.0035 percent of this electromagnetic spectrum of light again 0.0035 percent what does that mean break that down for what that means for you let's see let's put it from an economic standpoint I'm going to give you a million dollars from which oh no no I understand my new ratio that we can see I actually met but like if somebody is like what does that actually mean for what I can see well or what which we see a reality yeah everything around us right now color shapes it all comes because of the reception that we have from a visual standpoint of the electromagnetic wavelength that is all around us that electromagnetic wavelength has a spectrum let's consider a spectrum of 0 to 100 yeah in which you can only perceive 0.0035 percent which is an insanely small number insanely small so when we consider the object to go reality it's a very limited one all around us right now there is an incredible amount of light wavelengths that we are not even able to perceive and so that made me just trigger the idea of why when we look out in the universe we try to create mathematical equations to understand what it is without really first understanding how limited we are in understanding the current reality that we have and so I started correlating scales of astrophysics and quantum physics and found very similar boundaries in the scales of when our current mathematics and physics models stopped working and that just made me feel very small it made me feel very special it made me realize of the true power that life is the uncertainty of it and you know how valuable we are to be here today the same almost like the naiveness of humans absolutely and once again I got reinforced the idea the only purpose that we have here is to try to make the best of it it's almost as a traditional concept such as heaven are the present and we just have to build it and this is also where the the fight between light and darkness in society comes underneath the framework of psychedelic medicine it is the idea that as a society we need to change fast and we need to change now for us to change the direction in which the world is going I think people are realizing of the true detriment of the impact that society has been having in the way that we've been living for now centuries but now more than ever we're actually being able to quantify that detrimental factors we're actually being able to understand and visualize this is not just something happening in my small town or my city or my country it's actually happening worldwide and people are starting to suffer from a big picture perspective and so when he came to me and he told me that he was trying to elevate the consciousness of the planet he wanted to start allowing people to change their perspective and doing so through technology technology being psychedelic medicine I think that's the best way to describe it some people might describe it as a product some people might describe it as a service I think that the most pragmatic way of looking at it is technology one plus one equal two for me and I decided to move to LA from New York and I started building the company with them and what so so that's incredible it's an incredible reason to want to go into a certain business and a certain a certain thing that you're trying to do so you I see the progression you're you're trying to really you're trying to make life better for people you realize that how people don't really have a good grasp on what life even is and this is the mechanism that will hopefully allow you and the team to do this now when you look at when you look at psychedelics let's first talk about why because psychedelics are not new so let's break down like why are psychedelics trending now what has the history of psychedelics been because I also want to understand that if these are again that was advocates such a great benefit to society and it will allow us to see things and and and look at life through a different lens and think differently and and think bigger why have you know why has government more or less shut these down for significant period of time and then also what's different in 2022 that's a great question and it actually to answer it goes far beyond psychedelic medicine or medicine as a whole we're talking about social behavior the way in which the world behaves and every single actor in display which is us as individuals are being able to make a voice or an impact I think when psychedelic medicine initially got out into the world it was a very difficult time for society especially in the United States through the next and years war on drugs was voting power I think there was a lot of detrimental factors that come with drugs and unfortunately psychedelic medicine got introduced into the same bucket primarily because he was making a large portion of society that was going through these experiences think differently I think governments since the inception of time have wanted us to behave like sheep to feel structure and gain that a structure through lack of understanding lack of transparency of information and psychedelic medicine does exactly that not in the large scale and large scale alone of society but to yourself it allows you to think differently to behave differently to see the reality with a different lens and governments don't want that to happen what has changed now the age of information I think truth is much harder to be hidden today that it was a hundred years from now that it was a thousand years from now and it will be harder to be hidden in the next a hundred years and I don't know the same way that I turn myself into it I'm a very data driven person I think anybody else that wants to understand really the power that psychedelic medicine has through clinical trials you can just look at the data and the results that having happening comparing them to anything else that has been utilized for the same purpose is showcasing incredible results and so there's really a hard way to look at this and realize okay this is something we should have stopped the other way around it's actually turning very intelligent minds the other way and thinking okay this is something we should actually explore further and I'm talking about neuroscientists astrophysicists and biologists business savvy individuals really from every aspect of the world of life are coming into a psychedelic world with an eye of exploration and I think that that's something that you know in the past we didn't have the opportunity to bring in such a larger scale and and follow up on that why do you think that psychedelics you made a career choice you made a conscious career choice I mean the the the guy who you named before gentleman before what was it Ryan Magnuson so explain his role what was is he the original founder yeah he's the one he's the one being involved in psychedelics for a long period of time or is this through his personal life psychedelics change his life and that's something that he talks a lot about that's why he was passionate about what he was passionate I mean I think he's always been an individual he started pioneering the internet in the early 19 early 2000s and build that a very large conglomerate that then in my opinion shape what the internet is today we're talking about a company that was doing the total advertisement when websites were created for the first time and he's type of mind was always surrounding innovation and he go to appointing his life where he started to decide what else is there what's the actual purpose and I think that psychedelic medicine really provides you that type of perspective in a very quick manner a very rapid way it's almost a catalyst of your own perspective because that's actually the question I was going to ask because if you're thinking about how do I how do I make life better for everyone on the on earth yeah um it's interesting that you chose psychedelics versus for example fixing education systems or something like that right so is is the reason because it's such an immediate quick if you expose somebody to psychedelics and you feel like their life can be instantly improved is that the reason why you wanted to double down on this versus anything else that could elevate the consciousness of humanity I actually love the example you gave education I think psychedelic medicine is the most fascinating form of education for somebody that allows a structural change to happen in one's mind I think education starts when you're a baby the first neurological connection you make whether it's mom whether it's dad whether it's water because you need it you start learning and adapting how to behave as a species in this world based on social constructs whether it's language whether it's norms that start building who you are as a character and for the longest time we are all kind of living in the present moment if you think of this of life as a book we're in the present page you're reading it and sometimes you have the ability to go back and think of memory so think of ways in which you currently have landed in this present page psychedelic medicine allows you to open that book and be able to navigate as a catalogue a lot of times your life allow to see the big picture of the book the beginning the end and see how you want to continue shaping it so it's the most profound form of education that somebody can have that allows them to really have their own eyes as to what life is and what's so different between psychedelics versus if you like if you meditate and if you focus on extreme self-awareness and is there is there is there is there things you can take from other practices that are could be similar to to what you unlock when you take psychedelics that actually I've never done any psychedelics I mean yeah sure drink smoke like just like recreational shit but never like ketamine I know a lot of people that microdose LSD uses a very popular thing now as well so like walk me through what happens when you first take any and I'm sure there's a whole bunch of different types of reactions to different types of substances so like if somebody is somebody high a wasca I've never done but I've heard a lot of people speak about that crazy shit so if somebody's listening to this and they've never touched psychedelics in their life like what is do like a 101 on what to expect I bet they I bet it's it's almost hard to conceptualize how you can think differently than how you think right now like it doesn't make sense because your life and learned experiences indicate how you think and yeah there's times when you maybe you know if you if you're in a great state and you're calm in your relax you're not stressed out maybe you think a little bit clearer but for somebody to think differently or to think in you know in 3d versus on a single level it's it's an incredible thought but it's hard to comprehend and wrap your mind around absolutely I mean I think everybody's is different as an experience when I personally think of psychedelic medicine the idea that comes to my mind the most is the idea of perspective there's an exercise that I usually do with people we just do place a finger front of their face and look at something in the opposite side of the room and then to close one eye and then close the other one and feel how the finger doesn't move the thing that you're looking in the background doesn't move you're only changing the perspective of one eye over the other and the whole reality really shifts its own look that is more difference is really what you can feel in a psychedelic experience I think there's a lot of physical components to it as well that it's what makes it an enjoyable in some cases and in some cases a heart experience but at the know the day it's that second look that you can take from a different angle it's almost a bird eye view of your life in the case of ketamine for example a lot of people represented as a step back the ability of being able to look at your life or to look at what's currently happening all the problems that you might have from a observer standpoint we're talking before about the limitation of the almost looking out of body experience to an extent exactly common traits of people that do psychedelic medicine is really shifting the concept of me me me to we we we it really makes you feel that you belong to something greater that you belong to something that it's hard to understand it's hard to explain but it's something that goes beyond what you've been taught for the longest time that reality is the life is and I think that we just need to be listeners of those experiences and we need to be observers and then we need to try to adapt and that to your point to your question before comes the aspect of not seeing psychedelic medicine as the only route to get here psychedelic medicine in my opinion is a mere catalyst people are able to achieve this type of perspective or way of thinking without the necessity of these substances you mentioned meditation breathwork exercise I personally got to experience this out of body type of experiences or perspectives by analyzing the gravitational movement of the moon around the earth just by staring at the moon for two hours after studying gravitational theory be able to disconnect for a second and perceive the the world around me in a different way others do it by doing extreme sports or taking their bodies to the limit I think that there's multiple ways in which you can actually gain this perspective and the beautiful thing about psychedelics is that not everybody has the willpower or their life allows them to focus so much and so much effort to get in there without any form of help it's true life is stressful very stressful very noisy I think a lot of people more than we want to talk about air suffering from mental health and they're suffering acquiredly one of the main reasons could be because people are not aware they're suffering from mental health one in every four Americans are suffering from a diagnosis of mental health disorder in a single given year more and more now that I'm in the mental health space I keep hearing people open up to myself we want a one conversations around but the pressure really means and how they're going through it and it is truly different for a lot of people and that's also the beautiful thing of what we do and what one their mate is doing right now is that we're providing a medicine to a solution that seems very common to everybody anxiety depression but that is actually very unique everybody feels inside and depression incredibly differently and so the changes that you see and that we're seeing in our patients is really what fascinates me so if everybody experiences everything differently then how do you have a solution to help anybody and then also if everybody experiences anxiety and depression differently how could how could anything ever be like federally approved because I'm sure that you know if somebody somebody has you know if somebody has anxiety depression or a lot of demons inside and they and they go do ayahuasca and you have somebody who can sort of guide them through that but there's so many different outcomes and obviously it's good bad and it's very different for every single person because the problems are dealing with are very different the traumas are dealing with you try and tap into those traumas with I guess the traditional way that you tap into those would be like a therapist or something like that somebody who has a knowledge to guide you through if you're just giving somebody a substance and saying I'm going to let the substance do the work but we're going to have the substance for a wide variety of different traumas how do you know that the outcomes going to be positive or negative or healthy or unhealthy great question I think to answer it we need to look at it from two different standpoints one is what I mentioned before that the medicine alone doesn't do the trick the medicine allows you the opportunity for that kind of feedback up and just like so what's the what's the what's the therapy like so let's say like somebody is actually looking to and then we can sort of understand more about how let's focus then on what's currently being available for people something that has been available for the past 50 years but it's currently being accessible through companies like WonderMed if you're somebody suffering from mental health currently the psychiatry industry utilizes very subjective standardization surveys to understand whether or not somebody suffering from a mental health diagnosis and therefore gets diagnosed for a disorder right now the way in which WonderMed allows somebody to be able to experience this alternative form of treatment is by them going to a digital platform where they get diagnosed they get asked about their health history they're able to have a one-on-one consultation with a clinician that understands and gets to know the reasons why somebody's seeking this type of alternative form of medicine and then allows them to be able to in the comfort of their home receive a medication package that gets them into a meditative estate it's really one of the main powers of ketamine and in the case of low dose allows you in a safe environment to get into an experience of about an hour an hour and 15 minutes that in our case currently standardization is one time per week that allows you to get this perspective allows you to look inside yourself and in our case we call it empower your inner healer for the longest time I think to backtrack a little bit mental health has been seen as a chemical imbalance issue in the brain so we started to devise different medications such as SSRIs or benzodiazepines that started targeting these problems from that angle SSRIs started to regulate serotonin levels in the synaptic cleft which is the area in between neurons that regulated mood and we thought that there was a direct correlation and causality between increases of serotonin level and decreases in depression that is actually seen to not be true in the case of benzodiazepines, benzos, medications like Xanax that people are familiar with they target the central neural system in the back of your head and it inhibits it so it essentially does inhibit anxiety but it inhibits the whole body and that's why you get this type of feeling of zombie like estate these medications have been used on a regular basis sometimes on a daily basis for decades there's a lot of people are currently are probably here in this and they're currently taking them it's not that they're incredibly detrimental it's just that the efficacy rates from which the different clinical trials have been proven to show it's not that high and so I feel that the whole industry had this shift of pardon that didn't just see mental health as a chemical imbalance in your brain but it was actually more of a mind body spirit relation it is the aspect that your brain has the capability to make a structural changes that's where ketamine comes into play ketamine targets the glutamate neurotransmitter network which is the most common and potent neurotransmitter network in the brain and it empowers it so instead of inhibiting it actually generates new neurological connections it is this concept of neuroplasticity or brain is one of the most if not the most beautiful complex and interesting muscles that we have in the body it allows you to change how you see everything the world are you interact with your sensitivity levels your perception of the world and to think that that has been built through time when you're a kid this idea that you can learn a lot you're a fast learner when you're a kid you adapt a lot kind of gets lost as you grow I find it to be a very sad reality for a lot of people and if psychedelic medicine has the opportunity to sprung that back through the idea of increased neuroplasticity I think people are inherently going to be thinking differently that is more change than I allow you to change a thought loop that might be generating anxiety or depression about the problem the finger that we talked about before and be able to see the actual reality behind the finger very differently right and I want to I want to understand further about how this actual protocol works before we go into that for neuroplasticity if you're saying that this ketamine improves neuroplasticity that is the requirement of learning like a new thing right like neuroplasticity so in theory could this be used to like fast track the learning of a new skill as well because whenever you do something you can say so absolutely because if you do something I mean this is probably like the off label the off label youth but I mean if you think about neuroplasticity if you plasticity if you if you do something 10,000 times that is what you're increasing for that particular thing absolutely the skill that we're working with is happiness here yeah that's the skill that we're allowing people to really work on and happiness is incredibly subjective it is the idea that you can change habits skills ways of behaving ways of thinking there's a lot of people that think in a very negative way I myself have a lot of people I know that you know the the concept of being inherently pessimistic somebody that just looks at the world and if it's a rainy day they automatically their whole day is going to go from that type of pessimistic outlook that's all in your mind of course really a powerful tool to start thinking positively and getting your brain to kind of do it without thinking that's a habit that psychedelic medicine can help you any form of habit that you want to change you're actually in this neuroplastic window is stayed I'll allow you to learn much faster I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode Manscaped now Manscaped is the leader in 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company itself even from a cap table perspective people like Aubrey Marcus being one of our main investors and this concept of utilizing the medicine to become the best version of yourself yeah hence looking at things such as mental health is one of the main reasons why we do what we do very cool learning is repetition it has different components but repetition is one of the key aspects of it showing psychedelic medicine I really want to reiterate this because it's a very important factor that we strongly believe in the company and the industry as a whole psychedelics again do not do the trick alone so there is important aspects such as intention setting actually understanding from therapeutic standpoint why am I going to go into a psychedelic experience why I'm actually taking treatment instead of taking just a daily pill from a surgical industry has been teaching us for a long time why am I actually going to try to take a deep look at myself and be able to change the way I think and that intention is actually what allows you to have a much more effective treatment and then most importantly to your point is the aspect of integration really is the key to prosperity and long-term change it is the idea that whatever experience you go through whether it's positive or negative you need to learn adapt and generate insights from and that is really the powerful aspect that psychedelics medicines bring is the key to open the door to a successful integration or to a breakthrough integration effort so if you okay so now you're in this state for an hour an hour and a half every single week so what's the actual protocol that somebody will go through once once they take ketamine in our case we believe that life is very hectic that people need the opportunity to heal and the comfort of their day-to-day life and that for us becomes the comfort of your home becomes the idea that we want to to empower yourself to be able to make the change that you need so in our case the protocol initiates by doing a thought provoking exercise of intention setting by asking yourself questions and journaling about why is it that you're going to go into a psychedelic experience as I mentioned before the idea of generating breath work exercises for you to be able to go into this calm state and then while you're on the experience letting your brain discover and explore these these different type of questions that you've put out to yourself I think scientists know this a lot because it has happened and multiple let's just call it this covers have happened right before or doing a sleep when people go to sleep thinking of a problem or thinking of an issue and sometimes wake up with a solution writers for example wake up with a sentence that they would like to put in their next letteric and that itself is the power of the brain of allowing yourself to go into a meditative state or stating which the frequency in which your different areas of the brain communicate come up with a certain conclusion that is really the aspect of the journey itself of one hour and fifteen minutes it's a deep dive meditation experience which you have the ability to explore different concepts at a speed in a way that is quite unique and then afterwards you then need to try to dissect these type of insights things that you're being able to see to to think about and try to apply them to your day-to-day almost like getting perspective to then share it big what are the different insights that you would like to put forward in your life and can you and and when you're in this state because it would be hard to understand what this is like unless you're you've actually done it when you're in this state you're you're you're lucid like you're aware like and you can and you can choose what you want to focus on there's a lot of things that it's not like because I've heard with like high oscar like you don't actually choose 100% of the time what you're able to focus on absolutely um in the case of ketamine in the difference with many other psychedelic substances is that you do have in a much more direct capacity control over the experience especially in the low dosages that wonder met as a company's doing in the industry really it's one of the very few is not the only one a large scale that it's currently doing lower to do medium dose of ketamine you're very much aware you do have and feel some form of the sedative component of ketamine being an anesthetic are we to regenerate it as a substance um but because you're in a sub anesthetic level of dosing you actually go into the experience having control over the thoughts it's true that what we've built is the idea of you being able to go into a music journey that curates the experience and you very much see how your thoughts and experience navigates based on the music so it's not that you necessarily have the pure pure control over every single thought we're very much aware I mean even even when we're like when we're sitting here you don't have 100% control over thoughts anyway so absolutely yeah so um it's a very powerful and unique opportunity for people that have never tried something like this that have been taken traditional forms of medication and things haven't changed the way they thought they would or things have not progressed and have the feeling of feeling a stuck it really brings them an opportunity to test a psychedelic experience in this case coming from ketamine as a substance where they can feel control they can feel safe and yet be able to feel something quite unique okay so um what is the what is the uh like the actual results of using ketamine so I'm I want to actually go into the business of building a company like this as well because it's very interesting you completely pivoted industries like you're like a complete 180 which is like it's also like it's also like an incredible story like it's a CEO for you to be able to do that too that's not always easy to go into a brand new industry you've never worked in raise a whole bunch of money build a company and build it successfully and I know it's still like it's early-ish but you've done quite well so I want to figure out like the business of building a ketamine company but yeah totally but the results okay so let's actually like I want to sort of highlight what this does for people what are the results that you've seen on people that actually take this ketamine clinics are now all over the US I think and that is probably one of the more popular and probably only legal if i'm not mistaken currently in the utilization of it for mental health yeah the utilization of it on an off label used by clinicians is out of the main substances yeah you can consider from COSIA when LSD it is it is very new it's an exploding industry it's a blue ocean market how new is this how how new is this that's the really special aspect ketamine has been utilized for the past five decades and you mentioned that like 50 years almost yeah and the substance that has been utilized on the ER setting as an anesthetic because he had incredibly safe profiles for the utilization on large dosing on an anesthetic and then doctors such as for example doctor John Christo out of Yale University I started to understand and discovered the difference into the press effects that ketamine has a substance had so in terms of it being new as a substance has been available for a long time but it is starting to be accessible for people in these new off label use one of the main aspects of this that has allowed it is technology and telemedicine platforms that have been able to go into states in which a statistical analysis has been done in terms of the resources for mental health that people have and in some states you have one therapist for every four thousand people so it's a very interesting way of looking at this as an opportunity that never existed before from how big the demand is is incredibly large and I think that as a company something that I want to reiterate is this is very noble a lot of people are catching into it but we need to do this in a very responsible way and I think there's only a handful of companies that are really taking the hard look at the science and wanting to do this from a research standpoint in generalization of data and the true understanding of what these medicine is doing for people. Like I'm assuming when there's financial opportunity there's people that may not follow all the rules and you know dot the eyes and cross the teeth you just actually met before we started recording now there's a ketamine task force that is going out and looking at some of these companies what are the what are the potential negatives like what could the abuse like within the other form of medication the maluse of it the idea that people might start using it or clinics that start just dispensing it without the appropriate efforts and the appropriate reasoning behind it but you you mentioned something about effectiveness and what I have we've been seeing the positive from India so let me I'm going to explain this in two ways one is through a statistical explanation of what we've been seeing so far in data and two is the actual impact that we're making in the world from a statistical standpoint patients that have gone through wonder met and have done one month treatment 95% of them have showcased an average reduction in their levels of anxiety and depression of 42% and that is 95% 95% very impressive very impressive numbers now granted we launched three months ago there's a lot of things that need to happen a lot of more of a larger population we've already been seeing hundreds and hundreds of patients but there's a lot more to come and a lot of more research and data analysis to be done for it to be how do you measure how do you measure that primarily through subjective serving like the psychiatrist industry as I mentioned before does things such as the pH Q9 or the J87 or the sat 10 surveys that ask you about your well-being but what I really want to hone in is how can these actually change your life it's not a survey that says that you have less anxiety is you changing your life or patients are eroded using their anxiety yes but they're moving out of the country they're getting married they're getting divorced some people are decided that they're going to spend more time with their kids some people are starting to work out there are some people that are starting to travel there's some people learning a new language there's actual physical and real change happening people's lives through the decision-making conscious decision-making that has come from the treatment and that is really why I believe that these personalized experience or personalized impact that we're having on people actually has a positive effect in mental health so what you're saying is the person goes to the treatment they have a better perspective on their life they understand maybe that life is short or that maybe they should take more action or they should remove somebody toxic or or do something that they would have never had the courage to do before and then they take that action because of that change so the change perspective and the improvement is not for that hour and a half so once you go through this how does somebody because I guess that neuroplastic conversation before but how does somebody for example go through this treatment protocol and then say hey I'm going to move to Europe because or or I'm going to have a kid with my partner or I'm going to break up with my partner because that person isn't good for me how how does that given the courage to do that is it because of that is that development where they I'm going to answer that based on how people have been answering themselves as patients they feel like themselves again I think that that's the best way to describe people that felt lost people that felt lost for a long period of their life now feel like themselves feel like themselves again and I think that that alone gives you the courage gives you the openness gives you the ability to take action in a way that you maybe didn't see possible or maybe you didn't see the other side but actually believe that you could make a change like that that to actually make you feel better so making yourself feel again and I think you know when you look at the hardship of society you look at what traditional medications cost people can receive benzodiazepine prescription for 30 60 dollars per month and be able to access a form of medicine that might not be the best but it's actually quite accessible for them psychedelic medicine and ketamine it's in the thousands of dollars in most cases and areas even in telemedicine platforms this is something I'm very proud of but as a company in WonderMed we've been able to break that barrier and allow people to be able to receive this medicine for $399 a month something that we hope to go much much lower in the future but there is a lot of hardship now we're going to talk about how a business like this gets built from a business standpoint business model perspective capital efficiency and at the same time positive impact but people now and this is I don't know when we're going to be airing this but for August 15th we're going back to $399 currently it's a seed of stances $249 and people are having the opportunity of the budget so quick it's like 10 days 50 like 10 days guys we'll be in for three months but for $399 people are going to have the opportunity to to take a hard look at themselves take an opportunity to feel like themselves again and be able to see whether or not this type of kind of thing when you say that you have to be careful because that's a very attractive like so I want to understand if you're talking to somebody and you're and you're saying hey you should or you shouldn't do this because you're saying people that have anxiety and depression if you're saying I can see myself the proper version of myself maybe I don't even know if I've anxiety or depression and it's just an attractive thought to think for the first time I'll feel like who I should be in the past 20 30 40 50 years right so what's the what's the immediate step that somebody should take to figure out if this is something that they should even look into first explore explore aspects of what mental health is a lot of people may not have that self-awareness a lot of people may be absolutely depressed and have no idea that's the clinical effort and really the clinical efficacy that comes from the clinical teams and myself I'm not somebody that would go to somebody and say hey go and take care of your treatment I kind of put out there what what they did they they talked to somebody first talk to somebody first there is a diagnosis period so the flow itself is the following somebody goes to the website somebody sees something in which they feel cold to go and explore they go through a diet eligibility survey to see whether or another eligible from a health standpoint whether it's an age requirement whether it's a health condition standpoint then they go through a diagnosis step where they provide an abundance of information around the path the past health history any form of conditions that they have any form of surgery they've gone through then they go into the diagnosis step of answering questioners about how they feel that is all the information that a clinician then takes into account when you go into a one-on-one consultation with a clinician and actually go through a clinical setting which you are being eligible or eligible for these off-label use of a medicine so it's not for everybody it's not everybody that feels interesting and exploring a psychedelic experience comes to wonder yeah that's what I'm trying to do I've got no no absolutely not we are a company that out of all companies we are currently having statistically speaking the higher percentage of people that are not deemed eligible to receive the medicine but for those that are they're having the opportunity to go through and explore this alternative form of medicine and so it is all clinical driven we're actually in a very as a company very conscious of the different detrimental effects that this could happen if if abuse gets promoted or if there's a misuse of the medicine and that's why we are not maximizing growth we're not maximizing the speed of a company's growth over the impact of patients we've actually done very diligent work and going slow on purpose to be able to make this as best as we can for people amazing okay so let's talk about I want to I want to take a look at how you build a ketamine ketamine company because how did you how did you go into this even start to think about the commercial structure how to build it out how to scale it I mean if you are blue ocean then you don't have a lot of examples to look to right so you're going in day one you know like listen I I am entrepreneurial I have a mind for business I'm going in but there's a million different ways to revenue there's a million different uh legal items that I have to you know deal with so what what is it day one going to this is as the new CEO um to to that point I think you've been calling me a CEO I appreciate that a lot I'll go founder as well I'm a co-founder and managing director Ryan is the co-founder and CEO of the company okay still fantastic duo that's how that's how we call each other um and day one is a puzzle without the pieces if you've ever built a puzzle you start going to the boundaries the edges of the puzzle and you start kind of creating what the overarching structure is going to be of the building of of the of the build in this case in the company we started looking at all the different boundaries from legal boundaries to um business model boundaries of margins what the legality in each single state was because he's very different what the federal guidelines were and we started putting the pieces together it actually took us two years to launch the company that you see today and that people are able to benefit from and a lot of those things were to your point a lot of thought-provoking exercises with experts in the legal field things that have been happening on the telemedicine space things that had been happening in the off label prescription a space we learned from past mistakes and most importantly from present mistakes a lot of it was appropriate build of a structure that uh took a lot of resources and a lot of time and wouldn't have been possible without the team that we were able to assemble the experts that came in and helped the company get to where it is today and how did you you raised 5.6 in a seed raised 5.6 million dollars in a seed round how do you find investors for this you know there's a very common trade out of a lot of investors that have come into the company and that is their own self-actualization their own self-improvement through the medicine um so a lot of people have come to these because they have been able to have their opportunity to experience it and experience the positive impact of it and realize that the one this to be something that more people can benefit from um we're also getting a lot of investors interested in early-stage industries or markets I think psychedelic is a market more than an industry and um you know with that risk with that innovation comes the reward and I think that some investors that are business savvy and they're interested in looking at I mean things from consumer branding perspective to actual technology um the way we see it as I mentioned before ketamine or psychedelic substances are a technology that we need to maneuver that we need to master that we need to improve and at the same time it is a service because it is an experience and it is a product because it is a substance and so all of these things put together are a very unique type of business model that when you add on top of that the fact that every single patient interaction is unique and different you have really even a marketing exceptional opportunity to understand how to talk and provide people with the necessary knowledge for them to to do it was was it was it hard to raise the money it was difficult but I think that the support that we've been seeing from our investors has been out of this once you get them on board once you get them on board how did you find the five point six um it took us some time we've actually didn't do it in a in a full block okay we wanted to do it in a you know kind of pragmatic way of understanding how the business went through a building a stage and it started pivoting to a growth stage and within the same round investors have been coming in different points and um positive impact I think that what I started talking at the beginning of how tough it was to go to some investors the psychedelic industry and market has been time after time bringing experts and investors into the space understanding why we're doing this for what reasons and that made it pretty easy to to make people feel that they had the possibility of making a change and they weren't the investors they didn't have concerns of regulatory uncertainty or they did yeah the investors that we have in the company are some of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life and the conversations that we had this is not a happy happy uh situation this is not a super easy type of market the building in itself from a structural standpoint is incredibly complicated the contextual risk of unlegal and regulatory um components is also very risky but it is a matter of looking at it understanding what the changes would look like how we will adapt and if you have a team that is able to adapt to any form of change you will have a successful company and I think that investors as I mentioned before provided that type of of insight just from conversation those that invested and those that did not invest the conversations that I've had with investors in this company has been quite quite unique I'm yeah and I'm I always find it fascinating to see where money's flowing especially into into blue oceans because I mean now I think I think with psychedelics academy and I think it's starting to become more popular and I've heard it mentioned a little bit but I'm still curious about what what VCs are putting their money into and what they concern themselves with because it you know if it's not like a hot item like you know AI robotics machine learning even like crypto or NFTs for a while I feel like there's a lot of it's a lot of pushback from VCs unless maybe it does fit their investment thesis did you find funds by the way or did you find angels or both uh we're we're built from angel investors and some funds that have come into the space early trying to see what the outlook it's going to look like in the long term and you looked for investors like I'm just so I'm trying to pull out lessons from your experience to maybe somebody else trying to build in a in a super niche blue ocean category um did you look for investors that had any previous investment in psychedelic companies or were they how did you find the people that you thought would be the right approach or did you just approach like a thousand people and then you eventually I mean it was a little bit of everything okay um but I think that the the goal that Ryan and I had in in conglomerating this capital was to build a corretto of mines corretto being the concept originating in Japan of conglomerating different factors of an ecosystem to achieve maximum efficiency whether it is regulatory one the governmental one and the private sector getting together to achieve the highest um profitability um in our case the corretto of mines had to deal with different areas a lot of it was consumer driven a lot of it was past experience driven it was investment a private equity driven it was positive impact driven um and so this is your board is now this is who my board is now who the who the cap table really is it's a conglomeration of people in different areas that see these as an opportunity for the long term that is here to stay as a blue ocean and as co-founders between yourself and Ryan what are the attributes you bring to the company how do you balance each other out and how do you sort of support and benefit each other uh we're very similar and at the same time different um Ryan is a visionary he's somebody that brings ideas to the table day in day out night in night out and I think that's something incredibly powerful it's fuel for a company that needs to adapt a lot and at the same time I find myself being in the position to add direction to the changes that happen in the company and so both of us really have been able to um divide and conquer building a company like this is um it's not just us too I think we have a fantastic team in the leadership um that has been able to put forward their own experiences from patient experience to marketing to business operations um and together we've been able to to accomplish something quite special what I consider family at this point and what's the team that you'd build out for something like this because you obviously can't look for ten ten ten years academy and expert right no no not at all not at all so you you look for your psychiatry you look for the actual clinical side of the industry first those are the individuals that bring the notion of knowledge of mental health that you have the business components of being incredibly innovative from a business model standpoint I mentioned that people can take our medicine for $399 a month it's a subscription model each month to month and you go with the prescription um whether other companies are doing it at a thousand two hundred dollars and investors ask how by only taking a deep look at how to build a system like this and look at the granular efficiencies that you can achieve um same concepts that we were talking about of crypto systems it is the idea of looking at every single thing that you could adapt and do from a novel way what I call pushing the boundaries of our imagination in every single decision making that needs to happen in an industry like this and to any entrepreneur I would really really suggest these be something that you have in the back of your head push the boundaries of your imagination there's always a different way of doing things in most cases that different way might not happen it might mean it might not be the right thing for the moment but if you have that thought exercise on a constant basis you will find unique ways of adapting unique ways of finding different avenues to build a business I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now running your own business means uncertainty is everywhere so wouldn't it be nice to have a CRM platform that just works a CRM platform that helps you provide a seamless connected best-in-class customer experience for too long businesses have had to deal with managing point solutions that slow down their teams frustrate customers and hit them with hidden fees HubSpots all in one CRM platform has everything you need to do business no hidden fees included with a connected platform that's easy to implement and use your teams have all the tools and data they need to spend more time on what matters most creating remarkable customer experiences learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better at HubSpot.com and how well I mean I'll I'll go into it and I'll ask you you can you can either talk about it or if it's like trade secret proprietary you don't want to talk about it but I mean like when somebody says that okay so if they're product in the market sets of product price point out a thousand two thousand dollars per month per customer and you have a way to bring it down and like would it down to like three ninety nine and currently it's two forty and going to three ninety nine what are the efficiencies I mean the product costs so much your or or is it because it's a new market and the price point hasn't really been set yet I mean I think that's a very be component of it it's a very new market this aspect of supply and demand doesn't even exist right now we're making it happen we're shifting the ability of demand to be able to access this in a very unique way for the first time and price is one of those um for me it's being an incredible opportunity as an entrepreneur to go into a market where even things like price have not been settled yet but you made a conscious choice we made a conscious choice um we're here for people and I think that's top to bottom bottom to the top we're here for people in the way that our protocol works we're here for the people in way in the way that our business model works I said it before the only reason why I'm working on these companies for the positive impact that we're making alone that's the only reason why Ryan wants to build a company that he wants to build long-term to make long-lasting change in the world and I think that it starts by providing people with power by empowering people and so in our case a lot of it was taking a hard look about the margins that we could be gathering today with the demand that already exist at much higher prices and understanding that that's not the type of business that we want to build it definitely makes it harder you have less margin on a constant basis on a variable basis and it's still a fantastic business model so you know a lot of times you just have to ask the industry to take a hard look at itself and see whether or not um what they're doing is what they should be doing but I think people have the opportunity to choose new even look at like Mark Cubans in company right um so everybody's trying to be more ethical about delivering drugs to people that need them yes so I do believe that that's the way of the future I think that you have you could make an argument that if it's not a product that improves somebody's life like if you're selling like a casual leisure service whatever maybe charge whatever the hell you want but if it's something that's going to improve somebody's quality of life like you have a certain responsibility if it's I think it's we all have that responsibility I think that that's the ultimate kind of idea that we need to leave here with the psychedelic industry and why it's so powerful and why very interesting individuals are going into it is that we as a society have the responsibility to change the way we're behaving with ourselves with others and the way which we're cooperating there's things that I'm fascinated by like the concept of countries territorial divides the United States alone 50 states incredibly large size I just came from Los Angeles if I were to be in Europe I would have passed six different countries five different languages or different legislations and yet we work to be a cooperative system at least that's how the United States is perceived the European Union is perceived as the world as human beings there is not one single difference worth enough from anybody around the world compared to myself or anybody around the world compared to anybody in this country for us to not cooperate to become as efficient as we are I was having a fantastic conversation yesterday with two people were very good friend of mine and somebody ran them in the street that I met and both conversations led to the same point the success of a civilization it is determined by the amount of different species that thrive within the same ecosystem and that idea can get extrapolated to anything and in our case as people we need to understand well then we're failing we're failing miserably right now miserably yes the fact that there's 200 to 2,000 species getting extent on a yearly basis it's outrageous there is what we would call aliens if they were in different planets disappearing if you look at a whale I don't know we're pivoting away but if you look at a whale in person and really look at it the fact that that communicates with other species like them has a consciousness or at least we want to believe that they do and lives in the same present moment that I as a person lives just really makes you think twice about the true meaning of life and we're missing miserably because there's big problems right now on human movement the acceptance of people coming from a different place the aspect and concepts from race to ethnicity the idea that were 99.99999999% similar and there's a very small difference that it is a visual difference but going about to the aspect of vision if we're only able to see 0.0035% of the wavelength spectrum why would we take our visual differences as the main reason of change is an incredibly limited way of thinking and I think that psychedelic medicine or the industry and positive impact entrepreneurs really are shifting that way of behaving where do you think the industry is going to go because now we have ketamine that's that's it's going to be set up and it'll help people with their mental health depression anxiety um do you think that all the other use cases for L for LSD for high OASCA for psilocybin do you think that those will eventually become legalized to some extent more mainstream absolutely to some extent um I think it's going to be an aspect of courage because even like LSD there used to be research studies that were going on about the benefits of LSD and then those were almost killed I don't know the whole story but I know those were killed almost overnight all those research studies from rapidly universities and it was like nope tomorrow you're not touching this anymore right with with great power comes great responsibility think everybody can familiarize themselves with that sentence I think ask the private sector and the public sector need to sit together and understand how to best move forward this for society we need the FDA you need but you also need when do you need wins with ketamine to prove out that's something that that has just sort of come into popularity now and is being used successfully is safe is effective so you need good people you need ethical people like ethical capitalism I think is incredible good people to start businesses in to prove a model to prove a model not people that price gouge not people that grow at all costs especially in pharmaceuticals and drugs and even natural remedies like you can't have those types of people in there so you have to get rid of the people that are bad actors you have to get rid of the people that are trying to profit off of things like this and then when you have successful models ethical owners entrepreneurs founders of bill businesses that are doing good for people that's the people that can lead the conversations yes and most people in the second of the industry that I've met follow all of those factors and I mean I didn't think I would have said this after studying socio economic development but the government plays a crucial role in all of these to happen and I think there is an incredible amount of intelligent people working for the government and agencies that follow data as the primary factor of decision making and I think it's a matter of us sitting together and receiving the proper guidelines for us to be able to make this an accessible available safe and effective form of alternative medicine for people so it would be a matter of time research is absolutely imperative yeah because it takes an outlook from science instead of capital generation and I think that you're starting to see it already I think he was it also that to get something moving and to get something passed in government takes such a long period of time which is the reason why when there's a when there's a when there's something that's been decided like 50 60 years later it's just been decided we're not ever touching that again so you need like you need almost an overwhelming amount of positive evidence to get a conversation started it's important to not take a step back right yeah this is a very important message to your point that the government is aware of and I think he's just starting to make a change into the pandemic for example until a medicine law provided a future opportunity for people to receive medicine and a much more accessible and affordable pricing because business models became much more efficient in the industry I think it is the the responsibility of all actors in the industry to realize that taking a step back would hurt a lot and it has been hurting us a lot if you look at the growth of human evolution or change in decision making you see a linear fashion when you look at changes in technology changes in innovation human population growth all of those are exponential graphs so how to equate very different forms of rapid growth into a co-existent balance and let's call it equilibrium of an industry it's a very difficult one and it will only happen if all factors of the industry align together and at least what I am seeing is that type of cooperation from the government from investors from researchers from consumers from patients to really want to make this be a long-term positive impact industry so that's your point I know we wrote down some talking point and you wrote down one that I thought was interesting but I guess that's really what you were discussing it was the human evolution there's this technological revolution that's is that what you're referring to yeah it's one of the absolutely it's one of the concepts that I like to to entertain in conversation it is the fact that technology revolution directly has a correlation or could have a potential causality in human evolution and for the longest time we understand that even our political systems are very very static almost there's lack of dynamism or adaptability in the systems and decision making which granted provides stability but also provides lack of involvement you see it with things like cryptocurrencies how fast did that get adapted in society and how hard and regulation is still is still trying to keep up and still not unclear it can't keep up given how fast it's evolving and so it is a responsibility of government understanding the private world has a very powerful potential to make positive change and us understanding that the government has a critical component in making this happen there's a pure collaboration and cooperation play um after you build this company where do you want what do you want to do next because you you sort of you've now found something that can be that can be profitable um and still checks the box of positive human impact so where do you see wonder met going and then in your personal career like what is the thing that you want to do at a larger scale is like now that you sort of clarified how to be successful and drive profit and and be entrepreneurial and build something while still achieving that positive human impact i mean those have very kind words um i mean i mean we're hoping for the best there's a lot there's a lot to learn i think that i want to keep on learning um by any means i consider myself um an expert in everything i there's so much that i don't know and i will always have more to know than what i do know now as a company wonder made wants to become the best version of ourselves to allow people to become the best version of themselves in every facet of of life we're focused on mental health because we believe that's a very um important issue to tackle but as a whole in the company and the people leading it uh positive impact comes in very shapes and forms very different ones um and i think um wonder met is going to come up with very special things in the near future for people to be able to continue improving on a personal level i think that i want to continue to strive to unify people to change socio-political socio-economic ways of behaving in society i want to unite the power of people to continue spreading the word that the 99% is more powerful than the 1% that there is value numbers the one plus one equals three if you do the right thing um and i really don't know how i'm gonna conceptualize that but for now my focus is being able to change people's lives through wonder met why why did you write this down i thought this was really interesting the meaning of life and how to find purpose in living what does that mean to you throw in a curveball bring up the meaning of life at the end i think when you get to explore ideas and concepts that don't have a concrete answer you sometimes can feel overwhelmed you sometimes can feel very close to us would say yes 100% i think there is not an answer that we know for everything and there probably will never be for a lot of things but if you take a hard look at history as a society and humanity we're moving in a beautiful direction besides all the negative things that are happening so what i mean what the meaning of life is with the purposes people need a purpose to live at least that's what it seems like and a lot of people don't fight themselves to fit into what's currently happening the current models the current way of living so as a topic of what the meaning of life is with the purposes i think it's a conversation that needs to be more present in conversations with people conversations in the government and conversations in any form of business that you're building with your team why are we here there's different ways of saying it the other day i heard a comedian saying the meaning of life is to enjoy the past of time and for another person like myself is to make a positive impact in the world to make the my present moment and the future be better than the past and a lot of people share this feeling i think the vast majority of people in the world the vast majority are good people sometimes the bad people or the bad actions are much louder the vast majority are good people there's a lot of hope in the world that things can go the right direction and the meaning of life should be one in which people have an understanding that they belong because they do belong to something they belong to what i belong which is this world this humanity and working in mental health a lot of people suffering from depression and anxiety sometimes lack at this type of understanding and it's a very important to have i speak to others that feel the same way they're going through the same because you're not alone this is something that can actually have a positive change in humanity out large and what is there to life that enjoy living and making others enjoy living i love it okay i want to i want to ask a couple rapid fire to close this out before i ask that though is there anything else that we didn't go into that i should have asked you i think for the purpose of what we're currently doing at wonder met i think it's important for people to to get reminded that today there's an opportunity for them to seek an alternative form of medicine that was not accessible that they have an opportunity to explore i would highly recommend them going to wonder met calm and learning more about the science of it the information we provide and go through the flow to understand whether or not they're afraid and if they are to have a meaningful experience i would love for them to provide feedback which is what has been happening with most of our patients they're very open to explain what has been happening and that currently the the flow we've made it as as safe as efficient and as effective as possible and that we want to improve from it so that we want people right now to go for it see the opportunity and then learn from them and that we're here for them we're literally building these to help people um so that's the only thing that i would like to clarify um before we go into this rapid fire um where where should people go so wonder met calm and they want to contact you social where do you want to send people yeah myself or anybody in the team i think we're very receptive to people reaching out you could go to linkeding to any of the leaders in the company myself hozumunyev i'm very active i mean active in linkeding more than anything um go to the website explore all the information that you have there reach out we have a fantastic team of patient experience and support that can answer any questions that they have um and then be able to go through an experience where you could adapt your life one time every week four times a month and really allow yourself to see whether or not this is something that can impact your life and give yourself permission to improve your life i think that's a give permission yourself yeah how are yourself um okay a couple rapid fire so what keeps you up at night now could be personal could be professional what's what's top of mind the stress is you up how to build the best team possible on culture to build a company that can change the world forever and how do you do that with a lot of our work with trust with transparency with openness with vulnerability um and with love what's the biggest challenge you've overcome in your own personal life i'm still trying to overcome it which is how to navigate life uh somebody that loves to work in the fullest sense with as many things as possible from having time to take care of those that you love to um enjoy the little things in life i think i do a pretty good efforty making that happen but the biggest challenge that i've faced in my life is overcome hardship which a lot of people are going through now i come from a very humble beginning and yet i have always felt that i'm incredible incredibly i should be incredibly grateful for the opportunities that i've had and where i was born with respect to everybody in the world but i think you know overcoming hardship makes you who you are so if anybody's going through the same to push forward because that's actually gonna make you become who you truly want to be if you had to pick one person there's obviously been many but pick one person is that an incredible impact on your life mentor anyone um who was it what did they teach you i mean this is gonna sound redundant but i wish that everybody could say the same thing my mother i think somebody that can allow you to very deeply understand the power that you have to be happy with yourself and therefore be able to make others happy to enjoy the little things in life in a very unique and creative way um so yeah that's the person i would say right now if you had to recommend um some resource book podcast reddit threads something that you'd recommend if you could go check out what would it be i think a book right now that i'm very interested and intrigued by is a book called justice never done what i'm doing the right thing i believe um it's a book by um professor at Harvard he actually has the biggest classroom right now it's an elective class um which he teaches through the book a very open like situation asks very large questions around what is the right thing to do what are the different ways in which we could look at decision making in life from social to political to economical and understanding how to do the right thing which is a very difficult question to answer everybody thinks that they have an opinion that it's right he brings together multiple different extreme polar opposites concepts together in conversation and makes you think that there's a lot of nuances in life that we need to try to understand as much as possible at all times so i would highly recommend that book right now justice not good um uh if you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing what would it be my what's our 20-year-old self your 20-year-old self you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing or 18 or 16 keep going good and then last question what is success mean to you you to make the world a better place to feel good about doing it and make others feel good you