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A
Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle.
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Crush it. On today's episode of Habits and Hustle, I'm joined by the one and only Dave Asprey. He is the founder of Bulletproof and a pioneer in biohacking. He's a New York Times bestselling author who spent decades optimizing human performance and longevity. And he's helped millions upgrade their lives through science backed strategies. Dave and I talk all about his strategies, his marketing approach, how he built nine businesses and how we even bootstrapped bulletproof to 27 million before taking on venture capital. We also talk about how he got removed off his own board and so much more. So guys, if you're interested in biohacking, longevity, business and marketing strategies by one of the best that that's done it, I would stick around and listen up. Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, therage. Their Trilite 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. I personally use Therassage Trilite 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 be bold for 15% off. This code will work site wide again. Head over to Therasodge T H E R a s a g e.com and use code be bold for 15% off any of their products. Guys, we have basically like the, the father of biohacking. I think you bas it feels like you created it.
A
I did. I came up with the word in Tibet walking around the holiest mountain in the world and came back and wrote blog post, started the first conference, got it added to the dictionary eventually. So yeah, yeah, I did. I really did. Yeah.
B
You know what's so interesting because besides all the like insane information that you bring to the forefront, you know you, you're like kind of like that like nut like that nutty professor or that like crazy person that people I think oh, he's nuts. And then like 20 years later, it actually comes to fruition. Right. Like, you were talking about these things that seemed wacky, and now it's become super mainstream.
A
It. It's really funny. I got my MBA at Wharton a while ago.
B
Did you really?
A
Oh, yeah.
B
And I did not even know that.
A
I was a Silicon Valley tech dude. Like, I.
B
That I knew.
A
Yeah. So I got my MBA there, but I was kind of filling it out of my classes because my brain was cooked and I had toxic mold, brain damage, and all this stuff. So for me to pass my test, I would literally line up the smart drugs I was taking on the desk. I'm like, I'm not cheating. Like, if you dope. Like, you know people. Lance Armstrong couldn't talk about what he was doing because they didn't let him. But it would have been great if he's like, I won the Tour de France and I did A, B and C so we could all learn. And I'm like, I would fail out of this. So here's my cognitive enhancers. I'm not cheating because there's no rule against doping in business school, but it was the only way I graduated. And I've been on cognitive enhancers for 25 years. And. Oh, my God, why doesn't everyone do this?
B
Well, I want to talk to you about that, but what I find so interesting about you, I think beyond everything else, you are a master marketer, a master business person. Like, the fact that it's one thing to have the knowledge or to educate yourself. Right. It's another thing to be able to execute it in a way that people actually. It resonates with, and then they. And then develop. And you've been able to develop such a hardcore community to. But over and over again with all these businesses, like, Bulletproof is just one of the things you do. The. The Biohacking Conference, 40 Years of Zen danger coffee, and the list is like, it's on and on. So, like, I think beyond just, like, knowing all these biohacking secrets, what I really wanna get into today is your marketing secrets. Like, what. What actually? Like, how did you know what to do, how to get people, like, in. In? Is it just polarizing? Is it just being unique? Is it just being, like, outlandish? Like, what is your secret and what is your strategies? That's what I want to know.
A
We can go there.
B
Okay, good. Because, you know, you look at your Instagram and yes, everything is kind of like, things are super outlandish to the average Joe, but it actually tracks and works and it becomes A thing later on.
A
Yeah.
B
Okay, so tell me.
A
Okay. When I was in business school, we had a whole class, like for a semester, where the basic idea was to teach us that it was cheaper to spend a dollar telling people your product was high quality than it was to make a high quality product. And this is one of the problems in the world. Like you look at what's going on on Amazon and all this cheap stuff. So if, if I made the world's best of something and there was a knockoff next to me, it's still going to cost me a dollar to market the world's best, and it's going to cost them a dollar to market the world's crappiest with nice paint on. So therefore we have this race to the bottom where everything's like something you would buy at a flea market. And I just have this belief from my own experience having all the diseases of aging before I was 30, chronic fatigue syndrome, brain fog, arthritis. Since I was 14, I weighed 300 pounds. The GI issues, high risk of stroke and heart attack on lab tests, prediabetes. So I have all this going on and I realized I don't give a crap if something is supposed to work. I only care if it does work. And in business it's kind of the same thing, but it's more obvious. So if you have this religious belief that billboard ads are going to change the world for you. So you put a million dollars into billboard ads and you don't sell anything, you go, well, it's maybe because I didn't do it enough, right? So you put 10 million in and it still doesn't do anything, and then you're out of money. Well, for our health, like, how many times can you go to the gym without getting very good results per minute? How many times you can go on a low fat, low calorie diet that you can't sustain no matter what? I've done all of those on my weight loss journey. So when it comes to making products, I am going to bet that people will spend a little bit more for stuff that actually works. People will pay for quality. Not perceived quality, but actual quality. They just have to feel it, okay? So that was part of it. And then I also recognized that there was. There's a group of people who hadn't come together. So I ran a longevity nonprofit group in Palo Alto starting in the late 90s. I was the only guy under 60 in the room because I was learning how to heal myself from people three times my age. Like the, my elders, the masters of longevity taught me all this stuff that became biohacking.
B
Like who. Who are you looking up to?
A
A guy named Julian Whitaker was an example. Bruce Ames, who's still around. So I got to hang out with like the who's who from the 90s. People were writing the big books on nutrition. Barry Sears from the Zone, the Atkins family. So I'm getting mentored by all these people. So we have these longevity nuts, you could call them, like, like everyone thought we were crazy. Like it's not possible to do that. And then on the other side of the road, my brain was failing. And I'm at a company that split three times on the NASDAQ in 1998, was worth $36 billion. And I co founded a part of that company. And my career is going nuts. My brain is totally cooked. I can't remember things and I'm hiding it from people and I keep getting promotions. And it was just kind of this hellish but exciting, exciting time in my career where there's this deep fear that I have the accelerator pegged all the way to the floor and I'm slowing down every day and I don't know what to do. So I got into this cognitive enhancers I talked about before. And the guy who ran the world's only newsletter in the 80s on that became a mentor. So all of a sudden I have the elixir of brain juice that works and I know how it works. And I've studied intensely and I've worked with the longevity people. And Mike on my board of directors, who's 88 years old, has more energy than I do, calls me at 11:30 at night, all excited and ready to do stuff. And I'm like, how does he do that? I want that. And I know it's possible. And I saw older people get younger. I just didn't wait till I was old to see it. I got to see it when I was young because my body was failing, right? So, okay, now I got old. People want to become young about cognitive enhancement, right? These guys don't talk to each other. And then you've got. I went to the gym 90 minutes a day, six days a week for 18 months straight. Just beat myself up. I will lose this weight no matter what. I never lost a pound. I still had a 46 inch waist. I was just stronger at the end of that. So now I got my bodybuilders who are some of the best biohackers in the world, right? And then you talk with the professional athletes and like the astronauts and Then all the nutrition people. Right. And I've been a vegan. I've been a raw vegan. I've tested all the limits of the diets and understand all that stuff works because I had to, because no one could tell me. And I wrote a major, major book. Almost a million copies of it sold. That sold.
B
What was the first book? What was that book called?
A
That was called the Bulletproof Die.
B
The Bulletproof Die was your first book? Yeah.
A
It sold even like 600,000 copies in Japan, of all places.
B
That was a massive move.
A
It actually introduced in the first chapter, here's lectins, which became a big thing.
B
Yeah.
A
Here's clean keto and here's intermittent fasting. Like, those are massive trends, totally, that have taken off. And it made collagen into a billion dollar industry category. Collagen.
B
Yeah.
A
And it made MCT into a billion dollar industry category and functional coffee into a half a billion dollar category from one book and from one movement. And the reason for that isn't because I'm good at marketing. It's because I know how to make things that work.
B
How? So tell me, so, like, how did you figure, like the, like the butter and the coffee, right? Like, that was like such a trend. People are still. I think people still do it. People are still doing it. But that, like, was. That took over the health and fitness industry.
A
Isn't it crazy?
B
It's. It's beyond. Like, there was like, obviously, you know, there's like, you can go get that at the. At the cafes and everywhere you went. It was like the Erewhon of today.
A
Actually was the first company that carried bulletproof coffee when I was at Bulletproof.
B
Oh, really?
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And they used to make bulletproof coffee ice cream at their original location. I love Erewhon.
B
I. I mean, so did, like, how did you figure that? So were you basically a human guinea pig for all of these things?
A
People who are older will understand this. Well, if you wake up like me.
B
Or older than me, older than you.
A
Unless you've had a really good longevity program there. There comes a time for most people, if they're not doing the longevity stuff that I teach now, where you wake up and you're like, my body hurts. I feel like crap. My brain doesn't work. I'm. I'm have a wet blanket on my head and I wake up and I don't like how I look in the mirror and I don't have any vibe, any drive. I'm just tired and I'm gonna slog through the day and I'm gonna do it again and again. I experienced that at a very young age. And, like, I'm just going to use willpower. But willpower is a function of how much energy your body can make. So having to go through and, and repair all that stuff really taught me how to talk with people about what they don't share with other people. And one of the things that, that really touched me during the process of, of learning how to reverse all that is I raised my first venture capital round for Bulletproof. It was something like $8 million. And it's from Sandhill Road VCs. And one of the guys who ended up on the board, who I'd gotten to know because I worked for that firm, he wrote a Medium article. And I was shocked when I read it. This guy came to me when I was working at the firm and just, why are you putting butter in your coffee like you're an idiot? And it explained why he tried it. And when he wrote that post, after they funded the company, he said, 60 days after I met Dave, I sat down in my BMW in the parking lot on Sandhill Road and I cried. I'm like, what? Venture capitalists don't cry? They don't have souls. Like, I don't understand this, and I'm just joking. My friend does have a soul. And he said, here's why. He said, my entire adult life, I've had crippling fatigue and brain fog, and I've never told a soul. And 60 days after I started doing what Dave said, I went through the entire day without losing my energy even one time. And it felt so hopeless and so impossible that I was crying because I've never experienced a day of full energy in my adult life. And no one ever knew. And you look around, you know, why did biohacking take off? There's a lot of people who are quietly desperate, including entrepreneurs. We're some of the worst, right?
B
Probably the worst.
A
Yeah. We burn the candle at both ends and in the middle. It's not like when I was learning all this longevity stuff, I was just hanging out. I was. Had a demanding tech career. I started Bulletproof, and I was a VP at a publicly traded computer security company. I literally am a computer hacker. So I'm working all day at a high pressure exec job, flying around the world and doing stuff. And then at night I'm blogging and I'm building this little company. And my whole point of starting it, I didn't even build a list. I just wanted five people to not go through all that shit that I went through, like, if five people read my blog, it'll have made the world a better place. And that's my win. This is almost like a nonprofit activity. And when I said, well, I want some coffee that doesn't make me tweak, like, does anyone else want to try it? It was literally a desire to share. But along the way, how did I come up with this bulletproof coffee thing?
B
Did you come up with the name bulletproof?
A
Oh, absolutely.
B
So did you get money? Did you raise money after you kind of hit a certain benchmark, like, you were already. Your community was already kind of growing?
A
I raised my first round when I was doing $27 million in revenue. I bootstrapped it until then.
B
Wow.
A
And my original seed capital was $50,000. And I got that by an investment bank flying me around the world to teach hedge fund managers how to raise their IQs.
B
So you were already, like, on your way.
A
I was a top expert in this field because I had studied intensely every night for four hours a night to save my life.
B
And you also were the computer hacker, so you also knew how to market online digitally, I would imagine.
A
Surprisingly, maybe. So if we go even further back in my career.
B
Yeah.
A
You see the tattoo here?
B
Yeah.
A
You know what that is?
B
Yeah, it's like. It's like a hydrogen or what? Like, it's the caffeine molecule that's acid. Caffeine. Okay.
A
When I was 20. Now I'm exposing my true age.
B
How old are you?
A
I'm 52.
B
52. Okay. With that facelift, you look 29, by the way.
A
Why, thank you.
B
Yeah, the.
A
The first product ever sold over the Internet had that molecule on it. It was sold out of my dorm room. The first E Commerce on the planet. We didn't have the word E Commerce yet. The web browser wasn't invented yet. And people say that's bullshit. I'm like, no, go to Entrepreneur magazine. There's an article of me weighing 300 pounds wearing a double extra large T shirt with that molecule on it. And they're saying, hey, everybody, this kid's selling T shirts over the inner something or another. Because the Internet wasn't a thing people Mostly knew about AOL.
B
Yeah. What year is this?
A
Around 1993.
B
Wow. Okay.
A
Um, in fact, that fat picture on Instagram is from Entrepreneur magazine, so that's funny. Yeah.
B
Oh, wow.
A
So I did have some of that, but I spent time building Internet infrastructure. You go back to when cloud computing didn't have a name. The provision on demand, you know, pay as you go model. That's just part of everything we do. The first shipping instance of that was at the company where I helped to start part of the company and we beat Marc Andreessen by one day. So I've been deep in technology infrastructure. I ran the web and Internet engineering program in Silicon Valley to teach teach engineers how to build Web 1.0. So I'm just like a deep, deep nerd who's desperately trying to keep my brain and my body working so I can do the tech stuff that I love. And I'm sick all the time.
B
So you got. Okay, so you were like basically making Your revenue is 27 million. You raised 8 million.
A
But just to answer your question, there's a long answer. So I knew about early stuff, but then I started. I could have talked more about the OSI model and TCPIP protocols and window sizes. No one knows what that is unless you're a network engineer. So that was my thing, not e commerce. But then when Salesforce was eight people, they came to us and helped them build their infrastructure. When Google was two guys and two computers, they came to us. When the Facebook was eight computers, they came to us. When Hotmail was eight computers, they came to us. And we built all that stuff out and we held it in our buildings and built the networks. So that's what I was doing, not learning how to sell T shirts online. So I wasn't an e commerce expert. But what I was an expert at is technology and understanding the fundamental drive of humans. Because I was so close to zero. And the way I really got going, I hired a 23 year old. Now I'm a VP at a big company. I'm working my ass off. I have two young kids. I just moved to a new country, to Canada, right. And I'm very busy as a father and executive. And I said, look, you've proven to me. His name's Andrew, that you can solve problems. Like you have this rare skill of being able to go to Google and say, how do I do something? And then go and do it. And this is very rare. So I said, I'll pay you. And I paid him like 600 bucks a month. He lived in his grandmother's basement for a year and did whatever I needed done. And he did a 5 out of 10 job, made lots of mistakes. In fact, he cost me millions of dollars by doing things the wrong way. He also made me millions of dollars by doing enough things the right way.
B
Right.
A
And that was enough to start hiring a team. And then what did I do? I hired people who knew more than I did. One of my other first employees. The first employee from Starbucks. Yeah, I hired her. The ninth employee from Starbucks, I hired him. His name's Daryl. Right. So, like, I know the chemistry and the process of coffee. I do not know all of the coffee industry insider, who pays who and who hates who, and all this stuff that all industries have. So you just hire that. And I hired people who knew way more than I did. But I got it going with young, scrappy people who were just willing because they could see the why and the mission for it. So the e commerce stuff. My first head of marketing, he was an affiliate marketer who came in and made 60 grand the first month. And I called him and said, dude, can I hire you? Because I don't have time. I'm still working a main job. I don't want to make decisions. I just need to get the ball moving, get the processes going. So that got us to our 27 million.
B
Wow. And so when you raised the money initially, what did you first do with it? Where did you put it?
A
Let me tell you about the raise for a minute. First. I'd worked for the first venture capital firm who wrote a check. And so I'd been in their partner meetings. I've seen lots of pitches. I've seen what they say after the companies leave and just how partners think. It was very educational. And I called up my friends there and I said, I have a company that's growing. It is not a venture capital company. Like, you will never fund this company. I'm in five product categories. There is no acquirer for. For bulletproof. But you should give me a million bucks or even 50 grand. I just need $3 million of coffee inventory because I'm. I'm selling so fast, I can't get enough coffee.
B
Wow.
A
And they came back and said, oh, this is a VC company and it's worth, you know, here's $8 million. It's worth $40 million. So when I got the money, I was like, this is crazy. And I. I remember thinking to myself, I want to be independent so I can say the truth. It's really important. Because money does corrupt, and venture capitalists are well known for what they do. And it did happen to me, too. So I kind of had a spiritual discussion with myself. I said, if I take this money, I will lose control at some point, but it's going to give me a license to reach many, many million more people than I could do on my own with organic growth So I said, okay, this is for the greatest good. And I. I took the funding. And even by the time I had done my Series C, I'd set a record since 1986 for maintaining the most founders equity of any entrepreneur from that. And that was because I raised when I was in rapid growth and I didn't really need the money. I needed it for growth, but I wasn't desperate. And the sad part of the story, and the reason I advise a lot of entrepreneurs now is eventually, you know, years later, I did get removed from my own board of directors and, you know, removed from my own company. And then they sold it for a pittance compared to what it was worth when they let me go, which was traumatic.
B
Happens all the time.
A
It does. And now, though I've talked to so many entrepreneurs when they're about to get screwed on their term sheets, I'm like, let me help you.
B
Yeah. What happened with you, though? Because it was so. It was valued. What was the evaluation? A billion, Almost.
A
You said it would. It was valued anywhere between 500 million and a billion, depending on which, you know, which bankers you listen to and things like that. And we were doing about 140 million in revenue when I was removed.
B
So a. Why did they remove you and what happened? What was the downfall?
A
There's some things I can share and some I probably am not at liberty to discuss, but the bottom line is, VCs almost always want to remove founders. I like to describe them as. Imagine you pick up a hitchhiker and you can use their credit card to put gas in the tank as long as you're going where they want to go, but as soon as you want to go a different direction, they try to stab you and steal your car. Like, that's the model for venture capital, is it not?
B
Yeah, that's exactly true. Yep.
A
And it wasn't even about change in direction. I had brought in a very senior operator. And to be clear, I hate running $100 million companies. It is the most torturous, boring, like, awful job I can imagine. And there are people who love it. It's just for my makeup. I'm the 0 to 50 guy.
B
Yeah, right.
A
And I can do that over and over, and it brings me great joy. And after that, it just becomes a slog.
B
Well, they usually. That's what happens. Like, usually the founder gets replaced with someone who knows how to grow it from 50 to 100 and keeps on going.
A
What I did is I actually decided to replace myself. I. I don't want to do that. Kind of work. And I'd say I made a bad choice. And once that person was in there, things just got exceptionally hostile. They did some, some moves that ended up in some legal situations. And yeah, I'll say I uncovered along the way that an executive, not me, was in line to get paid a very substantial amount of money if the company was sold to the right people.
B
Wow.
A
For a low price. Yeah.
B
So what happened?
A
Well, in order to facilitate that or maybe for some other reason, the company suddenly was on the verge of bankruptcy, which was kind of surprising because when they let me go, we weren't in that situation.
B
It was, it's like at like the precipice of the company.
A
So, so yeah, then at that point, okay, they're like, well, it's kind of we have to sell at this price. We have to sell at this price. So I'll just say I. From my perception, it looks like there were some shenanigans. So I, I did the, the normal legal thing that you would do there. But the vent, the vast majority of investors, including the VCs who backed me, the one I talked about, who, you know, got his energy back, they got wiped out. So basically the company was sold for about 10% of what it was worth.
B
What was it? What did it end up selling for?
A
I'm not certain if that number was ever public and it's possible that I got that number in some kind of proceeding where it's confidential. So I would be happy to say the exact number, but I don't know if I'm allowed to.
B
Oh.
A
So. Well, we'll just say it was, it was enough that I was wiped out on my common shares.
B
You made no money off of Bulletproof?
A
I made, I made no money off of the, the end of the end. I mean off the sale. Along the way I made some money. I mean, geez, I was a CEO for 10 years.
B
You made a ton of money at the be. At the beginning, I would imagine I.
A
Made a decent amount. It was not, it was not crazy money, to be honest.
B
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A
I spent two and a half million dollars over 25 years. Yeah.
B
Two and a half million brands whole.
A
His whole marketing campaign is exactly the 2016 campaign for superhuman. My longevity book. And that's cool. We need more longevity voices. Longevity.
B
I feel we have a lot of longevity voices.
A
Well, there's this old school anti aging crowd and that's what I did in the 90s. And there's still like a conference. It's kind of like a dusty conference.
B
Which one?
A
The Anti Aging Academy one.
B
I don't know that one.
A
Yeah. And it's. It's a thing where, like, if you're against aging and you're against death, it kind of reminds me of, of Mother Teresa once she was invited to join a march against the war. And she goes, absolutely not. And they're like, we thought you would like it. She goes, I'll join a march for peace, but I won't join a march against the war. Because when you fight against something, get stronger.
B
Yeah.
A
This comes from the spiritual stuff. And the real reason for biohacking. Two things. Number one, I want young people to understand that there's a reason that they should do longevity. And the reason isn't so they'll live forever. That's nice. It's so you'll have a better brain and more power now. So the things that make old people young make young people more powerful. And entrepreneurs. We're the ones who need it the most. We need the power and the energy now. And that's why this biohacking stuff took off. Number one with tech entrepreneurs. I use the language, it was called the bulletproof executive. And number two, hedge fund managers. Number three, Hollywood and recording artists and pro athletes. That's who spread all of this.
B
Totally agree.
A
Right. And it's because they're the ones with the most cognitively demanding tasks and they have to look good at the same time. And that is really hard.
B
Also expendable income. Yes, that's the big one. So what I was going to say about Brian Johnson was. Is it no accident. It's no accident that both of you came from. You're both very successful prior to getting into longevity and biohacking. Let's just say had a lot of expendable income from being, you know, great. You guys had the pedigree and the cognitive ability already to know how to make a business and market it. But what he's doing is literally what you did 20 years ago, pretty much. Right. And. But is it that people are not aware of? That's the same. It's the same playbook. It is the same playbook.
A
Well, it's a well proven playbook. That works, right? I don't have an issue with that.
B
But he's just doing. He's adding different modalities that maybe weren't around back then, like the plasma or do, you know, like. I'm sure you've tried all this stuff as well.
A
I mean, I. I did the video on Facebook Live back when Facebook Live was a thing of them putting stem cells in my male organs. I'm on Facebook Live and I'm like, don't have the camera on the wrong thing. I've already done all of the penis enhancement stuff. We did a whole big.
B
You do?
A
Oh, yeah. I have a company that does that.
B
Hold on. Say that again. This is like a great clip. You did what?
A
I injected stem cells in my penis and I did this nine years ago. And I have actually added. If you want to get a little bit graphic, I added 2 inches with all the different technologies I do. Not that I needed to, but it was like, holy shit. I can. Like, that's. The human body is a toy. What can you do with it? And so.
B
Really?
A
Yeah. And like, there's video of me doing it. In fact, at my conference. This is one of my favorite scenes ever. Okay. I'm filming, but you can't. You know, you want to film things you can't see. So I'm laying down. There's a blanket propped up so you can't see my junk. And I'm filming. You just see my toes and the blanket. And this gloved hand comes down with this long needle, and you see the needle go in and then my toes go. And I'm like, this is going to give me length and girth. Right? And we're all laughing about it. And I. I played the video at the biohacking conference because I'M like, guys, this is possible. And you can take someone who has ED and you can fix it, and you can take someone who doesn't have ED and you can give them a very young thing. Because, in fact, in my, my new book, heavily Meditated, one of the chapters is like, tantra and sacred sex stuff. Is an altered state as important as psychedelics for personal development like that. That's nourishing for us at a very deep level, so we might as well just talk about it. So one of my companies called Wasabi Method, and we have a unique type of shockwave device that will put inches on, and that's how it works. So, yeah, all that stuff around, like, you know, look at my, look at my, look at my. Okay, like, been there and it's great. But like, we all. Every 10 years, you've seen this. Every 10 years, things recycle. There's probably a 22 year old right now going, I just figured out you can put butter in coffee and you feel so much better. And they're gonna, like, they're gonna do this.
B
So true.
A
And it's okay, right? And what's different, maybe about me? I was mentored by my elders. John Gray taught me a whole bunch of stuff. Right.
B
I love John Gray.
A
John is such a great human being. And I've interviewed 1200 people on my podcast over the last 14 years. I've talked to the masters of different lineages of spiritual stuff, the top longevity doctors, and the reason people biohack. Ultimately, you might come in to lose the weight or do one thing. You will always want to live way longer than you're supposed to, and you'll want to become more conscious and happy. So all of my efforts are longevity and consciousness. I'm doing an event, a very small, private event with the Dalai Lama later this year.
B
You are?
A
Yeah.
B
With who? Who else is going? Can I go?
A
Possibly. It'll be like 10 people and me. Yeah.
B
Wait, okay. There's like so many things you just said I have to unpack before we get to the Dalai Lama, which is a big one. Talk about this, like this, this penis enhancement thing. So you got stem cells placed in your penis and it actually grew to 2 inches for good, or does it go away after a couple years?
A
Not just the stem cells. That's a part of it.
B
Okay. The soft wave, you said.
A
Yeah, it's. The Wasabi Method is a. It's a specific type of sound wave that goes in and creates micro bubbles that cause new nerves and new blood vessels to grow. And if you want more size, you get more blood vessels, but more nerves and more blood vessels are good. Oh, and it works on women, too. I've done it on my girlfriend.
B
And what does it do?
A
Well, you want more nerves and more blood vessels all around the vulva region. It's external, only you don't go inside with that modality.
B
Does it hurt to get this done?
A
Usually use a little bit of lidocaine. I don't use lidocaine anymore because you just get used to it.
B
Well, how often are you doing it?
A
Maybe once every month or two when I get around to it. But normally you do it three or four times and you see, like, massive. Like. Like when I first did this, maybe six years ago, I'd get out of the shower, and if you're a guy, you get out of the shower, you recognize yourself in the mirror, and you kind of know, like, you know, shower girl or all that stuff, and you just do a double take. You're like, that's not mine. Because it looks so different.
B
And so. Okay, this is fascinating to me.
A
I'm like, try not to be a.
B
Douche who's like, no, it's just fascinating because I think that this. And. And so does it. So you do have to get it done over and over again. It doesn't last forever.
A
It does last a very long time because you talk about growing new blood vessels, and now we're going to get a little bit juicy. And this is part of heavily meditated. I write about it. One of the things that is a major variable for men is frequency of ejaculation, because every time a guy ejaculates, testosterone drops precipitously for 24 to 48 hours. And a hormone called prolactin that most people don't know about goes up. Prolactin makes you tired and lazy, and low testosterone makes you tired and lazy and fat. So every time we ejaculate, we're dropping testosterone and we're raising this other hormone. And that's why we have a refractory period, because prolactin goes up over time. So when you're young, you can go over and over, and as you age, you get higher levels of prolactin. So it turns out the Taoists figured this out a long time ago and said, you want to live a long time based on how old you are. Don't ejaculate too often, but have as much sex as you want. So I'm like, that sounds like bullshit. I'm going to go test this and For a year, I published my happiness data and my ejaculation data and my frequency of sex and masturbation, all that in one of my books. And the Taoists are right. The equation for men is real. So based on that, the longevity frequency for Taoists is ejaculate every 30 days or less. This is really hard to do. Publishing a year of data is kind of embarrassing because there's times I only made three weeks and then oops. But what I found during one of them, for 30 days, I'm like, we'll just try the edge of this. No stimulation whatsoever. So it's not that I'm not having intimate activities, it's just that I'm not getting any. And it shrunk very noticeably, like 20, 30%. I'm like, this is horrible. It's like a muscle that doesn't get worked out. So there are ancient. These are Chinese exercises that will restore blood flow and volume and basically make it stronger. I did an episode with Montauk Chia, who's one of the top teachers of this kind of thing in Oman. I interviewed him and he talked about, grab this and pull on it and slap it this way, like, okay. Or I just rely on technologies that do that. So if you, if you enhance it and you keep using it, it'll stay. If you enhance it and then you just, you know, once every couple weeks, it's going to go away. So it's a use it or use it thing, like every other muscle in the body.
B
Okay, so wait, so how often are you ejaculated? Then? You've said something about once every 30 days. And every. Give me the, the, the, the. The. I guess the playbook of the best way to do this.
A
Here's the equation. And I also want to tie this back to entrepreneurs. I'll give you the equation. First. It's age in years -7 divided by.
B
4, and that's how much you should be ejaculated.
A
And that's the number of days between ejaculations. So as you get older, it's longer and longer. And the reason for this is to keep your prolactin low and keep your testosterone high. And probably some other. They'll call it young life energy or qi. Like you lose your qi when you ejaculate, but having relations with someone increases your chi. It's just that it grows and it grows and it grows and then you lose it. Only for men. The rules for women are different. And then for entrepreneurs, I've been teaching this for 10 years.
B
Okay.
A
The number of men, especially in their 30s, who have come up to me after conferences or just on stream, be like, I heard you talk about that. I tried it, and I started two new companies. I got a $30,000 raise. I finally got a girlfriend. Like, their lives changed dramatically. And I didn't invent this. You know who did? Napoleon Hill. Think and grow rich. He has a whole chapter on sexual sublimation. But the world is so uptight that we won't talk about it. And that's why in heavily meditated, there is a chapter saying, of all the different ways you can access altered states that increase your performance in your consciousness and your awareness and your happiness. Sex and tantra. It is one of the preeminent ways. And 20% of people report meeting God during orgasm at least once in their life. But their partners don't know because they're just laying there twitching, just like if they were on ketamine.
B
Yeah.
A
So why are we not talking about this as a. As a necessary source of nourishment for the human soul and fuel for building things in the world that matter? Because creating a new life, which is what sex does, is not that different from creating a new company is the same energetic action that we do.
B
So I have a bunch of questions. Really. Right.
A
But I didn't think we were going to go, I know it's Weight Watchers.
B
Or something, but it's actually very interesting. Right. Because you're right. I think people are shy even, and embarrassed and don't know where to go with it. But, like, you're using these modalities to really enhance every aspect of your life. Your cognitive, your physical, your emotional, your spiritual. You've tried everything by any means necessary. By any means necessary. Have you? What have you noticed in the 25 plus, like, you've been doing this forever. Is there anything that you can look at now and be like, you know, that actually didn't really work. That was kind of a farce. I learned because everything evolves with this evolution.
A
Yeah.
B
What are some of the things that are kind of like, kind of not really worthwhile?
A
The. The thing that was the biggest mistake I made by far was becoming a vegan. It's taken me years to recover from that.
B
Really. Years?
A
Years. And what happens is you feel great for six weeks. And this is because you're not getting the fatty acids or the proteins your body needs. So temporarily, your body makes more thyroid hormone so that you can have enough energy to go find an animal and eat it.
B
Totally.
A
You don't do that so by then you're convinced I've got the glow, I've got the vegan glow, I feel so good. So then you keep doing it and then you start getting worse energy and your skin doesn't work and you start getting massive joint pain and weird skin issues that comes from plant based toxins, mostly called oxalate. And I wrote about this in the bulletproof diet, but I didn't weighed it heavily enough. So as a raw vegan, I filled my body with razor sharp calcium crystals that caused all the joint pain, a lot of the neurological pain. I had to have the big toe on my right foot rebuilt after a yoga injury because of this problem. So getting razor sharp calcium crystals out of our diet and out of our bodies is necessary if you're going to live to 180 or more years like I am. And it's taken a long time to unpack that and get out of it. And now I understand how it works. But even with a bulletproof diet, I wrote about it and I minimized some foods like spinach and kale, but it turns out almonds and sweet potatoes, which I'm used to be a fan of. I think sweet potatoes are better than white potatoes, but if you're eating very many of them, you're getting a meaningful dose of a toxin your body can't remove. So for me, I didn't do myself any favors with the vegan diet and now I kind of doubled down on those bulletproof diet principles and man, I, I am five and a half, six percent body fat and I'm never hungry and I'm lean. Have you seen the COVID of the book?
B
Yeah, I saw the COVID of the book. That's crazy. Is that real? I was gonna ask you if it was photoshopped.
A
It's real. It's not photoshopped. I didn't even dehydrate or do all that weird stuff. I literally woke up. I flew to Florida the night before. I woke up the next morning, took my shirt off in a studio and we took the pictures. There was no prep whatsoever. I did push ups before the shots. That was it.
B
Are you kidding me?
A
I'm not kidding you.
B
Okay, so wait again, I gotta unpack. This could be like a 12 hour, like I don't know how we thought we're gonna get done all this. So you're saying sweet potato is really bad for you?
A
Well, if you're sensitive to nightshades, which about a third of people are, you're going to get arthritis from eating white potatoes. I'M one of those people, by the way. My daughter isn't. My son is. So white potatoes, because they're part of the night shade family, along with tomatoes and eggplants and things like that. So this is a cause of rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmunity because our bodies can't handle that plant defense compound. So then you switch to sweet potatoes because they don't cause that problem. And you feel good on sweet potatoes. And they're delicious. I love them. And they have some nutrients. Problem is they're higher in oxalate than white potatoes. So either way, you're screwed. You eat sweet potatoes, you get oxalate, you eat white potatoes, you get less oxalate, but you still get it. And you get lactose. And I've been recommending forever the safest source of starch is white rice. Cassava, high oxalate, white rice, not. So I eat white rice as my carbs and I eat some fruit, but it turns out raspberries are as high as spinach in oxalate. You want to hear a cool story about raspberries?
B
Yeah.
A
When I was recovering from my vegan time, I went to the farmer's market in Mountain View, California, and I would buy like 12 baskets of berries and I would just eat a couple baskets of raspberries a day because they're good for you. And soon I had to pee like 25 times a day. Urgently have to pee. Like, I'm going to wet myself. I'm like, what is wrong? I'm like 30 something. And I go to my longevity doc. There was only one in the Bay Area at that time. And he goes, I don't know what this is. I go to San Francisco, they stick a camera in a place where they don't go in men in the front, not the back. And that was traumatic. Oh, my God. And he goes, I have no idea what it is. And I finally figured it out. The raspberries were causing it. I didn't know why, but now I know why. Because when you eat foods high in these razor sharp calcium crystals, the crystals form in your urine and they cut your urethra. If you're a woman and you have UTIs all the time, right, you have even interstitial cystitis. Step away from the raspberries and kale and spinach and sweet potatoes and almonds, and you might suddenly find that three days later you don't have it anymore.
B
That is insane. So how about blueberries or strawberries?
A
Perfectly fine.
B
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A
I am not a keto dieter. Some think I invented the keto diet. I did not. That was more Robert Atkins. But what I did do is I said, well, a clean keto diet with specific fats and no toxins, that's a cyclical diet, works really well. So I'll go into ketosis for a few days and then I'll go out. But I don't recommend unending periods of ketosis for most people, especially women. And that was in all of my books. But sometimes people just want to simplify. Like keto's good carbs are bad, right? So no, I'll eat. I eat a lot of blueberries and I'll eat fruit and I'll eat rice.
B
White rice.
A
White rice.
B
Because everyone thought that brown rice was obviously better than white rice.
A
Such a scam. In fact, I really pissed people off last week on Instagram. I said if I had a choice between eating white flour from Europe and sweet Potatoes. I would pick the white flour from Europe. Now, I am not a fan of gluten, but European wheat is much gentler than American wheat. It's a different species of wheat. It's a soft wheat versus a hard wheat. And it's not sprayed with toxins like glyphosate the way it was here. If you give me a teaspoon of American flour, man, my gut is ruined for days. And my. I get pimples. It's horrible. And I get brain fog. But I can go to Europe and I can eat croissants all the time. And I just have to say something really quickly like, you believe in democracy, right? Okay. So there are more Americans who eat croissants than French people who eat croissant. So by the power of democracy, the French people need to change how they.
B
Say the word that is so funny.
A
Sorry. As a Canadian passport holder, which is a French speaking country, as a Canadian.
B
In general Canadian, are you. Yeah, this is. When you said Vancouver, I lived in Toronto, so I know that's where I'm from. So that's okay. So first of all, the vegan name another myth or biohacking thing that you were like, really hardcore about that you've realized now that is kind of utter nonsense.
A
I really, truly believe that exercise would help me lose weight. I had three knee surgeries before I was 24 because my knee would just collapse from walking from the arthritis that I had. Like, I really had an old person's body when I was young. And I'm like, I am not going to let this happen anymore. So I went to the gym that time, you know, 702 hours over 18 months. At the end of that, I hadn't lost any weight, but I'm like, at least I'm strong. So finally I must be rehabbed. I can, like, see my quads. Like, I'm. I'm safe now. And I did something really dangerous. I played laser tag. Remember laser tag?
B
Of course I remember.
A
And I squatted and I twisted and I blew my ACL and went back in for another surgery. And I'm like, why? So my belief that exercise would make me thin was wrong. And my belief that more exercise was better was wrong. And Today we have 30 locations opening of upgrade labs. And I can prove it to you with university studies and your own results. You give me 15 minutes a week of cardio at my facilities, and it'll do six times better than an hour a day of spin classes because.
B
Are you doing strength training with that 15 minutes?
A
No, that's straight up cardio training. We're using AI to exercise, and we're using a ton of recovery technologies, because what really makes people change is brief, intense stimulus followed by profound recovery. So I use AI to give you the right stimulus, and it's a very small amount, and then AI to help you recover, to have the right recovery for what you did. And people transform. This is the stuff that I use to biohack myself.
B
Right. And there's. So that's. I mean, the intense intervals is definitely what really kind of changes someone's body composition. However. And so you're saying that a myth was that exercise, as a general term, was a great way to lose weight, which you now realize that is not.
A
That was part of it.
B
Okay.
A
One is exercise. Right. The other one was that more exercise would get more results. That is not true either. It's actually paradoxical. Over training is a really serious thing for people. Exercise every day. I had a couple friends over two months ago. They're both about my age, and they have much bigger shoulders than I do. That's probably because I had a tear in my shoulder that I've just rehabbed so I can put them back on. But they also have big pot bellies, and they're like, we never worked out this hard to be this fat. Like, we're going to the gym five times a week, and we're hitting it hard, and we're maxing things out, and it's called overtraining, dude. You have a cortisol belly and your testosterone's in the shitter because everyone's testosterone is low, men and women, because of microplastics and all the other stuff. So get on thyroid if you need it, which most people do. Get on testosterone, which most people need, and then work out every three days, and the other day go to yoga class or go for a walk and watch your gut disappear. So less exercise, more recovery equals results. I did not understand that.
B
Yeah.
A
And entrepreneurs, we are the worst people on earth at taking a break and recovering. So I use technology to let me recover faster than I'm supposed to. I'm like, hurry up, recover faster.
B
That's interesting because you're right. I think that type A person more is not more. Right. Okay, so you're saying that that's actually an interesting one, especially with the cortisol spike. So you noticed that when you stopped exercising more or you did these intense intervals and did much more of a recovery, your body started to lose weight more and get more lean, and your body composition changed.
A
Yeah, food is 90% of body comp easy.
B
Yeah, 95.
A
And then if you want to put on muscle and be fit, you can do it in very small amounts of time. And this is not to say that moving is bad for you. I recommend a 20 minute walk every day, or if you don't have time for that, get a whole body vibration plate. Do five minutes of that.
B
Yeah, you do that too, right?
A
Oh, absolutely.
B
Do you work out? So you do this because I want to know about your routine. Like you. But hold on a second. How about you said something about supplementation and testosterone and thyroid. What are you. Are you, Are you on testosterone? Are you on hormone replacement? Like, what are you doing?
A
When I was 26, I went into the doctor and I was very fortunate because I ran a longevity nonprofit to know the only guy in town who did this. And I'd sent my parents to him. And then I went and he called me and said, dave, I've got bad news. Your testosterone is lower than your mom's. Wow, 26 years old, by the way. This is the case for all 26 year olds now. Yeah, I was just an early adopter of low testosterone.
B
Right. What was it at? What was the number?
A
God, I don't remember at the time, but it was not good. This has been 25 years ago or something, so I probably have it in a hard drive somewhere. But I went on testosterone to get my levels back up and I went on thyroid because my thyroid was terrible at Hashimoto's. And we were just discovering Hashimoto's back then. So I remember the first time I got thyroid, I'm like, wow, I forgot I could my brain work like this. I was walking around in a fog all the time and I was cold all the time. And you see the outer parts of my eyebrows are thin. That's a sign of Hashimoto's. It is, yeah. You start shedding the outer part of your eyebrows. I was been like that since I was in my early 20s because I had. I lived in a house with toxic mold. I had brain damage from toxic mold that was driving a lot of my mental stuff. I had hormone disruption from chemicals, bad food and toxic mold, which makes synthetic estrogen that makes you fat on 30% less calories. And by the way, for people saying that's bullshit, it's called Zearolanone. You can look it up, it's real. So I had all this stuff going on, I didn't know. So, yeah, I went on testosterone and I've been on testosterone since I was 26 years old, except for two years when I was developing the bulletproof diet to see what I could do with just diet. And what I found was if I did my best to get good sleep and to eat tons of fat, I could get my levels up to about 700.
B
That's high.
A
It's not high.
B
Well, higher than 100 or.
A
Oh, no, your. Your total testosterone for guys should usually be around a thousand to feel good. And that's where it would have been 30 years ago. So 700 is not a healthy number for most people. And your free testosterone needs to be above 20 to feel good and to just have your masculine stuff. So I've been on it, except for that time I couldn't get it high enough. And testosterone has absolutely changed my life. And here's why. Testosterone drives Dopamine levels in the brain. So if you're low in testosterone as a man or a woman, you'll be low dopamine. And what happens when you're low dopamine? Dopamine gives you a reward and pleasure for pursuing a goal. You don't get the reward if you get the goal. It's just the pursuit of it. So if you're an entrepreneur and a business person, you're pursuing a goal and you need to have adequate dopamine to wake up and care about it. And if you've ever seen the movie Grumpy Old Men, that's a testosterone deficiency documentary. That's what people are like when you're low T. And if you're 26 years old now and you're low testosterone like I was when I was 26, you don't have the vibe you're supposed to have. And there's nothing wrong with you. If you're feeling anxiety or tiredness or depression, you simply have a hardware problem because your balls are not making enough testosterone because they were poisoned by your environment, or you're not sleeping and you're eating the wrong stuff so you can fix it. And a couple weeks after you do it, like, wow, this is great. I want to go to the gym. I'm doing stuff in my business again. Now I want a date. And it's like you get yourself back.
B
Yeah.
A
It's critically important. And you can measure it. It's not like it's witchcraft. What are my numbers in the labs?
B
How are you doing it? Are you doing it with a. With a. What do you call. With a pellet? Are you doing it just injecting it yourself? Like, what's the best, in your opinion?
A
Sure.
B
What's your. What's the best, best way to increase your testosterone?
A
It's different for men and women. The pellet works pretty well for women, but women need a much lower dose of testosterone. And a lot of people will think, well, women, it's all about estrogen. Women have four times more testosterone than estrogen. Estrogen's very potent, so you still need your testosterone. And it doesn't vary as much as it does for guys. My experience has been that you want to either inject or use a cream, because those are. Those are gonna give you the variability. I've used a pellet two times and a lot of my hair fell out from that. Because a pellet will raise your levels and keep them high and we need to cycle. So as of the last year, there are now two different oral forms of testosterone that are available. I'm testing those out to see which ones I like.
B
Really?
A
Yeah.
B
So, yeah, because a lot of the guys I know, they are taking, they're injecting themselves.
A
I've injected for 20 years. It's not that big of a deal.
B
It's not. How about. What do you think about peptides? Like, or even, like, even, like GLP1s and all that? Are you taking those, too?
A
I have been using peptides for about 12 years. I wrote a big chapter in Subrahman, my longevity book, on them. And they can work really, really well. It depends on your goals. There's hundreds of peptides.
B
So many.
A
Yeah. You probably want to work with a functional medicine doctor. Or if you're going to do it yourself, pick one or two to have specific outcomes you're looking for, and then do them for a month or two and see if you got the outcomes.
B
What are you doing? I want to know your. Everything you do in a day, what time you wake up, what you eat, what you drink, what you. Everything.
A
So over the last two years, I haven't used very many peptides, but over the last two months, I've been playing around with some new ones, like SLU P3.32. I've been on that for three weeks or something. All the weight loss and, like, muscles and vasculature and stuff like that is not from peptides. It's from getting one gram of animal protein per pound of body weight and doing it consistently. The biggest shift I've made In the last three years, that helped me lean out. I travel 50 to 70% of the time to come and be on shows like this. I'm on main stages in Dubai and.
B
All over the World. Yeah.
A
So when you travel, you can't get enough protein restaurants. Like, oh, here it's a $50 meal and there's a little cube of protein. Like, I'll have six of those, thank you. So I just travel with protein and I order the largest steak I can get at every meal. And once I keep my protein numbers up, it's like, I'm lean, I have tons of energy. And if you get one gram of animal protein per pound of body weight, it'll raise your GLP1 levels, similar to taking Ozempic. Anyway, I have used Ozempic one time because six years ago when I'm. I'm a futurist, really. And so I'm like, ah, this is gonna be really big. So the guy who led the first trial on Ozempic for weight loss for non diabetics, I had him on the show. So I injected the lowest dose that week so I could talk about it. Oh, my God. I felt like I had morning sickness. It was terrible. Uh, I wouldn't want to be on that. And since then, I've published GLP guidelines on my website. Here's what to do if you're going to be on a zic so you don't get the. The bad things. And this is my understanding of biochemistry, plus several doctors I've interviewed. And bottom line is you have to force yourself to eat protein and you have to do heavy stuff for brief periods twice a week and take some mitochondrial enhancers and you can safely use Ozempic to lose weight. I see all these people, really judgy people. These are people haven't really been obese like I have. When you're fat, you will do anything to lose the weight. And every single day, you sit down in your conference room and there's a plate of cookies in front of you, and you're like, I'm not gonna eat that cookie. And then the cookie is like, you're gonna eat me. And you have this internal dialogue which is depleting your willpower. And you're like. And you're drooling. And finally, like, fine, I'll just eat half. And then after, I was like, why am I such a bad person? I've done this so many times. I don't have that voice in my head anymore. The cookies have gone silent on me. I just don't even see them as food. And until I got to that point, though, it's just a constant struggle. And you're more tired when you're obese because your energy, that should be Going into your brain and your hormones, it's going into white fat cells. So losing weight is the most important thing you can do. It is deadly to be obese. So people think, But Ozempic is dangerous. Yeah. You know what's even more dangerous? Being fat. Stop being fat. So there is no issue whatsoever, morally or anything else for using Ozempic. But if you use Ozempic and you don't keep your muscle mass, you're doing it wrong and you're harming yourself.
B
Right.
A
And since I believe in personal responsibility and that no one has a right to tell me what I can put in my body, and no one has the right to tell you what you can put in your body. It's your body.
B
Right.
A
That means you have a choice to use Ozempic and you have a choice to use it in a dumb way. Same way you do to eat a Twinkie. Right. But if you just do a couple things with Ozempic, you can safely lose a huge amount of weight. You might have to deal with all the extra skin that I have from when I was fat. But that's a great problem to have compared to being fat.
B
That's a great problem to have. But what about these other versions like Triazepatide and all these other ones like Ozempic was like a first version type of thing?
A
As a matter of fact, I'm glad you asked. About three weeks ago, I received my first vial of Reta Ruta Retatrutride. I can never say that one. Right. This is the third generation GLP1.
B
And.
A
And I'm using the very lowest dose of that. Once a week, 12.5 milligrams of three weeks in, no changes whatsoever. That's not enough to cause weight loss. That's enough to activate longevity pathways. I'm all about using pharmaceuticals, natural compounds, lifestyle, lighting, magnetism, anything on earth to make my body recover faster and live longer. So I don't judge pharmaceuticals. I'm like, what are the risks and what are the rewards? And at very low doses, the signaling effects of the GLP1 things, they reduce Alzheimer's, all kinds of risks go down. So I've been testing that, but I don't like how I feel on it. It makes me a little tired for two days after I take it. Yeah, it is HELA venom.
B
Like the microdosing part?
A
Yeah, it's a very low microdose, but it doesn't feel good when I do it right. So I don't know if I'll continue.
B
You won't continue with that?
A
I might.
B
How about, like. How about the red light? I use, like, these, like, therassage. Like, I use my little indoor sauna. I have my outdoor saunas. I have, like, all things.
A
These are, like, foundational biohacking tools.
B
These are foundations.
Podcast Summary: Episode 451: Dave Asprey: Marketing Secrets That Built a $20 Billion Biohacking Industry
Podcast Information:
The episode opens with Jen Cohen introducing Dave Asprey, highlighting his pivotal role in the biohacking industry and his achievements, including founding Bulletproof, authoring bestsellers, and building multiple successful businesses.
Quote:
"Dave is a pioneer in biohacking. He's helped millions upgrade their lives through science-backed strategies."
– Jen Cohen [00:04]
Dave shares his inception of the term "biohacking" during a pilgrimage around a sacred mountain in Tibet. He recounts how he turned his personal health struggles—chronic fatigue, brain fog, and severe weight issues—into a mission to optimize human performance.
Quote:
"I got my MBA at Wharton, but my brain was cooked and I had toxic mold, brain damage, and all this stuff. I started using cognitive enhancers to pass my classes."
– Dave Asprey [03:16]
Dave details the bootstrap phase of Bulletproof, growing the company organically to $27 million before seeking venture capital. He emphasizes the importance of product quality over aggressive marketing spends.
Quote:
"People will spend a little bit more for stuff that actually works. People will pay for quality, not perceived quality."
– Dave Asprey [05:26]
Asprey discusses his marketing philosophy, which focuses on creating effective products that naturally garner word-of-mouth promotion rather than relying heavily on traditional advertising methods like billboards.
Quote:
"It's cheaper to spend a dollar telling people your product was high quality than it was to make a high-quality product."
– Dave Asprey [05:26]
He explains how fostering a community around longevity and biohacking, despite being labeled as "longevity nuts," was crucial. His involvement with foundational figures in nutrition and longevity helped shape the biohacking community.
Quote:
"We were the only guy under 60 in the room because I was learning how to heal myself from people three times my age."
– Dave Asprey [07:44]
Dave recounts his experience raising venture capital and the subsequent loss of control over Bulletproof. Despite growing revenues to $140 million, he was eventually removed from his own board, leading to the company's sale at a fraction of its potential value.
Quote:
"VCs almost always want to remove founders. It's like picking up a hitchhiker and they try to steal your car once you want to go a different direction."
– Dave Asprey [22:38]
Asprey delves into his personal biohacking endeavors, including stem cell injections for penis enhancement using shockwave devices. He illustrates his hands-on approach to experimenting with and showcasing the possibilities of biohacking.
Quote:
"I injected stem cells in my penis and it grew by 2 inches for good."
– Dave Asprey [29:35]
He candidly discusses his dietary experiments, notably his time as a raw vegan. Initially feeling great, he eventually suffered severe health issues due to oxalate toxicity from plants like raspberries and spinach. This led him to refine the Bulletproof Diet, focusing on eliminating toxins and optimizing nutrient intake.
Quote:
"The biggest mistake I made was becoming a vegan. It took me years to recover from it."
– Dave Asprey [38:46]
Asprey challenges conventional beliefs about exercise, sharing his experiences of extensive gym workouts that failed to yield weight loss. He now advocates for brief, intense cardio sessions combined with profound recovery, leveraging AI and recovery technologies to optimize results.
Quote:
"More exercise is not better. Overtraining leads to cortisol-induced belly fat and low testosterone."
– Dave Asprey [48:35]
He emphasizes the critical role of hormones like testosterone and thyroid in overall well-being. Asprey shares his personal journey with hormone replacement therapy to combat low testosterone and Hashimoto's thyroiditis, underscoring the impact of hormonal balance on energy, mood, and cognitive function.
Quote:
"Testosterone drives dopamine levels in the brain. Without it, entrepreneurs lack the energy to pursue their goals."
– Dave Asprey [55:00]
Asprey discusses the use of modern pharmaceuticals like Ozempic and other GLP1s for weight management. He advocates for their responsible use in conjunction with diet and exercise, highlighting their role in safely losing weight and improving longevity when used correctly.
Quote:
"Using pharmaceuticals, natural compounds, and lifestyle changes can make your body recover faster and live longer."
– Dave Asprey [56:18]
He elaborates on the integration of technology in his biohacking practices, including the use of AI-driven exercise regimes and advanced recovery tools like red light therapy and saunas. These technologies facilitate efficient workouts and quicker recovery, essential for high-performing individuals.
Quote:
"We use AI to give the right stimulus and recovery, allowing people to transform with minimal time investment."
– Dave Asprey [48:35]
Asprey ties his biohacking efforts to broader goals of longevity and heightened consciousness. He believes that the principles of biohacking not only extend lifespan but also enhance the quality of life by improving mental and emotional well-being.
Quote:
"The real reason for biohacking is to increase your performance, consciousness, and happiness now, not just to live forever."
– Dave Asprey [27:10]
Looking ahead, Asprey mentions upcoming projects, including a private event with the Dalai Lama, illustrating his commitment to integrating spiritual well-being with physical and cognitive enhancements.
Quote:
"I'm doing an event, a very small, private event with the Dalai Lama later this year."
– Dave Asprey [32:05]
The conversation between Jen Cohen and Dave Asprey offers a deep dive into the intersection of biohacking, business acumen, and personal wellness. Asprey's candid sharing of his successes and failures provides valuable insights for entrepreneurs and individuals seeking to optimize their lives through science-backed strategies.
Notable Quotes with Timestamps:
"People will spend a little bit more for stuff that actually works. People will pay for quality, not perceived quality."
– Dave Asprey [05:26]
"VCs almost always want to remove founders. It's like picking up a hitchhiker and they try to steal your car once you want to go a different direction."
– Dave Asprey [22:38]
"The biggest mistake I made was becoming a vegan. It took me years to recover from it."
– Dave Asprey [38:46]
"Using pharmaceuticals, natural compounds, and lifestyle changes can make your body recover faster and live longer."
– Dave Asprey [56:18]
Key Takeaways:
Quality Over Quantity in Marketing: Asprey emphasizes the importance of creating high-quality products that naturally attract customers, rather than relying solely on extensive marketing campaigns.
Personal Biohacking as a Journey: His personal experiments with diet, exercise, and supplementation illustrate the trial-and-error nature of biohacking and the importance of individualized approaches.
Challenges with Venture Capital: Asprey's experience underscores the potential pitfalls of venture funding, including loss of control and conflicts with investors.
Integrating Technology for Optimization: Leveraging AI and advanced recovery technologies can lead to more efficient and effective health and performance improvements.
Holistic Approach to Longevity: Combining physical health, hormonal balance, mental well-being, and technological aids provides a comprehensive strategy for extending and enhancing life quality.
This episode serves as an insightful resource for anyone interested in the dynamics of building a successful biohacking enterprise, the intricacies of personal optimization, and the nuanced challenges that come with scaling innovative health solutions.