← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Dave Asprey - Biohacking Pioneer & Performance Expert | How Biohacking Your Mind Transforms Entrepreneurial Success
01:11:56
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- [00:00]
A
Prolon is a success story partner. Now long weeks and busy weekends, they can leave everybody feeling depleted and tired. We work nonstop and that's why I love Prolon's five day fasting mimicking diet. I love this company. Let me explain how it works. Basically, they have a fasting mimicking diet that rejuvenates you from the inside and out. They deliver plant based soups, snacks and drinks that keep your body in a fasting state while giving you nutrition. And when your body's in a fasting state, this triggers cellular renewal and it actually works. This is why I loved intermittent fasting for so many years. This is the magic of Prolon. And the exciting news is that they just launched a new next gen five day program. So it has all the benefits that they had before, but now they have 100% organic ingredients in their food, better taste and ready to eat meals that make the whole process easier. I've tried the original Prolon program. I felt fantastic whenever I do it. I personally cannot wait to try this new and improved version. And if you've never tried them before, you're in for a treat because the old one was great. I can't even imagine how good this new Prolon five day program is going to be. And for a limited time, Prolon is offering success story listeners, all you guys 15% off site wide plus a $40 bonus gift. When you subscribe to their five day program, just go to prolonlife.com Clary that's P R O L O N l I f e.com Clary to get your 15% discount and your bonus gift. Prolonlife.com Clary I have to take a second and thank Northwest Registered Agent for supporting today's episode. Now listen, I know a lot of entrepreneurs listen to this show. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're building a business, you. You have to listen if you want to get more. When you're launching your next big idea, Northwest Registered Agent lets you establish your entire business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. For nearly 30 years, they've been the secret weapon for entrepreneurs who want to move fast while getting expert guidance. For just $39 plus state fees, they'll handle your formation, create a custom website and establish your local presence wherever your business takes you. As an entrepreneur myself, we what I value most is their one stop business solution. You get everything from formation paperwork to custom domains to trademark registration all in one easy to use account. No more juggling all these multiple services or wasting time figuring out the legal stuff. So don't Wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand and set up your business in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com success and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent@northwestregisteredagent.com success.
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One of the few entrepreneurs to go from zero to $140 million a year in revenue, writing a whole bunch of New York Times bestsellers and then getting removed from your own company. I'm here and I'm happy, and these are the kind of things that can break people. He's the father of biohacking. The man who turned coffee into a global movement and aging into a solvable problem. Dave Asprey isn't just chasing longevity, he's engineering it. It's the things that every leader needs to know. Know yourself, know your target state, know how to get there with everything on the planet, and then you can be in the state you want all the time. If you can manage to be unprogrammable, you get to choose your state and you can choose success. With four New York Times best selling books, hundreds of millions of podcast downloads.
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And a company built on optimizing human.
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Potential, Dave's mission is simple. To help you live longer, think faster, and become the best version of yourself. If you think that you're going to make money or be rewarded for doing the right thing, you have a childlike.
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A
View of the world where trauma comes from, if not from growing up.
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B
One of them is generational trauma. If your parents went through a famine in World War II, your chances of having type 2 diabetes are substantially higher. In this episode, we go deep into what it really takes to upgrade your body, your brain and your beliefs. This isn't self help, it's self mastery. Everything you've ever done that you're ashamed of wasn't you. It wasn't anything. Ancient network of bacteria conspiring to keep you alive. Stop feeling shame about it and start doing something about it.
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A
So, Dave, I'm excited to do this. Your new book. Heavily meditated. There's a lot of ideas that come from this book, but there's one that really resonated with me and I want to read it and then I want to understand what you were thinking or what prompted this idea. So you said in the book, I quote, by combining ancient wisdom with modern science, I discovered that you can achieve profound changes in your mental and physical states. Whether through biohacking techniques, neurofeedback, or simply understanding how your body responds to stress and stimuli. There are ways to take control of your brain and your body's performance. But you need enough energy for your efforts to be effective. Where did this idea come from? Obviously, this is probably the culmination of a body and a life's work that led to this, but give us some context.
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B
Well, I'm one of the few entrepreneurs to go from zero to $140 million a year in revenue. There's only 17,000 companies in the US that big. And to do that and to take all the hits you take along the way while simultaneously building a Webby award winning podcast. You know a lot about building podcasts and writing a whole bunch of New York Times bestsellers and having a couple kids and then getting removed from your own company and having it sold out from underneath you for peanuts. I'm here and I'm happy. And these are the kind of things that can break people. And the only reason I can do that, I have nine companies in my portfolio right now. Just wrote this book, is because of the things in the book. This is my most important book ever. And heavily meditated. It's the things that every leader needs to know, and it's that you've got to know how to regulate yourself. And if you're the kind of leader in your life or in your family or in your company or your community who gets dysregulated and you're the person in charge, there will be people who will be attracted to that, and they're gonna come in and they're gonna dysregulate you. And reality is, if you can be triggered, it means you're carrying a loaded gun and someone else has their finger on the trigger. Now that's fine. If you just have a 9 to 5 job, it's actually not fine. But if you're leading a company and you have hundreds of people relying on you for their income and maybe hundreds of thousands of customers, and you get triggered, you're not just carrying a gun, you're carrying a nuclear weapon. So the bigger your influence, the more the need for self regulation. And they don't teach this at Wharton Business School. They don't teach it anywhere except maybe in monasteries. Problem with monasteries, Scott. I don't have 20 years to go sit in a monastery. Do you? I got stuff to do.
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A
Nope.
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B
So that's why the book is called the fast path to remove your triggers. Because I don't want to spend two hours a day meditating. I will if I have to, but I'd rather spend 10 minutes and then take the rest of the time and maybe go lift Something heavy or cook a ribeye or be with family or come up with a new idea like it's your time, you got to invest it. Everyone listening tracks their roas. But do you track your roms? Return on meditation, spend every minute you spend meditating. You're not doing some other stuff. So this is why I wrote the book. It's all the techniques that are or are not meditation to shift the state of your biology and your mental state and your emotional state so that you can have the performance you want. Do you want to show up this way, calm, or do you want to go into an intuitive creative state or do you want to trip balls without taking psychedelics? There's ways to do all those and all of them have merit. So know yourself, know your target state, know how to get there with everything on the planet. And then you can be in the state you want all the time. And I think that's freedom.
- [08:16]
A
I think that, I think that so many people just drift through life with really no focus, no self awareness, no understanding of their own mental state. And to your point, that is a, that is a nuclear bomb. If you end up being successful, I would, I would make the argument that's actually highly difficult to be successful without a little bit of introspection and understanding your own mental state. But if you manage to do it, then you have the lives of hundreds or thousands plus employees and stakeholders and people that are basically potential targets for your, your, your lack of self care, for really lack of a better description. Was there a point? I mean, I read this little paragraph from your book that sort of speaks about combining physical and mental and understanding yourself and you know, modern science and ancient wisdom. And even before we press record, you said, I only write about things that I actually care about. And you've written nine books. And you, you only, you can't be, you know, you really can't be persuaded to write about shit that is just sort of run of the mill that 10 other people, 20 other people have written about. And this is very unique. What was the thing in your life that prompted you to care so much about understanding your mental state, but not just from a modern perspective, including some of these ancient techniques.
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B
When I was 26, I made $6 million. And this was pre Biden dollars, so it was worth something. And I lost it when I was 28 and I made that money because I was convinced it would make me happy. And I looked at a friend. This is a true story. We're there in Santa Clara, California, Silicon Valley. And I'll Be happy to when I have $10 million. I actually said that. So what a douchebag. But I fully believed that that would make me happy. I also tried getting married very briefly in my 20s and, oh, let's try fame. That'll make you happy. So I met Entrepreneur magazine. If you go to my Instagram account, the fat picture there is me from Entrepreneur magazine when I'm 23, as the first guy to sell anything over the Internet. And I can tell you I had 15 minutes of happiness from the magazine article. I had 15 minutes of happiness and a whole lot of misery from the money and a bunch of other things. You just realize none of it works. So by the time I'm 30, I've made and lost more than most people ever make in their life, and I am freaking miserable. And it was only when my relationship at the time just fell apart. I'm like, I got to do something. I'm a computer science guy. I'm actually a computer hacker. So I tried all the stuff that was supposed to work. None of it worked. So then I tried the stuff that only idiots would try. I went to Tibet and Nepal and I studied shamanism. And I did all the stuff that my family and my life taught me were worthless because I was desperate and I had already tried all this stuff. The reality is I finally committed to only doing things that work, which means I'm going to measure and I'm going to believe something works and then I'm going to test it. And if it doesn't, I'll change. Before, I went to the gym six days a week, 90 minutes a day, for 18 months on a low fat diet, I never lost an inch off my waist or a pound of weight. I probably lost some fat, gained some muscle, but I was still fat. And I could either say it's because I didn't try hard enough or because I had terrible advice. So this has led to so many of the businesses I'm running today, like Upgrade Labs, we're doing 187 million data points across people's minds and bodies. So don't just come in and think it's going to work. We'll show you it's working every time, because it does. And this is why. The basis for heavily meditated is 40 years of Zen. This is my, we'll call it Entrepreneur CEO Brain Upgrade program in Seattle. People come in, they have for 10 years, more than a thousand high performing brains have taught me what's in. Heavily meditated. They come in, spend five days with my team of Neuroscientists and facilitators and custom tech and we show you what's going on in brain your how triggers happen and how to go in and edit them out. People spend 20 grand to do that and it works. But if you read heavily meditated, I give away the process I use. It works better with the computers and all the other stuff, but you can do this at home. And even if you're just getting started, if at the end of the day someone got under your skin, they're controlling you and you need to install a firewall in your consciousness so that you no longer have that vulnerability. And it's not about being tough and inflexible. Step one, if you have a company, hopefully you've done this. Someone says something that pisses you off or does something, and if you were a 10 year old, you'd get really mad and probably punch them. But you're a functioning adult, so you do what most people do. You smile the fake smile, put on your game face and everyone in the room knows that you're pissed, but you act like you're not. And well, okay, at least we have civil society. But everyone knows you're no longer incongruence. Your inner state and outer state don't match. And your customers can feel it, your team can feel it, and it comes across as well, you're probably a con artist. Even if you're not, it just comes across that way. So learning how to actually have congruence is the only way to have authentic leadership with, which means you own your own shit. And every single time something triggers me, I'm gonna write it down and say, I wonder what that is. And then I'm gonna run this reset process that's in the book and I'm gonna track it down and I'm going to edit the vulnerability out of my settings. What do you mean vulnerability? Think of it like this. If you went to the therapist and you said, hey, I have this problem focusing on my phone, all these alerts keep popping up all the time, and this is all the time, and the therapist says, oh, that's okay, every time one of them pops up, just take a deep breath and gently swipe it to the side so you can focus on your work, you would fire that therapist. But if you go in there and say I keep getting mad every time my girlfriend says this or my mother in law says that or my boss says this, it's the same thing. Turn off the alerts, stop managing them. And the difference is incredible capacity.
- [14:48]
A
This podcast is brought to you in part by Stash. Are you still putting off saving and investing? Because you'll get to it someday. Stash turns someday into today. Stash isn't just an investing app. It's a registered investment advisory that combines automated investing with dependable financial strategies to help you reach your goals faster. They'll provide you with personalized advice on what to invest in based on your goals. Or if you just want to sit back and watch your money go to work, you can opt into their award winning expert managed portfolio that picks stocks for you. Stash has helped millions of Americans reach their financial goals and starts at just $3 per month. Don't let your savings sit around, make it work harder for you. Go to get.stash.comsuccessstory and see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase and to view important disclosures. That's get.stash.comsuccess story paid non client endorsement, not representative of all clients and not a guarantee Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments llc, an SEC registered investment advisor. Investing involves risks and investments may lose value. Offers subject to T's and C's hey everyone, Scott here. I just want to take a second and say thanks for listening to the podcast over the past couple of years. Obviously this wouldn't be possible without each and every one of you. I have a favor to ask so I would love to get some more information about you and why you listen to the podcast and why you listen to the show and why you tune in every week. And I have put together a short survey and and we are using this to help us sort of inform what type of content we want to create and the direction of the podcast going forward. This information is not shared with anyone else so this is just for us internally and I put together a link so scottdclary.com survey where you can go and you can fill in some information so we can know what kind of content you love. Also for the first 100 people that respond to the survey and you will be entered into a draw for a hundred dollars Amazon gift card. So we'll be giving out one of those to the first people that respond. It should not take more than two minutes of your time to fill out the whole survey. It's really not that long and it will help you shape the future of the podcast. So I really appreciate each and every one of you and thank you for listening. Lingoda is a partner of Success Story. Look, I'll be real with you. My French used to be solid. I learned it in school. I even had decent pronunciation. But when I booked trip to France last year, it was a total blank. I could barely order a croissant without sounding like a tourist. So I jumped into the Lingoda Sprint challenge and man, it changed everything. I'd take live classes late at night after podcasting. Only five students, max. Real teachers, real conversations. And in just two months, I went from a bonjour to holding full conversations at a Paris cafe. Confidence unlocked. Now here's the play. 30 or 60 classes in 60 days. And if you finish them all, you get 50% cash back. That's basically €4 or $5 per class. That's insane value. Go to try.lingoda.com success sprint and then use my code, Scott Sprint for an extra €20 off on top of their current deal. Registration closes May 5th. Classes start May 12th. Let's get fluent. I think that this is one of the most useful tools for any high performing individual, entrepreneur or otherwise. Like you mentioned before, like even people in jobs, you're not, you're not, you're not, you know, achieving peak performance. You're not getting the, the, you're not getting the promotion if you can't manage and regulate yourself when you, when you think about you. This is one of the other ideas that you write about. I will talk about the reset process in a second, but one of the ideas you write about just so people can understand and sort of we can go through some definitions or some, some basics as to how the brain works. They can see what's happening here. Because you write about exploring pathways to inner peace and meditation. It's very crucial to understand the science behind your brain states. So can we talk about brain states? Because you, you mentioned that the brain is like this complex orchestra producing all these different types of, of brain waves. I don't think many people even understand how their own brain works. So what are the brain states that people should be aware of for and why do they matter? For, for example, mental performance.
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B
If you're an entrepreneur, you want to be able to have energy and be focused all the time. So you could have the energy of running a sprint all day long. You think that would work? No, you'd burn out. It wouldn't work. So a lot of the times we get triggered and it's not a big trigger, but you're just like irritable. That's a beta brain state. And beta brain states are great for performing well physically. They're not great for intuition and creativity and working in collaboration with a team. So you would want to Know how does it feel when I'm in a high beta state versus when in an alpha state? And alpha has nothing to do with alpha males. And even alpha male was a complete myth from the guy who studied wolves and made a mistake. So what an alpha state is, is slower brain waves than a beta state. This is relaxed and alert. A lot of meditation takes you there. And you can drop down from there into theta, where we have dream states and daydreaming and more intuition and creativity and, you know, weird visions. And then delta is the dreamless deep state where your brain is refreshing itself and you have a mix of all these all the time. So that makes it sound really easy. Well, I'll just dial my brain up or down. The reality is think of these as music notes. You have a C note or a D note or a G note or whatever. It's not about the note, it's what song are you playing in the note. So say, look, I managed to have alpha brainwaves. I'm like, yes, and you're playing a Metallica song. Ride the lightning in alpha is probably not the brain that you want. On one hand, knowing brain states is beautiful because we can measure those. When people come in, we do a clinical grade scan on their brain. Like, oh, look, here's your likely behavior patterns based on your brain waves. By the way, these two parts of the brain, the cello and the drums, whatever, they're not talking to each other, they're not playing the same notes. If you want, we can teach you how to align those. And here's what happens to your behaviors when those are aligned. That's a pretty profound shift because otherwise the brain doesn't know what's happening. In fact, the only nerve that goes inside the brain is the fifth cranial nerve, and that comes from your molars. Other than that, the brain is blind to itself. That's why you can see the Hannibal Lecter movie. He takes off the guy's brain and pokes at it. Doesn't do anything. You can't feel your brain, so your brain doesn't know what it's doing. But if you ever see the mirror experiment where they hang a mirror up in the jungle and an ape walks up and looks at, oh, that's me. And it'll like find lettuce in its teeth or whatever they're eating, right? And that's amazing. Your brain is doing that. So when you do neurofeedback, you start learning how to, how to control the states and the song that's playing and the special thing about 40 years of Zen is we figured out a way to shift from one state to another in order to permanently turn off the source of a trigger. And it's very different than just maintaining your cool. That's a waste of time.
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A
So maintaining your cool is almost like you're trying to put a bandaid on this open wound where with 40 years of Zen, with basically everything that you teach, you're talking about stop. Like it's almost like a leading indicator of a trigger. You're stopping it before it even impacts you. That's what you're trying to do.
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It's more than just stopping it. You're permanently removing it from your reality.
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Wow.
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Right? So that way there's nothing to stop. It's kind of like you're in a boxing ring, right? And you're like, okay, I'm going to be tough and okay, do the rope. A dope strategy. I'm just going to let him hit me. I'm going to pretend like it doesn't hurt. I'll take the hit and I'll be tough and I'll counterattack. Dude, that is not a good path. What you want is for him to hit you and it goes through you with no effect, right?
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A
Like what?
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B
That's what's possible when you permanently remove this, the thing that just got under your skin. It doesn't matter. And the best example for this, for a lot of, just a lot of people in general, it's driving. Someone cuts you off in traffic, everyone gets mad until they learn to do something about it, right? And it's just, ah, this, this feeling. Well, if you're on the reset process on that feeling, there was some time earlier in your life where you felt disrespected and it really hurt your feelings. So your automated defense systems, which are based in the body, not even the mind. Oh, this matches that other situation. Therefore, it's a threat. Therefore, how? Have some anger. And then you're going to make up a story about what's going on in the other guy's head. You don't know if the guy's about to fill his pants. You don't know if he really thinks you're a jerk and he's cutting you off and you don't know if he's on the way to the hospital to go deliver someone's baby. You just don't have any information at all. All the story you have is bs. If you could do something so the next time someone cut you off, you just didn't care, you wouldn't make up a story, your heart rate wouldn't change and you wouldn't remember it because it's irrelevant. And we want to live in that state. And that means if you're running your company and you get the phone call that anyone with any level of success has, that some employee who you fired for doing something that was well, deserving of firing decides to sue you, right? Because many employees, in fact the lowest performing employees, will almost always try to sue you because it couldn't be them, it must be you, right? In their little twisted reality. So that can really, really push buttons for people. And when you've run through your reset process on that, oh, look, it's happening, okay, I got the attorneys handling it. It's going to happen. But the amount of suffering and therefore the amount of wasted energy goes down. And that's what just gives you resilience in business. And if you can manage to be unprogrammable, you get to choose your state and you can choose success. And if you're programmable, some asshole somewhere is going to program you when you're not looking, and you're going to act like a jerk. And it's going to affect your team, it's going to affect your customers, it's going to affect how you sleep, it'll affect your relationships at home, and it.
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A
Affects, it affects everything. It affects your performance, everything. Across the board. Lingoda is a partner of success story. Look, I'll be real with you. My French used to be solid. I learned it in school. I even had decent pronunciation. But when I booked trip to France last year, it was a total blank. I could barely order a croissant without sounding like a tourist. So I jumped into the Lingoda Sprint challenge and, man, it changed everything. I take live classes late at night after podcasting. Only five students, max. Real teachers, real conversations. And in just two months, I went from bonjour to holding full conversations at a Paris cafe. Confidence unlocked. Now, here's the play 30 or 60 classes in 60 days, and if you finish them all, you get 50% cash back. That's basically €4 or $5 per class. That's insane value. Go to try.lingoda.com success_ sprint and then use my code, Scott Sprint for an extra €20 off on top of their current deal. Let's get fluent.
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B
Fluent.
- [26:46]
A
FreshBooks is supporting today's episode. And if you've ever wondered how successful entrepreneurs stay on top of their finances while growing their business, the answer is FreshBooks. The numbers don't lie. Over 30 million people have chosen FreshBooks, processing more than 60 billion in invoices and saving an incredible 192 hours every year on accounting tasks. Think about it, that's nearly eight full days you could get back to focus on what really matters. Growing your business FreshBooks is more than just accounting software. It's your all in one financial command center. Create professional estimates, track time, automatically, bill clients and capture expenses on the go. Plus, it integrates seamlessly, seamlessly with over 100 business tools you already use. All backed by award winning customer service. If you're ready to stop drowning in receipts and you're ready to stop chasing down payments, here's what I want you to do. Head over to freshbooks.com to start your 30 day free trial. No credit card required. And for all you success story listeners out there, I've got something special. Get an exclusive 60% off for six months when you visit freshbooks.com pricing offer transform your business with freshbooks today. That's freshbooks.com pricing offer for 60% off. Today's episode is brought to you by Vanta. Now listen up. This matters for your business. In today's digital landscape, security isn't optional, it's essential. Without it, deals stall, sales cycles stretch on, and scaling becomes very difficult now. Why? Because investors, customers and partners all expect businesses to demonstrate strong security practices before they commit. If you can't prove trust, you lose opportunities. So whether you're a startup founder trying to land that first big client or an established company scaling your security program, Vanta helps businesses of all sizes prove that they're trustworthy by Automating compliance across 35 frameworks like SoC2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA, the exact certifications your prospects are demanding. Here's why you need to pay attention. Vanta gives you back precious time that you're currently wasting on compliance. Their platform automates up to 90% of the tedious compliance work. It helps you respond to those endless security questionnaires up to five times faster. And it connects you with experts to get your security program running immediately. The results speak for themselves. A recent IDC report found that Vanta customers achieve over $535,000 per year in benefits. And the platform pays for itself in just three months. So you're going to join over 10,000 global companies like Atlassian, Cloud, Quora and Factory who use Vanta to manage risk, improve security in real time. And don't miss this for a limited time. Only my listeners can get a thousand dollars off Vanta. That's real Money back in your pocket. Visit vanta.comScott right now before this offer expires. That is V A N T A dot com Scott there's in the book, there's an eight step process for the reset process. We're not going to go through everything now, but before you even start that process, you speak about time traveling and going back in time and figuring out the root cause of the trigger. And I've always thought this is important because I think that trauma, whether or not they're early childhood trauma or later trauma, that happens because you experience an event once and now it's imprinted in your brain and you can never forget it. And that's probably what is causing the negative response the next time you experience that. So before this process even starts, you're going back in time. This is, I'm assuming what the time travel portion of this process is. What, what is the, what is the guide for somebody to even sort of go down this path and to start looking back and figuring out what was the thing that happened to them that's now eliciting this behavior 20 years later? Like that's a, that's what therapists charge you a lot of money for and seem to never fix. So how are you doing it in like a very short period of time?
- [30:40]
B
It's pretty incredible. You instead of thinking about it, and let's face it, if you run a business, you probably spend a lot of time in your head thinking. All of the stuff we're dealing with is pre thinking. It's in the tissues, it's in the body. And I want to walk you through how the body makes decisions that you're taking credit for all the time. But to answer your question really directly, you're going to say, what does it feel like in my body? The hairs on the back of the neck, my stomach, my jaw tension, am I sweating? And you turn on all the senses to feel what it feels like during that trigger because you can replay any emotion, good or bad, you've ever had. Like a Spotify playlist. Your body can do that. You just have to decide to try it. Like, oh, that's gross, I don't want to feel that. But you feel it anyway. And then you ask yourself the question, when's the first time I felt that way? And it doesn't matter if you get it right, just whatever pops into your head is probably the first time. And that's how you know. And here's an example of this that I put in the book I was on the Joe Rogan show three times. And one of the companies that Joe owns decided to copy the product set that I had. And the day that launched, Joe suddenly came out and said, dave Asprey's a bad man and a liar. Right?
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Funny. Funny how that works, right?
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B
I'm like, I didn't do anything here. I mean, and it was pretty targeted. And to be really honest, it really messed with my head. And that's on me. So for a few months there, I'm like, should I hire a crisis pr? This guy's just saying all these things about me and a guy on my team who was a convoy commander in Iraq. That means he drives around explosive stuff with generals in the car. So he's like, dave, why are you so reactive to this? I don't know. So I sat down, did the reset process. What's the first time I felt this way? And this thing popped into my mind I had no memory of. In first grade, another kid did something he shouldn't have done, and I tattled. I told the teacher, hey, teacher, teacher, Little Johnny did that. And she goes, little Johnny, did you do that? And he goes, I didn't do it. Dave did it. And then I got sent to the principal's office for what someone else did. And this is injustice. Do you know what the biggest trigger is for entrepreneurs? It's injustice. I did the right thing, and then they punished me for it. And this is actually a childhood thing. If you think that you're going to make money or be rewarded for doing the right thing, you have a childlike view of the world. You gotta learn to be a little bit more grown up than that. Doing the right thing is something that I choose to do. There are times when I probably could make a lot more money by doing the wrong thing. I don't want to live like that, so I don't. But there are people who will make the other choice. The other big trauma that everyone processes when they come to 40 years of Zen is even worse. And it's betrayal. I trusted this person. I did the right thing, and they intentionally harmed me. When I give talks to entrepreneurs, I just did one three days ago in Phoenix. About 100 plus entrepreneurs. How many of us have had people steal money and embezzle? 90% of the hands go up. That leaves a scar. How am I ever going to trust my employees again? And if you don't learn how to reset that betrayal and injustice, you learn to not let those get under your skin, because people will betray you. All that you can do for that is have better discernment, learn how to feel it, and have better processes so that your culture and your team can spot it before it becomes a problem. And if you don't do that, it's no one's fault but yours. And I didn't do a great job of that. I do a better job now. At least I think. And if I'm not, guess what's going to happen? I'll get betrayed. And I'll learn from it. Because that's how it works.
- [34:37]
A
Listen, it's. It's so true. It's so, so, so true. And the worst part is the. If you just push all this stuff down, all the trauma, an employee sued you, an employee stole money, stole money from you, or just personal trauma, somebody cheated on you, somebody lied to you. If you just push it down and you never deal with it, or you deal with it in an ineffective way, it just builds up over time. And then it makes you this, on the surface, a seemingly effective person that is just, you know, a moment away from the wrong trigger to blow up their own life. And I think that that's what's so scary. And you probably see this with tons of entrepreneurs, too, and not entrepreneurs, just people that have bottled up these traumas.
- [35:19]
B
It's so scary that if you haven't mapped out your emotional triggers, you're not running your company. Your past is like. Imagine that you're not in charge. You just think you are. And let's walk through the main framework that has come up just in the world of biohacking and the one that we teach people at 40 years of Zen, and it's that we like to think that we see everything that's happening and we don't. And here's an example. Clap my hands. You know that it took some amount of time for the sound to get to you, and then you heard it, right? Because that's what you see. That's not true. So if we put electrodes on your head and measure your brain waves, your auditory cortex won't hear the sound for a third of a second after it hit your body. You mean there's some other force listening for a third of a second? Yeah, there is. And that's a useful force. You ever lean on a hot stove accidentally? Unfortunately, we've all done that. And of course, what we did is we noticed it was hot, thought about it for a minute and said, yeah, I guess I should move my hand, right? No, you jerk your hand away and then you say, good thing I jerked my hand away, but that's a lie. Some other system that was not. You pulled the hand away. It's provable. You didn't have time to move, but it moved. That system has a third of a second to fuck with your reality. And it is based on a network, a distributed consciousness of ancient bacteria that basically filters reality for you and decides based on the algorithm of all life on the planet what it's going to make you feel to manipulate how you behave. And that sounds dark. And I can prove all this. Here's the operating system for life. This applies to slime molds, it applies to politicians. There might be a relation there. It applies to humans and single celled organisms. Number one, if something is scary, run away from, kill or hide, it's fear. They're all F words, right? And you do this first, always. Because if something eats you, there's no point of the rest of the operating system of life. It has to come first. Fear will always come first. Even if you're the best meditator on the planet, your body will watch out for real physical threats. It's just not very good at that. Because single celled organisms are stupider than hell. And your behavior is based on single celled organisms. So fear. Next thing, food eat everything because famines are bad and these are dumb little bacteria making sure they don't run out of energy. And they're really scared of that. So fear than food, the third F word. All life has to do it to stay around for multiple generations. You know that one?
- [38:04]
A
Yes, I know that one too.
- [38:05]
B
Fertility is the one you're thinking of.
- [38:07]
A
Of course. That was it. Exactly.
- [38:09]
B
That was it. So you don't know how many people I've tricked into dropping an F bomb. So you dodged that one.
- [38:17]
A
I was about to, but I was like, you know what? I know you. I know you. I know you're messing with me somehow. Very good. Well placed.
- [38:23]
B
Yeah, that's my 12th grade. Sense of humor or sorry, 12 year old sense of humor. So it's fertility. But that means that before you get a chance to see or hear anything, your body looked at it and said, should I kill it? Can I eat it? And should I hump it? And only after it's made those judgments is it going to get passed into your consciousness. And it will get passed along with the flavor, along with the manipulation, along with an emotion. Unless you've done something to remove that manipulation.
- [38:55]
A
Tied back to past lived experience, it'll.
- [38:57]
B
Be tied back to, you know what? I'm a dumb network of bacteria, but I'm really Fast. And when that guy cut you off, it had enough similarities to that time that Ms. Johnson in second grade did whatever it was some old thing that it's not even that relevant. A dumb network of ancient bacteria that runs your operating system. It's just doing pattern matching and says that pattern matched enough that I'm going to make sure that you feel fear because it's better to feel fear than to get eaten.
- [39:27]
A
Can you just a quick question on that. Can that same system pull patterns from previous generations, or is it only your own lived experience? It can.
- [39:36]
B
It can. And it gets really interesting there. I'm going to finish the other two F words and then let's talk about that. Because it's one of the most important things for entrepreneurs to understand is the nature of where your behavior programming comes from. So fear, food, fertility. Next one is friend. All life on Earth will form an ecosystem. You'll support your tribe, you'll support the world around you. And you do it without thinking. So we're wired to be kind to each other in our bones, as long as we're not inappropriately feeling threatened and we're not malnourished and we're not lonely. And this is why we build healthy companies or unhealthy companies. And the final F word is forgiveness. It's how you go in and it's how you evolve as a human by letting things go. Forgiveness is not, by the way, saying something was okay, and it's not telling someone you forgive them. It's just a matter of adjusting the programming inside your tissues so that you don't have any more reactivity to something. And that's what creates power, and it creates freedom because you imagine this 30 pounds of air and some food every day. Combine them, make electricity to run little environmental sensors and computers and manufacturing plants called mitochondria. Well, they didn't get triggered by fear. So you have all this energy. Most of it's left. Okay, let's look at food. If you have cravings and you're hungry all the time, you don't know how to eat well, you're going to spend a lot of time on that. In fact, for the average person, one third of their thoughts every day is about pizza or tacos. It doesn't really matter.
- [41:16]
A
That's why Ozempic is killing all the food noise.
- [41:18]
B
But you know, it's true. Ozempic is probably, in fact, not probably. Ozempic at low doses is a longevity drug. But that's a different podcast, probably. So if you can silence that voice, by training yourself to do intermittent fasting, you saved yourself a lot of energy. So we can turn fear into peace, we can turn cravings into nourishment, and then we get to the fertility thing. 20% of people report meeting God during orgasm at least once in their life. So you can use conscious intimacy as a way of powering yourself. And I'm not the first guy to say that. You could talk to Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich has a whole chapter on this. You can talk to Montauk Chia, who I've interviewed, is one of the leaders in the field of studying Taoism and Tantra and just understanding. Oh, you mean intimacy is a form of power as well. It's one of the. It's creation energy. This is what makes companies is libido, right? But not if it's all in porn and onlyfans. And then you go to the next one, your community. If you have enough energy to put into your community, it will always support you back, right? This is why we have all our masterminds. This is why people join a church group or a club or you do all these things because it nourishes you. We need this in our cells. If you do that stuff right, you have energy at the end of the day and you're going to do your meditation practice or breath work or whatever it is that just makes you a better person. And if you don't understand this, you're triggered all the time. You eat junk food, you're hungry all the time. You spend little energy you have left looking at some kind of porn. And it's no wonder your company is taking a shit. And it's because you wasted your energy everywhere, right? And your company is a reflection of your energetic state. If you are chaotic and low energy, your company will be chaotic low energy. If you get your stuff together, you remove the things that are not serving you, you become present and your company starts to grow. And they're connected, you can't break them. Especially if it's an early stage company. The younger the company, the more important your presence is.
- [43:36]
A
Prolon is a success story, partner. Now long weeks and busy weekends can leave everybody feeling depressed and tired. We work non stop. And that's why I love Prolon's five day fasting mimicking diet. I absolutely love this company. Let me explain how it works. Basically, they have a fasting mimicking diet that rejuvenates you from the inside out. They deliver plant based soups, snacks and drinks to keep your body in a fasting state while giving you the nutrition you need and when your body's in a fasting state, this triggers cellular renewal and it actually works. This is why I've loved intermittent fasting for so many years. This is the magic of Prolon. And the exciting news is they just launched their next generation gen 5 day program. It has all the benefits they had before, but now they have 100% organic ingredients in all their foods, better taste and ready to eat meals. They make the whole process easier. I tried the original Prolon program. I feel incredible whenever I do it. I personally can't wait to try this new and improved version and if you've never tried them before, you are in for a treat because the old one was great. I can't even imagine how good this new Prolon five day program is going to be. And for a limited time Prolon is offering Success Story listeners. You guys 15% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their five day programs. Just go to prolonlife.comclary to get your 15% discount and your bonus gift. Prolonlife.comclary A big thank you to Indeed for supporting success Story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to have to do. As an entrepreneur, as a founder, as somebody who's trying to build a business, it's important to hire well and find the right person. But it takes so time and it's so labor intensive because like most entrepreneurs, you have a thousand things going on and there's a good chance that you just realized your business needed to hire somebody yesterday. So how can you find that great, amazing right fit candidate fast? It's easy. Just use Indeed because you don't have to waste time struggling to get your job post seen on all these other job sites. If you're using Indeed, you can just use their sponsored jobs to help you stand out and hire fast. Your post jumps right to the top of the page for relevant candidates so you can reach out to exactly who you're looking for faster and the results really speak for themselves. According to Indeed data, Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. And you know what I love most about Indeed? It really just makes hiring so fast because everything is streamlined in one place. No more juggling multiple platforms or waiting weeks for the right candidate. And how fast is indeed in the minute I've been talking to you. 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed Data worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of success story will get a $75 SP or job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com Clarie terms and conditions do apply. Just go to Indeed.com clarity A huge thank you to Netsuite for supporting today's episode. Now, what does the future hold for business? If you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers. Bull market, Bear market. Inflation up, inflation down. Honestly, at this point you just need a crystal ball. But until we get one over 41,000 businesses, I found the next best thing. They future proofed their businesses, their operations with NetSuite by Oracle, which is the number one cloud ERP. Imagine having your accounting, your financial management, your inventory, your HR all flowing together in one fluid platform. And here's what makes NetSuite different. It gives you one source of truth for your business. You get the visibility and control to make quick, confident decisions while others are guessing. You're working with real time data, insights, forecasting. You're basically looking into the future of your business with actionable data. Whether your company earns a couple million or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and helps you grab your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunities, they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com Scott Clary this is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business. The guide is free, that is netsuite.com/scott clary we will talk about meditation because I haven't even asked about that yet, but I need to understand what we were speaking about just briefly, how the generational trauma, because someone's going to say, for example, I want to just, you know, lay out somebody listening to this. They're going to be, you know what, my life has been pretty good. Nothing really bad has happened. Even though I'm sure you forget a lot of the bad shit that happened when you were a kid. But say for argument's sake, you're saying your life was pretty good. So let's talk about where trauma comes from, if not from growing up.
- [48:12]
B
Here's, here's what happens. Someone will come in to 40 years and they're a high performer and they'll do some of these resets and like, you know what, I worked through all the trauma and I still have stuff. And they're going to go in one of three directions when they get rid of the obvious stuff. One of them is called pre and perinatal trauma. The trauma that your mother experienced when you were in the womb does leave a mark, and we have almost 40 years of research supporting that. So traumatic birth and a traumatic gestation really makes a difference on your psychology. But if they didn't have issues there, then it gets shamanic. And there's a lot of altered state stuff in heavily meditated. And it's not that easy to write about that stuff because a lot of people say that can't be, therefore it isn't, which isn't very scientific. But this is what people do, and it's reliable and it works. Some people are going to say, I was doing the meditation and I suddenly was speaking a language I don't know, and I saw this stuff from some other time. Like, great, why don't you run a reset on whatever that past life was, right? And I don't care if it's a real past life or just a perceived one. It left a mark. Let's erase the mark, right? You still remember whatever it was. You just don't have an emotion associated with. I don't attach a value to whether people believe something or not. And then the other thing is generational trauma. So sometimes people heal their lineage. And, gee, my shamanic teacher's been talking about that forever. Of course people are going to do that when they start running this reset process. One of the most profound things that's happened with someone who's gone through 40 years of Zen is Miriam. And I can talk about her name because she's public about this. And people will go, it's confidential, unless they talk about it. But Miriam was conceived right after her parents got out of a concentration camp that almost killed them. And she's older, and she said, I've been searching my entire life for peace, and I have never felt it until right now. So we're in their 80s. That's the power of generational trauma. You carry it with you. And there's evidence for this. If your parents went through a famine in World War II, your chances of having type 2 diabetes are substantially higher. And it only makes sense. Maybe there's a genetic component. And I know a lot of people are starting to argue that there's also a. Could be an energetic, could be quantum or just a learned behavior. Because if your parents learned a pattern, and it's an unconscious pattern, it's their triggers, they're going to give it to you when you're young. They got it from their parents, who got it from their parents, who got it from their parents. And let's face it, most of history in humanity has been pretty dark. So someone got traumatized. Now their kids are. And it's going to keep getting passed down. It'll get passed into your company, it'll get passed into your kids unless you stop it. And it gets really sketchy because when you are the top executive in your company, if you're a man, traumatized employees are going to bring their daddy issues to you. And if you're a woman, they're mommy issues. And if you're an experienced leader, you'll see this. Someone gets triggered. They stop acting like an adult. They start acting like they're 10 or 12 or 7 or whatever the age of the trauma was. And they don't know they're doing it right. They become defensive. They'll lie. They'll just. You're like, what is going on here? Well, one thing is I'm so mad. The other one is I have a lot of compassion because I understand where this is coming from. This is a flawed human being. And I'm going to sit them down and I'm going to have a conversation with them. And in that conversation, I'm going to discover what category of person they are. And I write about the categories in heavily meditated because they're so important. A spiritual teacher named Dr. Barry taught these to me, and he learned them from Lao Tzu's direct oral lineage. This is basically the Buddha of China, the roots of Shaolin. This is part of the training. Four categories of people. Category one people are win, win all the time. They do something, they're going to make money. You're going to make money. Category two, people, they're win, win most of the time, but they screw up. And if they do something to win and you lose and you call them on it, they'll apologize and make it right. Those are the only two kinds of employees you ever want to have. Category three employees. For them to win, someone else has to lose, but they don't know it. They believe their own bs. So, like a story, I never fail, okay? That means they will be unable to see themselves failing. And if someone points out their failure, they will unconsciously try to destroy that person because that person cannot exist for their story to be real. These are really dangerous people. Category 3 people are also known as narcissists.
- [53:05]
A
I was going to say it sounds like a narcissist.
- [53:07]
B
I had one of those in one of my businesses. You can guess which one. Every single week, reporting to me and the board, we're on track to lose a couple million bucks and grow at a large rate. At the end of the year, we might lose 5 million instead of 4 million. December 1st. Okay, that's not good, but at least we're growing. December 31st, oopsie. I lost $28 million. And I'm like, what? All the board meetings, all the financial reports. So when we fired this employee for burning through three years of venture capital, she says, you should give me more stock options. And I'm like, why?
- [53:51]
A
The delusion? Absolute delusion. But this is a category person.
- [53:55]
B
I know that that person didn't have the capacity to see what she was doing, even though she had great credentials and all that, because she was blinded to it, because she was a category three, a win, lose person. And it was very, very weird. Anyone who's dealt with a narcissist understands, like, you start to question your reality, and to this day, that person is out interviewing. And the story is that I wasn't at the company when it happened. And I don't think that person is lying. I think that person has rewritten history to make themselves not fail.
- [54:33]
A
Wow.
- [54:34]
B
Isn't that weird? But what this means.
- [54:36]
A
Wait, what is. What is category four, then? If that's. If that's a narcissist, I don't even.
- [54:41]
B
Know there's one level of. One level worse. I've dealt with two of them in my life. They are sociopaths. Sociopaths are win, lose, and they know it. And they're playing you. And they're master manipulators. And the thing with the narcissist is there's defenses. And once you. Once you realize what's going on, if you don't give them any positive or negative energy, they can't survive and they'll go stick to someone else and they'll leave you alone. You might have to sue them, whatever. But a sociopath, they will intentionally and consciously try to destroy you. And this is the world of business. And if you started your business and you're a normal category two person, you're going to think the whole world is win win, because you're striving to be that. And you're going to think people are like you. And I was one of those. And I got the lesson. There are people who will look you in the eye and they will lie, and they will work to make sure that you lose, even if they also lose, because they cannot stand it if you win. And I was removed from the board at Bulletproof. The company was sold for less than 10% of the value of when I was removed. And how could that have happened? This Kind of dynamic had just had to be a play, right? And I write about this with as much detail as I can without violating confidentiality and things like that. But I've seen it. And if you learn the reset process, you learn to not carry it with you. So I could have easily been broken by that stuff, Scott.
- [56:27]
A
A thousand percent. I think most people might have been.
- [56:29]
B
Yeah. It was rough at the same time, I guess, because, well, the best entrepreneurs are really good at suffering, according to Elon. I think he's right about that. His quote about staring into the abyss and eating glass is what makes you a good executive. I also decided to do a conscious uncoupling. That's Austin speak for getting divorced. And right prior to all this, I had a family member try to steal one of my other companies out from underneath me all at the same time. And, man, that was a lot. And I sat down and I did exactly what's in this book, that reset process. Because otherwise I would have broken. So I want people to have this. And that's why come to 40 years, as in, like, my whole team, we will dial your brain in or just read the book. Understand that it's not you choosing to do these things. It is an automated system to keep your hardware alive that's giving you all these feelings. And you can imagine everything on Earth. It's a giant, fluffy Labrador retriever, okay? It comes in the door, it eats your shoe, pees on the couch, humps your leg, goes into the kitchen and ransacks everything. That's your operating system. That's what an untrained nervous system will do. And it's there for a reason. To make sure the species reproduces, to make sure you don't starve to death and make sure nothing eats you. You can also take that same dog and turn it into a service dog. Takes six months or a year. And now it'll sit there, do what it's told with a piece of pepperoni on its nose until you tell it it can eat the snack. You get to run your company with one of those two operating systems. And the whole point of heavily meditated is that you don't have 20 years to learn all this crap. Nobody does in the world we have today. So learn it quickly. And you may not even like the reset process that's in the book. I go through all of the different techniques and technologies in order to enter the altered state that lets you turn off the alerts on your phone that's in your operating system. You do that and everything gets easier. In your life and it's the highest leverage is to turn off fear. The second highest is to turn off food. The third highest is something I cover in the book as well and that is to learn how to harness, we'll call it sexual energy to become life force creation energy. And this is a long standing technique. So I write about those. Why are psychedelics special and an altered state in the bedroom is not? They're both gateways to the same states. You could also access from breathwork or from meditating in a cave for a while. You get to pick the path, but you need to figure out how to get there.
- [59:13]
A
I just want to take a second and thank Cornbread Hemp for supporting today's episode. Now Cornbread Hemp CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit. I don't use them every day, just when I want to unwind after those extra busy weeks, but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance. Really just shut off from work. And what makes them special is how Cornbread Hemp crafts them. They only use a flower of USDA organic hemp plant. That's the best part for the purest, most potent experience. No fillers, no artificial fluff, just clean full spectrum goodness in delicious watermelon, berry and peach flavor. I keep them in my nightstand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing. And I love how transparent they are too. Every batch is third party lab tested so you know exactly what you're getting. And they put together a special offer for all success story podcast listeners. All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbread hemp.com success and use code success at checkout. That's cornbread hemp.com success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistants assistance switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3.
- [60:43]
B
Month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra fee full terms@mintmobile.com craving your next action packed adventure, Audible delivers thrills of every kind on your command like Project Hail Mary by Andy Weird, where a lone astronaut must save humanity from extinction. Narrated with stunning intensity by Ray Porter from electrifying suspense and daring quests to spine tingling horror and romance in far off realms, unleash your adventure aside with gripping titles that'll keep you guessing. Discover exclusive Audible originals, hotly anticipated new releases and must listen bestsellers that hook you from the first minute because Audible knows there's no greater thrill than the one that speaks to you. Discover what lies beyond the edge of your seat. Start your free 30 day trial at audible.com wonderyus that's audible.com wonderyus I need.
- [61:41]
A
To just touch on meditation because it's in the title, but explain to me how you look at meditation for somebody that just does it casually. What is the different interpretation of meditation? Because you've included if I go through the list of of various religions and practices like you bring in things from Buddhism, from Christianity, you bring in things from all over the world. So your version of meditation, and I'm assuming that is a gateway to the altered state, is a little bit different than probably what most people consider meditation to be. So talk to me about optimal meditation through ancient wisdom, modern science for peak performance.
- [62:23]
B
You might hear someone say it's really important to learn how to cook well. Doesn't it matter what you're cooking? It's the same with meditation. So what is the goal of meditation? You might want to choose the meditation or the meditation replacement based on the desired outcome so you have your return on ad spend. I put a dollar in, I get four bucks back or more. It's great. If I put a minute of meditation in, how much do I get out of it? And are you measuring dollars? Are you measuring something else? Well, with meditation, you're measuring did I get into the desired state? Let's say you want to have a really good brainstorming session with your team and you want to go into that creative state instead of getting stuff done state you would do a meditation or a breath work or run electricity over your brain or take a bump of whatever, I don't care. You're going to do that to get into the state you desire. And the most precious states are the states where you're blasting off into outer state, feeling in outer space. You're feeling connected with everything, connected with your partner, connected with your team. They're just very different goals. So when it comes to something like breathwork, which is provably faster, there's three buckets that I mention in the book. The first Bucket is I am feeling tweaked and stressed and I need to get my energy back and get aligned right now. Okay, that's. The military knows this stuff. It's a box breath, you know, four seconds per side or you want to go a little faster, make your out breath twice as long as your in breath. So you would breathe in for four, breathe out for eight. That will shift your state very reliably. So if your goal was to chill, that's what you'd want to do.
- [64:10]
A
I do that before I go on stage every single time. Yeah, I do.
- [64:13]
B
You know that. Then there's another one which is something that's more akin to what I would do before I go on stage, which is about dropping yourself into a relaxed, aware state versus turning off stress. And when you do that, instead of, we'll say grounding in, what you're doing is you're expanding and calming. So you walk in with a big presence, but not a big, ah, you know, all over the place presence, but just a big felt presence. And this is more like what you would do if you were going to have that brainstorming thing or a really productive meeting where you're at a place of peace and you're aware but not fired up. Right. And then there's another set of breath work, which is the stuff that replaces taking lsd. And I write about my experiences with Stan grof, who treated 3,000 people with LSD as a physician in the 1950s, who invented a kind of breathwork along with his wife when LSD became illegal. So, God, which of those ones do you want to do? Or. Here's another one of my favorite techniques, and this is new in the world of biohacking. It's not even a meditation, but it's a practice that works really well for entrepreneurs. And it's called bicep. And it's not this bicep. It's brief, intentional, conscious exposure to pain.
- [65:32]
A
The last thing that I think would be interesting because you, you write about this and I'm curious, I'm curious why you think this is an important idea for a high performing individual. You write about tantra and you write about, you write about intimacy. Why? Because if somebody reads this book, they're going to be okay. Like everything else makes perfect sense. I get it. I want to be able to perform. I want to be in a meeting. I want to be able to let go of the, of the anger that is associated with the employee that sues me. Why does sex cross the, pardon the pun, corporate veil and Start to become this important idea for entrepreneurs to understand.
- [66:09]
B
Entrepreneurship is a community effort. You are an entrepreneur to make something that the world needs or to do something the world needs. The way your body processes reality is. Is it scary? Can I eat it and can I fuck it? Okay. If you don't feed those parts of your operating system so that you feel peace, you feel nourishment, and you feel that intimate connection, your body will derail you. And you'll be the kind of founder who sleeps with your assistant. And you'll be the kind of founder who spends all of your money on hookers and blow. And I've seen this so many times. And you'll be the kind of founder who leaves chaos in your personal relationships. And guess what happens to your business when your marriage fails. We all know entrepreneurship.
- [67:03]
A
Not good. Not good is the answer.
- [67:06]
B
And it happens because this is. Relationships are as important as eating for adults. Your system needs that. And if you don't prioritize that the same way you prioritize EBITDA or the amount of cash in the bank, you want to have a bankrupt, unhappy relationship at home so your business can grow. It doesn't work. You'll do that for a few years and then you won't have a relationship. You'll only have half your company if you're lucky, and your company will be much smaller because you were emotionally taken out. Now, this happens over and over. And I know this because this is how it has to work, given the way our unconscious mind and our body works. But it gets even more interesting because I am dating a relationship coach. And we do hot seats, hot seat masterminds for entrepreneurs, just about relationships, not about marketing or business operations. And couples and singles come. And we work with Annie Lala and Rod Harrison and a bunch of others, and we do coaching in front of a small group. And then you go, oh, my gosh, these guys work together. And this is how they do it. These guys don't work together. But it turns out you're not alone. And the data shows that the single factor that determines whether your relationship will last is whether you have a community that supports your relationship. It's more than anything else. So you might as well put at least as much energy into maintaining your relationships and deepening your intimacy as you do grow in your business. Because you will keep your business and your business will grow much faster when you have you're vibing with that creative energy that is the same thing you use to create a baby. Even if you're not looking to do that that's what creates businesses. In the East. They call it life force energy, or chi. And if your home relationship is depleted, your qi will be depleted. So you pay so much attention to what goes on your plate and whether you're doing your red light in the morning. But if you're not practicing intimacy as a source of power and nourishment, you're missing out on a massive, massive energy source and a massive way to enter altered states. Some of the most sacred altered states come from tantra or even. I interview an expert for the book, Kim Inch. She's actually in a conscious kink. And what is that? She's a somatic therapist. And she's like, you know, I work with a lot of people, including entrepreneurs, and it turns out some of my clients, in order to really feel it, like they needed to be kind of restrained. So I started doing that with clients. And this is my path now. I'm a professional dominatrix who was a somatic therapist. But it's healing and altered states work. It's not about the sex. She doesn't have sex with her clients. She's leading them on a guided journey that is no different than a psychedelic journey. It's just accessing the senses through the body. The same reason the monks are flogging themselves. It's just another gateway in. Given the number of entrepreneurs who are unnourished in their intimate relationships because they don't get what they need, it creates so much pain and suffering and it breaks companies and it causes massive lawsuits when you just can't stand it anymore. It's so funny. You take someone who's dieting, you put a plate of cookies in front of them, and half the time I just ate half the cookie. I just had to. I said I wasn't. You put a bunch of women in short skirts in front of a man who's a good man, who is just completely malnourished that way, and he's going to fight with all of his willpower, and eventually he might eat half the cookie and it'll ruin his life. Right? And that's not an okay thing to do. So can we talk about this? Can we talk about that? This is as important for men and women in different ways as food. And then we can treat it as something that we respect and that if you met God during a really good orgasm, great. Was it good for you? Did it nourish you? Did it make you feel grounded? Did it make you feel connected? Great. You'll be a better entrepreneur. And then you can do what Napoleon Hill talks about and think and grow rich. It talks about sublimating that energy. And I have taught so many young men. Here's how to space out your ejaculations so that you don't lose your energy. This is an ancient longevity practice. And it turns out every time a guy ejaculates, testosterone drops. And prolactin goes up. When testosterone drops, dopamine drops. When prolactin goes up, dopamine drops. And that will you respect me in the morning thing? Actually, no. Because you have no testosterone, you have no dopamine, your prolactin's high, you're apathetic. So if you're masturbating all the time or you're ejaculating all the time with your partner, it is very likely depleting you and probably harming your business. So this is a call to be aware that this is part of your performance stack. You can have sex and not ejaculate. And if you learn how to do that, you'll have a lot more sex. You'll become more successful, your partner will become happier. This only works for men, by the way. Women do not have that problem. So if you're a woman who can ejaculate, go for it. But it's something for guys. If the goal of your lovemaking is no longer getting yourself to completion, you're gonna have a lot more fun. Your partner's gonna have a lot more fun. And when you're done, you'll be so incredibly supercharged. And the young men have said, dave, I thought you were full of crap. I tried it for 30 days, and I got a $30,000 raise. I started two companies. I finally got off my ass and I did the thing I wanted to do. It's because their testosterone went up and stayed up, which made their dopamine go up. And maybe they got in a cold plunge, which was their brief, intentional, conscious exposure to pain, and all of a sudden, they stepped into their power. This is how it works. So how could I write heavily meditated without talking about what one third of your thoughts every day are about? Boobs, if you're a guy. And I don't know what women think about, but probably something similar, right? It does depend on which time of the month, by the way. Women are more complex that way. But seriously, all humans, when our hormones are healthy, we will spend a huge amount of our energy and thoughts on that. Why don't we treat it as a sacred, nourishing thing instead of something dirty?
- [73:32]
A
If you Wanted somebody who reads this to just take away one message, the most important message, and they understood nothing else. What would that message be and why?
- [73:45]
B
Everything you've ever done that you're ashamed of wasn't you. It was an ancient network of bacteria conspiring to keep you alive. So you can stop feeling shame about it and start doing something about it.
- [74:01]
A
Where should people go to connect with you? I'm assuming this is going to give me the links and the website so we can put in the show.
- [74:09]
B
Go to daveasprey.com and there's a link there on the homepage that'll take you to all the bonuses for heavily meditated. If you pre order the book or you order it right now, you get $199 course from Commune about biohacking. So that way more than pays for the book. And there's about $750 in bonuses and discounts and things available. And look, I'd love for you to come to 40 years of Zen. And not everyone's going to do that. People feel called. It's expensive and it's the most valuable thing I've ever done for myself. In fact, that's why I built the company was to reprogram my own brain. Even if you never decide to go read the book, sit down. You have a couple hours. Run the reset process on the things that really piss you off. If you do this, it'll change everything you do. And when you buy the book now, I will invite you to a webinar where I teach you how to do it.
- [75:02]
A
I love it. I love it. Okay, Is there anything else you wanted to go into?
- [75:07]
B
We should also just touch on psychedelics. So we talk about sex and we talk about things like food is a very small part of the book. And this understanding of your mental frameworks and breath work and all that. So many people are using psychedelics and you can use them as a way to enter some of these altered states. And there's no good or bad about it, but there is an order of operations. If you're new to this and you're considering it, and the reason I wrote that chapter is I've done shamanic training. I've traveled all over the world. I've done the great majority of the psychedelics and we use them as an option at 40 years of Zen. It's the world's first psychedelic assisted neurofeedback program. So, wow, they could be valuable. But I see people usually using ayahuasca and sometimes mushrooms to target wealthy and successful People. And I would suggest that you should start with lower risk, high reward psychedelics on your journey. And don't be one of those guys. We've all heard them. The Ayahuasca bros. Dude, I've done 87 IA journeys. How I do them between my kettlebells and, you know, I used to be an MMA fighter and now I'm going to be saved someday, dude, 87 times. When are you going to notice it's not working? And so I would say if you decide to do one of the ancient medicines like that, go to the jungle, do it with a real shaman, because there's more risk there than people realize. And the safer ones, well, ketamine has been around for 70 years and you can do it in a therapist's office. And that is very well understood. Using ketamine at parties, Bad. Addictive. Using it for therapy, Amazing. It regrows your brain. MDMA on occasional use. Relatively safe and very effective for trauma. Mushrooms, reasonably safe, effective for trauma. And I don't think things like heroin or cocaine, those are hard drugs, but they're not psychedelics. I don't include them in the list and it gets a little bit sketchy. I mean, you can do dmt. DMT can be profound and it's different than doing Aya. And ibogaine is one that should be near the end of your list. Ibogaine is medically risky. I am planning to do that, but I'll do it with a cardiac monitor and a doctor nearby because sometimes your heart rate gets a little bit high. So just understand, start with a foot in the water. Don't just find some Aya bro who's gonna walk you through. Those people cannot hold space the way they need to. The role of a shaman is to act as a firewall to keep malware out of your brain. And there are people, those narcissists that we talked about earlier, they will target you with psychedelics. So be careful if you're high visibility or you're high wealth. There are people who really, really, really want you to do drugs with them and it's not for your best interest. And there are people who really, really want you to do drugs with them because they're going to help you heal. Your discernment better be good if you're going to go down that path, especially with drugs. Towards the end of the list, what about lsd? About lsd. I actually like lsd. I go to Burning man, so I don't have an issue with it. I did a podcast and then a breathwork workshop with Stan Grof, who's the guy who created Transpersonal Psychology. So all the emdr, all the breath work, it all came out of his work. He treated 3,000 patients with LSD in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, when it was still called that, and it created a whole new branch of psychology and psychiatry. So there is value for lsd. And it's very hard to get addicted to psychedelics. It is possible to get addicted to ketamine because it's not really a psychedelic. We just talk about it that way. It's a dissociative. So I would say you're unlikely to get addicted to lsd. And occasional use with integration and journaling, relatively safe. You might want to try mushrooms first, but it can be a beautiful experience.
- [79:07]
A
But ultimately, all of these, all of these psychedelics, they can what, expedite improve the, the whole reset process? They can, they can complement it. Like, is it possible to do it without. I'm assuming yes. But what value do they add?
- [79:23]
B
You know, during the reset process? Most psychedelics aren't going to be helpful. They're going to create profound awareness. And sometimes you may experience forgiveness, but it tends to be random. Right. So having awareness and having the felt sense of an altered state can be really powerful. And like, if you go to an event once a month and you do a psychedelic journey of whatever works, or you do a breath workshop, it's like taking a mental shower. It just lets you see the world as connected to everyone with more gratitude. And that's really the role of a lot of psychedelics, depending on which ones. A lot of people won't agree with everything I'm saying here. This is a generalization. Feeling a sense of awe and gratitude and connectedness is really, really grounding and beneficial for people. And it's in the middle of the reset process. You cannot heal from a trauma unless you know how to feel gratitude or awe. And psychedelics can reconnect you to that experience, which is a necessary ingredient for forgiveness. But they won't cause forgiven.