Episode 559: James Beshara: Top #2 Angel Investor Shares Why He Backs The Founder Not The Business

When you want to understand someone's success, you look at what they built. The company, the exit, the valuation. But James Beshara says you are looking at the wrong thing. You are studying the fruit when the real story is in the roots. James has built three separate companies to nine-figure valuations before 40, ranks as the top #2 angel investor on AngelList, and has made over 100 startup bets. He is also the founder of Magic Mind and after 14 years of investing and 18 years of building companies, he has learned that the founders who get funded are not the ones with the best pitch deck. In this episode of Habits and Hustle, James shares why he backs the founder and not the business, what he looks for in the first 7 minutes of meeting someone, and why a product that is merely liked will always lose to one that is loved. He also breaks down the science behind Magic Mind, why your coffee habit may be working against you, and the morning philosophy practice that shapes how he makes every decision. If you have ever wondered what investors are really evaluating when they decide to bet on you, this conversation gives you the answer, and it starts with looking at the roots. What's Discussed: (02:53) The roots versus fruits reframe and why copying success usually backfires. (10:14) The 7-minute window that tells James whether he wants to work with a founder. (16:41) Why investors back the founder, not the business, and the 40% likability edge. (25:33) Magic Mind: Why caffeine shuts off your fatigue signal instead of giving you energy. (45:30) The Bezos rule: innovators must be willing to be misunderstood. (1:07:51) What selling a company for less than he raised actually taught him. (1:17:59) Why a product that people buy when it is "ugly" is the only kind worth scaling. (1:28:55) Why running toward failure is how you avoid the failure that ends you. Thank You to Our Sponsors! AirDoctor: Head to AirDoctorPro.com http://airdoctorpro.com/ and use promo code HUSTLE to get up to $300 OFF today! AirDoctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, plus a 3-year warranty (an $84 value) FREE! Kion: Visit getkion.com/habits http://getkion.com/habits for 20% OFF Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com http://livemomentous.com/ and use code JEN for 35% OFF your first subscription. Therasage: Visit Therasage.com http://therasage.com/ and use code JEN to get 15% OFF your order. Your skin deserves this level of care. Magic Mind: Head over to magicmind.com/jen http://www.magicmind.com/jen and use code JEN at checkout. Prolon: Prolon is offering listeners 30% OFF sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN https://prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use the code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Rho Nutrition: Go to RhoNutrition.com http://rhonutrition.com/ and try Rho's Liposomal Glutathione. Use code JEN20 for 20% OFF sitewide. Manna Vitality: Try it now by using the code Jennifer20 at http://mannavitality.com/mannavitality.com http://mannavitality.com Find more from Jen Cohen: Website: jennifercohen.com https://jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen http://instagram.com/therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books https://jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements https://jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Find more from James Beshara: Website: jjbeshara.com https://jjbeshara.com/ Instagram: @jamesjbeshara https://www.instagram.com/jamesjbeshara/ Linkedin: James Beshara https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjbeshara/ X: @jamesbeshara https://x.com/jamesbeshara Find more from James's Yoga For Your Intellect Podcast: Website: yfyi.co https://yfyi.co Instagram: @yogaforyourintellect https://www.instagram.com/yogaforyourintellect YouTube: Yoga For Your Intellect Podcast https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHg7-6w6bLMVjwRDDqkrYpA Spotify: YFYI - Yoga For Your Intellect https://open.spotify.com/show/39m5XJbUWuJM0v1fhbBjNN Find more from Magic Mind: Website: magicmind.com https://magicmind.com/ YouTube: Magic Mind https://www.youtube.com/@magicmindco/ Instagram: @magicmind https://www.instagram.com/magicmind/ Podcast: Magic Minds https://pod.link/1457400066 Find more from APT AI Career Test: Website: tryapt.ai https://www.tryapt.ai/ Instagram: @apt_ai https://www.instagram.com/apt_ai/ Find more from James's Passions: Open State Music: @openstate_ https://www.instagram.com/openstate_ Daily Vedantic: @the_daily_vedantic https://www.instagram.com/the_daily_vedantic

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:06Jen Cohen?

  Okay, you guys, we have a big treat today. We have one of the most fantastic founders, serial entrepreneurs on the planet, and not just my opinion, but actually the opinion of many, because we have James Beshara. Beshara? Did I say that right?

• 0:21Speaker 02

  Either works. So the Americanized version is Beshara.

• 0:25Jen Cohen?

  Beshara.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  The Lebanese version, my family's Lebanese, Beshara, but our family's like, we'll just go with the flow. So Beshara works.

• 0:31Jen Cohen?

  That works? Okay. James Beshara or Beshara. He is the founder of Magic Mind, one of my favorite, favorite habits, daily rituals of all time. But also, I just found out that James is also considered the number two most, best angel investor on the planet by, of course, Angie's List, you said? Said that?

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Angel List, yeah. Angel List.

• 0:56Jen Cohen?

  Oh, Angel List. And there's also an Angel List.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  There is. Angie's List. If I was a home cleaner, I hope to God I'd be in the top three. I would. I'd work my ass off to be in the top three. But alas, I went the angel investing route instead. And through a lot of, honestly, Jen, through a lot of failure and in building things that, learning what not to do, it got me into the circles of really great founders and started to make a couple of investments. And then I was like, I think I could do a few more. And it started to take off from there.

• 1:29Jen Cohen?

  But wait a second. So you have had three exits of companies that have 100 million and more, right?

• 1:35Speaker 02

  I've built three companies that had to a valuation of 100 million or more.

• 1:38Jen Cohen?

  You were also voted number two on Angel's List.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, Angel List. Every once in a while, they put out data. And the last time, they put out the data of their top investors on the whole platform, which is the biggest platform for angel investors. They did have me listed as number two.

• 1:56Jen Cohen?

  So why you? Like, what are they looking for? What are the kind of qualifications are saying that this guy is the top angel investor? This one's not? Like, what are they looking for?

• 2:05Speaker 02

  That's a great question.

• 2:06Jen Cohen?

  What are the data points?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  It's done by height.

• 2:08Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, for sure. Because you're what, 6'5"?

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's all done by height. Now, the...

• 2:14Jen Cohen?

  I would be number one, actually.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  They don't. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. They actually do not release exactly how they compile their data, but they do have more data than... Than anybody and it's built on performance data. So how your investments, I've been an angel, I've been an angel investor for 14 years now. And, and so they, they compile all of the entry points of when you get into companies, where those companies are.

• 2:40Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  But the reason I say that it's, it's hard to know exactly what data they're using is because, um, let's say a company is private for 10 straight years, they haven't gone public. Maybe they raised around two years ago that says they're a $10 billion company, but two years later, maybe they've grown a lot. Do you make it a $12 billion company? Do you make it a 14? It's kind of, it can be a bit of an art, uh, at that point. So yeah, that's kind of the, a lot of people like, how do you compile your data? And, and I don't even know how they compile it.

• 3:07Jen Cohen?

  Well, also though, let me ask you a question that why, why do you think you are, why do you think you're a great angel investor? Or, cause you've raised a ton of money over the last many years.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  I always think about this Warren Buffett line in this realm where he said, I'm a, uh, I'm a better businessman because I'm an investor and I'm a better investor because I'm a businessman. So when I think about my investing, the lens, and I look at about 1,700 deals a year and it usually invests in about 20 a year. So it's, uh, 15 to 20. And these days it's less and less because Magic Mine, uh, keeps growing and, uh, and we've got three little daughters and just want to be as present as possible for, for them. My number one kind of like waking hours goal is to spend 20,000 hours with them before they're all 10 years older above. Because I can tell you the, the story behind that goal, but that quote from, from Warren

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Buffett is so, I think so brilliantly encapsulates that building startups, and you know this as well, by building your own operation, because you have team members, you've got just a, um, a, a really well-oiled machine. That then helps you notice when you're working with a company, like, well, how responsive are they on an email that I sent them five days ago? Why has it taken five days versus wow, they replied five hours later? You see these things and it's like, I wouldn't necessarily hire someone that takes five days to reply. So what I want to partner with a company that takes five days to reply. And it's a very similar lens where I'm thinking about in terms of just the people that I, something that I think about is when I, when a founder is pitching me, I guess I've invested

• 4:46Speaker 02

  in something like a hundred and, hundred something investments. I've never counted it up, but the, uh, when I'm chatting with a founder for a potential investment, I'm thinking, does this person make me want to work with them within seven minutes?

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Minute nine, minute 19, it's too late because you meet someone great at a, uh, networking event, at a dinner, at a house party, that could be an amazing co-founder, potential investor, uh, a partner, a brand ambassador, a recruit for, you know, let's say an open role that you have. Uh, if you can't hook them, even if you do have 30 minutes on a Zoom, but if you can't get them engaged, you know, for a dinner cocktail serendipitous moment, you might have six minutes before they decide whether they want to chat with you.

• 5:40Jen Cohen?

  Why seven minutes though?

• 5:42Speaker 02

  That is a great question. I settled on seven because I usually know within seven minutes. And I think it goes back to this, this, uh, this intuition aspect of, you know, like logic is 11 data points, intuition is a thousand data points that you're pulling on to, to recognize, do I love being around this person? Like for instance, do I get great energy? So I get amazing energy. Every time we hang, I'm like, dude, I just love Jen. And, and everybody does. And if it took eight minutes, you might not have those eight minutes. Like you, you have learned probably since you were nine years old, since you were five years old. Like it's probably not, it's part learned and part just who you are. It's

• 6:27Speaker 02

  like, I want to make this person feel amazing on minute one and, and second 30. And what I've noticed in the best founders is they're wired to make someone else feel amazing minute one.

• 6:39Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  They're already looking into, uh, and this is how I, when I'm, I've, I've fundraised probably a hundred and, maybe a hundred and 50 million for different things over the last 15 years of building companies, last 18 years of building companies. And

• 6:55Speaker 02

  I recognize early on, like, I'm so wired to want to figure out, what does this investor care about three days before the call? What am I thinking about that morning, the shower before? Calling three hour, like, for Jen in this podcast, I was showering early, thinking like, okay, what, what would she, I'm on the drive here, thinking, what would she care about this? Okay, she loves this, I'm looking this up. And it's a total empathy thing of like, whether founders, the best founders, whether they know it or not, they're so service oriented.

• 7:26Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  And this is obviously very different than what the press would say about founders. But like, Steve Jobs, I heard this about two years ago, this is so, so cool. His chief of staff, that had been his chief of staff for 22 years, James Heega, he's an investor in Magic Mind. And he was chatting with our team two years ago and he said, I was like, what was the, what was the underlying mission of, of Apple? Like, what was the, because I actually never heard their one line mission. For Google is organize the world's information, Facebook is connect humanity. And I was like, what's the one line mission for, for Apple? And he goes, oh, is how best to relieve suffering?

• 8:11Speaker 02

  And I was like, what? He was like, oh yeah, we never really like codified it, but you know, in our executive team meetings, that was kind of the, the decision maker was which route would lessen suffering the most? And I was like, wait, James, what?

• 8:29Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  I was like, I've, I've consumed nearly everything that there is to consume about Apple, Steve Jobs, I never heard that. He goes, well, yeah, I think he got it from his guru, something. I'm like, wait, what? And he's like, yeah, well, he had his guru in Tokyo that, um, give him a lot of advice on these things. And, and I was like, you think that, all right, billionaire, uh, Apple.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Edison of our time, you think of those things and and this is, I think, the mistake that young founders get caught up in or any first time founder gets caught up in is you get caught into the the fruits instead of the roots for examples in life. Never look at the fruits, the fruits of what a tree is bearing has nothing to do with if you want to replicate those fruits. It is ever like you go to a great vineyard. The the winemaker would be like, yeah, you can't look at the grapes and get that much information. It is all about the soil we chose, the climate of exactly where we are on the hill. You would never just look at the grapes and be like, that's that gives me the whole playbook.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  And yet we do that with examples in history all the time or like.

• 9:48Jen Cohen?

  That's so true. That's such a wise thing to say, and it's so true, and we are programmed to do that so often. But I like what you said about that. You said so many good things in the last few minutes. I was trying to like remember them so I can I can.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Speaking of, let's take a magic mind shot if you're down.

• 10:04Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So we can focus more. This one's caffeine free, right?

• 10:07Speaker 02

  This is the caffeine free because it is about 1pm and this is, uh, speaking of the roots instead of fruits. Well, you can have half if you want, but yeah, this is part of my roots for.

• 10:18Jen Cohen?

  This is the best. You guys, I'm, well, I do it all the time and they're they're.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  God, just smells good, too.

• 10:25Jen Cohen?

  We're going to talk all about this. We're not there yet, but.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  And that's our sugar free version. That's um, it is so delicious.

• 10:30Jen Cohen?

  And caffeine free.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:32Jen Cohen?

  It's good.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  It is.

• 10:33Jen Cohen?

  So good.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  First caffeine free shot that we had ever heard of caffeine free energy shot. So it's, uh, yeah, it took a while to develop.

• 10:42Jen Cohen?

  This is amazing. They all taste so good. But wait a second, before we even jump into magic mind, because you know, I'm going to have a bazillion things to talk about with that. You said a couple of things that I want to make sure we don't forget because I think they're really valuable. Pieces of information. There's a lot of wisdom there about founders because if we have entrepreneurs or people who want to start businesses, you're a really great person and a great resource to give people some very tactical, actionable things. And things that people just maybe not think about. But you said something that really kind of resonated because I did a whole talk on this and it kind of went viral on the fact that. I believe, and from what I've seen, from my purview, that companies or investors typically,

• 11:26Jen Cohen?

  they invest not in the business or the company, but the founder. And if you're likable, you're going to have a forty percent more chance of not just raising money, but getting more money. And you just kind of said that, you proved that hypothesis, right? Because you said, if you like somebody, or they give you that feeling of, or that energized feeling, within seven minutes, you know if you like them. And then all these other things, of course, make a difference. So basically, I totally see this because now that now I know you, I see why, you know, you are able to raise money. You're able to like build this business and be like, because it all comes from the top.

• 12:07Jen Cohen?

  And you exude a great energy, a great, very empathetic. You're kind, you're likable. So that is exactly, that is your secret. That is your secret sauce.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  It's all magic, man. It's all magic, man. I do say, I'm like, people are like, man, you have such great energy at, you know, 4pm, 8pm. I'm like, that's the magic, man.

• 12:27Jen Cohen?

  It could be the magic, man, but it's also part of like we say in the Jewish world, like Neshama, like it's part of like who you are. Like your DNA is very much that way.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I do, I love people. And I love, nothing lights me up more than figuring out what someone wants, needs, is struggling with. And then I can, I can get so quickly emotional thinking about it, and then jumping in to help them. It's a, I was chatting about this with Theo Von, the comedian.

• 13:01Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I love him. He's good.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  He's so great.

• 13:03Jen Cohen?

  Were you on his podcast?

• 13:04Speaker 02

  No, we were just chatting and he's been a friend for years. And he and I were chatting about, I was like, you know what's so weird is growing up, you remember the King Arthur stories? He was like, oh yeah, I love those. And I was like, did you want to be King Arthur? Or did you want to, was there any party that liked Merlin? He was like, Merlin, no. Yeah, I want to be King Arthur, of course. And he like, and he, he's a nut for like childhood things. So, but yeah, he mentioned that so quickly. And I was like, man, I always wanted to be Merlin. And I always loved Merlin. He's the wizard that like helps the Knights of the Round Table. He's kind of like a side character.

• 13:44Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  But what I loved about that character is, and I was doing this like a non associative drawing exercise where I was just drawing and seeing with my eyes closed, like where would my mind go? This was, I don't know, a year or two ago. And I was drawing Merlin. I was like, God, I forgot. I loved Merlin when I was a kid. The product is called Magic Mind. I loved performing magic when I was little and

• 14:13Jen Cohen?

  You did.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  I did. And I loved this aspect of this, this character that would help these knights. He didn't necessarily have like some big challenge of his own, but he loved helping the Knights of the Round Table succeed in their challenges. I wake up each day and I'm like, I don't really have that much to, I don't have like this drive of like, I need to make this happen in my life. But once I hear someone that I know and love has this or that problem, dude, I'll go on a walk for 45 minutes thinking about how can I solve it? It's the reason that we were saying just before we hit record, like both of us are wired to where we don't, um, people think I'd be good at sales. I'm like, not if

• 14:55Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  It's only if it's something that I really believe in, because then I can't wait to tell people about it because it's going to benefit you. So, yeah, that was the, I mean, the whole founding story of Magic Mind was these 12 ingredients. Well, they will ensure that you, you feel like you're in flow state within 15, 20 minutes. These are the 12 things. And I was doing that years before ever starting a company.

• 15:14Jen Cohen?

  Tell us about it because you're, what you'd also said was interesting is that you are one of these founders with Magic Mind, but you're like intricately involved. Like you were at that, but you know, at Expo West, you were there like standing there for hours, like for, like you're there at the booth, like you really, you so believe in this product. And on top of that, you also are investing on all these other projects that you also are involved with. Like you were, like, do you sleep or does Magic Mind keep you up? Like, how does it work?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  I sleep great. I'm in bed at like 8:30. I wake up at 4:30. Yeah, Magic Mind Sleep. It is. Yeah, we did launch Magic Mind Sleep because it's it is. We launched it a little bit ago.

• 15:55Jen Cohen?

  And it's great, too.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  It is so. I know. And in fact, one of our other partners and friends, do you know Pete Holmes?

• 16:02Jen Cohen?

  You gotta have a podcast. By the way, you just you just mentioned him before the podcast. I have no idea who this person is.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Oh, he's a great comedian, hilarious comedian.

• 16:10Jen Cohen?

  Comedian. I like him already. Let's book him.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yes, you know, you would love him and he, like you, gets stopped on the street because he's like talking about Magic Mind all the time. And and and he'll send me texts of like, I'm on the streets of Baltimore. Someone just came up to me saying their life was changed with. The one of the things that he said that was that is so. So I guess interesting around this topic. And by the way, I also, yeah, this morning I was like, I need to go surfing and figure out this thing where we're about to launch. I'll let listeners in on this. We're about to launch a new version of Magic Mind Sleep. And how do we launch an improved version, but we still have this inventory? We gotta mind every penny we sell this inventory of

• 16:54Speaker 02

  version 1.0. And so it's it was like, I'm very involved to where I was like, I was like, I have to figure out this Tetris in my head and I need to go clear my head. I'm going to go surfing to try to figure it out.

• 17:07Jen Cohen?

  Did you figure it out?

• 17:08Speaker 02

  To help the team. I don't think so. Maybe. But then I was on a 30 minute call on the way here with our team member Joe, just trying to think through this. These logistics, my co-founder William, who's just so brilliant in the same way. He and I both love. We can't. We can't not be involved in these details. I'm sure we we piss off team members. You hired me to be the expert in this. And there are experts that tell us how we should be doing things. But then every once in a while, it's like, there's

• 17:35Jen Cohen?

  Some micromanagement.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. Five years of instant, you know, just like institutional knowledge that says, I need to jump in here and help with this. And and that was kind of one of those examples today. But but yeah, there is a. Pete, he wrote me this text. He's like, okay, Magic Mind Sleep, how's one company done it twice? And this sounds like a commercial and obviously.

• 17:56Jen Cohen?

  I know. It's not even a commercial. This is like legit.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  He's like, there's no, usually companies nail one product. You guys actually nailed two with Magic Mind Sleep.

• 18:03Jen Cohen?

  No, by the way, you did nail two because I will, I, I, I'm saying this because it is legit and Ed can even vouch for this. The, my cameraman over here, people come here and they say to me without any type of conjoling, oh my God, I'm obsessed with the sleep one. And I, I'm like, people legitimately love that sleep one. What is in the sleep one? That's not in the, okay, how did like, cause it's true. Like you did, you like knocked two out of the park.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Well, thank you. The, uh, and I could talk about this stuff. The, the people that are interested in the ingredients.

• 18:36Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, of course.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  They, they, I love, love talking about this and, and this will be, uh, generically helpful whether you buy Magic Mind or not. So with Magic Mind, um, the daytime shot, the morning shot was all built around, at least the key insight was the leading cause of procrastination is low-grade pervasive stress and anxiety. It's not fatigue. It's not lack of motivation. We think it's, it's those things.

• 19:03Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  But the leading cause and the research actually shows that it's low-grade pervasive stress. You actually, you're motivated, extremely motivated to nail that big paper you gotta write or that three-hour project you've been putting off. But your low-grade pervasive stress just of living in the world that we, we live in of 25 text messages every hour and 50 emails every, every day. We're like, I'll get to it later. I'll get to it later. But if you can decrease that, that stress, that low-grade kind of just like, ah, I want to get to it, but like, ah, it's gotta be perfect. If you can decrease that. Yep. You can actually, your, your to-do list just melts away. And when I figured that out in my morning stack, just my personal morning stack, this is probably seven, eight years ago.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  And I was like, oh my God, that's the unlock that when we're drinking excessive amounts of caffeine, the sad side effect of excessive amounts of caffeine. First, caffeine works, its primary function is that it blocks our adenosine receptors that tell us we're building fatigue. It actually, it doesn't produce that much energy in the body. To produce energy in the body, you want to produce the fuel currency of the body is called ATP. And you can do that with things like cordyceps mushrooms, which is in Magic Mind. Or you can feel like you're awake by shutting off the check engine light. The adenosine receptors that tell us we're building fatigue. But that fatigue, and everybody knows this from chugging a coffee, it's building in the background. And when that caffeine wears off, you crash. But it is like, like I said, it's just like turning off the check engine light when you

• 20:34Speaker 02

  chug another cup of coffee or a Red Bull or an energy drink. Yeah. It's turning off the check engine light instead of actually improving the engine. So the first insight was like, well, I want to improve the engine. What are the ingredients that actually produce more ATP and produce the fuel currency of the body? That was the first set of things in the beginning. Then I, then I learned that when we consume, and this was, you know, like I said, seven, eight, I mean, really the beginning of this journey is about 12 years ago. Ended up writing a whole book on this subject before starting Magic Mind. Oh, yeah. And, and I would just love this. So it was kind of this Merlin kind of story where it was like, when I tell people about, hey, you should try ashwagandha, you should try rhodiola, you should try bacopumumari, they would notice such a better lift in their productivity for years.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  And then I found out about, okay, decreasing the stress. And let me let people in on this, this secret that most biohackers know, which is when you consume a lot of caffeine, you are turning off that check engine, check engine light instead of improving the engine. But also critically, also you're spiking cortisol, the body's stress response. The very thing that you think like, if I chug this Red Bull and knock out that project, maybe for the next hour and a half, you're good. But then the very thing you're chugging to get through that next to do list item is the very thing that an hour and a half later, your stress is spiked, you're like, I don't want to do anymore. I can't, now I gotta go into, you know, being a great. Mom or a great dad afterward. I'm so stressed and people would rarely make the connection of,

• 22:05Speaker 02

  oh, it's because I had those two, three, four extra cups of coffee that I shouldn't have had.

• 22:09Jen Cohen?

  Also, what I noticed, because I'm a big coffee lover, I love ice cup. I love cold brew. I love that whole thing.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  I love it too.

• 22:15Jen Cohen?

  I love it. And the problem is not, not even necessarily, well, it's actually, I drink it because I like the taste.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  And I love the ritual of it. I love a great, I drink at half, half in the morning.

• 22:25Jen Cohen?

  The ritual.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Love it, the warmth. And then I add my magic mind just alongside it, take a magic mind next to it.

• 22:30Jen Cohen?

  Well, what I was gonna say is that the coffee for me, the ritual of pouring the cold brew, putting in the almond milk, doing that whole thing is more of the ritual. And I don't think it gives me any more energy. I'm not, I'm doing it for the taste, not for the effect anymore. In fact, I can probably drink five of them and probably fall asleep because the, it does, my body has acclimated.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  You build the tolerance in about thirty days.

• 22:53Jen Cohen?

  You really do. You build a to, I can have now two, three cold brews and people are like, could be jumping off the, I guess the rooftop and I'd be like, not ever. What I found with magic mind, what I do, my, my part of my ritual is I drink it before I work out because it will, it will actually make me work out longer and I'm, I'm like in, like I'm focused more.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  The cordyceps mushrooms and specifically the, the supplier that we get our cordyceps from, we're like, we are nuts for how much research. It's the most over researched beverage we know. And it sounds, that sounds biased, but like, anybody can email us for the, the third party testing that we do across every contaminants, heavy metals.

• 23:35Jen Cohen?

  You do, yeah.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  And microbial, mytox, it's, it's, we, we give it to everybody. Everybody we know, our own family drinks it daily. So we're, I'm just like, I'm gonna go as far as you possibly can. Our operations manager, Blake, when I said it made a request for the latest test that Tim Ferriss asked for, he was like, uh, we can do it, but that's like, we're the only beverage I know of that would do it. I was like, great. That's a, that's a reason we should do it.

• 24:00Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  But, um, but yeah, the, the cordyceps, specifically cordyceps, so great for endurance athletes and for anybody working out that wants fifteen, twenty. Thirty percent more endurance for their workout.

• 24:11Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, well, and also like I'm focused more and I have my best ideas like when I work out regardless. But coffee doesn't do the same thing. It does not work as well. It does not. I mean, I'm just being honest.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  And caffeine is actually, this is where we get into the fun, I think.

• 24:28Jen Cohen?

  But there is caffeine in this.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Not in this one. Not in the caffeine free, but we do have fifty five milligrams in our original shot. And we have a Magic Mind Max, which is one hundred and sixty five milligrams, which is, that is about a cup of coffee. But it's time released over the course of eight hours, which is so cool. You couldn't do that until about two years ago.

• 24:46Jen Cohen?

  It's amazing.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Liquid. You could do time release pills, but not liquid until about two years ago. As soon as we saw that, William and I were like, we're gonna make the first time release energy shot. And Max is that. Now we've incorporated time release into original, but okay, the generic, I want to, I definitely want to oscillate back to the generic helpful information.

• 25:03Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  That's so independent of whether you, anybody drinks Magic Mind or not. And on the caffeine side of things, side of things, the neurochemistry and the biophysiology of caffeine is really interesting. And it's so poorly understood. One, what I was saying of people think a cup of coffee gives them energy.

• 25:22Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Gives you a tiny amount of adrenaline, but its primary function is shutting off the nerve receptors telling you that you're building fatigue, the adenosine receptors. And then three hours later, those blocks wear off and the adenosine rushes in and you have that crash. But there are actual things that nature and science give us that do build up the body's fuel currency and produces more energy. The other thing that's, that is poorly understood about caffeine, at least from the mainstream audience, it's very well documented in the, in the literature, is that caffeine is a vasoconstrictor. So it restricts the blood flow to the brain. So you get less oxygen to your brain. With something like citicoline, which is in Magic Mind. Citicoline improves blood flow to the brain.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Why is that good? That improves lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is the scientific term, the academic term for creativity. Lateral thinking is being able to switch contexts, be able to combine this problem and this problem, or this potential solution with this problem. So citicoline, we use this, the best version of citicoline is called Cognizin. It took us like two years to get on the waitlist to get Cognizin or a product because it's, it's, um, it's always in such high demand. But that product and you, anybody can buy a Cognizin or citicoline on their own. They don't need to get through Magic Mind. But that, that is a great approach to improve blood flow to our brain, which improves lateral thinking. Drinking a lot of caffeine, drinking a second cup, a third cup of, of coffee.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Not only do you build a tolerance within 30 days. My, my parents, my mom and dad have been drinking coffee for 50, two cups for 50 years. For 49 years and 11 months, they've been in maintenance mode.

• 27:05Jen Cohen?

  Exactly.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Just maintaining, getting back to neutral with those two cups. And they feel when they're out of neutral, they're like, oh, there's these two cups. I need them. Well, you do need them to get back to neutral. But you're not getting anything more than that maintenance mode when you drink those two cups. After 30 days, if you add in a second cup, a third cup, if someone's listening to this and they add in like a, a fourth cup.

• 27:25Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  They'll feel it for 30 days and then they're in maintenance mode. You can take about 12 days to get off and then get back into, you know, feeling that.

• 27:34Jen Cohen?

  Cycling it, you mean?

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, cycling. But all this is to say that you aren't getting much of the benefit. You're just getting back to neutral. But every time, 50 years in, five years in, 55 days in, you are getting the negative effects of the vasoconstriction, the limited blood flow to your brain.

• 27:56Jen Cohen?

  Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentous 3. I've been using their protein, their creatine and omega 3 combo for months now, and the results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long-term health and performance, but hard to get enough of through diet alone. The Creapure Creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance. The grass-fed whey tastes great with no weird aftertaste, and their omega 3 is a must for recovery. Since adding these, my energy, my recovery, and my overall well-being has really improved. So if you want better performance, this is the way to go.

• 28:38Jen Cohen?

  Visit livemomentous.com and use my code GEN for 35% off your first subscription. That's livemomentous.com code GEN for 35% off your first subscription. Trust me, you'll be happy you did.

• 29:04Jen Cohen?

  Okay, I have a question for you. Can your body acclimate to drinking a Magic Wine?

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Everything in Magic Wine outside of caffeine does not build tolerance.

• 29:13Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Oh, it's like I say, it's like the... You know, I almost tell people like, if you can put aside the knee-jerk reaction of thinking this might be a commercial for, you know, some guy's own product.

• 29:27Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, it's not even...

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Right, if you can put that aside, the ingredient choices are so fascinating.

• 29:34Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  That is why we have you. You've had so many people take it, from elite athletes to the person that you wanted, that you wanted us to send it to Italy recently.

• 29:44Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Like, they've tried everything.

• 29:45Jen Cohen?

  Oh, I've said it's A-list actors and actresses and actresses, athletes, moms, entrepreneurs, all alike. Everyone's obsessed with it.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Maybe the best... Cyclist of of all time. We won't even mention that has tried everything else.

• 30:01Jen Cohen?

  That's right.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  And yet they're like, can you send more of that? And it's a um, that is.

• 30:05Jen Cohen?

  Did I give you him too? Yes, I did. I'm giving you a hundred. Oh, my God.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  I know.

• 30:09Jen Cohen?

  My rolodex for you guys is pretty vast. Holy crap.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  What was so nice about that one too was he he took the time to also write a note back. And he said, I've got to say whatever you've done. And this is so impressive because my wife, my wife actually loves this. And we get all these products sent our way.

• 30:26Jen Cohen?

  Of course.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  And she doesn't love any of them. It's rare for an actual love one. So that was really kind. But the um, but when I say, you know, if you can put that aside, it's a really fascinating dive into the ingredients that, like I said, you could buy on your own. You don't need to use cordyceps mushrooms you can get on your own. Cognizin you can get on your.

• 30:42Jen Cohen?

  Like also like stuff like rhodiola and stuff like this. You could buy your, but is it as effective on its own? Or is it the combination and sequence together?

• 30:50Speaker 02

  They call it the entourage effect.

• 30:52Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  So yeah, biohackers and all of our formulators. And we have a scientific advisory board of these these titans in this space. That's been a constant trek is how do we get the best minds around the table? Like Dr. Andrew Weil, who if you've never had him on a party.

• 31:07Jen Cohen?

  He's great.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  He's amazing. He is so amazing. He's like the the OG functional doctor that that you'll cover time.

• 31:15Jen Cohen?

  Are you friends with him? I actually really like him.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  I would, yeah.

• 31:17Jen Cohen?

  Can you put me in touch with him? I really do like him.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  He's so great.

• 31:20Jen Cohen?

  He's the best of all these people.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  I know. And he's like, goes on to Joe Rogan. He doesn't have like a, he doesn't have some commercial interest.

• 31:28Jen Cohen?

  No, he's just.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  He's just like, hey, matcha is great for dot, dot, dot reasons. Uh, a rhodiola rosé is great for dot, dot, dot reasons. I'm like, mention magic. And he never does. He just keeps it so cool, you know, objective and independent.

• 31:40Jen Cohen?

  Yep.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:41Jen Cohen?

  Okay. You've got to hook me up to him. Oh, he is?

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:45Jen Cohen?

  Andrew Weil's the head. Shut up.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Dr. Dan Engel, who also goes on, you know, all the big podcasts. He's a brilliant neuros, he's unique because he's neuroscientist. And he's a uh, MD and PhD. And uh, and he is, he also overlaps with a lot of psychedelic research, which is really rare to get.

• 32:05Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yes.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Two of those, but all three is is really rare. So great neurologist and neuroscientist and just has, he's so open to all plant alternatives to things. And there are no psychedelics in Magic Mind, even though the name.

• 32:19Jen Cohen?

  That's a lot of people always asking that too. I'm like, no. So then, okay, so obviously, clearly, people love it. Um, there's 12 ingredients. You made it. You basically concocted this whole thing in your kitchen.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:30Jen Cohen?

  It's been around for how long now? Like seven years, you said?

• 32:32Speaker 02

  About five years.

• 32:33Jen Cohen?

  Oh, five years.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  I've been doing it for a mile and for about 12 from it started all started with a heart condition that limited how much caffeine I could have each morning.

• 32:41Jen Cohen?

  And that's how it all started.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  A cup of coffee. Yeah. Or I was like, I coffee's the end all be all. I was drinking six to seven cups a day. And my doctor was like, with your condition, you can't have more than half a cup. And I was like, there's no effing way I can get through it down half a cup of coffee. And then he said this one thing. Then we will, we can wrap up the the Magic Mind content, uh, and and law, you know, the long ass commercial.

• 33:05Jen Cohen?

  It's not even a commercial. People, I think people should know about this. It's that good.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, this, and this is a great point around green tea and, uh, or anybody that wants to add L-theanine to their their morning uh, ritual. He's the this doctor, this brilliant doctor in in San Francisco. He said, you know, with your condition, really can't have more than a half a cup of coffee because it'll trigger your irregular heartbeat. And, uh, and I was like, dude, there's no way I can get through a day on half a cup because like a true addict. I was my.

• 33:36Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  It was the only thought from the day of hearing out of heart condition. We're gonna go next door to the ER and have your heart shocked back into rhythm. Like, I didn't care about any of that stuff versus him saying that. And he said, well, have you ever tried green tweet, uh, green tea? It has this compound in it called L-theanine that extends your body's absorption of caffeine over a longer period of time and dials down the stress response for how much caffeine or for the caffeine that you're consuming. And I was like, wait, this L-thea stuff, wait, there's a stress response? And I could add this L-thea stuff that he just mentioned to my morning ritual to get more out of my first cup of coffee. And that was 12 years ago. That was the beginning of my engineering brain going crazy down the rabbit hole of what else does nature and science give us to add to the morning ritual to get the most out of it?

• 34:19Jen Cohen?

  And so how much do you drink a day, just out of curiosity?

• 34:21Speaker 02

  I drink one original and then in the afternoon, every once in a while, I'll have a Magic Mind Free.

• 34:26Jen Cohen?

  And then the sleep one, okay, what's in the sleep one? Don't go into the, just tell me like, okay, you have.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  The, the best ingredients, my favorite ingredients in sleep are magnesium, chamomile, there's valerian root. And, and then I love lavender as well, but it's a low dose lavender.

• 34:43Jen Cohen?

  So why does it work so well? Like, why are people so crazy for it?

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Okay, and this gets back to your question of the 12 ingredients and.

• 34:49Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, so.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, rhodiola, that's on par, on par. It's been shown in large scale studies to be on par with low dose pharmaceutical stimulants.

• 34:59Jen Cohen?

  Which means, I can say this, correct?

• 35:02Speaker 02

  You can say whatever you like.

• 35:03Jen Cohen?

  Is supposed to be, and this is what a lot of people I know who are on Adderall or on all these ADHD medications. The natural, the, the natural occurring version of Adderall is supposed to be rhodiola. And so I know a lot of people.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Rhodiola is so good for that. And then if you pair it with bacopa monari, then that decreases impulsivity up to 40, 45%.

• 35:24Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that you really feel locked in, your energy is higher and you feel super locked in to the task you're working on. And no one knows these things. And in India, India and China, bacopa is given to kids and adults way before they would give a pharmaceutical.

• 35:41Jen Cohen?

  That's incredible. This other one you just mentioned, what's it called?

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Bacopa.

• 35:45Jen Cohen?

  Bacopa, like, do you, can you buy that on its own?

• 35:47Speaker 02

  You can. Tastes awful. That's where three different science, food science teams have helped us probably, it's probably 700K. Three years, three different food science teams to get it, to get it to taste good.

• 36:00Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, you guys spend a lot of money on the ingredient list. I mean, there's a reason why it's like, it's a, it's a very high quality product.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  It was, yeah, I think three, three months ago, it became the number one hell shot in the natural, in the country, in the entire country, in the natural grocery channel.

• 36:16Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:17Jen Cohen?

  I'm surprised this.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Whole food sprouting.

• 36:19Jen Cohen?

  I, I feel like it's been on a rocket ship for the last couple of years, maybe.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  It's been fun to see it go from D to C in e-commerce and, and biohackers and influencers in Silicon Valley. I love it too now. Yeah, it's been cool to see it in grocery stores and the same.

• 36:32Jen Cohen?

  Where's that? Air One?

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the number one shot at Air One. By the way, I think, do not quote me on this. Ed, you can clip this out if I'm wrong. I'll look out, I'll look afterwards, but I believe, uh, last time I checked, it is the number two revenue beverage at all of Air One. And it is the number one shot in the natural channel, which means Whole Foods and Sprouts and Air One and natural grocers around the country. And now we just started to get into, um, conventional grocery, which would be places like Kroger and Albertson's and Publix and, you know, the, the southeast. So yeah, now you'll start to see it in those kinds of, which is so fun.

• 37:12Jen Cohen?

  I love it.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Most of my family and friends back in Texas, they're not, you know, going to Whole Foods for every grocery run.

• 37:18Jen Cohen?

  Regular grocery stores.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Right. So it's fun.

• 37:19Jen Cohen?

  That's amazing. Okay. So that, okay, that's amazing. So tell me more about what your other rituals are daily to kind of keep on point. So we know that you do this. What else? Cause I know you're very spiritual and you're into all sorts of like meditations and stuff.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  So we talked on, we talked about looking, I love your shoes, by the way. Those are so cool. I've never seen shoes like that.

• 37:40Jen Cohen?

  You have it? You know, you know what these are? They're called sneaks. Do you know Sarah Blakely who did Spanx?

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:47Jen Cohen?

  So she sent me a couple of her, actually Jessie, her husband.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  That can't see, it's a high, high heel, like running shoe.

• 37:54Jen Cohen?

  They're basically a high heel running shoe. They're, they're not the most beautiful to look at, but I will tell you, they are the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn. I thought like, I thought like when I first saw them, I'm like, oh my God, they're so horribly ugly. And then Jessie, her husband, Itzler, who is a friend of mine, sent me a couple pairs and I've been wearing them ever since. They are amazing. They are the most comfortable shoes ever. And people can make fun all they want, but listen, put your foot in there, you'll never not walk around with them again.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  And then do you end up talking about it a lot because people are like, that is so unique.

• 38:28Jen Cohen?

  People are usually guys are like, oh yeah, they're, those are so cool. Girls are like, they're so ugly. How are you wearing them?

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Really?

• 38:36Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Dude, yeah.

• 38:37Jen Cohen?

  But they're selling, I think. I mean.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Function over. Form for guys, I guess, like I'm like, that looks so much more functional.

• 38:43Jen Cohen?

  It's a functional, like for me, I mean, I don't know how to like walk in real high heels because I'm I'm such a, I'm like a gym bro, but with long hair, yes. So for me, I have to, it's true. So I need to, I can't wear like stilettos. I will fall over and break my face. So I need to wear shoes that are very comfortable. So I wear these and this is also not an ad. This is legit. This is something that I've been wearing and I really like them because I can wear them with jeans and not look like a boy. Sneaks.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Dude, when I, so I took an enneagram test and said I was a seven, meaning an epicurean loves to go find things and tell the community. So I love like that, like just knowing someone's made a really high quality, cool looking product. And now you are testing to the comfort. I'm like,

• 39:26Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  I want people to know, sneaks, sneaks, sneaks.

• 39:29Jen Cohen?

  Sneak, sneak, sneaks. I'm telling you, I, you're like the fifth guy on this podcast to mention them.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  They look, they look like shoes from straight on. And then on the profile on the side, I was like, wait, what? Those are heels?

• 39:41Jen Cohen?

  I know.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Very cool.

• 39:42Jen Cohen?

  So people stop making, girls stop making fun of me.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Uh, they're, they're all gonna be, you're ahead of the curve in a lot of ways. So.

• 39:49Jen Cohen?

  Sarah's actually, Blake is ahead of the curve. I'm just a follower apparently, but I mean, they're really great shoes.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Well, you know, the, you have the, uh, one of my favorite quotes, I think of in entrepreneurship and in life. This is a Jeff Bezos quote. He said, innovators must be willing to be misunderstood.

• 40:05Jen Cohen?

  Yes, totally agree with that.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  I think about this all the time where if you can cultivate a willingness, where it's not a, um, it's not a bug, it's a feature if you can cultivate it. It's not like, oh, it's something you gotta put up with. It's like, that's your edge. You are willing to be misunderstood. You don't really care. You can be, you can go from being six months ahead to two years ahead, to three years ahead. And that can allow you. All kinds of affordances in life. You become the maven where everybody just starts, you know, what's next? What should I be? What? I'm sure everybody in your network asks you, it's like, what do you think about this product? What do you think about this supplement?

• 40:41Jen Cohen?

  All day.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Cold plunging for women. And you're like, because I just didn't need to fit into, I didn't, I wasn't striving to be understood. I got the answer for this three years ago.

• 40:52Jen Cohen?

  A hundred. Also, it's so funny that you said that, James, because that does happen all the time. People like send me stuff for my opinion or whatever. And many years ago, actually, like 10 years ago, maybe eight, I was actually, was it like the LA Times or some magazine like put me as like in the top 10 tastemakers in like the health and wellness space. Because I have like, you know, I created this whole thing called No Gym Required before No Gym Required became a thing. I created weighted shoes before like weight, you know what I mean? Like I was always doing these things, but I was always like, like a year, like five years before it became popular. And then it kind of exploded onto the scene. You know what I mean? So people who know me know it's like, kind of like, yeah, like, and people laugh at me and it's interim.

• 41:37Jen Cohen?

  They're like, oh, my gosh, she's like, what is she doing? She doesn't know what she's talking about. Like, I was doing fitness stuff way before fitness and wellness and longevity became popular, you know?

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Have you started your own company?

• 41:48Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I had. I started too. I had a, I had a shoe. My first one was a weighted shoe. That was basically the weight was like base, the, the sole or the

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 41:59Jen Cohen?

  was like a weight. So you can interchange. You can take out the weight and have a regular sole or have the weight. And the weight was evenly distributed. So it'd be easier on your knees and your ankles. And it was like, it was, I sold, I don't know, like 100,000 pairs of these shoes on my own.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  What happened? Where'd it go?

• 42:16Jen Cohen?

  So what happened was, oh, my God, this is like, this is a, this is a podcast on its own. I got acquired by a big company. So what happened, I sold so many shoes on my own. I factored the money. I didn't raise any money. So I was like paying a ton of interest on the money. And the shoes were coming from Korea and they were heavy. So because of that, like, it was costing me a lot. But all these made, like, the top five, because in the, in the, in the Business of shoes is not many. There's Reebok, Nike.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:45Jen Cohen?

  People were like, oh, my God, how is this like girl selling all these shoes without a big two hundred million dollar a year marketing budget without all this? But I was giving out these shoes to every celebrity and they were wearing them around. And at the time, like those magazines, like, you know, Us Weekly and Life and Style were really popular. So everyone was capturing these shoes in these magazines. So like all these companies were going to incubate me.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Do you wear them out and about and people wouldn't know that they have weights?

• 43:12Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, like they were cute, but they would be in the shoes. So you can't see it because ankle weights are really bad on your joints.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  And they look weird to where it's like you look like a prisoner.

• 43:21Jen Cohen?

  I look like it was they were heavy, but they were cool looking.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:24Jen Cohen?

  And so like everyone was wearing them like Jennifer Gardner was wearing them, Jennifer Aniston, whoever, like everybody. And so people like, who the hell is this chick? And so I was gonna be, I was getting offers to be incubated by all of these companies. And then I ended up going with this second tier company because I really liked the man who was like who owned it. And he, this guy, this company owned a bunch of these like tier two, tier three shoes that you'd find like at TJ Maxx. It wasn't like a Reebok or a Nike. And I got the deal with him and then once I did the deal with him, he wanted out of the deal. And he basically like kind of screwed me. And so I, it was like, and the whole deal last took so long that like by the time I was like legally okay,

• 44:07Jen Cohen?

  I already lost momentum on the shoes for so long. And it's still one of those like bees in my bonnet. Like I still think about that.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Let's bring them back.

• 44:16Jen Cohen?

  I want to, listen, I just had this conversation two weeks ago because I was like 10 years ahead of my time. And those shoes today in the wellness space would kill.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:27Jen Cohen?

  I'm gonna show you a pair. That's the first thing, because that one to this day, I should have made, I, I was young and naive. I trusted this person.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  I tell young founders all the time, if first time founders, you might be 55, first time, but get your first startup out of the way. It's a burner brand. Your first pancake is the messiest. Get it out of the way. If you're successful, great. Otherwise, you got a cheap MBA.

• 44:50Jen Cohen?

  You have no idea. I learned so much. I also have an MBA, but I learned so much. But the truth of the matter is, like, if you get into business with someone who wants to screw you, who has more power, money, money and power, it's really hard when you're like this young girl.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  Choosing your partners.

• 45:03Jen Cohen?

  Choosing your partner. That's the first lesson.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  So.

• 45:06Jen Cohen?

  In life, in everything in life. The second business I did, the second company was sold, got acquired by Weight Watchers. So I developed a fitness app.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Wait, how has this not come up in our conversations?

• 45:16Jen Cohen?

  But I don't talk about it. Cause I, when I, with this podcast, I talk about the person who's here. I don't talk about myself. And weirdly enough, as extroverted as I am, I don't really talk about myself in that way. Like I, people always laugh at me, like my friends and family, like, I'm super like low key and stuff like that. But people who know, know, you know, there are people who only know me as the entrepreneur. There are people who only know me as a fitness person, who like does squats and lunches on Instagram. People who only know me as like the bigger, better, bolder person who does, you know, this TED Talks. I'm very.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm similar in that, and I think that all of those different beautiful songs is made of three or four chords. And I think they'll come together so beautifully over time to where you're, where you're like,

• 46:04Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Oh, that's why it just felt destined that I would invest in these different areas that come together.

• 46:10Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Cause they certainly are coming together. But also add that I, I'm wired very similarly. From building companies to investing in companies, to making a lot of music, make a lot of music just for fun.

• 46:23Jen Cohen?

  I love that. And magic.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Yep. And I love magic. As I was telling my wife two nights ago, I was like, yeah, I stopped doing magic because my friends made fun of me in eighth grade. But I'm gonna start bringing that back.

• 46:34Jen Cohen?

  You should.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially the little kids. They love it. But um.

• 46:37Jen Cohen?

  You should bring it back.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  And that, by the way, that's a, the willingness to be misunderstood. That was the beginning of.

• 46:42Jen Cohen?

  Bringing it up.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  That was the beginning of me being like, oh, I want to be understood. So I'm going to get rid of these things that I'm, that I'm naturally, that I'm naturally loved. But everybody listening, if you can lean into things that you loved when you're six, seven, eight years old, you will uniquely be preternaturally wired for that thing. Maybe it took 30 years off, but finding a rediscovery of that, playing music was one of those things. There was no commercial reason. It was just, if I do this, you know, you know, uh, told me this, that got me thinking in this direction. It was two experiences. One, I saw our six month old daughter dancing. To music, she didn't even understand what music was, six months old. Her face, it would, her face didn't even, there was no smile.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  She would hear music and within half a second, her body would start moving. But our first daughter didn't have that response. And I was like, I'm wired that I always start tapping on everything. And I've kind of been like repressing music.

• 47:38Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  And when I told my dad I was taking, making more music lately, he goes, oh. This is his response, maybe two years ago, he goes, hmm, does that make any money? And I was like, oh, God bless you. That's been the influence in my life.

• 47:53Jen Cohen?

  Totally.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  For different pursuits, like it doesn't make money, so I shouldn't do it. But man, Jen, when I started to make more music, and when I leaned back into making music, all of these other things started to flourish because one, seventy percent of our brain is wired for movement. So you're lighting up the, the idea that you're gonna sit at your desk in front of a computer screen and become creative? And find creative solutions for things is so laughable, um, when you look at the science. That you want to be walking around the proverbial like throwing the ball against the wall, that's way better. Go out and play basketball, not because you're gonna play basketball, but the randomness of where the ball is gonna go, where you're gonna have to dribble it around is so great for lighting up the brain. Or music, and Einstein was actually like famous for leaving his office,

• 48:39Speaker 02

  playing a couple of notes to the piano or on his violin, going back with some insight.

• 48:44Jen Cohen?

  Also, think about it, people who are not talented like that, even just going for a walk lights up your brain. The cognitive power that you get just from moving your body in a walk, like again, you get way better ideas.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Probably why you get great ideas at the gym.

• 48:56Jen Cohen?

  I do, that's like, I, to me, I think there's a, the lack of the ability of people just to be with themselves and their thoughts, because that's where like brilliance happens, or that's where like ideas happen to me, you know what I mean? I really believe that's like a very important piece of it.

• 49:19Jen Cohen?

  I want to take a quick break from this episode to thank our sponsor Therasage. Their Trillight panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go. And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places in my body where honestly, I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps, shoulder, ankle. Red light therapy is my go-to. Plus, it also has amazing anti-aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for.

• 50:00Jen Cohen?

  I personally use Therasage Trillight everywhere and all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective. Head over to therasage.com right now and use code BEBOLD for 15% off. This code will work site-wide. Again, head over to therasage, T-H-E-R-A-S-A-G-E.com, and use code BEBOLD for 15% off any of their products.

• 50:41Jen Cohen?

  Also, I wanted to say something, I think you said something that was very true, which is being okay with being misunderstood. The other thing that I think is really valuable is that being underestimated is also very valuable. Tell me more. Because people don't even know what they're getting. Well, because you were saying to me earlier about like this whole, when I was in the bathroom, I was just thinking about this. Some of my secret powers have been being misunderstood, right? Because like, people don't really know where to fit you, right? Like, you can't pigeonhole me. I'm a podcaster, but I'm also an investor. I'm a fitness person, but I'm also had two successful exits. I'm a this person, but, and people don't know, so it's like constantly this ball.

• 51:25Jen Cohen?

  They're like, what do you do? I don't know who you are. What do you do? I hear that all the time. But that that ability to be underestimated all the time, right? And then people get to know me in one lane. And they're like, holy shit, how do you know all that? Or how do you do? And that underestimation or being underestimated has served me so well in life. Because you shock and awe and surprise people constantly and they don't see you coming.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Well, you know what's so great is that I think it's in building any identity. You can catalyze an identity by focusing on something early. You can catalyze an identity by getting tattoos. You know, dying your hair purple. You can do expedient things to catalyze an identity. And it doesn't usually last that long. Like you could be the eccentric friend that has purple hair and a face tattoo. And it's like, yeah, yo. Christine's really like, you know, really creative. And then they look at the output and they're like, I don't know. And and not very reliable. And your identity, you can really undo your identity on the other side of whatever shortcut you took.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  But the long term investment into a unique singular identity. Then it's like, and this is how. I already talk about you with with other people that where we're mutual friends. I'm like. We already know it's Jen Cohen. Like, there's no other way of describing Jen is Jen Cohen. That is the, that's the pay dirt. Like, that is, that is the golden territory to where it's like, oh, you don't know Jen. Oh, you just, I don't even, I'm not even gonna try to explain it. Go look her up and you need to know her. And I would hope that for my daughters, I would hope that for the founders that I work with where if it's just like. He's the founder of Instacart. I know that he also feels like that's. Limited identification.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Uh, maybe he did that for 10 years. Sort of a friend of mine, Corvus and Max, the two founders of Instacart. I know damn well that that would suck if seven years later, that's just how they're.

• 53:25Jen Cohen?

  That's how they're known.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  15 years later, it's how they're known. But that might be the way that they're known because it was so.

• 53:32Jen Cohen?

  Their identity.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Burning hot so quickly early in their life. But I think if you invest in these other areas, like the last area that I I am somewhat somewhat followed for and known for is on philosophy in Venice every month, I every first Friday, do this thing called Philosophy Fridays. And it's this thing that started in our backyard with five people and now it's 200 people and it's 110 people that meet up every first Friday because the room capacity is 110 people, standing room only. And it's around the 5,000 year old philosophy of Vedanta comes from India. And it's but it's really a perfect container for any philosophy. You could bring up Socrates, you could bring up St. Augustine.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  It's the perfect container for anything philosophical. Kant, it could you could bring up Hegel, Nietzsche, and anyone and everything in between, because this is a great little container for, like we were talking about before, roots instead of the fruits. The stuff that I think about, you asked about my morning routine, it starts by waking up at 4:30 and it's an hour and a half of philosophy and spiritual just stillness. So it's about a 45 minute lecture of some of some kind or reading. And then it's 45 minutes of journaling, reflecting this, this, this ancient, it's all in terms of continuous studies, oldest philosophy on the planet. It's called Advaita Vedanta. And I have a daily podcast on this

• 55:00Speaker 02

  that like 11 people listen to. But I'm like, man, no one is, people would really benefit from an accessible approach to this very ancient cryptic philosophy. And it's the source of nearly all Eastern philosophy. Buddhism comes from, as it's described, the adage goes, Buddhism is Hinduism made for export as it leaves India and enters China. You have Zen as a derivation as it leaves China and enters Japan. But if you follow it all back, four, they all go back to these four philosophical textbooks called the Vedas that 1,000 years later, Hinduism and all the rituals and things get built on top of it, really kind of distractingly get built on top of it. Hence, Buddhism strips a lot of that away to get back to the simple philosophy. But this philosophy, these philosophical principles,

• 55:43Speaker 02

  things like one principle is, love is seeing no otherness in the world. Another one is, wisdom is the capacity to see the end in the beginning.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  Another, which I've never heard definitions on these things. Another is reflection is a hundred thousand times more powerful than listening. The reason I mentioned that one is not only is that morning ritual, just it's all reflection time. I'm not reading anything new. There's a, a three year course on this philosophy that I've done now. Done it four times on a fifth cycle through. It's nothing new. It's just reflecting on these things because like I mentioned, one of the principles is reflection is a hundred thousand times more powerful than listening. If there is a listener to this episode, this conversation that got anything that resonated with them out of the conversation. If you don't reflect on it, maybe it was the Jeff Bezos quote of innovators must be willing to be misunderstood.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  If you hear that and you're like driving your car like, that was really cool. And maybe you tell a significant other, a spouse that night over dinner, this cool phrase, but you never think about it again. If you're not spending seven, 10, 14 days just reflecting on that for five, 10, 15 minutes with your morning coffee,

• 56:57Speaker 02

  with your magic mind for 10, 15 minutes before you get started with your day. It is like it never even happened. Cause you know, you know this, when you click on something so inspiring on, on Instagram, you like it. Maybe you even send it to a friend. But if you don't reflect on it, two days later, it's like, it's in one ear, out the other. It's like it never happened.

• 57:18Jen Cohen?

  It's like it never happened.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  The reflection in this philosophy so brilliantly and precisely, the words around this philosophy is they're so precise. But it's so precisely enforces this reinforces this, this beautiful notion that reflection isn't just like twice as powerful. 10 times, it's a hundred thousand times more powerful than listening or reading. So I, every morning, 90 minutes of just reflecting on these things. And now it's a decade in to this philosophical pursuit, these studies. But that will serve the conversation that I'm having, like the conversation, what I'm coming to with this. The investor meeting or a podcast conversation is seeing no otherness in the world. What is Jen interested in?

• 58:05Speaker 02

  What would make this a fun conversation for listeners? That kind of even asking Ed during the quick bathroom break, what, what are the things that, what are the things that we said that were interesting to you? And that's. And it's so ingrained in how I operate. So someone might see multiple nine-figure businesses. By the way, the first one didn't stay there. It was valued at 400 million before a fire sale to Airbnb and total PhD and triple PhD and what not to do. But there was so much reflection on what not to do. What mistakes did I make? So much reflection on that, that then it allows for this beautiful clarity to where magic mind has been like a five-year journey where

• 58:49Speaker 02

  every night I'm going to bed, just being like, how did this all happen? I've never gone to bed feeling like stressed about it. Not a single time. No, not a single night. I've never had, I've had maybe stressful hour of how do we figure this out? A stressful three hours of like, oh my God, our financial model is wrong. We're going to run out of money and have to solve for that in like three days. But there was like two hours and then it was clarity. Literally go for a walk and then I'm like, oh, we could, well, this investor loves us. This customer loves us so much. He's been a subscriber for three years and he loves investing in companies. Maybe he would want to invest. Maybe she would want to invest. And yeah, it's maybe max three hours of stress, but I've never had a stressful day.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  Never woken up in the middle of the night thinking about some existential thing or some made up pretend thing.

• 59:40Jen Cohen?

  Oh, you're lucky.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  And I, my previous lives in my twenties, it was failure after failure after failure. And every night, stress of waking up in the middle of the night about this, that, or the other kind of stress.

• 59:52Jen Cohen?

  How did it tilt? Like you just said it yourself. It was evaluated at $400 million and then it was a fire sale to Airbnb. What the hell went wrong?

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Well, it is part two of the episode is.

• 1:00:04Jen Cohen?

  I know.

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  It's kind of like when you get a PhD, asking somebody gets a PhD, what'd you learn?

• 1:00:09Jen Cohen?

  I know.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  So there's so many things, but I'd say the number one thing that I crystallized it down to where it's helpful for. There are a lot of things I learned where I utilize it every day and utilize that reflective learning for anything. Even how I run a meeting or how I elicit feedback from somebody. Like I'll ask people, what is your brutal, honest feedback on that product? That is a total learning where I was so scared of the truth. My twenties, I never asked people, I wouldn't, and when I do, what do you think? But I'd be like, how do I couch this into something that's gonna be pleasant to hear?

• 1:00:46Jen Cohen?

  Like non-confrontational.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly where it's like, no, Jin, be as brutal as, as you possibly can because it doesn't help the company. If, and then for two years, it was iterating on the product before we ever launched Magic Mind. And it was two years of me wanting that versus my twenties with something like Tilt, a payments platform that we're in through the skin of our teeth, we're able to sell to Airbnb, but certainly not at the heights of our valuation that we achieved.

• 1:01:11Jen Cohen?

  How much did you sell it for? Are you allowed to say?

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  It was about, uh, the cash and stock is about 55 million.

• 1:01:17Jen Cohen?

  55 million?

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  But we had raised our previous round of funding was at 385 million.

• 1:01:21Jen Cohen?

  I, you, you guys raised 385 million dollars?

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  No, we raised a total of 70 at the last valuation.

• 1:01:29Jen Cohen?

  So you raised 70 million?

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, we raised 70 and sold for 55, which ain't a good, that ain't a good equation.

• 1:01:35Jen Cohen?

  No, it is not that good. So did your investors talk to you still?

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Every meaningful investor has invested in me multiple times. In fact, so I was thinking about this on a run yesterday. Um, Justin Khan, the, the co-founder of Twitch. I'm sure you've seen this in your entrepreneurial, uh, journey too. You think they won't talk to you. I thought, I was like, I'm a failure.

• 1:01:57Jen Cohen?

  I was teasing you.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  Nobody, you, I bet you've seen this. You're like, the best investors, they're like, you just got a PhD.

• 1:02:04Jen Cohen?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  I want to invest in you again and again. Justin Khan, the co-founder of Twitch, he's invested in me four times. Mike Maples, maybe the OG seed investor of all time, the best seed investor, the first investor in Twitter and Lyft and a bunch of companies. He's invested me four times.

• 1:02:19Jen Cohen?

  Cause it's you. The people invest in the person. So many variables make a company break, right? Make or break it. Like it couldn't, like you said, it was like on the skin of your teeth, you sold it for 55. But like the line between X, like, like excellence and just like unicorn to like a complete failure is like this, this thin. You know what I mean?

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Crazy, crazy margin. Airbnb had to launch three times and still had like the year that they were gonna go public. And where I was like, all this stock is gonna finally be worth it if 10 years of doing things. And then the year they go public, the first global pandemic in a hundred years that shuts down travel, the year that they're going public. And I'm like, Why does everything I work on just fail? It's just like, once in a hundred years.

• 1:03:09Jen Cohen?

  Oh my.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  The biggest travel company is going public and then this happens. Yeah. So it's, and then luckily they ended up having one of the best IPOs of all time, but that and it's, every company has these near death experiences. Facebook, Uber famously just dragged in the mud for three years.

• 1:03:26Jen Cohen?

  Uber like that.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  You didn't think they were going to survive?

• 1:03:28Jen Cohen?

  I, I kept, they came back like with like, they came back on a rocket ship.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:03:33Jen Cohen?

  Because like their CEO, he's a really good CEO, right?

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, Dora.

• 1:03:37Jen Cohen?

  Dora, did he really kind of take that company and?

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  He did, made some amazing moves and honestly, just a lot of these companies, Apple famously almost died a couple of times when Steve was there.

• 1:03:47Jen Cohen?

  Multiple times, for sure.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  They had six weeks of cash when he came back. Tesla famously almost at death's door and, and I, you'll, that's another learning that I had was, I just was so scared of it failing that I thought, well, it's going in the wrong direction. We should find a place that we should sell, not realizing, no, every company, if you're lucky, you get a third act where up and to the right, then it comes down and then the third act, you rise again like a phoenix and then you're unstoppable. And until the, so that I was mentioning that there's so many things that I use each day, like how I elicit, uh, product feedback, but the thing that I tell early founder,

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  maybe the first or second time founder, the thing that I say most often is, wait until your product is loved before you try to scale out your business. An obsessively, myopically tunnel vision focus on getting to that point and nothing else. With Tilt, it was a payments technology that was lukewarm liked. People kind of liked it. It was good, but as soon as they liked doing this free, as soon as we tried to charge for it, it's kind of like Venmo. As soon as you try to, try to charge for it, people are like, well, PayPal's free or Zelle's free. People bounce and you could have a good product, but a terrible business. And we had a good product, but it wasn't loved enough to where anytime we tried to charge people 2%, 5%, they would bounce and we realized way too late.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  We're scaling a product that people like, lukewarm like, but they don't love. Like your shoes, how do you try to sell shoes where it's kind of a derivation of what's out there? People don't really love them. You're such a charismatic persuasive person. You could force 10,000 pairs to be sold, but you get to 32,000 and be like, this is just getting harder and harder and it's because the product isn't loved yet. And with Magic Mine, I was, I literally was like, I will put my own capital into this. And I want to be told in the first two years that people don't want this because these journeys are so brutal. That I want to find out in two years and not six or seven.

• 1:05:56Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  Like I'd found out before that people don't want this so that I can go on to the next thing. Luckily.

• 1:06:01Jen Cohen?

  Totally. That by the way is another really good piece of advice. You've given a couple of really good, like good, solid, like more than a couple, like probably four or five solid gems here. That's another one, which is if a product's just liked, it doesn't have the threshold to make it.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  Gravity that pulls it.

• 1:06:17Jen Cohen?

  Gravity. It has to be loved. You're a hundred percent right. And this does. So that's interesting. You're right. Cause tilt, like, yeah, whatever. They liked it.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  Kind of like Venmo, but it's also you could do it with 12 people. It was, it was a real learning of do not rest on your superpowers. Reserve those superpowers.

• 1:06:36Jen Cohen?

  So true. How do you get a product to be massively loved? Because like.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  That's.

• 1:06:42Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Super simple. Time. Time and a obsession with the truth. Brutal, honest feedback from people. First time founders, there's we, we, myself included in my twenties. I just wanted to be, not only did I think it was like, this is a shortcut to ego engineering. This is a shortcut to the career that I really want. This is a shortcut to financial milestones. Yeah. And, and it was like, I'm doing this selfishly because I would have some cool articulated mission, but it was really just selfish on three different, you know, channels. And I, and I was so.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  I was so impatient to get there on those that I was like, I'm gonna brute force this. Like my, one of my superpowers was being persuasive or being really persistent. And with, with Magic Mind, it was a beautiful thing to reserve those cards. And say, yeah, I have these cards, but I only want to apply them. It's like a surfer. You could surf multiple waves. Wait for the wave of the day. Wait for, and surf some great waves, you know, leading up to that. That's how you find the wave of the day is you surf a few, but wave selection.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  That is, that is an art form all in its own. Whether you're a surfer, whether you're an art entrepreneur, where you could do anything. We can't do everything. And if you are really good at, let's say, three paddles popping up on a wave and you can ride it for 300 yards, 300 meters. This set's coming. Choose the best wave, obviously. But if you're so eager to just prove that you could ride a wave, then the other people are looking, they doubt you and you're gonna prove it to them. You're gonna jump on a shit wave, you get detonated. And not only not get the validation, but also you're gonna be hesitant to ride the next set that's coming.

• 1:08:26Jen Cohen?

  Great analogy.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  And, and I think with, if you can have time, recognize that it's a, uh, it's so much of it is, like you said, you can have the same founder that chooses the wrong wave in a dog market. And that market is going to destroy them. Same founder that waits for the right wave, maybe is really patient. With Magic Mind, I was two years of like, universe, show me that you don't want this to exist. Because the last go around was so fricking painful, nearly killed me. I want to be shown early. This is a bad wave. And luckily that patience allowed us to iterate. I was iterating on the product to make it better and better and better before it even had like a name to it. I just called James's Magic Potion.

• 1:09:10Jen Cohen?

  James's Magic Potion?

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  James's Magic Potion, yeah.

• 1:09:13Jen Cohen?

  That sounded like, that sounds like a horrible name.

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  And I wanted it.

• 1:09:17Jen Cohen?

  That's brutal honesty.

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And Jen, you know what was funny is I, I was like, this tastes awful, doesn't have a name. And I'm shipping people a little, uh, these little bottles with powder that you have to add your own water to. And I was like, I luckily with investing or someone that has other jobs with you have it. If you have another day job, then you don't have this undue unnecessary financial pressure. What was so fun about those two years or what was helpful about it, I should say is I was like, if people want this, when it has a dumb name, basically no name, tastes awful. And they've got to add the water themselves. That's when I'll know that I have something that's worth it. And I say this in, in product building to founders all the time.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  If they'll buy it when it's ugly, they will pay a shit ton when it's pretty.

• 1:10:08Jen Cohen?

  Wow. So that's what you did.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  And that's exactly what we did for, it's what I was doing out of my kitchen for two years.

• 1:10:15Jen Cohen?

  And so you're constantly iterating the product. So was William's job to like run the operations?

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like, once I knew we had something.

• 1:10:22Jen Cohen?

  Yeah. You're like.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  I was like, I gotta get a co-founder that's really great on all the things I'm not great at. And this is part of the PhD too, of my twenties, uh, triple PhD, cause there's three failures. My twenties just failure to failure.

• 1:10:34Jen Cohen?

  How old are you now?

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  At this point I was 32.

• 1:10:37Jen Cohen?

  Okay. How old are you now though?

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  So, uh, just turned 40. So I guess it was 32. Seven and a half years ago was the beginning of the two year journey. Is there something here?

• 1:10:46Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  We launched about five and a half years ago.

• 1:10:47Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  And, uh, so I brought him on about five years ago and I was like, all right, I know what I'm great at, which is I know this, this world of products like the back of my hand.

• 1:10:58Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  I know e-commerce like the back of my hand and brand building, but I do not know supply chain management, logistics of these things, cash flow. And you mentioned with the shoes being so expensive, coming from Korea. It's a whole art form in its own right of cash flow management.

• 1:11:13Jen Cohen?

  I was crushed. Yeah.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  And then retail, I know nothing about expanding into grocery and retail. And he knew, uh, all there was is to know about that with Bill, brands that he had built before. He's brilliant Princeton grad and just like.

• 1:11:26Jen Cohen?

  Where'd he come from before that?

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  He was building a brand called Brahmi. If you've ever seen Brahmi in Air One, it's the protein, protein pasta.

• 1:11:33Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I have seen it.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  He was a co-founder of Brahmi. Yeah. Co-founder of Brahmi and was on the operations side. So he just knew his superpower is. Is all of these things that managing a retail sales team, looking at a spreadsheet for my financial modeling.

• 1:11:46Jen Cohen?

  He understands us all really well.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  It's a, it is a really powerful one plus one equals three. But this gets to also one of the PhDs is knowing what you're not good at, knowing what you're good at, and then also knowing what makes a great partner, what makes a bad partner. The only way to learn these things, it's like surfing. I can't tell you, you can't read a book and know how to do these things. That's why I tell everybody, get your first business. If you have inclinations, want to start something, get it out of the way to get the, which was more valuable for you, the businesses you started or the MBA you got?

• 1:12:16Jen Cohen?

  The MBA you got, for sure.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  Really? Tell me more.

• 1:12:18Jen Cohen?

  Oh, the MBA got from school? No.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, which was more valuable?

• 1:12:23Jen Cohen?

  Okay, this is, this proves you have no clue who I am. I just did an entire TED Talk called.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  I'm not on socials.

• 1:12:29Jen Cohen?

  No, no, no.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  My assistant does all, nearly all of my socials.

• 1:12:31Jen Cohen?

  Released yet technically, but I just did a whole TED Talk on why your barbell is more important than your MBA. Cause I have both and I learned almost nothing from my MBA. I mean, except like how to memorize and to, you know, spend a lot like the amount of money it costs to get the MBA. But everything I've learned that has been valuable to me has been way more valuable in being like practical experience.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  And doing it, right.

• 1:13:00Jen Cohen?

  And fitness stuff, like fitness has actually taught me way more, gave me, gave me the best MBA I could have ever had because it taught me discipline. It taught me, it taught me a ton of things, but like patience, discipline, hard work.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  Perseverance.

• 1:13:15Jen Cohen?

  Perseverance, persistence, doing something even when you don't want to over and over and over and over and over again. To me, that's the best, best training ground. So like I learned more on like, on the, like at the squat rack than I did in my, in my MBA program. And I tell everybody that and people like, a lot of people like poo poo me who have like Princeton degrees and Harvard degrees. Honest to God, does it teach you, does it, does it, does it give you some type of status? Yeah, it can give you some status to get you in the door, but it will not make you successful. It will not teach you the fundamentals and the foundation of what real success is in life. I don't think so.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, it's, you know, we can. We mentioned that the Warren Buffett quote before on better business person makes him a better investor, being an investor makes him a better business person. And it actually ties closely to his longtime partner Charlie Munger, who is one of the best, both of them, two best investors of all time. And they're talking about having multiple perspectives and multiple pursuits and how they help each other. Charlie Munger had his own version of this where he said, everybody should have a cross lattice work of mental models, that you should take how you play bridge or poker into how

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  you run a business, how you run a business into how you parent your children, how you parent your children into how you, maybe it's play tennis on the weekends. But the cross lattice work is so different than our academic notion of mastery where we think it's go deep into just playing the piano 24/7 for 30 years and then you'll be an amazing aficionado. Pianoist or whatever, yeah. And, and it's like, well, that's the most boring person at the frickin dinner party because they can't apply it elsewhere. They make for great employees, they make for great playing and replaying Chopin, but they're not a Chopin. They're not a Chopin. And you, you look at someone like Isaac Newton, Isaac Newton, perfect example.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  We know him for physics, maybe the greatest scientific mind of all time. He spent a third of his time on theology, trying to prove that God exists, a third of his time on alchemy, trying to turn lead into gold, and a third of his time in math and physics. There's no like removing those other two, they all fed into each other in the same way that, yeah, working out, I, when I'm, when you, when you're saying that, I think about me playing music and writing a song. That is one of the biggest, I said, one of the biggest things that I'm doing that then informs how we're working on the, let's say, sleep 2.0 launch is it's a story arc and every song is a story. And if you, I don't know, mismanage that story for a song and the different characters

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  of instruments that come in, you're going to mismanage the listener's perception in the same way you mismanage a press release around a new product.

• 1:16:12Jen Cohen?

  It's interesting you say that. I think fitness personally is like a microcosm of life. I really do. And I, and I use it as that. So like, people think when like I talk about fitness being so important, they think because it's for your abs and for your glutes and for, I think the fitness element for me anyway, and what I've seen from a lot of people is that it's the mental that it builds. It builds, it makes you more mentally strong. It shows you that you can kind of go beyond your limit and surpass your limit and with your goals. I think that like, if you can take that same, the same, those, those same principles and apply it to everything in life that you want to be good at, you will thrive. And so to me, that's why fitness has been

• 1:16:53Jen Cohen?

  such an important piece of my life and why I tell people early on, like young people who, who contact me, if you want to be successful, start working out now. Start exercising right now.

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  Amen. I'd say, I think about, in the same way I think about these kinds of things with surfing, where it is such a beautiful, I mean, every, the truth rhymes everywhere. You see it everywhere. If it's the truth, it's going to show up everywhere. And it rhymes in the way that you learn to surf. It's, it's going to rhyme in the way that you run a meeting. It's going to rhyme in the way that you build a company or build a relationship. Talk about choosing the right waves. The relationships you're building, like, send a, a great human into a really toxic relationship. They're not going to come out too great on the other side.

• 1:17:43Jen Cohen?

  Totally true.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  But if they chose a different wave, a different partner, a different friend, a different business partner, then it can be the most beautiful ride of their lives. And it's a

• 1:17:52Jen Cohen?

  So true.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  And I, with the, the, the working out and the fitness approach of fitness, you know, one of the things that, that I think about so often, and this is, comes from Tim Ferriss, where he said, just one push up.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  He said this randomly in a podcast episode where he's like, if you are wondering where to start, right before bed, right when you wake up, right after lunch, close the office door, right when you get home from work, just do one push up. And that was an entry point into now, everything that I'm doing and, and working out. Started with, God, that's such an easy entry point. Cause once you get down on the ground and do one, you're like, I'm gonna do 10.

• 1:18:36Jen Cohen?

  That's why it's a gateway drug for everything. It's like, the hardest thing is the beginning, is the start, right? So a good mind trick that I tell people all the times, you don't like to work out, that's okay. Do one minute, go outside and jump around for one minute, just jump.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:51Jen Cohen?

  You know, or just walk around your block once, or do one squat. I don't say one push up, I say one squat, cause squatting could be easier. The point is, once you start, then chances are you're gonna keep on going, you know? One, one surround the block will turn into like two or three.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:19:06Jen Cohen?

  You know what I mean? Cause it's about getting your shoes on and starting the process is the procrastination is what, what stops the start, you know?

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:19:15Jen Cohen?

  Once you're in there, you're like, wow, I'm already here. I'm on the floor anyway. I might as well do another five pushups.

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  And you're not, and you're not working against your other goals.

• 1:19:22Jen Cohen?

  No.

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  It's so beautifully harmonious when you recognize your fitness is gonna feed your other goals, like you getting the best ideas you get when you're at the gym.

• 1:19:28Jen Cohen?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  Move it. Seventy percent of your brain's wired for movement. Get out and move. That'll help you. Not only will it help you problem solve the thing that you're working on, but so beautifully might help you avoid the mistake that you're this close from making with some suboptimal decision.

• 1:19:45Jen Cohen?

  It also makes you so much more resilient. There's been a study that shows that people who are like fit or like work out regularly, they are much better at like dealing with struggle and with of course, like like setbacks and all those things, like they're able to bounce back, is it like 80% quicker? Than people who are more sedentary, because they've, they've, they've primed their brain.

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  The neural pathways of like, go further, go further.

• 1:20:14Jen Cohen?

  They prime their brain for like, for like, for failure, because every day you're going in the gym and you're, you're, the purpose of the gym is to like, get to failure, right? So that is like, you're, you're already primed for that feeling. So when you can take that and transfer it into anything else in life that may, may not go your way, you can bounce back much quicker.

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a great investor that he was on our, he was a board observer for our previous company, Marc Andreessen. And one of the conversations we had one time was around, around this idea of to avoid terminal failure.

• 1:20:51Jen Cohen?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  Like, let's say, losing and being the last on the PGA Tour. To avoid being last on the PGA Tour, you want to consume like crazy non-terminal failure. You want to go and hit as many balls as you can. You want to miss the cup over and over again from five, 10, 15, 25 feet.

• 1:21:10Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  You want to hit that failure point at the gym as often as possible. It's not about avoiding failure at all. If anything, it's the exact opposite of exactly what you're saying. It is not the exact opposite of what you're saying, but it's the exact opposite of avoiding failure. It's running towards failure so frequently in the non-terminal sense, where it's like, who cares if you miss a three-pointer in practice?

• 1:21:33Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  If you miss the free throws in practice, eat that up like a bit of poison to where you're completely immune to it.

• 1:21:40Jen Cohen?

  Immune to failure. Exactly.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  To failure. By the time you get to the free throw line with 11 seconds left in the fourth game of the game seven finals, you're like, dude, I, I'm not only, I know I'm gonna make these, but I'm immune to.

• 1:21:53Jen Cohen?

  Desensitized if you don't make it.

• 1:21:55Speaker 02

  Exactly, desensitized to it. And getting to that place where you are avoiding terminal failure, paradoxically, it's through chewing it up every day at every chance you can in the non-terminal sense.

• 1:22:07Jen Cohen?

  You know, it's really, well, I'll tell you again, I, my first TED Talk was on this idea. It was called a 10%.

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  I've seen that. I've seen your TED Talks, but I was maybe, I saw one maybe two years ago.

• 1:22:19Jen Cohen?

  Was that on parents and resilience for kids?

• 1:22:21Speaker 02

  I didn't reflect on it. So I, it was anyway, I should have, I should have reflected more on it. But it was, it was beautifully articulate. But I don't remember, I just know the setting. I know the setting.

• 1:22:32Jen Cohen?

  The first one went crazy viral and it was about this idea of asking for what you want in life.

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  Yes, I do remember this one. Yes.

• 1:22:38Jen Cohen?

  And so, and the whole idea and basically being bold and going after it.

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  Saying it out loud. Yeah.

• 1:22:43Jen Cohen?

  And, and like the 10% target. Is based around this, which is the idea that you become immune to failure. Because if you make 10, my whole thing is 10% target because you make 10 attempts of whatever you want most in life. And either two things happen, either you get that thing, or another opportunity presents itself that you didn't know existed because you went, you went and did it over and over and over again. But the the secondary thing that happens is you become immune to the feeling of failure because now you're used to it. You're doing it so much.

• 1:23:13Speaker 02

  Perfect example was I wanted to know, and I still do all the time. People's brutal, honest.

• 1:23:18Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  Feedback on anything I'm creating as soon and early as possible and as frequently as possible because that's the way to avoid. Well, I know the alternative in my twenties, avoiding that leads to terminal failure and a whole lot more pain.

• 1:23:32Jen Cohen?

  A hundred percent. My gosh, this has been a really good podcast.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jen. Thank you for the conversation.

• 1:23:38Jen Cohen?

  No, this was really good.

• 1:23:40Speaker 02

  Well, you're a great host.

• 1:23:41Jen Cohen?

  Thank you. You're a great guest. You actually gave some, I shouldn't sound surprised. I'm not surprised. You have some very valuable information for people on every level. You gave some really great wisdom, great gems. I'm really happy that you came on.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  Well, for a simple Texan with a little drink company, I try, I aim to serve, especially on a podcast.

• 1:24:02Jen Cohen?

  You serve beautifully.

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  Well, you, you're a great host and it's you are interested in these topics and a different gear because you apply them instead of just a podcast host that's kind of a journalist that doesn't really know where they apply. So thank you for being such a great share of this wisdom.

• 1:24:19Jen Cohen?

  No, no, I, I, I, I really have loved this conversation. You were such a good, thank you, James. We have to do this again.

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 1:24:27Jen Cohen?

  We'll do it on your podcast.

• 1:24:28Speaker 02

  Whenever, whenever you want. That's right. Yeah. If people want to find out anything of my projects from Magic Mind to the, the Philosophy Podcast, just James J. Beshara on Instagram is the best, best place for all of it.

• 1:24:40Jen Cohen?

  And try a magic mind. You guys will not be disappointed, as you know.

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  We've worked hard to make sure that people get to say that all the time. So thank you.

• 1:24:49Jen Cohen?

  Thank you. Bye bye.