James Beshara: How a Dangerous Problem Led to a Magical Solution

Speaker A: With startups so much of the time, especially first time founders, can just be like, I'm going to confuse activity with achievement and we're moving so fast, we're working seven, eight and this, this. I only knew that this wasn't the way because I did it for six years. Sent me to the ER with Heart Condition and with Magic Mind, I was like, nope, we're pushing a, uh, boulder down the hill instead of pushing it up. And six years in, I want it to be getting bigger than six years in, uh, being an 18 month stupor, waking up feeling like, how did I get into this position? Position.

Speaker B: That's the voice of James Bechera, founder of magic mind and apt AI. For most of his 20s, James tried to go big as a startup founder in a hot category where he burned tons of money in hopes of getting big fast. Instead he ended up with a heart condition and a fire sale. So he decided to radically rethink his approach and start with a problem that he actually had today. His mental performance drink. Magic Mind does $50 million in revenue with 12 people. This is Mike Maples Jr. Of Floodgate and it's go time with James Bechera. This is Mike Maples Jr. And welcome to the Pattern breakers podcast where we explore why some founders radically change the future and how they stand apart. Together we'll learn about the counterintuitive mindsets and actions behind their remarkable success. Brace yourself for a world where chaos is welcome. Naysayers are often a positive signal and movements galvanize misfits who transform the impossible to the inevitable. James Bechera began his journey with technology by fixing computers at age 14. His first big swing was Tilt, which eventually raised at a $385 million valuation at its peak. But as James puts it, they built a lot of things people liked, but nothing anyone loved. Four years in tilt sold to Airbnb in a fire sale. Magic Mind is what happened when James inverted his approach. A heart condition that grew from his stress as a founder had forced him off of coffee and he started asking what to do instead. With Magic Mind, he built the thing he needed for himself. And it turned out a lot of other people needed it too. The number one reason startups fail is they solve a problem that only exists in the founders minds. But when you scratch your own itch, you already know the problem exists in the first place and you are already a domain expert. You already know where the other solutions fall flat and you are likely to find yourself inside a like minded community of people with the same Problem. James shows us how the path to something people actually love usually starts much closer to home. Let's talk to him.

Speaker C: All right. Well, James, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker A: Mike, you know, they say, never, never meet your heroes. And I will say, if I could be effusive for 60 straight seconds to kick this off with, with this is real talk too, because you've backed me twice and you were just as supportive in a company that you didn't back and you still found time to meet with me. But being from Texas, seeing you as the OG seed investor, that kind of created the whole category. And best in class, uh, venture investor, I was like, I gotta get that guy from Texas too, on board with what I'm doing. It took a couple different attempts a couple years before that happened. But man, um, as a hero of mine, you are ten times better as an investor and as a mentor and friend than any, any of all of the amazing praise that, that you get. It is a true honor to, to be able to do this with you.

Speaker C: Well, you're going to get me all misty eyed before we even get started. So, uh, uh, you know, somehow we didn't intersect in your first company, uh, Tilt. Right. But, uh, I remember us meeting one time and thinking, man, it'd be fun to work with this guy someday. And you know, you never know what's going to happen. And then I remember there was some article, maybe it was in TechCrunch or something, that announced the acquisition of Tilt by Airbnb wasn't the best assessment of things.

Speaker A: No, it was. It was basically Airbnb got this amazing discount and, uh, it was. My 20s is just filled with failure after failure after failure. So you're seeing me on my third tour of, uh, failure with, with Tilde. In some ways, everyone was like a, uh, failing forward. My 20s, I was like, what is the biggest startup I could possibly start? And if Facebook is the biggest startup today of the day, then a social network around money, uh, yeah, that would be even bigger. So aim to build that with this obsession on a solution, without the obsession on a real problem. And we tried. We built a handful of lukewarm liked things, but never anything loved, and then got to a $400 million or $385 million valuation two years in. And then four years later, fire sale. Skin of our teeth. We were able to get an acquisition over the line with Airbnb, and rightfully so. We got a lot of bad press for just not achieving what anyone thought we had a chance to do but not achieve. Certainly not achieving what my co founder, Kaylan and I, uh, set out to do. And you are so gracious on the other side of, of that.

Speaker C: Well, and I remember at the time seeing the article and feeling that it was pretty unfair. And so I think I, I think I dashed off like an email. Like, I, I do this every now and then. Like I'm, I'm like, man, this guy is probably feeling like crap right now. And, you know, but for gust of wind, sometimes these things work or don't work. And so I think I dashed off some email that said something like, don't, don't, you know, ignore these ignoramuses. They don't know what they're talking about. You'll be back someday.

Speaker A: No, I'll tell you, I'll tell you exactly what you said. You wrote me an email and said, um, James, there's greatness inside of you. I can't wait for the world to see it. I think I was starting, you know, Airbnb within the next few days and this absolute low of the low for probably 18 months, had been waking up, putting both my feet on the ground of the carpet. I still remember the carpet, still remember how it, uh, felt when I'd get out of bed for those last 18 months, feeling like I was in a nightmare of my own making. It was so clear, man, I made all these decisions and they have not gone the way that we thought it would. And then to get some reprieve of just like, okay, well, we found a home for part, uh, of what we're building. It's not the dream, but it's not nothing. And it's Airbnb. It's going to be, it's the best startup on the planet that we get to go join forces with, um, and start and begin a new chapter. I mean, I still had to take a two hour nap every afternoon. I would find a room at Airbnb, try to take a two hour for about six or seven months after acquisition because I was so burnt out, had no idea until after that, maybe month eight when I no longer needed, no longer needed a two hour nap. That should, that was a pretty good sign of like, oh, wow, James, you are really burnt out and depressed. But in the moment, in the middle of all of that, um, there was a note from you, a note from Naval, uh, a note from Jeff Jordan. The three of you all wrote me notes and a handful of other friends along the way. My co founder Kaylin and I, we had each other's backs and we still do till the Day we die. But, man, out of all of it, I will, uh, elevate yours. Rightfully so. That was so meaningful just for someone to believe me in the. In the midst of chaos, where I didn't think anyone would ever again.

Speaker C: Well, you know, you've. You've had a pretty good run since then, so, uh, you know, maybe we should shift gears a little bit to Magic Mind. Uh, so you're at Airbnb for a little while. What was the setup for why you started to think about doing Magic Mind? You know, you'd invest in some direct to consumer ideas. You know, um, you definitely had a thesis for what you were trying to do. But what, you know, what, what drove

Speaker A: it at the time, the thing that I noticed was that when founders, uh, call it concepting, when they sit down and concept out, like, here's this trend and I should build on this trend, or here is this huge space that if I built something in that space, it'd be really valuable. And that's what I did with Tilt. So I was thinking through these two different ideas. One was a concepting idea of, like, this would be a really big idea, and I could see it opportunistically. And then there was this other idea. In my last endeavor, I had gotten. I was drinking six to seven cups of coffee a day. Sends me to the ER with a heart condition. My doctor tells me, you know, with your condition, James, you really can't have more than 80 milligrams of caffeine a day. And I was like. I was like, 26 at the time. I was like, what is that, two cups, three cups? He's like, no, that's a half a cup of coffee. And I was like, there's no effing way I can get through a day on half a cup of coffee. And so he said this one thing to me. He said, have you ever tried green tea? It has this compound in it called L theanine that extends the body's absorption of caffeine over a longer period of time, which is great, but it also dials down the body's stress response to consuming caffeine. I was like, wait, Consuming caffeine spikes your stress response? And I'm stressed out all the time. Maybe this is kind of related. And wait, there's this lthea stuff that I could add. So my engineering brain just went crazy down the rabbit hole of all of the things that I could add to that 80 milligram, that half a cup of coffee to make it last all day. And I'd Been doing this for years. And uh, when we started chatting I was 32 and, and had become the nootropics adaptogens functional mushroom guy. And lo and behold I was like, how is there no direct to consumer energy drink? And I know E commerce like the back of my hand. So it's kind of a understanding of what I uh, was, was really great at and, and really knew and loved, I knew about building consumer brands. I love building consumer brands is what I'm wired for. So I was like, this will probably maybe a small shopify project, but I'm going to scratch my own itch. And I've already tried the concepting thing. I think there's, there's daylight in here. What's so beautiful about building up scratching your own itches, as the phrase goes, um, is that you already are a domain expert. You know what solutions are out there and what aren't great. I'd love to hear your, your view on this, on why solving your own problem is so powerful.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And, and you and I are both fans of uh, Paul Graham, obviously. One of the ways he puts it really resonates with me is that the number one reason startups fail is they solve a problem nobody actually has in the real world. So they, they, they, they have their idea of what a solution ought to be and they have their idea of what a problem is, but it exists in their mind and not reality. So they've got a mental model for how the world should be that it just isn't true for how the world is about to be. Whereas if you're, if you're solving your own problem, if you're scratching your own itch, you don't know how big it's going to be necessarily. But one thing you do know is that you're solving a problem that exists, which kind of puts you at the top decile of ideas you know.

Speaker A: Exactly. And you're an um, inherent domain expert. There's so many like three powerful reasons why I tell founders you will hedge yourself so much more by solving a problem you have. Because one, you're gonna be a domain expert to know what else is out there by definition. Two, you're gonna know where the other solutions fall flat. And you're already gonna be obsessed over the problem because it's a problem you have. And then three, you're already gonna be plugged into the community of all the other people that have that problem. So you're gonna be able to get the feedback cycles. They're gonna be so, so good for you with Tilt, we had that a little bit and we took it far. We took. It was a fast growing app within. We got to amass like the smartest group of team members around us. It's like, yeah, that's kind of a problem. All right, I'll try that out. But as soon as we tried to charge any money for it, 2%, 5%, people are like, uh, ah, it's not that big of a. Didn't want a bad. Yeah, we'll switch to the free solution. So with. With Magic Mind, anybody that's almost by definition obsessed with coffee is underserved by the solution coffee is supposed to give you. If you love coffee to where you have three cups, four cups a day, then by definition, that first cup isn't doing its job of giving you the energy you want throughout the. I'd be like, I love cars because everyone I buy dies within three months. I got to get another one and another one and another one. Um, and it's funny, when it comes to coffee, people just like, oh, yeah, uh, it gives me three hours and that's it versus what is possible. And again, with Magic Mind, you don't have to replace your morning coffee, but if you take alongside your morning coffee, you might find out that it gives you energy that lasts, that makes that first cup last all day.

Speaker C: So then I remember, uh, seeing you and you were, you were just about to leave Airbnb and you were thinking about this. So, like, what, what was that like from your perspective? So I remember I was try, I was actually trying to convince you to raise money, I think for a little while, uh, because you were very resistant to raising money.

Speaker A: I was still at Airbnb. I had like two days left.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And you were like, I will. I want to write you a 500k check. Whatever you start next, I want to back it. And here's this idea that we both are kind of circling around of. If you can make Magic Mind work, um, as a first entry into this space of direct to consumer version, improved distribution model and improved product, you got to have both. It can't be like, take Colgate and then sell the toothpaste on dtc. But if it's a better toothpaste and Magic Mind is a better energy shot than anything else out there. And then you combine great, distribute direct distribution to consumers, get feedback, iterate to the 50th iteration and make sure it's super dialed in, you got product market fit, then you go into retail. Then you have this huge brand awareness that carries over into Retail. Then you go get the shelf space and you do it again and again with other brands. And we both love that, um, that idea in that combination of a better product with better distribution. One of the things that we both saw is if you could do this once, you could do it again and again because of the same back office. What made you want to write? And I remember you texting me, and I was like, I never in a million years thought I would be turning down half a million dollars from my favorite legendary investor wanting to back me. But I think one, I was at a point of just not a whole lot of confidence in myself. I was just like, I don't want to lose anybody's money ever again. So painful. Uh, real quick, I want to just open up and ask you, like, what, what was your strategy? Thought, uh, doubts around that.

Speaker C: So normally, direct to consumer types of ideas just terrify me. Uh, I think most of them don't work. And even the ones that get a lot of attention usually don't work. Uh, you know, they're, they kind of go up on the way to going down. Uh, there were ideas about your premise with the magic mind that I thought, well, people like this, it's going to be a daily habit. It's a continuous revenue stream, and you don't have to reacquire the customer and you get high margins. And you were describing this drink and you're describing what it costs to create one unit of it. I was like, man, you know, at the limit, this is almost like SaaS margins. And so one way I like to think about situations like that is to say, okay, what's the minimum amount of money and time that we could spend to either prove that the biggest risk is not a risk, that we've, we've crushed it, we've solved it, or we say, you know what? Um, we falsified the idea, but we didn't spend much money or time on it. We'll know within six to nine months if there's a business here. And. And then the other thing is, when I looked at you as a person, I was like, james is going to be the first guy to tell me that I'm not going to have to. Like, if we're six months in and there's nothing here, I'm not going to have to be like, well, can I have the rest of my money back? You're gonna, it's going to be a badge of courage for you to make the Most of that 500 or say, hey, you know, I'm 200,000 in and I don't want to do this anymore. It's not a business if you go into a situation saying, look, we're both grownups here. This is not, this is a no harm, um, no foul kind of thing. This is something where it might work, it might not work. But we can't know unless we try. And if we prove that it doesn't work, you and I are no worse off. We get our time back. We'll live to find another day, we'll find the next one. And if, if my memory serves me, I think you even ended up putting some money into the round. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, I see.

Speaker C: Like, now that you. Yeah, you're like, now that you put it that way, why don't I put some in too?

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I put 500k of my own capital and as well. But knowing exactly what you said of like, okay, well, I want this to be here in case we are. It's so easy to make a call on a Tuesday after a lot of data, this isn't working. And return the capital. Um, but if it's working, then I also wanted to have the right Runway to seize the opportunity. I wanted to see that the world didn't want this because I had just spent six years pushing a boulder up a hill, like I said, for something that people lukewarm liked. There was a lot of people that, that really liked tilt. But then you try to charge them 5%. Like, yeah, I don't like it that much. So I wanted to make sure that the world really wanted this, that people really wanted this. So for the first two years, and I always think about, um, the most important skill, uh, that an elite running back has is that is their patience while the gap opens up. And you see, uh, you see elite athletes that can carry a ball not become elite running backs because they punch the gap too early. And then you see the elite running backs that have that elite athleticism. They wait like, you're like, wait, why is Emmett Smith growing up as a. I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan and Emmett M. Smith was, he was the goat at this. He'd get it and just. It was almost like a cartoon where his legs were spinning. But he wasn't going forward yet until it opened up. He would bust through the gap. And I think with startups so much of the time, especially first time founders can just be like, I'm going to confuse activity with achievement. And we're moving so fast, we're working seven, eight. And this, this. I only knew that this wasn't the way, because I did it for six years, sent me to the ER with the heart condition. We were doing everything, quote, unquote, the right way. Uh, we're doing it right, pouring every time. I moved four different cities for it. We, we raised from all of the best investors. We got everything around the table and it was like the elite athleticism. But then every step of the way is like, we got to go faster instead of the very beginning. Do people really love this? Do they really want this? And do we have the right business model or do we have a very fast, viral, growing consumer product? And with Magic Mind, I was like, nope, I'm going to make sure that this can be built in a healthy way and that we, we're pushing a boulder down the hill instead of pushing it up. And six years in, I want it to be gathering more momentum, going faster than ever, getting bigger than six years in, uh, being an 18 month stupor, waking up feeling like, how did I get into this position?

Speaker C: You know, maybe it's useful to talk about Magic Mind today for just a minute because, like, the company's doing pretty well, right? Um, I remember backing it, thinking, okay, we'll see what's, what's the current state of play.

Speaker A: At Magic Mind, there are the fruits, the top line metrics, and then there are the roots that, at least in my experience, have created. Magic binding won't apply to some companies and might apply to others. And those roots, when you have a founder, when you're part of the executive team, you're really just thinking about the roots. You know that the fruits are a function of every bit of attention paid to the underlying systems, the people, processes, the investment in the product. With Magic Mind, it's like, how do we make the product better and better and better? And that's part of the roots, that's part of just how our, uh, core values, one of them is all the hard things the right way. So we're just constantly chewing on the hardest possible problems we could chew on and doing it the right way. Just knowing this is going to suck for a little bit or this is going to be a little bit of poison, but then we'll be inoculated from the poison once we're immune to it by chewing on it a little bit each day. And, and, and so I could say, you know, things like 50 million in revenue, uh, with only 10 employees right now, maybe we just, we just hired two. So maybe we're about 12, becoming the number one health shot in the country in the natural channel, which is uh, you know, Whole Foods sprouts, uh, natural grocers. And it might be easier to take this to. Our stated goal internally is 10 billion in revenue. So we got a ways to go take this to 10 billion in revenue. Um, Red Ah, Bull did 10 billion last year. Last year. And Red Bull is a brand that, it's not a brand that many people are proud to. You don't walk around the office proud that you're drinking a Red Bull. So I think in that, in the kind of the opportunity we talked about shifting consumer behavior. 35, 36 grams of sugar, it's not what people are craving these days. So I look at that, I'm like, man, we could have 10 billion in revenue. Might take us 30 years to get there. But let's, let's outline that as a goal. And I looked at, okay, should we launch other brands or even when we're at 10 million revenue? You and I had this conversation. We were maybe at 6 or 7 and it was, and it was just so many signs of product market fit that I was like, I think actually Mike, we might be better served by building um, $1 billion revenue brand with Magic Mind, then trying to create $1000 million brands. Yeah, that would ultimately lead to the same, uh, the same network value. The same and maybe even less network value because an acquirer would say, man, getting to a billion. Yeah, that's. Or even 100 million. That's, that's far more exciting to us with that one category than, oh wait, we're acquiring this portfolio of four different products, six different products in six different areas of the grocery store versus that uh, might all have 100 million revenue or acquiring one that has 600 million and revenue, um, in one super simple to understand slot to fit into an acquire strategy. So that was kind of our, our part of those roots was focus. And focus is power. And yeah, previous lives had taught me that, uh, if you diversify too early, then you can miss out on the massive win if you are just extremely ruthless with your focus. That's why Magic Mind had one product for five years.

Speaker C: And I mean there's a lot of things that you've done that I think people would be interested in. Right. You've got basically no meetings to speak of. You've got a, uh, fully asynchronous team. You've got, you know, I've heard you talk in terms of flow over FaceTime and uh, you're doing some AI things, uh, that help you build the organization. So like what are you, you know, what are Some of the first principle tenets of how your thinking about this and I know you've written about it online as well so people can learn about it that way as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, I, well th. This, I love this part of the conversation. I can't talk about this subject and then not talk about uh, the core values. And the thought might be like uh, oh, James is on a Silicon Valley podcast. He's trying to recruit. We aren't trying to recruit because we one as a CBD product. We don't, we can't really recruit from uh, Silicon Valley very often. But also I plan to take 12 people to 100 million revenue. So we're not really recruiting. Um, so I hope it comes across as not propagandistic. But we talk about in terms of the Tao or the dow of magic mind. And the first one is think like an owner. 70% of our team members are founders. So it really is made up of owners and everybody uh, on the team owns equity in the company. So it really is a team of owners and we want everybody to think like owners. The second one is a. It's all of the, all of the, the hard things the right way. I touched on that. It's just like whenever there's a hard thing, it's like, let's do it all. We're going to do whatever the hard things are, we're going to do them all. And um, someone asked like would you, would you build your own bottling facility facilities at some point? And simple answer is that's what we got to do. It's very straightforward. All of the hard things the right way and then it's the right way. It's no shortcuts. And man, the secret to great sleep is magic mind sleep that we just launched. That's great. But combine that with doing all the hard things the right way. When you know you're doing the right the, the all of the hard things and you know you're doing it the right way. No shortcuts then it sounds so cliche and I, and I want to scream it from the mountaintops for first time founders that, that get the concept of hacking so wrong. It is not shortcuts. It's take a fucking axe to that huge ass redwood and chip away. If you got a chainsaw, great. But if all you have is an ax and you need to fell that huge ass redwood, what's the order of the day? Tiny little chops and you chip away until it falls. And then you will have the satisfaction not only of taking that mother Down. But also more than that, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing how it all works. The great things are built on all of the hard things the right way. Brian Chesky did such a phenomenal job of this. Ah, at, at Airbnb. My desk was shoulder to shoulder with him. We'd sit at the same wooden table basically. And he said this one time, it's so brilliant. There's a myth going around that you have to sacrifice quality for growth. And he said, we're going to be the rare company that does both that nails quality and growth. And it turns out if you do that, you're the Beatles. You are Airbnb. Um, but then if I go through it over communication is the third one. Obsession over the entire customer experience is four and honest, uh, ears, honest voices and honest ingredients. So these five things we think about all the time. And one of the things that over communication led to is when we were trying to practice over communication. Ron Conway, he, he's the one that, that said uh, this to me said the uh, hallmarks of the, the hallmark of the best founders is that they over communicate. Over communicate, over communicate. And uh, it was so great that he repeated three times because it really land landed. Uh, and over communicating this point to, to me and Caleb my, my co founder Tilt. And um, and so we've tried to always practice that throughout our careers and uh, Caitlin and his companies since then, my company since then. But when I realized, okay, we're going to use a lot of email, a lot of text, a lot of voice notes, every tool possible, a lot of loom for over communication. It also seemed like man, these meetings end up being a really poor form of communication. 30 minutes is so arbitrary, an hour, so arbitrary um, that we ended up having to say so much communication after the meeting and so many voice notes following up on all of the follow ups that then I wanted to try this out where I was like, well, as a team, why don't we just try out asynchronous communication and no meetings to begin with. All of the prep materials that would go into a meeting just becomes the communication threads. Then we follow up with email and follow up with voice notes and loom. And what happened Mike, was that the communication became five times more effective. Better. Here's the point I want to, or here's something I need help with. Here's something I've got uh, really great news on. I'm going to start the email thread or a loom. And then it became man, this is more efficient, more effective. Why not just do this. And now we have an asynchronous culture where we have one meeting a month, uh, for the team.

Speaker C: And how are you, uh, how are you using AI? Because I know, you know, we've talked about this a little bit, uh, kind of informally, but are there, are there specific things that you've done with AI that you, you found really effective in force multiplying the efforts of the team?

Speaker A: Yes. And this, that this kind of workflow and this investment in the roots is. I'd say if there's a theme Internally, it is AI everywhere. And honestly, ChatGPT is so phenomenal. We're now switching to Claude for, for teams so that you can have, we would have different silos of ChatGPT for, hey, here's the surveys that we just ran. And we do both surveys with humans as well as we use artificial societies. Great AI tool that mimics communities and disclosure. I'm m an investor in them because it works so well. I asked to invest. But artificial societies, they will run on, uh, nearly instantaneous AI mimics of the audiences you're trying to reach to give you survey data back. And we combine all of this data. Then we say, well, every touch point, every marketing email should run through this rubric of the AI gathered data. The human, uh, survey, thousand person survey gathered data. And we were doing it in chatgpt silos to where we then were like, all right, well, we need to create CLAUDE workspaces where we upload our cmo. Rob uploads all of these insights to where not a single piece of packaging copy all the way to an ad shouldn't go rogue. It should go through that rubric to see how it would improve it. So the prompting is things like brutally honest, rate this strategy or this podcast ad read or this packaging on a scale of 1 to 10, brutally honest. And then tell me how I can improve it. That prompt is so helpful. And then it gives you a, uh, 6.3 or a 4, uh, point 2. I'm asking for that brutal, honest, on the scale 1 to 10. And it's the prompting level, the tool level was recognizing, oh, everybody has their own silo chatgpt. And when we get new data and survey data, it should upload into one one shared workspace. So CLAUDE is way better for that. So it's right tools. But then, Mike, it's the mentality AI should be the default, not human insights. The default is, is there an AI tool that can help us with this? That it might not be as accurate, but you'd be able to maybe in three days have some answers. But also instead of, I wonder what this really smart mentor would think about this. And maybe you get that in addition. But the default is, let me run this through AI, this email that I'm going to send to try to close this big brand champion partner. Maybe there are ways to improve it. Okay. I'm not going to go off of uh, rote, um, kind of like path dependence on. I think I might be good at this. I'm going to run it through AI.

Speaker C: And it's the other thing I find it really useful for is um, what um, McKinsey would call me. Uh, see, uh, mutually exclusive, completely exhaustive. So like, like for example, you just talk about meetings. One thing I started to think about was like, has anybody ever created a mece list of all the types of meetings that are useful in the world? And you start to, you get that list and then you say okay, great. Given that that's the list, what is the discrete purpose of each of these types of meetings? What should happen in them? What, how would you judge them, successful or not?

Speaker A: And what, what could you, what should you distribute before the meeting to get the most out of it? What should the, what would it be? The post meeting follow ups. Yeah, there's so many ways to. If your intention is to crush whatever you're working on, um, and the meeting is a part of it, why not add this to it?

Speaker C: Yeah. And it's like the thing that's so different is before AI, you might have had that idea. You might have had a notion that, that's interesting but, but there's just no possible way you would have had the, the time to figure it out. And you know, not only that, you can ask the question of three different AIs, then compare the answers and you could very quickly converge on a very good answer and then try it, you know, and then see, see if it really works for you in the real world. But that's part of what I find so valuable is it, it helps me figure out am I, am I spending my time on things I should be spending it on. And you know, the companies I'm meeting, are they 7 out of 10 good or 9 plus 10 out of good? Like that's all you really have is your time. It's the only thing you never get back. And so it's like I find that it's really good for helping you be intentional about things.

Speaker A: That's a great underscore of even the thing that you are about to do. Uh, that you don't think AI has any, um, need for. It could be date night with your wife, with your husband. And this is the default AI. Like, okay, like I think I have intuition on what makes a great date, but still ask it because yesteryear, yeah, you got to read a book on relational advice or how to run a great meeting. There are many books, uh, out there on how to run a great meeting. Right now you get instantaneous, dynamic advice specific to your use case and you can ask it for free essentially on the meeting you are coming up. And you don't need to read a book about meetings to get that insight.

Speaker C: Yeah. And to me, like the, the hinge question I always ask is uh,

Speaker A: the

Speaker C: problem I'm trying to solve, is it a brand new novel problem for which nobody is offered a solution or is there a chance that somebody solved this more than good enough? And what I find is increasingly the answer is yes. And so like if that's true, then it's like, that's my point of departure, right? Is to try to uh, imagine the best person who's ever existed in humanity and solving this problem and to treat that person like they're my friend and I'm having, you know, a quick, quick coffee with that person and they just tell me the, the answer to that. And then from now on I have that in my tool kit as to like how I show up in the world. Right. I can, I can just keep implementing.

Speaker A: Yeah. And me see is a great one to add to that. I, I have it in the uh, the background context, anything that I ask and I got it from you, Mutually exclusive, completely exhaustive. When I ask for lists, make them mutually exclusive. Completely exhaustive. And that's another kind of way to buttress this prompting bucket of using these tools is find these best practices. And there's so many good ways to just ask ChatGPT, what are the best ways, um, to prompt around areas that I'm interested in, what are the best practices? And then find the defaults and add them to um, your settings in that client. Uh, when it makes sense.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I find it's, it's, it's interesting, right? It's like to me, what, what it really rewards is the system level thinker. I think that the people who just want answers are going to get commoditized because anybody can ask for answers now. And so now it's, it becomes a question of can you use it, can you use the AI to kind of ask better questions and sort of complement its ability to make Answers a commodity with your ability to make judgment scarce if you will. And I think that if you can do that, then you can be onto something.

Speaker A: You nailed it. And I think the skill of the future, the skill of the future is to be the best in your field at asking questions.

Speaker C: Well, cool. Well, what should we have talked about that we haven't so far?

Speaker A: Well, there you go. That's how you show the world how wise you are. Um, by asking that question. I, you know, finding flow in, in our work is, is so, it's so rare. And I, and I've lived a couple lifetimes of, of not flow academically. And everything that I, that I gravitate towards is, is around finding flow in my life and finding flow, helping others find flow. If anything, it's actually helping others find flow. That's my flow. And that's a, um. And it seems meta, but it just is. When uh, Zig Ziglar, uh, fellow Texan, the, the uh, the original motivational speaker had this great quote of give others everything that they want and you'll get everything you want. And I realized maybe about seven or eight years ago that what gives me more energy is not trying to walk a thousand feet forward, but, but helping Others walk 100ft forward, 500ft forward. I think about. I wrote a blog post, my most read blog post called Mental wealth. And this was about uh, seven or eight years ago. And it was uh, the top of Hacker news for like 36 hours a day and a half, which is extremely rare. And Mental wealth was this concept where I'd try to reframe the way that we think about mental health, which is largely only something we bring up when something goes wrong. And 70 years ago I um, had this thought that, man, we really should reorient ourselves to this term of mental health, to where it's something that we think about in the same way we think about physical health, where it's something that 50 years ago we thought about physical health when something was going wrong. And then we developed a much more mature view on actually physical health is something you've got to invest in and maintain to avoid the things that could go wrong and felt and still feel like. Mental health is this thing where it's not something you should think about when something's going wrong, when you're in the red or you're in a uh, shit ton of debt. In terms of mental health, it should be something that we're all investing in on a daily basis. And the five buckets to invest in are in this Order sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and then exogenous compounds like a cup of coffee, like magic. Uh, mind. That should be fifth on the list. But the first things being sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and then each one has, out of years and years, uh, thousands of hours. I ended up writing a book called, uh, Beyond Coffee on that fifth, uh, topic. But the whole first chapter is talking about the first four and prioritizing those four. So each bucket, in my own optimization for each, had a couple thousand hours and felt like. In this blog post, I'm going to talk about the top two for each and the top two for sleep. Uh, pro tips, um, in this investment, daily investment, in the same way you'd invest in your finances, you'd invest in your career, you invest in a skill you want to master with your mental health and your mental wealth. Um, for sleep, it's very simple. Wake up every morning the exact same time that sets your 24 hour circadian rhythm. And that 24 hour circadian rhythm is not the time that you're asleep. It's not the 15, uh, hours that you're awake. It's actually 24 hours and that circadian rhythm gets set. Uh, the time you go to sleep is very helpful, but not nearly as helpful as the moment you wake up being the same time every day. And it sets this cascade of a circadian rhythm. Um, and then the other thing is followed by the time that you go to sleep is to prioritize sleep like you would prioritize and protect any anything on your to do list. Because productivity should be measured in years and decades. It should not be measured in hours or days. And that productivity over years and decades is going to be built on how much you prioritize great sleep. We know with an hour less sleep, you can lose a standard deviation of your iq. And who is trying to go through the day of work with a lower IQ than what you're capable?

Speaker C: Uh, I've experienced many such days.

Speaker A: Right? And as founders, as creators, we all have. And you can. I used to pride myself on going to bed at 3am, working like a dog. And like I said, those experiences led to suboptimal, uh, experiences. And then you have diet, which the quick pro tip, there is alcohol, uh, before bed, that dietary Choice can decrease. Two drinks can decrease your sleep quality by up to 34%. That's like losing an hour and a half of sleep with two drinks. Is it worth it? So that's one aspect of diet. Then exercise, super simple, three times a week, strenuous exercise for 25 minutes sprinting or cycling. Those tend to show the best results on mood clarity, uh, improvements and short term recall. Uh, so cognitive function, you could. Some research now is showing that sprinting, even, uh, six minutes of sprinting, where you're sprinting for 30 seconds, pausing for 30 seconds, sprinting for 30 seconds, paing for 30 seconds, um, can be as effective as 45 minutes of aerobic exercise of jogging for cognitive function and for mood. So it's not at, it's not a whole lot. The last thing is, um, that fourth thing is stress management, socialization with friends, and then my favorite first foray if someone's hearing this for the first time. Gratitude journaling. Gratitude journaling for 5, 10 minutes can rewire the brain within 23 days is what the research shows towards more optimism. And then exogenous compounds. Super simple magic mind.

Speaker C: So there, you know, out there, there's a lot of, uh, super ambitious founders listening to this. What would be the key advice that you'd offer them? Is there something that, if you could go back in time and talk to a younger version of yourself and you get to give one piece of advice, what would it be?

Speaker A: So many different pieces of advice have been so integral at different times. So it's so contextual, including one person telling me, don't take anybody's advice. And that one comes to mind where I think, what happens when we get into I need someone else's advice mode is that we outsource our thinking. And I heard this once, um, that if you're playing someone in tennis and they're, they're in flow, great way to get them out of flow. And, and uh, I don't know why it was tennis, but this is just what the person told me is like, ask them, man, you're doing it. You serve so frigging well. Can you show me what you're doing? And by getting them to switch the, their, their brain over to how, how they're serving, it gets them out of flow. And when, um, or why this comes to mind is I think when people are in, I want to get advice from some outside authority. What happens is we turn off our own internal clock, we outsource our thinking and we switch into a pretty inescapable mindset of the answer's out there, the answer's out there, the answers out there. It's in one more podcast, one more piece of insight from someone else, it's in one more, one more conversation with a mentor. And that could be true. That can often be true in life. But I Think what gets under communicated so often is you probably have the fricking answer inside of you right now. And if you sit down, stop productively consuming. The most, uh, tempting part of consumption is listening to one more TED Talk or something. Stop with the idea, the illusion that it's outside of you and it's one more thing. And maybe just frequently or once every blue moon, tap into. Start journaling of like, what would I tell myself? And you might get to the answer because you, uh, got way more context than anybody else. But also, everybody's capable of sitting down quietly and tapping into a higher perspective that gives them probably the advice that they really, really need. And then it's not about the words. It's about the action that that follows.

Speaker C: Well, James, it's been, uh, it's been fun. It's been fun getting in some trouble together. And, uh, you know, I'm glad we had a chance to do this episode and, uh, appreciate your taking the time.

Speaker A: Mike, thank you for everything you do, uh, in front of the scenes, behind the scenes for founders that founders will never see. And even that framing, it's not about making every step perfectly. It's really about discovering internally what the next step should be. And you can only do that when you kind of let go and you're like this, all right, I might step into a pile of shit, but at least my. My partner in crime, uh, with Mike Maples, he's totally on board. He knows that that could happen, and he frames it that way of let's get in trouble, uh, together versus, you know, let's. Let's build a unicorn together. Then you're like, oh, shit, uh, I can't step in and I can't make any wrong moves. So thank you for the grace that you bring to everything you do and the relationships with founders.

Speaker C: All right, well, thank you, sir.

Speaker A: Thank you, Mike.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Pattern breakers podcast. You can follow me on X2JR, and I encourage you to check out our newsletter@patternbreakers.substack.com I'd love to have you subscribe wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you like the show, I'd be grateful if you could leave us a review until our paths cross again. I hope you embrace the power of thinking and acting beyond the conventional boundaries. It's the people who dare to be different who truly make a difference.