 Part of the reason that younger entrepreneurs or people earlier in their entrepreneurial journey struggle so much with feeling like I need to do it myself, I know that I did, is because you might conceptually understand that it's about a team. But when you're early in your career, your network is so piss poor. So even the best of us, you'll try out trusting your college roommate with ex and you end up being burned so many times that then subconscious without even knowing you're like I need to do it myself. And then you suffer with that misguided concept for years and years and years and then you actually find someone that is so well just amazing at ex. It is magic when you just hand it off and they hand you something unbelievable back 120% of your expectations. This is Startup the Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. Today's guest is James Bishara, founder of Magic Mind, a productivity drink designed to replace your morning cup of coffee for good. James' story is about so much more than Magic Mind though, as he started a few other companies and invested in a few others as well. One of the companies he started was bought by Airbnb, which on the surface seems like a major win. Until you learn that he had to sell it in a fire sale. James is very open about both his successes and his failures, and it's this kind of honesty that led him to start his own podcast where he dives into all of the challenges facing business leaders all over the world. This episode is a truly fascinating conversation in which we take a high level look at what it really means to be an entrepreneur in today's world. So listen in to recover everything from the difference between the fear of missing out and the fear of being involved, why he's long on Airbnb, and why spiritually everyone should be a freelancer. Now, back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to James, the CEO founder of Magic Mind. Thanks for joining. Diego, Nick, thanks for having me. People who don't know, what is Magic Mind? Magic Mind is a little two ounce elixir that will give you the very short version. It's basically the world's greatest morning ritual drink ever created. Oh, perfect. Take it in the morning, alongside your morning coffee or tea, or in place of it, and you get seven, eight hours of just creative, productive flow state. And we're having it here with some tonic, which is delicious. We can definitely, this should be a cocktail, some sort of drink that we should put on our gram. Yes, please. And maybe we'll do a partnership with Farm Copper. Oh, that'd be perfect, actually. Yeah. So I'm a big believer, business, life, relationships, how you do anything is how you do everything. And I could just look at the design for listeners. If you haven't checked out the videos that the team has put together, specifically of creating the space. Nick, kudos to you for the video. So beautiful, the video creation, the truck. It's like you see these little tiny details being so well managed. You know that the coffee's going to be great or you know that the potential collaborations would be great. Yeah, it's funny. I always tell people like, you know, growing up, you always have like an art project or whatever was science fair. It would never come out the way I wanted it in my head. And this was like the first time this project that you're sitting in right now came out beyond belief. It was like, but it was because we had all the right people. You know, we had the right team. And so that's why it just, it feels good in here. There's like a vibe. There's no, I don't know, it just feels complete, I guess, is the way I think about it. How were the ambitions of the project compared to previous company ambitions? I'm interested in why you say it turned out better than you thought. So I mean, at one point, I think for real estate development in general, you try not to live in the Excel sheet, but dollars do matter. You know, you don't want to create something that doesn't make any money or doesn't have a potential to make money later. And as soon as we started the process of literally choosing finishes, specifically back here and in the front, most early tenants don't want to spend money on things they think aren't going to give them ROI, right? And so if I'm a coffee business, coffee is going to give me an ROI. Milk is going to give me an ROI. Is a design going to give me an ROI? Hard to compute. And so what ended up happening was, so my wife owns a construction company and she was an architect in her former life. And so at some point she just goes to me and says, screw the budget. I'm choosing all the finishes. It's going to feel the way I need it to feel. And I go, okay, if that's your decision, I'm good with it, right? Like, we're not going to worry about the money. We're just going to do it. She goes, right. I was like, okay, because for her, it's also a showpiece, right? I can take clients to this area, show them what we did, show them the innovation, show them the bathroom that you saw, which is not, it's like a high-end restaurant bathroom, right? There's a beautiful tile. It is beautiful. Yeah, there's beautiful finishes. And so she wanted to make it a piece that would connect to the way she thinks about construction. And so it became a little bit bigger. And in that, that meant we had to spend some more money in our tenant's space to make sure they, you know, they weren't the things that they couldn't compute ROI on. We were just like, we're just going to do it. And you're going to love it. And so when you walk in that tile on the ground and says sunny days ahead, the truck's name is sunny. So that was an Italian's idea. She's like, I'm just going to do this thing. They're not going to know if they want to reimburse us fine. I'm just going to do it because it creates the moment, the Instagram moment. It's also really beautiful. The car's name is sunny. Sunny days ahead is part of their whole mantra. So it's like, like little things like that, that I think. How you do anything is how you do everything. Yeah. And it comes through to where the people where, and everyone's picking up on just the intuitive feel of a business or a brand or a space, especially space, you're going to pick up on a thousand different subconscious elements that are going to then tell you, oh, this is a coffee that I'm going to enjoy, that I'm going to want to come back and enjoy, or whatever the space is. It could be where people are working, but that, the idea of trying to excel, spreadsheet everything is super short-sighted. Yeah. Yeah. And then even the mural on the back. So this guy is, he has a residency here in LA at Lapeer Hotel. His name is James Peter Henry. He's become a great friend of ours. And I just told him the story of what I was trying to create. And so, you know, this James, you have a podcast. One of the hard parts about having a podcast is getting people to disconnect from their phone or as a founder or whatever you're dealing with, you know, employees are leaving, they're saying you're hiring, you're raising capital, it's not going well, growth sucks, all these things. And so what I wanted to create, the vision was I want to create a space where someone comes in, they see a truck in a building. Whoa. Interesting. Their brain starts, their attention starts moving in a different direction than their phone. Then if they order something, okay, cool. Now we've moved them a little bit further. Right. So first it was a truck. Whoa. Now it's, oh, I'm having an amazing experience with either a latte or whatever coffee they decide to rematch a drink, whatever they decide to have. Then they come, they follow me into like, where am I going? Right. This doesn't feel natural. And then they come into a space and then they're like, whoa, look at this art piece. Look at this. And then they see the mics. We're trying to disconnect to connect. And so we told the artists that. And then we just said, do whatever you want. And then the yellow paint behind us is actually leftover car paint from the truck. And so it just all feeds into each other. It was crazy. Like the more people we added to the project, the more that they added their touch, and it just kept feeding into each other. And it creates like this, I don't know, this like energy that it's no one controlled, right? But everyone collaborated. It was really cool. It's beautiful. And now you're here. You know, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And that's it. Man, I mean, and I'm being a podcast host, I could go for the next hour just asking you questions about that journey of, especially when you see these things, you see the creations, these pursuits start to bear fruit. If you're so used to telling land and trying to grow fruit, you just want to ask about the roots. So I'm fascinated into your own journey of finding a place where you can actually let go and let collaborators run free. Or has that always been easy to you? Now, I think this is something we talk about all the time. And Nick is, I think, learning this now, which is amazing. It's been something he's been driving in like me in that direction for because I was very much like, I love that saying, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. And I was always of the mindset, like, yeah, eventually, eventually, I'll build a team around myself. But at first it was just like, I need to do everything. Because how can I expect anyone else to do it as well? Like if I don't understand it or whatever. And so then I was, I found myself just stretched way too thin, doing everything, trying to become an expert at everything instead of bringing on a team to accentuate my highlights and cover for my flaws as an artist. So Eric Jorgensen wrote a book, The Navalmanac, right? Okay, so we had Eric on the podcast. And I think he gives the perfect answer to what you're asking, where he just says, life's about creating levers and levers can be a function of you hiring employees, people, right? So I don't have to do sales. I hire a sales person. Tech. Tech is probably the best example of levers, right? YouTube or Google, all these things are living without literally someone coding every working second of the day. These things work on their own. And so because of that, they're somewhat automated, but they're levers. And so when he said that it made everything clear in like the simplest way of understanding growth or just not so much letting go, but what I call it like what's required, it's actually what's required. If you really want to get to the place in your head that we all have this place in our head of where we want to go, what's required in that is you creating these levers, whether it be people, whether it be tech, whether it be platforms in order to achieve that. And I think a lot of people spend time in this place of I don't have the money to do it. I don't have the education to do it. And so they spend this, you know, I call it imposter syndrome kind of like where I call it the room. You spend time in the room giving yourself a bunch of reasons why you can't and you haven't given yourself permission. But when you're in the room, you're just being selfish, like the world isn't getting better. You're not getting closer to your goals, whatever they may be, right? You're just stuck. And I think once that becomes clear to you, then all of a sudden the window of Oh, it's not about money. It's about giving myself permission to be who I think I can be. And to do that, you need other humans. I think that becomes pretty clear. Yeah, it's an interesting traversal in an entrepreneur's path. If you stick with it for five, 10, 15 years, it is this interesting journey of, I love that idea of levers. Neval's is an early investor and a previous company and a close friend since then. And he, I love that way of thinking about it. And that is kind of like the, I don't know, level 501 classes where it's there's a phrase in the military, it's, I think it goes something like, if you want to win a battle, talk strategy, if you want to win a war, talk logistics. Similarly, it's if you want to go fast and get to a preordained destination, then yeah, you talk about strategy, but if you want to build a machine that builds machines, if you want to say, okay, that's not about going from LA to Palm Desert, it's actually about building the machine or the operation or the organism that can go to the East coast and back 50 times over. That is so much about, yeah, levers and leverage, but I think it's about the right team members, which we touched on. But I love thinking about this entrepreneurial journey like a road trip and why so many of us, we have an idea in our heads of, you know, let's get to Tahoe. You have this destination and you touch on it. It's so rare in projects where you have a visual and then you actually get there and it's better than you even thought so much of the time and it could be on your first company, third company, 15th company, just it happens so often that you have this idea, we're all going to Lake Tahoe. Everybody jump in the van. This is going to be amazing. And then you end up in the desert and people are dying and you're like, I don't know if I can cuss on you or so. I'll restrain myself anyhow. I made a commitment that each podcast that I record my own or others really wanted to be for my two daughters to listen to. So we'll make a conscious effort. Yeah, no, no, no, you all can. Don't be like Diego and Nick Heathens. So that's what it really feels like when you are off course and you're dying of thirst. I mean, psychologically, it is, I'm sure you've been there. Like it's not much different than that. It's that dramatic in our, in our heads is, I think the worst part is you're off course, but it's also, you haven't taken care of the obvious. So you haven't taken care of yourself, you know, like when I was in the thick of it, I didn't go to the dentist for like three years or something. Right. And I didn't go to the doctor. I mean, I probably still haven't been in the doctor actually, but it's like teeth or dentures. I wasn't like working out. I wasn't eating the right foods. That actually was my first introduction to like biohacking to some extent where I was like, I need to be able to perform. And this doesn't work if I need to function and basically be in charge of a team. And so it's also like you can be in the desert, but you're not even all there. Oh yeah. And you caused like you're riddled. Exactly. Delirious. That's exactly right. And I think part of the reason that younger entrepreneurs or people earlier in their entrepreneurial journey struggle so much with feeling like I need to do it myself. I know that I did is because you might conceptually understand that it's about a team. You might read that in 15 books in a row and be like that. Yeah. Okay. I gotta find a great team. But when you're early in your career, you don't, your network is so piss poor. It's such a thin network of world-class creators. So even the best of us, you'll try out trusting your college roommate with X, your friend that, that just started doing whatever it is, program development, you're going to trust them with Y and you end up being burned so many times that then subconscious without even knowing you're like, I need to do it myself. And it might only be six months into the journey of quote unquote creating, that you feel like, all right, I guess there's wisdom in the, the quote of, you know, if you want to do it right, you got to do it yourself. And then you suffer with that misguided concept for years and years and years, hopefully not years, but for me, I'm, it was years. And then you have this network that you actually find someone that is so world, just amazing at X and you trust them with it. For me, there was still this once bit and twice shy of like, I don't know if I can trust them with this and it could be an amazing designer. I'm like, no, I need to be involved. And then you see someone that's world-class at Y, world-class at Z, and they start to actually reeducate you to the fact that no, there are world-class creators in these specific or general realms where, oh, it is, it is magic when you just hand it off and they hand you something unbelievable back, 120% of your expectations. So how did you get over that, that personal hump? Was it something as simple as you just hired the right person and then over time, like they just started presenting you with their work and you were just like, oh, this is stuff that I was asking you because he's going through this. Yeah, I think it was, it was more or less kind of what I said in, in life experience of one person blew me away with something. And now I look back and I'm like, well, no shit that, oh no, sorry, Ellen Marley. And I look back and I say, well, duh, like I was 28, I'm not going to be an amazing, I'm not going to be the best designer in the room and I shouldn't be. That's why I started in product design. And then you see someone that just consistently delivers, I was thinking about this number 120%. The best team members deliver 120% of what you expect. And maybe over the last five or six years, I've seen that, that happened where you throw something really vague, really ambitious and someone awesome delivers 120% back better than you thought. And you're blown away by that. And then you get addicted to that. You're like, one tenth of the work and 120% the expectation. All right, how can I find that replicate that at every, everywhere? And, and I think part of that is also a very honest conversation with yourself and with other team members, if they're delivering 70% of what you expect, 80% of what you expect. Max Lubchin once said at Y Combinator dinner that if there are any doubts, there are no doubts. When it comes to team members, if there are any doubts, there are no doubts. And I thought about that and I thought that is, that seems super harsh. And I think this is for collaborators that you can still politely end a collaboration, but then say, okay, I had a lot of doubts and they kept delivering 80%. And then you see one partner or one collaborator, one team member deliver 120%. And then you're like, okay, that's my new bar. And it turns out that especially as you keep creating your network grows, your ability to sleuth around through friends to find another 120% creator and whatever, you know, collaboration you're searching for, and they keep delivering, delivering that. And then, like I said, you get addicted to it. At least I know I have that the brand for Magic Mind, it was eight months, about eight years of developing the formula for it, but developing the brand was eight months, 15 revisions, but it's such a great team designing the brand that they themselves are like, we're not there yet. Hey, we're going to deliver a few options, but I don't think any of them are there yet, maybe these two. And it was just amazing to sit back because you don't want to be flying the plane if you can sit and chill in first class with someone else really driving it. And yeah, I think that's the best way I've ever taken it. Maybe as you just get addicted to amazing team members. The thing I've become keenly aware of is friction. If there's friction, I'm out of any kind. And I just think like, so friction, I think to your point, when you're a new entrepreneur, you expect some level of friction. You don't really know what you're doing. Maybe you hired your buddy that just graduated college. So like, they're probably not a good project designer yet, or a good whatever salesperson yet. And so you expect the, we're going to grow together. And then at some point, let's say on your second company, third company, whatever it might be, you just get used to that 120% and you get addicted to that. And now you know these humans exist. Now you have to go find them. And for me, it's like when I am working with someone, if I feel any form of friction, I'm out. And the friction can be like the feeling of they didn't achieve. They didn't do the 120%. And now I know that. And now this is like, I can either go back in into the arena with them and try to give them some guidance and we should fix this, this or this, or I can just move on. And I think like where I'm at today, it's like, once there's friction, I'm out of any kind because I know the other human exists. And once that's in the back of my head, it's, it's hard. Oh, you mathematically compound someone that's delivering 80% versus 120% day over day. I mean, if you come just, they're 3% better, much less 120 versus, I think early on you suffer through 80% because you're like, well, nothing's perfect. And the truth is you're not looking for a perfect, you're looking for someone that is the expert. So you don't have to be the generalist expert across five or six different fields in your company or whatever your creation is. And you're right, they, they exist. You know, they exist. You might have thought they existed, or at least I thought they existed conceptually, then was burned so many times. And I was like, I guess that's what a good CEO is. Great at all. And I'm like, that is so not what a great CEO is. Now I love that I, I mean, people talk about having FOMO and I had FOMO 10 years ago in my career. And now I feel like I've got phobia. I have a fear of being involved. I do not want to be involved with a cool retail build out, a cool international expansion, the design of the brand, like I want to be, you have to have your fingerprints on it in some ways, but for the most part, it's like the real magic happens when you're not involved, when you can just say, trust y'all's judgment, go for it. So do you find that the 120% result comes more often from intrinsic motivators or extrinsic motivators? Oh, for sure. I think incentives in general are a losing game. And Charlie Munger's famously said that incentives are superpowers. And I think that that is brilliant. If you have really screwed up incentives, sales team, startup, you know, founder, whatever it is, you, if they're screwed up as an incentive structures, it could be lab rats in a cage. And yes, there's, it's going to lead to some pretty screwed results. But I think ultimately the real 20, 30 year trek where you are loving every minute of a year surrounded with team members that are intrinsically motivated in the coaching part, the part that I thought, Oh, I could coach this to, like you said, friction. Okay, this is maybe where I can add value is guiding that person. It's like, I, you know, I don't want a car where I need to add value to 113 parts when I'm going to Tahoe. I want to do as little as possible and get to Lake Tahoe. It's like our television show. Remember, you're like, can I show you? I was like, I don't want to see any of it. We're working on a TV show. The concept quick is basically like the seed to what people take for granted. So it could be literally coffee. So the seed of coffee, where you get it at your local coffee shop. And no one really knows that people involve the farmers, climate change, sustainability, transport, all of that. They order the drink and they get the drink. And for a lot of people, that's how the interaction ends. And like season two could be like tequila, mezcal season three could be fashion, where it's like a fashion house thinking about next year's product that goes to Italy, follow the leather. Next thing, you know, it's being bought. And then season four, I mean, it could be tech, right? There's a whole thing. And in that, so Nick, we just, Nick just was in Mexico just got back from Mexico yesterday. They're basically getting a bunch of footage to create the sizzle for this potential show. And so he's like, we have so much to catch up on. And I'm like, oh, like what? And he's like the show. He's like, do you want to see it? I'm like, no, I don't want to see any of it. And he's like, oh, okay. I was like, and we have a friend of mine is on the show. He's basically going to be the EP. He just did the mirror of Easttown. That's his show. And so he's really the professional in the room to be honest. It's not me. I'm not a TV guy. So this is his world. He loved the idea podcast guy, but don't sell yourself short. It is my medium. There will be a podcast component to the show eventually, but yeah, we'll take care of that. And I was like, no, once you have it, send it to Mark. I'm out of it. Like I don't need to get in the way. And I'm not the expert. Like that's their thing. Like I know very clearly. Like you might as well let me floss your teeth while you're at it. Like these things are not, like that's not my skill set. I learned something brilliant at Airbnb when we sold our company Airbnb. And I was there building out, yeah, till the payments company and and building out a few different business lines there and we're producing a really awesome video reel that was likely going to be TV commercials for Airbnb. And it was a new, it was a new muscle for Airbnb. And I thought I needed to be this, just have this crazy high bar and things weren't good enough, weren't good enough. And in many ways, I working so closely with Brian Chesky, we sat at the same desk and and I thought, okay, this is Airbnb. It's extremely well known for the the great design of everything that they do. So I thought, okay, this is maybe four months in five months. And I need to deliver this 11 out of 10 video reel that might be our first TV commercial. And it was so interesting to watch him come into the room to look at it after I've gone like four revisions and think that, okay, we still need to tweak things. And he just looked at it and said, watch it like a 30 second spot or so. And he was like, that looks amazing. It's great. It's done. And that was it. That was his only input. There was no, you know, Steve Jobsian idea of like, it's not good enough, right? This is wrong. And in my head, I'm thinking, Oh, that's what a great editor does. But to your point, the best editors in the world are not taking third graders and saying, I'm going to surprise myself. The best editors in the world are getting editing the team and thinking about editing the team 95% of the time, not just cutting, but also bringing on great team members versus trying to edit articles or the work itself. Yeah, that's a good gem. Any other gems from your time there? So many, I would say one of the things that was brilliant about Brian as a CEO is brilliant. And I'm so long on Airbnb as a company because of this and many other things, but he was so good at looking in the mirror, honestly, knowing what was going well, what was going poorly. And I can be so caught into the optimistic viewpoint. In the optimistic case. And that's not a service to the team. Re-recruiting people that works for a little bit. And then people realize, Oh, this is just kind of like the optimistic view. Does the CEO know that this engine over here is failing? And that's what ultimately the smartest team members want to know. And he was so good at that, so good at 5,000 person all hands, or he's just addressing this issue that in my head, I'm like, I wonder if he's going to spin this. And he'd do the opposite of spinning. He would dramatize how or really honestly see the long-term detriment to the company and the mission by not taking it seriously. And also just you hear about Steve Jobs in this, we hear these such, that's why I started below the line podcast that is in a similar vein as us. We hear these versions of founders and creators that is just so far from the truth. And I've been lucky enough to know a few of the people that worked directly with Steve Jobs, including his chief of staff, this guy, James Higa, brilliant, brilliant mind. And he would say, you know, that people think that he was just ruthlessly critiquing a design. He would come up with a concept of it, I need to be able to find any one of my songs in three clicks. That's it, go and do it. It was not show me things constantly. And I'm going to, he would give obviously as Johnny Ive. And you get to know the story more or in an exec meeting, the execs at Apple would talk about things like, and this is relayed to me just so matter of factly in almost verbatim won't give you the verbatim. James said to me, he said, in our exec meetings, that would be three hours, four hours long every week, we'd carve out time. And for three hours would discuss things like what is a better city design Tokyo or Paris and why not like how are we going to outmaneuver Microsoft or how is the iPad coming along. And that's just so different than what you would think you could read Walter Isaacson's amazing biography on Steve Jobs, which is so detailed. So he's the best biographer in the world. And yet it doesn't capture how he actually thought or how executive meetings would would go. They're very, yeah, it's very different than you would think those stories need to get out there. I hear Tim Cook is very similar in that vein where he will just question he'll have meetings with with employees and question what they're doing. And like if he sees a problem, nothing else in the meeting will continue. It'll be like, go address that go fix that. There was one employee who just like continued sticking around the meeting with everyone else. And then after like five more minutes, Tim was like, what are you still doing here? Why are you not working on this problem? It's like we've identified it. Go do it. Go fix it. I feel like that's probably why he ascended to the throne right after Steve because their methodology is somewhat similar. And that's a good example where I think on first blush, you think, okay, that's a CEO in the driver's seat. But I think the nuance there is he is not coming up with the design tweak or the genius innovation. He's not thinking through the problem. He's saying, get out of here and go figure it out. And that is very different than I think the the lone genius in the lab idea we have of entrepreneurs or creators that are coming up with the thing soup to nuts. And that's all right, I'm 23 trying to be a great entrepreneur. And that's what I need to do as well. But that right there is a perfect example of look, there's there's no point if we're going to have friction here and they can't figure out then and it requires me to figure this out, then that's a recipe for disaster. It's also a an effect of we're aiming to go really far here. So we're going to go together. You got to do your job of figuring that out. It's like what Elon, when he asked the UN for, he says, like, I'll give you the six billion if you can solve world hunger. It's the ultimate lever, right? He's basically that was brilliant. That was so good to see. So good. And then Jake Paul chimes in saying he'll give 10 million, which is just a good marketing. Which is just like a penny compared to six billion. Right. But it's the lever. It's the whole concept of the lever, right? Elon's obviously not going to be involved in a single, probably one of those meetings until the very end where maybe he adds three minds, I don't know, but great as a lever. That's the beauty of money to some extent too. It's just like, it's energy, I guess, right? You can just put in motion. And that's another thing, another new learning for me where it's like a lot of people focused on money, even to some extent, like I did obviously, you know, it's not like I was born into some affluent family, but my whole relationship with money has changed. I never think about it anymore. It's like, we just think about the idea, the purpose, the thing. And then money becomes like gas in the tank, right? So it's like the Tahoe example. Like we know we have to get the Tahoe. We know gas is required at some point. Right. And when it is, we'll just go get it. And when it's not, we're not going to think about it because there's gas stations along the way. That's such a, yeah, that's a great additional misconception that I had early on in my career where I just thought we're going to raise capital and then fix issues. And it is, it is fuel. That's a good point. Yeah. And it is like thinking it is needed, but stockpiling fuel is not going to make your jet go any faster. You need enough is as good as a feast. You got enough. And adding any more is, is quite pointless, especially if you're doing, and this is a slight sidebar, but especially for a founder that's looking to raise capital, but the way they really want is validation that they're working on the right thing and craving that belief capital as they say. I saw that a lot when I was in San Francisco. Oh yeah. That's like the coronation that every lost egoistic mind is looking for is someone really smart. It gave me a couple of million dollars to pursue this. It might be my tech crunch article. I made it. My mom's proud of me now. My dad's proud of me. You see it a lot. It's actually, it was kind of sobering. It was kind of a bummer. It's so independent from the success or failure of the company. I know I raised 72 million for a company we sold for 50 and extremely painful along the way, essentially a fire cell from, from the $400 million valuation that we had gotten to two years in and then two years later selling it for a fraction of that. It is just those two things are not just independent, but if you're chasing that validation from investors, then honestly, it's just misspent energy from chasing the value. How did you deal with that? Yeah, because I can imagine there's a number of ways that you could have mentally dealt with that. Like at least we got something. There's the idea of the regret that like, we should have held on and I could have built this back up. Or did you just like, this happened? I'm moving away from it. Did you see it clearly at the time? I guess. Yeah, there was clarity of this is 99 percent, 98 percent, the right move. There was a part of me that just was like doing this for and then it was about five a little over five years. It's like, we need to push on. But then there was a bigger part of me that was just, I was just so spent the last 12, 13 months of the company. I was looking back. It was so clear. I was depressed and was just chugging coffee to get through. It's actually where Magic Wine came from. And I was drinking six cups of coffee to get through the day. And I look back and I'm like, who needs six cups of coffee? Who has such low energy or to your point? Diego around friction. Like I think incentives are, I think that pales in comparison to getting the people that are and doing the work that's inner energy generative. Incentives are what you need for energy dissipating work. Sales rooms that it's, they're just exhausted. So you put up a hundred thousand dollar bonus at the end of this quarter for whoever X, you know, whoever gets X, whatever goal. And, and that is when you know, you've got energy dissipating work. Energy generating work is you have in Sanskrit, there's this concept does for Dharma, which is your nature. You are just working with your nature. You cannot stop yourself. There is this natural wiring and compulsion to do what you're doing. So then friction, you just want to remove friction and something beautiful will will blossom. And that's when I look back, having to drink six cups of coffee, I was like, no matter whether we kept going or whether we sold, I was not working in accordance with my nature having to drink six cups of coffee a day to get through it. And masking a depression that it was just a sign that this is extremely energy dissipating work. Did that shift for you at a certain point of the company? Like for me candidly, we met with Keith Robloy and then he says, track how many, like there's this Google Chrome extension where you can track your day essentially. This, so we would just click at emails. I would click at emails, meetings, blah, blah, blah. And at some point at the end of like two weeks, I realized I was basically a team psychologist. I was spending 55% of my day making sure my team's Tinder date didn't fail, making sure this one wasn't hung over. I was a mom effectively, like I was a big babysitter. And I'm like, that's not what I signed up for. I don't want to do this. I want the 120. What do you think nature is? So, so I think the nature is coming more clearly as we do the podcast. And so what's interesting about the podcast is we have two people that work for us. And when we first signed them on the, the whole agreement was you're not salary, you're contractor and you're going to get fired in two years. And when I fire you, I'm going to hire your LLC and you'll have people working under you. And what we're going to create for you is basically a referral engine. Everyone that comes on the podcast is going to know your passion through your work of social and the amount of work that we put out. They're going to love it so much they're going to hire you. This might sound crazy today, but this isn't a job. This isn't a career. This is a passion. And you guys have expressed to me that you really love what you're doing. So if that's true, this is going to work exactly like that. And sure enough, it's working exactly like that where I'm not hiring. I don't want to babysit anybody. I don't want the friction. I mean, I don't check any other work. I'm just like the people like all I need is an email from you in three weeks time saying, Oh my God, this is amazing content. And then I know that the world likes it. And that means my, my, my team, not my team, but the team is doing the work that they're passionate about. And when that changes something in that they're doing has changed, maybe their passion has changed. So that's my philosophy today where I don't want anyone working for me ever. Amen. Amen. Magic mine is one employee. It's so, uh, you don't like it. Yeah. This is dangerous. Must agreeing. Well, it's, yeah, exactly. It's going to accelerate us when whatever mistakes we're making out. But the idea of a large team is the, it's a nightmare scenario for me. The, and it's also for them. I, it's really interesting that you've pushed people towards their own free agency and not allow them become to become comfortable and addicted to just being just a passenger on the bus. And I think that spiritually everyone should be a freelancer, should be a founder, should be a creator, whatever label makes sense for whatever they're doing. That's what everybody should be. And you apprentice to then take on, take over your own shop. You don't apprentice forever. No one's spirit is meant to apprentice forever. And I think that that just comes from my observation that it's the ultimate glory is, is sovereign agency. So much so that when I would think about this stuff like, what is the ultimate glory? And this is when I was thinking, I was impacted, influenced by this economist Amartya Sen that, uh, Nobel laureate that he defined wealth as freedom. And it's obviously a slight reorientation of what is wealth. It's not 16 zeros in a bank account and you're in prison and you have no freedom or 16 zeros in a bank account and your three children are going through drug rehab and you are just destroyed by that. It is freedom. It might be everyone in the world dies and you and your family are alive, has nothing to do with money. You have just become the wealthiest person on the planet. Right. That definition of freedom. I started to think of, okay, so we're wired for adventure. And historically you can think of conquistadors or you think of the three G's guns, God and glory for driving some of the most remarkable adventures of the last thousand years of people to go explore new lands to almost certain death. It's like, okay, what? I mean, we're all behind keyboards. We're not doing anything that adventurous, but what would push someone five hundred years ago to go sail for four months and face mutiny storms, whatever, and explore new lands. And I was like, okay, this glory thing, this God thing, this gold, they're, they're all tied into freedom would be gold. God would be your nature. It's just, what are you created to do? You could be purely atheistic and just say, okay, what does the community need from you? That's your creation is this community that said, okay, we really need this from you, Nick, or this from you, Diego, this is your, your nature. And then the glory piece was, it was like the thing that tied the two. It was the least, it was the most vague and yet conceptually I was like, that is just sovereign agency. The ability to own your day, week, year, decade, life, own your life. So then I was like, okay, no one can work for anyone else to achieve ultimate glory. So, and that is, it's not, I don't mean parade in the streets glory. I mean, that owning your life. And I couldn't agree more. That is, and you're pushing people to their, their own spiritual evolution when you say in two years, you're gonna have your own LLC. Yeah. I always feel like a dick when I say it, by the way too, because people ask me on philosophy and I'm like, this is going to sound terrible. I'm sure. I'm like, I don't know what you're because everyone runs, you know, whatever you say through their filter. But I'm like, this is how I feel about it. And very few times do people, it's like, they get scared by it. Because it forces the question of, are you doing your passion? And how they react is that answer essentially. But it forces the question. And I just leave the room and I'm like, that's for you now. The opposite is, is my definition of hell. 25, 55, 155 millennials looking to you as the piggy bank for not only they're all of their financial outlandish financial goals, but also their entire career realization. And you are babysitting the hungriest mouths that have ever worked in companies in history. And it's like, that is my definition of hell. And what's worse is you're subjecting them to some story of why they shouldn't go out and pursue their own sovereign agency. I always looked at it like, you know, we have one, but one life to live. I didn't want to spend that life potentially building some potentially building something for someone else or contributing towards someone else's dream. I wanted to build something for me, something that I could look back on and be proud of something that I could say that I contributed to. This is, this is an extension of me right here. And this is because I went and blazed my own path. I didn't want to be 40 year employee of a company. Here's a medal. Thank you for all your service. Here's retirement. And looking back, like you might have some work that you can look back on that's your own, but most of it's going to whatever company that you just put all of your time and energy towards. When I look back, I want to look at the body of work that, that I have helped create. I have directly influenced and, and can be proud of that. And the world is making this more and more as the world puts more and more importance on our professional pursuits, which 1000 years ago was not a thing. Career is a 20th century convention. As it puts more and more importance on it, it is creating these insatiable desires. But what is beautiful about that is we're ultimately in 30 years all going to be working for ourselves in some form or fashion in the not too distant future to exactly what you're saying Diego, everybody's going to be working for themselves and in a beautiful way. And you might collaborate like a film set collaborate around this project and Diego's the director. This is beautiful. Sarah's the director for this project. This is beautiful. I also think people will be able to work on multiple projects at a time individually. I wrote a blog post called the multi path career that we're going to see this introduction of the sea of what I call sea Lansing where you have a CMO of three different companies working amazingly for those three companies one maybe in the concepting phase one in a early stage one in a mature stage the concepting phase you want that brilliant CMO mind but even in the mature stage you don't need CMO at Airbnb you need to work 15 hours a week in fact for many of these these roles they're just creating work because they're there for 40 hours and they're like well I got to justify my massive salary and create work. So who's your one employee at MagicMind? Well shout out to William he is our president general manager runs all of our operations he co-founded his own healthy snacks company and I was like I know e-commerce left right and center I know this product formulation of this little concoction and I knew even before I started I had 200 subscribers of friends and fam I was very reluctant to starting it but what I didn't have was someone that would be great at scaling everything from inventory management to retail sales to all of the financial modeling that goes into a physical goods business and he's brilliant at that and when I brought him on I said hey in two years what success looks like is you becoming CEO I was am was will not be tied to those three letters it's it's such a hindrance to recruiting when you're when you're tied to your little territory I've had those three letters and lived a very imprisoned and psychologically expensive life and it was I want it I want what's best for this company not what's best what's best on a business card or LinkedIn profile so come on board and in two years what success looks like is you becoming the CEO so maybe it's a similar vein Diego's what you're thinking about where it's in two years when you have full agency of your career or there also might be a chance that and we'll chat about this in 18 months there might be a chance that we say okay this is going well and let's scale this to 72 countries of the next two years and we've got to bring on someone that already knows how to do that and your equity as a he has a CEO s equity already but ultimately his equity might be more valuable if we bring on a different leader just like I guess ostensibly my ownership would be more valuable with someone like him or someone like the person we might look for in two years would create for the value of the company I think about that a lot when it comes to the podcast too like I always think about like could you imagine if we could bring on someone that's way better than this than us that's the that's the dream because we have we have like the system now and so you know we keep the same team in place but we just replace ourselves with you know better I don't know if they exist I'm just saying it's a humbling thought when you can think about that and you recognize you're not that cool like no one is I'm so vain I'm like we're the best there's no better until my magic mind wears off around 4 p.m that's where I am as well and then I'm like you know what it'd be pretty great to just end every day at like 1 p.m work 20 hours a week on the things that I have to do and the dream being work the other 20 hours though it's impossible to count the hours when you're doing something that is just all consuming and and they love doing but the other 20 hours in pursuing the things that are tied to my I don't think scaling a company globally from scratch to 100 employees I don't think that is my nature and I think that I used to think to myself okay that's what I need to become and now that is my zone of genius as they call it I love the beginnings of things I have some part of natural understanding of how to navigate the really vague beginnings of things so that's going to be my contribution to the things that I work on yeah I think like today I always ask people what they're solving for and so for me it's like I'm solving for time that's it that's it and so I want to do as least as possible I want to play tennis and I want the ability for when I have kids for them to say hey can you stay home with us today and I'm like yeah yeah I don't have to make a phone call yeah there's no boss yeah whatever you want right and then we just chill wealth is freedom that's it yeah I've always been solving for time yeah right at the beginning probably similar to what you were saying like I had this goal of going to Silicon Valley you know and then exiting at what like just like everyone all of us in our 20s I guess who are in the tech world and then like just becoming this massive investor you know dude investing but invest even finding companies to invest in is not none of these things are easy you know and they require a tremendous amount of time I invest I but I certainly don't think of myself as an investor I love encouraging creation I love love love finding something cool and bringing it back to the community that's why even building things it's like oh this is cool if it's built this way the community is going to love it even more and that's I love that the investing part I mean VCs are money managers on the spectrum they're they're basically investment bankers and I happen to write investment checks in the companies but it's I that part I truly and it sounds plainish but I really don't care about it at all I care about seeing something cool encouraging them and then okay I'll say I care three percent about it because that is a great way to invest your money in something that you truly care about know a little bit about but 97% of it it's like I want to help I want to get this part out of the way the financial part out of the way and I want to encourage these these founders in their creation and what they can bring to the world we invested on almond milk company it was the same thing I was like you're never going to see me I'm not going to ask you any questions probably not going to read your investor update but I'm going to make sure every coffee shop I know has your almond milk and they carry it here and so and we promote it all the time yeah it's and that's it and it's in our fridge and it's like delicious and I'm just a fan they were our very first podcast episode too there you go yeah and I'm just a fan like and I tell Brooke all the time she's amazing she just had a baby just like look I'm just a fan of yours and I love what you're creating right and I think this should exist in the world and this money's my vote see yeah yeah I think the best investors are the ones that were creating mixtapes or sharing links to songs like crazy when they're 13 or 14 or I think it's not everyone thinks that it is about an expertise and skepticism and taking a magnifying glass to something and I think that those things can be important but what's way more important is this intuitive desire to encourage creation but also say wait I know a community I could use that and I can't wait to tell them about it and then if you like to invest in startups you're going to make a mental calculation of well I'm going to tell people about it so I might as well see if they could take a a check I couldn't agree more on this this concept of just I like I like that you said friction so much of what we accidentally do is add so much friction in our lives and you're I mean you articulating your goals in life it is it's all about freedom or sovereign agency I love the sovereign agency I think that's it makes it sound a lot better than when I'm like you're gonna be fired in two years sounds much more diplomatic you're gonna have yeah you're gonna get to have what we're all aiming for which is sovereign agency over your career do you want to tell everyone where they can find you in your podcast I don't want to take up too much of your time sure sure you can find me at well I actually just tweeted today that I'm taking a break from Twitter but people can find me on Twitter you can't take a break from Twitter without telling people that's right that's right I just well I just didn't want to Irish goodbye and I I post on there but I'm sure my podcast episodes my producer I'm sure will will retweet those and then JJBashara.com for my kind of various strange projects podcast wrote a book on Neutropics and Adaptogens and and Functional Mushrooms I make music and I invest in all kinds of crazy startups around the world. James thank you man thank you so much for your time today. Of course guys thank you all.