 And it was the first time where I literally could do the whole thing. Like, I could make the product, I could design the brand. I knew enough to build the website. And I was like, I don't need anybody. And I just felt like I was unleashed. Like, I was just like moving so fast and everything came very intuitively. At the time, I had no financial stability. Like, I was in debt, a little bit of debt, but I didn't have any money to sink into it. But I just knew it was going to work. This is Started to Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. Today's guest is Shane Heath, founder of Mudwater, a coffee alternative that boasts all the aspects to make coffee great without leaving you waiting for the crash. Shane developed Mudwater first and foremost for himself. His coffee cycle went something like this, drink coffee, get a boost of energy, crash, repeat. He was fed up, so he started experimenting in his kitchen. After some trial and error, he landed on the recipe that's still sold today. He didn't set out to make a business. He was only trying to solve a problem in his daily ritual. But as you'll hear, the signs that he was onto something big became clearer and clearer until he could ignore them no more. So listen in as we cover everything from the trip to India that helped him shake his coffee habit, why entrepreneurs should chase a feeling of intention and purpose, and why it's so hard to quit drinking coffee. Before we go, just real quickly, go down there and click that like button. Helps us out tremendously. Now, back to the episode. All right, welcome to the podcast, everyone. It's 2021 on Today Show. We have Shane, the CEO and founder of Mudwater. Shane, thanks for joining. Tell everyone a little bit about what your company is and what you're working on. Hey guys, how's it going? Thanks for having me. Yeah, Mudwater is a coffee alternative. It's a blend of masala chai, cacao, turmeric, cinnamon, chaga, reishi, lion's mane, cordyceps, little bit of sea salt. It'll get you a one-seventh the caffeine of coffee, but you get energy, focus, immune support, whole lot more without the jitters and crash, dependency and shitty sleep. So this is good because Nick and I are on both sides of this equation, right? So I'm like a big coffee guy, big into biohacking, which is actually why I love the product more than the caffeine side. And Nick is not a coffee guy at all. Because of the jitters, he's very much tea or matcha. What made you wanna start the company? What was the thing? Was it a biohacking thing or was it just like you were getting jitters from coffee? I guess both, right? I was getting jitters, I was anxious. I suffered from anxiety and depression most of my adult life, to be honest. And then I was working in the creative realm where I was working in Silicon Valley, doing design work for various tech startups. And then outside of the office, I was also a fine artist sitting in front of a canvas for hours at a time. And I think because of that, I was hyper aware of maybe the anxiety and depression and like any sort of jitters that was in my hand, that was going to the brush and on the painting. So I guess you could say that led me down to biohacking my own solution for some of those side effects I was experiencing. And yeah, that led me to look for alternatives. Initially I was looking at different ways to make coffee. Like I tried the bulletproof route, I tried the four-sigmatic route, all of those things. But yeah, that was kind of the initial impetus. And then I saw at some point your journey led you to India. And this was kind of like the awakening moment, right? So can you share a little bit about that with us? Yeah, exactly. So I was working in Silicon Valley, I just started to explore different ways to I guess hinder some of these side effects of caffeine, but also was trying to like heal maybe some of the depression and anxiety that was sort of underlying all of it. And it was just more or less being amplified by caffeine and activating the sympathetic nervous system. And around that time, I was painting like every night after I'd get home from work. And I got invited to do an artist in residency program and go to India. At the time, I'd never been outside of the country besides like Canada or Mexico. And I was enjoying my career, but I knew that I needed to sort of break myself open a little bit to really get to that next level. I remember having a meeting with my VP of product at the time, he was my manager. I was just telling him some of the things I was experiencing. Like I really felt like I had a lot in me, but I was sort of holding myself back. And he told me that he was like, Shane, you're the most talented designer that I've ever worked with that doesn't know it. And I think that that really hit me hard as far as to how anxiety was hindering my ability to be my highest self and reach my potential. And so when I heard that, I was kind of like, it's time. Like whatever it takes, I gotta get rid of this. I wanna step in to figure out who I really am. And so I got this invite to go to India, live there for six months and work on an art show essentially and had a free place to stay. And it wasn't like a lucrative opportunity, at least financially, but spiritually and personal development wise, it totally was. So I took a leave of absence from work and jumped on a plane and landed in Goa. That's pretty amazing. And then as you start going through this like rediscovery, what's, is it the tea that kind of sets off the idea to start the company? Or when were you thinking about how do I take this? Like it's making you feel amazing personally. And then at some point, just making that leap to the ultimate, like in terms of anxiety and depression, right? Starting a company surely can set that on fire. And so just talk us a little bit through of when you started to figure things out. And then I guess at some point the seesaw goes, okay, I need this can help other people, right? And then that becomes the greater mission and sort of the feeder kind of calms down. But what was that like? Yeah, I think, you know, in psychology, they talk about changing your environment and how that can change a lot of your internal, and it can change your internal environment as well. And so going into a new country, obviously with completely, it was a completely different country, not just time zone, it had different beliefs, different clothing, different speaking, different, everything was kind of, like it allowed me to rethink my own cultural prescriptions. So like what was prescribed to me by my parents, by religion, by school, by friends, like essentially telling you or not telling you, but like giving you a sense for what is good, what is bad, what is cool, what is not cool. Sort of trying to pigeonhole you into like an identity, right? And when I was in a new place, like not knowing anyone, traveling there on my own, I sort of felt empowered to just be like, it's a fresh canvas, right? Like I could sort of detach myself from some of the things that were no longer serving me or at minimum at least see them in a different light because now it wasn't the norm. I was in a place where these cultural prescriptions wasn't the majority of people weren't doing that. So that was definitely really a big powerful insight that I had that took me back. And then part of that was also over there, Chai is like what coffee is here, like it's on every corner and like everyone, it's in everyone's home and whatnot. So I started drinking Chai and I'd love Chai going to India. And when I arrived there, like drinking Masala Chai, the Wala, it was just like an amazing experience where back home it was really tough to kick coffee for me just because of how ingrained into culture it is. You know, they call it like, they serve like the third location where you have like your home, your work, and then the other and like coffee is like that. Let's go grab a cup of coffee. So it was really tough. And in India, like I got to essentially replace that with something else and I got to see what that feels like and was like, why can't I do this all the time? Like it gave me power, right? And so when I came home from that trip, I found a Masala Chai blend, powdered blend that had no sugar in India. Like they typically will mix it with a lot of milk cream and a ton of sugar. So it's not really like a sustainable morning ritual, at least for the lifestyle I'm looking to live. And this blend that I found had one seventh of caffeine of coffee. So just inherently cutting down caffeine really helped me with anxiety and depression. It helped me sleep better, which I think sleep might be the one thing that kind of it's a fix off or most things. If you can solve that, it really does help. And I was drinking this every morning and Masala Chai is, it's an amalgam of multiple different ingredients, right? Like chai means tea and tea in Masala Chai is typically like a black tea. And then the Masala is like a blend of spices where you have cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, cloves. And so I was kind of just looking at that and I was like, if I'm gonna drink this every single morning before pursuing like my dreams essentially or like my highest self, like what can I put into this to essentially like stack in a ritual or a healthy habit, healthy consumption habit, that would serve my lifestyle. So I was like, focus is obviously a really powerful attribute when you're in like the entrepreneurship world and at the time moving home from India, I was working for a tech startup and immunity obviously, you don't wanna get sick, no one does. And so I added some chaga and reishi. Oh yeah, and for the focus, I turned to lion's mane. And then I also trained jujitsu. I've been training jujitsu since I was a little kid. I live a really active life outside of that too where I'm constantly like, I drop in on CrossFit classes, I rock climb, like surf, all these things. And the physical side is something that's really, really important to me, both just because it feels good, feeling that way, feeling strong and feeling vital in my body, but also because it helps with the mental side too. Mind and body are really connected. And so to support the body, I added cordyceps. And then I was doing intermittent fasting and so I added cinnamon because it helped me curb the sugar cravings that I would get normally around like 10 to 11. And then turmeric to help with inflammation and a little bit of seesaw. I felt like it really helped the flavors pop together but obviously there's some minerals, there's some hydration properties to it. But that was ultimately the formula that I was just like playing around with in my home kitchen. No intention of starting a business, just knew back to LA, was actually working on another startup that I co-founded with a friend that was a B2B SaaS super techie company. And this was just my little secret where I was working remote, like didn't even have people, nobody really knew I was even drinking this. I was just like, I needed something to make me feel good. And that was ultimately what I found. Sorry, that was a long-winded answer and I didn't even get to the second half of the question. You said a lot, you know, it's funny, man. Your story reminds me of kind of like the reverse of mine. So we were in Boston and our company got into Y Combinator and so we go to Silicon Valley and I'm thinking like, okay, I'm gonna meet, I'm gonna meet all the shanes. You know, I'm gonna meet all the guys starting really cool things and I get there. And that was my belief system. So I was going in thinking, I'm gonna go to the epicenter of creation essentially of like people who are really doing things in the tech world. And what I found was the complete opposite. I found the, my mom told me to go to Stanford, my parents told me to go work for Twitter. And this was like this overwhelming majority in San Francisco that I kind of viewed as like soulless. It was like, you guys aren't, you have no idea. Your humanness is you've put it in a corner and I don't even know if you can touch it anymore, right? And it was just like weird thing where almost the opposite of your experience in India where seeing that made me want to run away from it. But it's also one of those things where you encounter the other. And it was just so obvious in San Francisco to me. But either way, like for me, San Francisco, similar to you, it sounds like it was like biohacking became front and center for me. I was managing a team. All of a sudden it was like, if you have a burger at lunch, you're gonna fall asleep. You know, I was working out. And so it was like all of a sudden I got super hyper focused on every little thing that went into my body, intermittent fasting, sleeping. I'd sleep at 11.08 every day, like 11.08 to the dot. I was, I was, I was out. It was crazy, like, but just living like kind of like a robot. You know, I'm just saying this. It sounds like a ramble, but it just, it connects me kind of with your story. And I just love the honesty of it because it's these journeys that I think we all go through as entrepreneurs or just people in general, creatives in general, that sometimes it doesn't feel like there's meaning, but at the end of it, there's always some, some really amazing moment or meaning where things come together. And it's like, you know, I talk about watching a tree grow is never fun, but like once the tree has grown, it's pretty cool to look at. And so it's this thing where you can, having the reflection is, is kind of nice. Yeah, it's like that, a James Clear quote, like you overestimate what you can do in a day and underestimate what you can do in a year. Yeah. It's all about the little, the little steps, yeah. Yeah. This is a book I'm reading. It kind of reminded me of what you're saying too. It's called The Book of Life. I don't know if you've ever read it. Super good book. No, I haven't. A lot about what you're talking about. It's a, an Indian man, Indian philosopher wrote it, gives daily meditations, talks about, basically a lot of that rewiring and just how, you know, prescriptive our culture can be and just gives you a sense of how to walk away from that, back away from that. Yeah, a lot of it is, a lot of it was just like an unlearning for me. Like more than, more than a learning of new things. It was unlearning and then you're kind of like looking at the things you already know, but from that whole new lens and able to integrate it with sort of like a fresh mind. Yeah. So like in the Silicon Valley example, it's like, it's kind of like discovering your why, like instead of just going there because like following the sheep or because mom said, ultimately maybe that is really your passion, but if you're doing it for that reason, it's like the simple, it's like the difference between like a why that is rooted in you and a why that's rooted in like approval, like approval from the external or something. You mentioned all of the ingredients that you had in mud water, but I have to believe that, that you didn't just be like, oh, let's add this, this, this. And without any trial or experimentation, you just landed on the final recipe. Were there any other ingredients that you maybe tried out, trying to address some symptoms that you were feeling or something that you wanted to address in your biohacking process that didn't make it into the final recipe of mud water today? For sure, for sure. Like even calling it a recipe, like at that time, that's definitely not what I was. How I was even viewing it. Like I would do research on things that I felt like had promised and that reputable people were talking about and I would just order them and try them. And I had a big hydro flask that I would go down in the kitchen, fill up with hot water and dump in everything that I had in the kitchen cabinet that I had purchased and try different things out and I would make like wild smoothies and stuff. And this was nothing new. This was something that I'd been doing since college. Like around my junior, senior year of college, I had a similar sort of transcendental moment of sorts where a flat roommate of ours had committed suicide and it sort of caught us all off guard. And like me especially where I sort of was, I just considered like where I was heading in my life and like as a friend, as a person, as somebody who's present and like watching reality and seeing what's going on. Cause I just felt like I was in college mode and oblivious to this. And at that point, from that point on really was the beginning. Though it took years to really step in was ultimately amplified by going to India. But I started like taking yoga during meditation. That's when I started painting. I started doing Ayurvedic cleanses and got introduced to a ton of very strange at least to Western society, ingredients and different teas and roots and whatnot. But to be specific, some of the things that I was working with was like all the mushrooms. So like shiitake, matake, a turkey tail. I was playing around with things like bee pollen, different honeys. Makka was a big one that I loved and still I still add to my mud water. Like often personally, ashwagandha, all these types of ingredients. If you look in my kitchen cabinet right now, it's just like, it's dusty. I'll tell you a little bit about what I'm having right now. So I make a honey sage simple syrup. It's just basically honey water and sage leaves. And then I just still that into just a simple syrup. And so I put like an ounce of that with the mud water with the coconut milk that you guys make too. And then just eight ounces of water. And it's so nice. Yeah, that sounds great. And then do you froth it up with the frother? I froth it up and then I also have this really cool coffee machine. So I use the frother on the machine too, just to try to give it a little bit more of a head of a foam. Of a blend, yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. You know, it's funny. Whenever I talk to designers, this is like, this is every designer I've ever worked with. I'm always convinced the designer has a way of impacting the human. So from a business perspective, has a way of touching the human that nobody else at the company has. So whether you're in sales or whether you're in on the development side, the designer has a way. Like there's just something about design that can connect you to anything, to a product, a brand, if done thoughtfully. But typically the disconnect around business and design, there's like people view it from the outside as there's just a huge gap, right? They always think, oh no, sales is way closer. But I found at least in my life, and it sounds like you've nailed this, especially with how well your company's doing. I mean, design literally can transform and just connect with people in a way that nothing else can. And it seems like, I don't know why that is. I just know that it is. I just don't know why that is. When you started your company, did you raise capital? Did you just do it? Or did you bootstrap it? What were some of the beginning parts of the foundation of your company? Yeah, so I mean, I guess rewind like maybe a year before starting it. Like I said, was working remote in my home kitchen, had been drinking this weird drink. We ended up winding down that startup and I joined a tech company in person, like was working in an office environment now and was around a ton of caffeine addicts, basically. If you go into any office, it's probably 10 out of 10 people drink coffee and like eight out of 10, probably will tell you they drink too much of it. And I would bring in this hydro flask and people were just like, what the fuck is that? And I'm like, it's mud. It was just like a joke. Like it just looked like people were like grossed out by it. They're like, that's not coffee, so that's gross. And I love like playing into that and sort of like challenging that a little bit. But every time my fellow employees would be like, oh man, I'm like trying to switch out, like wean off my afternoon cup or drink less or quit altogether, like that type of thing. And I was like, this is insane that like everybody drinks this stuff and most people who drink it are probably somewhat addicted to it. And also most people who drink it want to like rethink their relationship with it, whether that's quitting or that's just like drinking less. And I was just like, that's absurd. That just means that culture and marketing is like controlling people into how they act and behave in a similar way that maybe like tobacco did. And so that kind of like planted the seed where I was like, that's really interesting. And so I started giving, making some for people in the office and like just seeing what they thought and people were like, oh my God, this is amazing. Like I've been wanting something like this, like tea just never quite cut it like this, that and that. And so fast forward a year of working there, it just was starting to become like overwhelmingly obvious that like there was an opportunity here. And I think there was two things that contributed. Like one, I was in LA. And LA is sort of at the tip of the spear in regards to like progressive health and wellness and like mushrooms at that time three, four years ago weren't as popular as it is today, like not nearly. Like it really hit a curve around that time. And then also that company happened to be an e-commerce subscription tech company. So I was leading the design team and learning the ins and outs of subscription e-commerce and how to build community, how to build retention and how to track it, but also how to design for it. So all of a sudden I felt like I had like a very unique skill set that could launch this product that could fit a massive market. And so May of 2018, literally over the weekend I grabbed my computer and designed the brand, the packaging, coded a front end, I know how to do some front end code. So I coded like a front end website on the Squarespace e-mediter and put up an Instagram post that said we're not mad at coffee, we're just disappointed. And it was just me, like I didn't even have product yet. Like I didn't have anything. I was just like, I was excited to work on something that was my own and for the first time in my career like I had worked on side projects, I had co-founded two other companies but both of them were tech companies and I didn't know any back end development. So I always needed other help on everything that I did or was joining other people like an already started company. And there was the first time where I literally could do the whole thing, like I could make the product, I could design the brand. I knew enough to build the websites you could work with these themes. And I was like, I don't need anybody. And I just felt like I was unleashed. Like I was just like moving so fast and everything came very intuitively. The brand was live now and all of a sudden like orders started to come in and I was like, oh shit, what do I do? At the time I had no financial stability. Like I was in debt, a little bit of debt but I didn't have any money to sink into it but I just knew it was gonna work. Like I just knew it. And so I opened up a credit card and got started and I ordered, I basically was, I just ordered more of exactly what I was making for myself. So I ordered the same from the same suppliers on Amazon. I bought more of it and I got some jars and some stickers and just started small and started fulfilling orders. And being, having worked in the tech space for a while I knew that once I launched, well I knew that I needed to go with a VC route. I needed capital because I didn't have my own. And because of that I knew that once I launched like it was on, like every month I needed to beat my numbers. And when you're pitching to investors like it's just like trying to convert a customer as well. Like you want to reduce friction and you want to make this like just a seamless yes. And to do that in the early stages of a company it's almost more simple than in the later stages where you just need to have an amazing growth slide. It just needs to go up into the right and it just needs to show you continued growth. And if there's any like dips that's just one more thing that you gotta like, like why did it dip? And you're like, well I had my job, got busy and it's like, where are you committed? Like I was all in. And so I just started to go and I was fulfilling orders in my house and moved to a commercial kitchen. And within six months we were doing six figures in monthly revenue. Just like I was working full time at my previous company. I would hire all my friends who in LA there's like a lot of just actresses and like models and whatnot that had these like interesting time. Like they just had so much time that they needed little side jobs. So they'd come over to my house, package boxes and I'd come home on my lunch break and go and take them to the post office, go back to work, come home, go to the commercial kitchen, mix mud. Just like I was just on fire. It was insane to think about what I was doing, but ultimately was just trying to get this thing off the ground. And we had progress, but it got to the point where I probably needed like a month more to prove out like retention growth, some metrics. And I would like timing wise, I was completely maxed out. Like I didn't have enough time to put into it to keep up with orders. And then financially, like I didn't have the money to keep up with orders really. So like I couldn't quit my job to free up time because then I wouldn't have cash and I would have to like wind down the business. And I called up a previous co-founder of mine who had been sort of my like therapist and advisor through these first six months of launching Mudwater, like watching from afar and helping on finances and business. And I was just like pretty much on the verge of tears. And I was like told him the situation. And I was like, I don't know what to do. Like if I continue, I'm gonna have to like probably slow down growth or wind down the company. And if I quit my job, I'll have to wind down the company cause I'll run out of money. And he was like, dude, I'm not an investor, but I'm wiring you $25,000. It's pretty much all I have. And I'm gonna stop helping you if you don't accept it. And tomorrow you gotta go quit your job and we're doing this. And he like hung up and just texted me. He's like, look at your bank account. Like let's go. And it's pretty much what happened. His name's Paul DeJo and he's our current co-founder and COO. And yeah, went left my job and we went out and went on a fundraising mission. And we closed that fall. So I guess it was probably two, three months after that point, we closed just over 1.1 million. Wow, that's amazing. That's really, really cool story. I love that. That is unheard of. Yeah, it was pretty nuts. It was a wild time. You said some things that I think are really interesting there. I mean, the one thing that really sticks with me is I think this is one of the misnomers of entrepreneurship and it kind of goes back to your why. And it also, it touches on honesty. And if you're chasing money, more often than not, some people for sure can chase money to be successful. But I think if you're anything like me and it sounds like kind of like you, then if what you're doing feels very intention driven and purposeful, then you do go to those lengths of like you're willing to go homeless. You're willing to get a credit card because you know it's gonna pay off. And that belief is something I think entrepreneurs in general should chase. Chase that thing. Chase the thing that you're willing to just everything. You're willing to bet it all because at the end of the day, you're really just betting on yourself. And that honesty, that mirror is so beautiful, right? I think that's when you feel the most alive. It can be terrifying for sure. But I think just that honesty needs to exist when it comes to basically, you're putting yourself on display. It's your product, right? It's your company, you're backing it. And so ultimately it's, you're kind of naked, but that's exhilarating at the same time, you know? Oh, totally. Yeah, it is like Simon Sinek, like start with why. Like there's kind of, there's companies that can be like whiteboard companies. There's probably a lot of our competitors today. It's like somebody sees what we're doing and they're like, well, the market's this big. And if we can get this chunk of it, like we can have this big of a company. And it's like, that's a completely different starting point and purpose than for me. It actually is, it's coming from a place of like, when I found that I can think for myself, that's when life started to get much easier and more fruitful for me. And, you know, we kind of talked about that in India where I was like, I really just sort of saw like everything that the things that I believed and which one of them were sort of given to me by what? Like whether it was parents, family, teachers, friends, like all these things, it's not that that's a bad thing, but ultimately I discovered that that wasn't allowing me to truly think for myself. Like I was drinking coffee because it was like served to me on every street corner and in every office and everybody had it in their home. It was kind of like this momentum and the majority people drank it. So I did, I wasn't thinking about it. And once I sort of got control of my why in regards to like how I did everything in my life, that led me to mudwater. But I think mudwater, I hope, can enable people to find that in themselves too. Whether that means that they continue to drink our product, that almost is like secondary. Like if somebody sees, like we have stickers that say fuck your coffee that we ship to people and like it's not in a like antagonizing angry way. It's literally just a shake up a snow globe because everybody thinks coffee is cool and that causes a lot of people to drink it like without thinking unconsciously. And so by all of a sudden saying that's not cool, like do you still want to drink it? That's ultimately the framework that we want to provide people with is like, just think for yourselves. And if that means that like you're going to continue doing exactly what you're doing but it's coming from a place of like truth, fuck yeah. Like if that means that you don't like mudwater and you want to continue to drink coffee, hell yeah, if that's coming from you, that's the wind. That's the product we want to sell. But our product obviously tends to appeal to a lot of people too. But I think that that, like you're saying, like that made it such a deeper purpose than just like a money play of like what is the odds that I can get to this percent of the market? Like I haven't thought about that. Like it's like, there's no white boarding, there is no like what color should I have it? There was no, it was just like I'm going to create a brand that like I would buy. Like I'm the biggest customer of mudwater still to this day. Like straight up, making it for myself. As you think about like future growth, does the desire to ever open up on a mudwater shop come to mind? You know, obviously it's good marketing too, I think. Like the drink I just made is wonderful. And so, and I know you guys have a whole menu of different, you know, different recipes that go with it. And so it'd be a really interesting way to share that with the market. If you ever think about a retail strategy, obviously post COVID, but it seems to make sense. Totally, yeah. I mean, we kind of look at the whole coffee ecosystem, right? Like you have, it's a beverage. It typically comes in a vessel like a mug. So we're thinking through mugs that maybe have like a frothing mechanism. A lot of times there's like content involved where you got your coffee in the newspaper. We're investing heavily in content. We're building sort of like a Red Bull media arm, but for health, wellness, lifestyle, and psychedelic research, so like mental health research. And we will be publishing that starting in Q2. We're gonna launch our first like physical, it's actually gonna be like an old school style newspaper that we're gonna launch. And then like you said, I think the physical location is a huge part of why coffee is so big. Before Starbucks cafes launched, like coffee was largely like a blue collar is like drinking in the military. There's Folgers and whatnot. And then it became that third location in that whether people wanted to drink coffee or not, they go and grab a quote unquote cup of coffee with somebody and that's just like synonymous with going to chat. And so I think that there's a huge potential to take what we are doing and apply that to a physical space. So I mean, we just had a meeting with the former CEO of Starbucks actually in his pretty interesting conversation that my co-founder had with him. And he asked the same question and we had the same answer. But we also were like, but we're not gonna have coffee there. And he's like, he just like didn't really, he didn't really get it. But yeah, I mean, I think having a cafe type space, I don't know if I'd wanna call it a cafe even, but like a space to go that sort of rethinks how we find energy productivity, a community, those types of things is something we're really interested in. But also for our D to C business, it's interesting because as an acquisition tool, right? The best way to try our product for the first time would be like someone like you who has their way of making is like, dude, you gotta try this, like here's how I make it and give them like your secret recipe. But that can also be facilitated like by a trained barista, right? And then in a cafe environment, allowing for people to sign up for, they're automatic to subscriptions. Like we have 70,000 subscribers now. And so using that as a place where people can go try it for their first time in an amazing format, whether that's hot, cold, blended, and then they can just sign up for their monthly deliveries on the spot is something that we and our investors are really excited about. It's amazing because it's like completely green opportunity. Like I'm just thinking out like out loud, you can call it the mud room, you don't, you can just differentiate, it can be like almost a place for creatives as well. Or there's just so much there that the coffee market has kind of positioned themselves in a certain way and that leaves a really interesting opportunity for differentiation. Yeah, and like our brand, it's mud slash WTR. And I think that slash is symbolic for like being able to be malleable across different verticals. And so like we were hypothetically calling these locations like mud hut, so N-U-D-H-U-T, things like that. But yeah, yeah, you're spot on. Like I think that we wouldn't necessarily try to clone the cafe model. It'd probably be cafe plus. Like we would probably have, you could order beverages, but there'd be like maybe a members only area where there's meditation classes and maybe even like a nighttime hangout spot where it's sans alcohol and we incorporate some different elixirs that are conducive for socializing and whatnot, relieving anxiety. Maybe it's the opposite side of the spectrum too. We're about to launch a nighttime blend. So the best morning ritual, or the morning ritual you choose is sort of determined by the night before, right? Like if you don't sleep, a lot of people like turn into their coffee because they're like, I'm dead tired. If you sleep amazing, like you might not need to rely on a drug for energy. Instead you might look for other things that you're looking for, of course, like focus and whatnot. But in regards to like socializing too, I'm really interested in that space, the alcohol alternative space. So those are definitely both things we're thinking about with like a physical location. I do real estate development and in that my whole ethos is really just like first aid spots, that's it. And so it's kind of like the new community, the new church. And so for me, it's like coffee shops. It's what you're talking about, it's breweries. I think these are the things that will survive the test of time. And also just the pure financials of it make a lot of sense. The restaurant industry was getting killed by the rising minimum wage for years. And so the fact that they're just getting wiped out because of COVID is kind of an unfortunate reality that's just coming to bear. I mean, it's something that's been happening slowly for a long time. And really just first aid spots are a big thing for us. And I think COVID or an opposed COVID environment, everybody's hungry for that. Everyone's hungry. Like I just like walking around and seeing people just walking around my neighborhood, you know? And it's just like, I think that goes into overdrive as we move out of this COVID-19 area. What do you mean by first aid spots? You mean like those kind of novel or like exceptional places in your community where you're like, if we're gonna, if I'm gonna take her somewhere, like we gotta go to a place. Like what do you mean by that? That's like a second aid spot. So a first aid spot is like, is like, hey, let's just grab coffee and get the NOHL. Like real quick, like it can be- A casual spot. Casual spot, yeah. It can be 10 minutes, but it can also be an hour. But there's no pressure. Like it can be a beer or, you know, three beers. It doesn't have to be, it could be a cider. You know, it could be a non-alcoholic cider or three of them, but you have the choice. It's not like a sit-down dinner where you're, you know, you're locked into what may be a two hour embarrassing conversation. Yeah, that's cool. I like that way of thinking about it. Shane, I was reading on your website and I saw that you are a big supporter of a program called Maps. And specifically dealing with the effects of mushrooms and psilocybin. So my first introduction to this was I developed a show for Vice called Kentucky, ayahuasca. I think it ended up being called. And that was like the first time that I had one herd of ayahuasca and then two really delved into the effects of psilocybin and the regenerative healing powers or just how it can kind of unwire your brain to help you cope with PTSD or abuse or trauma or whatever it might be. I did think it was funny that you had on your FAQ, you know, do you include magic mushrooms in your concoction? And, you know, because if people start reading about this, they're like, oh my God, if I'm drinking this in the morning, am I gonna trip? And you're like, no, no, we do not. We support it. But can you talk about why that means so much to you and why you donate to Maps? I believe it's every month. Yeah, yeah. So Maps is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. They're sort of like the leading organization in pushing forth therapeutic usages of psychedelics. So some of their most prominent studies, like they just had a successful phase three study go through with MDMA therapy. But like you said, they work with pretty much all of them and it's sort of been, I guess they're like taking the first step and there's a lot of people kind of following in their wake now. But I, so for me psychedelics have been a really important part in my own personal healing. Back when I was working in Silicon Valley, I came across a podcast and it opened my eyes up and mind up to Ayahuasca actually. And a couple years later ended up having my first experience and it was definitely one of the most important weekends of my life. And you know, both the experience itself was powerful but I think almost more so was the integration and like the aftermath and how it sort of empowered me to like change my life in a similar way to like going to India and like the trickle down effect. Just like eating better, talking to myself better, sleeping better, like all of these things, like finding really what was important to me. So as I got into this business, you know, like I live in LA, I've lived in Santa Cruz, I've lived in San Francisco, there's massive homelessness in all of those locations everywhere I've grown up and I've always just been very interested, you know, having experienced anxiety and depression on my own. Just like what is that threshold which brings you from like a point of just sort of distress and then all of a sudden you're on the street and like what about society and culture leads to that? There's definitely some issues, some problems that like the core fabric of culture and society. And I think that some of that can be stemmed from the mind, right? If you look at psychiatric medicine that's prescribed right now or sleep aids or anxiety meds, like they're just like skyrocketing up, right? And that's just showing that people feel that there's something wrong with how they're thinking, how they're feeling and ultimately that if the center for how you think and feel and act is in disorder that's gonna lead on a societal level to sort of what we're seeing, right? And so for me maps seem like the most important organization that I could support because it's dealing with what I think is the most important thing which is like the root cause of some of these systemic issues. And so yeah, we donate to maps every month and then more than that we proudly support and share and write about the psychedelic research that's happening in hopes to like help some people to sort of alleviate some of the stigmas that have been built around this but also to inform people who maybe use it or have used it or are afraid to use it, afraid of others using it in like a recreational sense because it can be harmful. And so we're trying to help support building up those like solid frameworks to use it in a therapeutic way. But yeah, it's super important for me. And I'm like, I'm just like honored and kind of like in awe that we can contribute at all. We're actually interviewing Rick Doblin, the founder of Maps Tomorrow on our podcast. And I'm just like, this is crazy. He's just coming full circle. So yeah, thank you for that question. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast, Shane. I know you guys have a lot of really cool content on a YouTube channel that you guys have also really amazing super well done content. Just tell everyone where they can find you, where they can get the product, how they can support all that good stuff. Yeah, you can obviously go to our website. It's mudwater.com, M-U-D-W-T-R.com. Our Instagram is a good source for, we typically share all of our YouTube content and all of our content from around our website, our blog. Our Instagram is drinkmudwater, same spelling. And yeah, looking forward, like we are launching a content arm called Trends With Benefits, which is gonna be serving up audio, written and visual content on psychedelics for one, but mental health in general and lifestyle. And of course, we're gonna go deep on a lot of nutrition and ingredients. Love it. Thanks for coming on the podcast, brother. I appreciate it. Thanks, Shane. Thanks so much for having me.