Hey everyone, come back to figure fantasy. So today we're going to go through the new stages of Spades magic. So let's go through hot pursuit Okay, so for hot pursuit will be starting with consciousness. So let's check out your team lineup for this one Okay for this lineup, you're only allowed to bring four so the objective here is really to take out this boss first So as you can see attacks all enemies reduces their ultimate power for five seconds. So so far. This is the most Optimum lineup for this stage. I've done this a couple of times and Usually I'm successful 90 to 95 percent of most of my Attempts so let's try this out so as long as as Rin is able to life steal and also Zhaoyun as Zhaoyu so more or less. We don't have a problem with this stage so we're done in a quick fashion So let's move on to the next as you can see here three stars achieved Okay, next we're going with trauma. So let's see our lineup for this one So for this one, you're allowed to bring six figures. So let's let's just realign these So most of what I used to the first one. I'm gonna use now so same objective, it's just more difficult with more figures and Let's try to do this Here try to rearrange These figures so the additionals were we only added two we have Eriksia and we have Mako here for additional survivability, so hopefully I also did this one around 95 95 percent Successful, so let's try this one out So again the objective is to go through the boss first as quick as possible Eriksia's shared health is actually a big help here with two healers To help her so your concern here is not surviving the onslaught But your concern here is clearing it within the allowed 25 seconds, so hopefully this is going to be a breeze. We are at 41 Five seconds to go. Hopefully we can clear this in a bit. So There you go. So we're good Okay, as you can see there there was a 30 seconds left some of my attempts were 40 seconds left So there's a small margin of error there for you not to do this stage. Okay, hopefully this helped you guys So again, I'm just in case you Haven't done it in the first try Please try it again again the RNG for this one is better than the previous one that I made so thank you guys for staying this far so Take care stay safe. This is the warden and I'm out of here


BU's ROTC programs and veterans groups hosted a vigil on Veterans Day that included a guest speaker and other traditions. Student veterans were glad the event was back in person after a year without any on-campus celebrations. It feels good to know that there are a few of us here and we'll be spending part of our Veterans Day together. Planners say the vigil is a tribute to veterans. Whether they served one term in the military or served a full career in the military, we want to pay our respects to those. The participants close the event by folding the American flag 13 times. Each fold represents different principles important to troops. And that's just kind of a moment to reflect on what the flag means to the veteran community and to the country. There are more than 300 veterans enrolled at BU according to BU Veterans Services. They are represented across the university, from the Metropolitan College to the graduate schools. Reporting from Marsh Chapel, I'm Stephanie Joseph for BU TV 10.


One of the great lessons from the Isra'an Miraj is the wafaa for the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. That's the greatest lesson from Isra'an Miraj. You want to take home a lesson tonight? It's a lesson of wafaa, faithfulness to our Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Because it's easy to be faithful when everything is according to how you like it. It's difficult when things are against you, against you. It doesn't make sense to you sometimes. But you're not patient enough to sit and make sense out of it or listen to it. Or say, and this is why the religion for some people is very difficult. Because they don't have the patience. No, no, it has to be my way. Not God's way, but my way. But the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, if you look at his life, it's constant qabd and bust. In spirituality of these two stations of constriction and expansion, all of creation is like that. So you have the day's expansion. You have the night's constriction. If you ever went to Umrah or Hajj, you would go to Mecca. It's constriction. It's the Haibah of the Kaaba. You're really not comfortable. You're not supposed to be comfortable in Mecca. You're supposed to be on your tippy toes. It's the haram. It's the house of God. You do your worship. You want to get out of there. You're done. Then you go to Medina. It's relax. It's just expansion. You want to stay there for the rest of your life. That's how life is. The heart is constantly pumping. Expansion, constriction. Everything in your life is like that.  That's why a lot of the students say, I can't think. Writers block. It's constriction. You can't write anything. The greatest writer, they can't write something. Sometime for months. But if you look at his life, getting to the year of the ninth year, which is the year of, this is the year of Sarl, the Huzn.  He loses Abu Talib, who is his uncle, and who is a supporter for him and a shield between him and the Quraish. He loses his beloved wife that he's been married for 25 years, a quarter of a century. Bi Khadija, who was a supporter, spiritually, mentally, physically, in every way she was there for him. He also then goes to get support from Taif.  Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.  But that's constriction. That's the year. And then comes the expansion that Allah rewards him for Inna Ma'a Al-Asri Yusra. Inna Ma'a Al-Asri Yusra. The Quran reminds us, whatever hardship there's ease. Whatever hardship there's ease. You just have to be patient and see the wisdom in the hardship. Allah rewards him with this beautiful night, Al-Israa Miraj. Well, he said this was the best night of my life. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam goes to the house of Umhani. Umhani is the daughter of Abu Talib. She became Muslim after the death of Abu Talib. Abu Talib died the year before. And this is the year of Israa Miraj. This is the next year. So his wife, Fatima Abu Talib's wife is a Muslim. Her daughter becomes a Muslim. Umhani. And her son becomes a Muslim. We all know that Sayyidina Ali was a Muslim in the first few days of Islam. So he goes there and he has for dinner. And they have Aisha prayer. They pray in Jama'a. And then Umhani says, why don't you spend the night here, sleep in our house? And he says, okay. So they make a match with bed for him and he sleeps. After a brief hour of sleep, he wakes up and he goes to the Kaaba. And unfortunately they have remodeled the buildings around the Kaaba. But the Ottoman, they left the mark where her house was. And you could see actually up to like five, six years ago, go to the place where her house was. You could see how much the distance between her house and the Kaaba was. So the Prophet goes to the Kaaba to worship Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala because night worship is very unique. And many people are deprived from night worship because wassallu billayli wa nasun niyam. The Prophet SAW said one of the keys to paradise is when you pray in the night when everyone is asleep. Because that is the prayer. There's no riyah in it. There's no show off. There's nothing in it except you and Allah. These are the prayer that builds connection. If you ever lost, confused, get up at night and pray. You will find yourself. Because Allah is there waiting for you to come to Him at night when everybody is asleep. It's kind of like going to... It's not kind of going to DMV in a rush hour time. And there's lines and you have to wait for six, seven hours to even get a question answered. But imagine if DMV had a special hour and said, hey, there's a special hour and nobody's there. But it's difficult because it's 11 o'clock at night. Nobody goes there. The night is open door. But nobody goes there to knock on the door of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. So the Prophet goes and he worships Allah in the Kaaba. And he worships him and then he said a sleep came over me. This is very interesting because many stories in our tradition is that they said, I wasn't sleeping, but a sleep came over me. So what does he do? He obeys this. He knows this is heavenly. So he puts his head and he falls asleep. He falls asleep and then somebody wakes him up from the sleep. He got up. He said, I look all around and I didn't see anybody. So I went back to sleep. I got woken up again. I look all around. I didn't see anybody. The third time I woke up, this is very interesting. And he goes, it was Jibril A.S. And he said, what he did, he extended his hand and I grabbed it and he pulled me. And I just realized, see the Afghans, we always do that. I'm like, where that sunnah come from? That's from Jibril in the Prophet A.S.  That's how Jibril A.S. took the Prophet A.S. by the hand on this night of Israq Miraj, and then he stood up. And then he said, I have an invitation for you. And then he said, invitation from who? He said, from Rabbul Alameen. Wallahi, I shiver. Can you imagine getting an invitation from Allah? We get a wedding card. We get so excited, right? Invited to a banquet. We get so excited. This is a banquet. He's going to see Allah. And he says, where? He says, a place beyond places, time beyond times. We're going to cross all those barriers. And then he comes out. And he comes out. And this is very important for people to know the adab of our religion. That this deen is founded on adab. There's an animal which is outside the gate of the Kaaba. Jibril didn't bring the animal inside. Because of the sanctuary. This is a heavenly animal. Complete, pure. This is not from the mazra'ah of dunya. This is not from some garden that you go, oh, there's some stable, you go grab an animal. This is taken from a place in paradise. This is a heavenly beast that were brought down to the earth to give right to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Yet still out of the adab of the Haram didn't bring it inside the sanctuary of the Kaaba. They go outside the gate and the Prophet said, what is this? He said, this is a vehicle that Allah has chosen for you to take you on this journey. Subhanallah the asra bi adihe laylan minal masjid al haram ilal masjid al aqsa. Glory be to the one who has taken his servant on this night journey from Mecca from the Kaaba to Bayt al-Maghdus to Jerusalem. This is the Quranic verse. Isra is in the Quran, you can't reject it. You reject it, you reject the religion. The araj is in the hadith. So he says, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, this is for me. I got, once I got stopped at the border at the airport and I was interrogated for about four hours. This is back in the days, right after 9-11 when the Muslims were being interrogated for no reason. I just came from getting married overseas, so I'm like, that's the welcome congratulations you get. But anyways, one of the things that they did, the agents, they were asking me a lot of detailed questions.  What's the address of the place? How many bedrooms in this house? Which bedroom did you sleep? How many beds in that room? Like, really, to a point where you get annoyed. But I didn't know why they were asking. And then three, four hours later they came and said, what was the address of that house that you stayed? How many beds were in that room that you were sleeping? Because they know that the nature of liars is that they don't remember details. That's why liars, they never give you details. They just make it universal. Because they won't remember. You ask them the next day, they won't remember. So this is one of the things that the Prophet ﷺ did in this journey. It's the most detailed story in all of Sira. There's nothing more detailed than this story. And if it was a lie, if it was a made-up, he would have just told us, hey, I went to Isra'a Miraj, I went to Jerusalem and I went to see my Lord. Why so much detail? Because it was Ainul Yaqeen. It was eye-witnessed. Everything was eye-witnessed by him. So he goes and he said, this is the bur'aq. It's going to give you a right. And the Prophet ﷺ, if you have Urdu books on the Sira, or Farsi books on the Sira, or English, read it. They all say something really weird. They say, the bur'aq raised his hand and didn't let the Prophet get on it. And then the Prophet went back. And then he went forward to get on it. Then the bur'aq raised his hand and didn't let the Prophet get on it. And I'm like, why would he do that? Why would the bur'aq, that's bad adab to the Prophet ﷺ. Why wouldn't he let him ride it? Now, in the famous book for the Hanafi Salad al-Adham by Hakim Samarqandi, he answers this question and he says, Jibril ﷺ had a whip and he disciplined the bur'aq. And he said to him, don't you know who this man is? And he says, this man, he's Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah. He's Habibullah. He is the best of Allah's creation. And the bur'aq keeps going, praising the Prophet ﷺ. And he said, so if you look at the Prophet ﷺ sitting in the beautiful hadith, he said, there's nothing in the creation that doesn't know I'm the Messenger of Allah except the disbelieving jinn and the disbelieving man. Everything in the creation of Allah knows I'm the man. This is why when he got the revelation and Allah unveiled for him, as he was coming from cave Hirat to the house, the trees were saying, As-salamu alaykum Ya Rasulallah. The rocks were saying he could hear the trees and the rocks speaking to him. Because everyone knows him, right? Everyone knows him. So then he goes to the bur'aq. He says, so why wouldn't you let him ride you? And this is very interesting because this is a story of love. Everyone who knows about the Prophet ﷺ will fall in love with him. Sheikh Muhammad al Yaqubi in this masjid, he had a talk and he said, to know him is to love him and to love him is to know him. The more you know about the Prophet ﷺ, the more you will love him. The more you will love him, the more you want to know about him. This is the nature of the Prophet ﷺ. So he knew. The bur'aq knew who the Prophet was. He said, what if he rides me today? What if he rides me today? And on the day of judgement, he doesn't ride me. I will die from the pain of separation of Muhammad. I will die from the pain of separation of Muhammad ﷺ. This is ishq, this is love. So the Prophet told you, what are you talking about? And he explained. And they said the Prophet ﷺ, when he put his hand on the bur'aq, they said the color of bur'aq changed. Literally a blushing. And he said, I promise you, I will ride you on the day of judgement. And he started to sweat like teenagers. Love is an interesting thing. So he rode the bur'aq and the Jibril was right beside him. Now I want to think a lot of people think that the bur'aq was flapping and struggling to get from Mecca to Jerusalem now. Sa'adirah, he says, He said he rode the bur'aq who had in one hop, went to Jerusalem. He put his feet in the front and like an airplane, it went from Mecca to Jerusalem. When he went to Jerusalem, all of the prophets were brought and he led them in prayers. And he saw every prophet the way they appeared in the junior in their time. That's how he saw them, as the way Musa ﷺ was amongst the Bani Israel, the way Jesus was amongst his people. All of the prophets were amongst their people in the appearance of the junior. But when he sees them on the heavens, he sees them in their celestial reality. So do two different appearances. Then he leads them in the prayer. And this is where he gets the title of the Imam al-Rusul. We have a beautiful poem in Arabic, Ya Imam al-Rusul, Ya Sanadi, Anta Babullahi Muhtemadi. It's beautiful that people chant this poem all the time. You are the messenger. You are the Imam of all of the prophets. O Messenger of Allah, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Then he gets, then from here he gets on the goat. This is a horizontal journey and then becomes the vertical. And then the portal opens and he goes through the earthly, this dunya. And remember that this is not unique to our prophet. Not unique to our prophet, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Adam al-Islam went and Adam al-Islam, Hakim Samarkand, he says that he went on a bed that was made out of gold and 40 angels carried him. Jesus al-Islam went on the feather of the angels. Every prophet, Ilyas, Ilyas al-Islam, he went on a chariot. I just figured this out today. Like what does it mean? Ilyas al-Islam went on a chariot of fire. I was like chariot of fire. What does that even mean? I realized, you know, when you have the space shuttle, they have to have fire out in order for the speed to go up. So this was a chariot that released fire for the speed. So all of the prophets, they went to this night journey, but everybody went to the degree of their station. And this is where the prophet sees all of them in their degrees, in their ranks. So he goes to the first heaven and before entering the first heaven, there's Babul Haifda, there's this security date and there's a security guard, Ismail. And he says, has this man introduced him as he received revelation? He says, is Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And he gives him greeting of peace and he says, welcome. Ismail has 12,000 angels under him. Each angel has 12,000 angels under him. So that's 144 million angels under one security guard of one gate of heaven. It shows us the vastness of Allah's creation. Then he goes to the first heaven. When he goes, he sees Adam alayhi sallam in the first heaven. And he sees Adam alayhi sallam was looking to his left and shedding tears and looking to his right and smiling. He said, what is he doing? He said, this is your grandfather, Adam alayhi sallam. When he sees souls of the disbelievers, they're going to, they died in kufr. He said, he looks to the left and he cries for them because they're all his children. All of human beings are the children of Adam alayhi sallam. And when he sees the believers, he smiles and he's happy that they passed through his right. And then he goes from the first heaven to the second heaven. Between each heaven, they say this 500,000 years, the distance. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam said the first heaven in comparison to the second heaven is like a ring thrown in a vast desert.  That's the size of the first heaven in comparison to the second heaven. And the second to the third is like a ring thrown in a vast desert. So all of these, just the size of Allah's creation, just the physical size of Allah's creation, he goes and then he sees all of these prophets. But what I think about this journey, as I said at the beginning, is the detailed description. He said alayhi sallallahu alayhi sallam, he had facals in his face. And as though he just came out of shower.  And he said, Musa alayhi sallam, you know, was medium height.   And he said he had all his hair was gray. He described the hair of Musa alayhi sallam as wavy hair. And then he says he saw, so he describes all of these prophets really in detail. And all the visit, then he goes to, when he sees Musa alayhi sallam in the sixth heaven, and then he goes to the seventh heaven, to Baytul Mahmood. Baytul Mahmood is a house of worship for the angels. Just like the Kaaba is a house of worship for the us, Baytul Mahmood is for the angels. There's 70 angels go inside this bait and they do the Tawaf inside. We do outside of the Kaaba, they do inside Baytul Mahmood. It's made out of ruby according to Abdullah Alansari, the great commentator of the Quran. And he said, they don't get a second chance until the day of judgment. So you can imagine how many angels there are. So he sees, the Prophet sallam said, I saw a man by Baytul Mahmood sitting. I thought I was looking to a mirror. He looked like me. I said, who is that man? I said, that's Ibrahim alayhi sallam, your great-great-grandfather. And then from there, he goes to the load tree, the furthest point that any created being has ever gone. This is it. Beyond the load tree, nobody has crossed. Now, if you look at the seerah of our Prophet sallam, the first time, when revelation became in Ghad Hira, people who have climbed mountain of light, the Ghad Hira, in that area, if you climb up, you see all of Mecca. It's just a beautiful, magnificent scene. So when the revelation came, Jibril opened his wings. And the Prophet sallam said that I looked, and everywhere I was looking, I would see his wings. He covered all of the horizon from the east to the west of the junior. But according to the scholars, they say that wasn't his wings. He just opened a few feathers. The reality of Jibril was not revealed. So the Prophet sallam said on this night when he got to the seven heaven, to the load tree. So you can imagine the first heaven to the second heaven is like a ring. The Prophet sallam said the first heaven to the seventh heaven, all of them in comparison to the Arshab Allah, is like a ring thrown in the vast desert. And right now they're at the edge of this, the creation. Nothing has gone past this. Then the Prophet said, O Jibril, I want to see your reality. Show me. This is very beautifully, those who read Urdu, I should read Bali Jibril by Iqbal. He has a beautiful, really his Iqbal, Rahmatullah Ali, has an amazing mind and imagination and just such a beautiful way of expressing these. He says, I want to see your reality. And Jibril opens all his wings. They say that 600 feathers on his wings and he opened it. And they covered all of the horizons of the seventh heaven, load tree. And they said the Prophet fainted. He passed out. Maulana Rumi said that don't think that he passed out because Jibril was so magnificent. No. He passed out. This is one angel of Allah's creation. This is just one angel amongst the untold number that I've seen in the heavens. They say it's not the size of your feet, that much space without an angel making tasbih of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. He passed out just understanding the Qutr of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, the power of Allah. That's what he passed out for. In Maulana Rumi, he says he answers Jibril in here. He answers him. Because he said, don't think that he passed out because of your wings. Don't think that. He said, Ahmadar Book Sharia, He said, if my Ahmad opens his spiritual wings, Jibril would be unconscious for eternity. That's what we call Muhammad and reality. Muhammad, that's the reality of our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Then the Prophet moves forward. He goes forward from Sidratul Muntaha. Then he turns back to Jibril standing up. He said, come Jibril, come. Follow me. He said, no, no, no, you go.  I can't do this. Then he said, the Prophet tells him, he said, why don't you the one who is just showing your magnificent wings right now? Why don't you come? Come with me. Go. He said, oh, my illustrious friend, Muhammad, please understand me. If I take one more step forward from this point that I'm standing, all my wings and feathers will burn and be annihilated. This is your maqam. This is your station. It's not me. You and your Lord, I can't even move anymore. So he says, the Prophet goes forward. He goes to a point where it says there was both lens between him and Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Now what happened in that night? Allah says, I gave him, revealed to him, Abdi, my servant, that which I give him. This is what happened in that night is what happened in that night. And Allah gave him the last two ayahs of Surat al-Baqarah. These are the two, only two ayahs that was revealed without Jibreel. They didn't bring him to the earth, but Allah gave him in the heavens, Amman al-Rasool al-Bima onzele ilayhim in rabbihi wal mu'mina. This is why all of the words that you read, all of the books that has the awrad, they have those two verses to read daily because of the barakah that is in those two verses. And then the Prophet SAW, Allah knows all the problems. So if you look at, and this is one of the lessons that we have to learn from this, is if you look at the Prophet SAW and that time, they had so many issues. Political issues, poverty, weakness, no support. People are just throwing trash on them. They're driving them out. They went to Abyssinia. And then all these problems are happening. There's too many problems. Too many problems. So he says, when he leaves, this is why it's so good to be from the ummah of the Prophet SAW. When he leaves, he tells Allah and Fakhreddin al-Razi in his Tafsir Kabir has beautifully described this conversation between him and Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, where he says, everyone who goes back home from a journey, they take gifts for their beloveds. And then he said, what am I going to take from this journey to my ummah? Now you have to think about it. We didn't exist at that time. He could have said, what am I going to take to my family? Ahlul Bayt. What am I going to take from my Sahaba? Those were the people. They were all Sahaba. But the Prophet SAW's generosity shows right here. He's thinking about us. He's thinking about our children. Until the end of time. He says, what am I going to take from my ummah? And Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, gives him the gift of Salah, the prayer. And this is why prayer, if it's done right, you have economic problem, pray. Trust me. You have physical problem, pray. You have mental problem, pray. You have spiritual problem, pray. You have financial problem, pray. Because prayer was prescribed to take care of all of the problem. Allah could have given him, you know what, go ahead. I'll send some strength for you. Give energy to the Sahaba that they can just take the Quraish out. But that's not just a solution. That solves one problem. It doesn't solve all of the problem. So the Salah is a gift that solves every issue. It solves every issue. So the Prophet SAW, he gets this gift of 50 prayers a day. Then he comes back down and Musa A.S. asks him, he said, what did you get? He said, Allah gave me 50 prayers a day. He said, your people will not do it. They're weak. Because his people will not do what he asked them to do. So he's given him really sound advice because prophets are brothers of each other. They're all brothers. He's given him sound advice. He said, go ask for ta'fiq. He's asking for discounts or something. It's embarrassing to ask for less. It's one of the most embarrassing things. So he goes and he says, if you can make it less for my ummah, they're du'afa, they're people. Allah says, okay, we'll make it 40. He comes back and says, no, 40, they can't do it. He goes back to 30. He goes back to 20. He goes back to 10. He goes back. The Prophet SAW goes back and says, Allah says, okay, make it 5. He goes back and Musa A.S. is telling you 5 is too much. And you know, he was right. A lot of people 5 prayers too much for them now unfortunately. And the Prophet SAW said, I feel embarrassed of going back and asking my, you know, I'm just, I feel embarrassed going back. But this back and forth had many, you know, had many reasons. One of the commentators said, he said that Allah wanted to give 5 prayers from the beginning. But he gave 50 because he wanted his beloved to keep coming to him, coming back to him. It's ish, it's love. He's Habibullah. He's the beloved of Allah. So one of the poets said that he called the Prophet SAW brought him to Arsh. What was the reason to bring him to the Arsh of Allah on this night of Miraj? He said, He said it was just one of his beloved. The Miraj was just an excuse. So, but the Prophet SAW comes back to the earth. And this is where we come into this story. He comes back to the earth and then they pray Fajr at Umahani's house. And he says to Umahani that, I prayed with you Aisha, but you know, I went to this journey, explained the whole thing. And I came back and I'm praying with you Fajr. And Umahani said that I grabbed his cloak and I said, please, whatever you do, don't tell the people about this. Because she knew that this is going to create, she said, by Allah, I can't speak anything but the truth. So he goes and he tells the people. And people were just like, whoa, what did you do? You went to Jerusalem? And it takes a month at that time to go to Jerusalem and a month to come back. So the two months journey, you went on a night and came back. So Abu Jahl, and this is the split of the people. And this night it becomes really clear. Abu Jahl listened, goes to the Prophet and goes, so what's the news today? And he tells him about the Islam Miraj. And he said, okay, you just hold on right here. And he's so excited because he said, you know what? I think I got him this time. And Abu Jahl's name is Abul Hakim, the father of intellect. Because he became Jahl because he was so stubborn with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. But he was very intelligent. He was very sharp. He was the wisest man of the Quraish at one point. So he says, let me go and talk to Abu Bakr. If Abu Bakr leaves his religion, everybody will leave. See, that's smart. I'm going to go to the head. If Abu Bakr leaves, everybody else will follow him. So he goes to the door of Abu Bakr and knocks like madmen. And Abu Bakr says, opens the door and he says, you know what your friend is saying? He's saying he went to Jerusalem and he went to the 7th. And I told the whole story. And he came back. You know this journey takes two months to go and come back, don't you? He says, yes. You're lying. You're lying. What are you talking about? He said, no, but I swear to you, this is what he said. This is what he said. Muhammad has said that, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. In Canaq, in Canaq Khaled, he said, if he said it, Sadaq, it's true. If he said it, then it's true. And I believe him. When he came inside in front of Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said, tell me what happened. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, last night I was at the Hateem and Jibril came and Abu Bakr said, yes, he did. He took me on this beast, beautiful buraq, wide with two wings above the shoulder. He said, yes, he did. He said, I wrote the buraq, went to Jerusalem. He said, yes, you did. And then he said, I led the prophets and prayed. He said, yes, you did. And he said, I went to the 7th Heaven and I saw all these prophets. He said, yes, you did. And then I passed the low tree. He said, yes, you did. And the Prophet looked at me. Yeah, Abu Bakr. You're speaking as you were with me. Da'a is faith. Da'a is iman. You want to know what iman is? Da'a is iman. If you believe in it, you believe it with Haqul Yaqeen. Everything for you is Haqul Yaqeen. There's no doubt. There's no doubt. I live laa meem. Da'a liqal kitabu l-araybe fi. Hudaan li'l mutaqid. There's no doubt in this book. There's no doubt in this religion. And he said, I did. And he said, you're speaking as though you were with me. And he didn't have to be with him to be with him. He believed him. And this is when he got his title of Sadiq, the great confirmer of truth, Abu Bakr Sadiq. And Sadiq is the highest maqam in Islam after the Prophet. Because we can't be prophets. It's done. There's no more prophets after our Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. But the Qur'an talks about four categories. Menna nabi'ina wa sidiqina wa shuhadahir wa salliheen. Amongst the four groups of paradise, either the prophets, the Sadiq, the martyrs or the righteous. You have to become one of those in order to enter paradise. And the Sadiqs are the highest after the prophets. So he is Abu Bakr Sadiq. And this is why his e-man outweighs the e-man of the entire ummah. Right? But what did he have? Faithfulness to the prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. You want success? Faithfulness to the prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. You have the ummah, look at the situation that we are in. It's all because of unfaithfulness. And Iqbal Rahmatullah alayhi said that, why are you doing this? Ya Allah, he complained. And it's shikwa. And it's shikwa, he complained to Allah. He said, we are doing it. We are praying. We're fasting. We're in a masjid. We're calling the avant. We're giving our charity. We're doing all these stuff. But why are we in the state that we are in? There's no, look at that. Look at the state of the Muslims. What's the secret? What are we missing in this ingredient? What are we doing? Everything we ask us to do. And then when he gives the jawaab, he ends it with saying, kee muhammad say, wa faatunituhum terehe. Ye jahaat sheezi, kee Allahu qalam terehe. He said, be faithful. Have wafaat with Muhammad. Be faithful to the prophet. What do you want? You want power? You want dignity? You want honor? He said, don't worry. I can give you the law and the qalam. You write your own destiny on it. But be faithful to my beloved. Be faithful to my prophet. Our prophet, sallallahu alayhi sallam, came to make us human being. To make us insan al kamil, perfect human being. Then when we walk, people say, I want to be like her. I want to be like him. I don't care. There are people who became Muslim. They didn't know that God was a Muslim. I know people who became Muslim. They didn't know that the guy was a Muslim. They said, what religion are you selling? You. Because I've been working with you for six months and I've never seen character like this. I don't care.    You know I'm a Muslim. You say, I become a Muslim. That's the person who's following the sunnah of the prophet, sallallahu alayhi sallam. Lip service is easy. Everybody can memorize ahadith and all these stuff and talk and say, but who's practicing the deed? And the practice is what's attractive for people. That's what's attractive. That if we walk on the prophetic path, it's a difficult path. Because it's a path of destroying your own nafs, going against your own nafs, your desires. And submitting to Allah, sallallahu alayhi sallam, and putting our prophet, sallallahu alayhi sallam, as the model. And I always tell people, it starts with our own home. It starts with our own home. There's a beautiful poem that Ahmad Saqr, Rahimullah, from LA, he wrote a poem when I first started practicing, I don't know, centuries ago. That was a poem that really affected me. It was called What if the prophet visited your house? What if the prophet visited your house? And he said, what would you do? Would you hide magazines and all these stuff so he doesn't see it? So really, what would we do if the prophet sallallahu walked into our house? Is it a prophet friendly house? Right? What about our hearts? Allah is looking into our hearts. So, if we change that, the change becomes from within and then walk on the prophetic path and take these examples of who he was, the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam and practice it. It will change your life, but you will see that other people will see you and they want to be like you.  If we become like the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam and everyone will love you because you are like the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam because his character is lovable. Sallallahu alayhi sallam Allah is better if you come to JazakAllah khayr. I don't even know what time it is. Sorry, if I went too long. May Allah bless all of you and may Allah protect all of you from all of the earthly and airborne diseases, inshallah, in Medhi. This be the end of this pandemic, inshallah. And may Allah protect all of the people who are in Ramadan from all of the evil and fa'zat of their time and makes them amongst salliheen, wa sallihāt, makes them amongst the people that Allah is pleased with them and the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam is proud of them under yawmu l-qayāmah. May Allah protect this community from all of the evil of our time. May Allah keep us on the path of fitr Allah in the time of confusion. May Allah protect this community from all of the evil of our time. May Allah keep us on the path of fitr


All right. Welcome to the podcast on today's show with Jim from HypeRice. Thanks for joining. Thanks for having me, Diego. For the small amount of people who don't know what your company does, give them like a quick window what you guys are focused on. Yeah, I'd say high performance wellness. So if you think about the recovery category, we make innovative products for athletes to help them prevent injury, to perform, to increase longevity and performance. Okay. There's a couple of reasons I want to talk to you. One of which is recovery is such a new term. It can be considered a new term.  What was that? What was that like? Yeah. And it's a great and fun question. Because when we started raising money really in the early stages, people, we had big time investors that came to us and said, Hey, this maybe there's a $10 million market in recovery. Like this is very niche, right? And our position was, look, when you see what's happening in training, there's a lot of athletes now that are overtraining and their body starting break down teams and organizations are starting to think about how do I optimize longevity to put my multimillion dollar asset on the field, the Bron James, Kobe Bryant, whoever it is, right? So I think in the early stages, it was really all around performance and it hadn't spilled over to the everyday consumer and it's starting to spill over now. It's been about 10 years for us of heavy education to try to get people to understand that products and technology can actually impact the physiology of the human body and it can help you live better and move better. So that is part of the mission statement, help everybody on earth live better and move better. I love that. And then let's talk about the name. How did the name come to be? It's a fun story. Oh, it is a great story. So founder of the company, I'm the CEO. So founder Anthony Katz, still very involved president of the organization. He was a high school teacher and a basketball coach, got into his 30s. His body started to break down. He loved playing pickup basketball. That was his thing. Body started to break down and he started to realize, I can't do the things I love anymore. There's got to be something around recovery. Breaking on the inside, just hearing this. So he said, okay, well, he started doing some research. What is recovery? And there really wasn't much in recovery. This is 2012 other than icing. People knew about icing as the pillar of recovery. So he said, I'm going to set out to create a technology driven ICER, which was our ice compression device. So he started out and said, you know, what are we doing to ice? It's very old school.  So he set out to create the world's most innovative ice compression technology. Got the early stages, went to an aerospace engineer, said we need to design something interesting. One of his friends was a trainer for Kobe Bryant and said, hey, you should really talk to Kobe here about this product. And Anthony said, Kobe's my favorite athlete. He was born in Laguna Beach. Love the Lakers. I got to meet him. This is going to be awesome. Got that meeting, presented the product, Kobe looked at it and said, hey, this is an early prototype, but this isn't good enough, right? You got a lot of work to do. But if you can make this a great product that's ergonomic, that's sophisticated, that has these same core elements all wear on the sidelines. And he was inspired, went back to the aerospace company, scoured the earth for components that could develop this product, represented it to Kobe numerous times. Finally, Kobe said, this is great. I'll wear it on sidelines, wore it during a big game for the Lakers, got national exposure. And from there, we had almost all the elite NBA players calling him, pay there's this guy out of his car. He's making this ice compression device. You've got to call Anthony. And it started to spread. So the name hyper ice is actually inspired by Kobe's hyper dunk Nike shoe. So hyper dunk, hyper ice, icing being the pillar recovery. That's amazing. Yeah, it's a great story. When you got involved with the company, so you got involved 2014? 2014 January. So what did you see? So the beautiful thing is you get to analyze this company, spend time with the founders, understand the cap table. What did you see just in relation to maybe the vertical? And then also, what did you see specifically about this company that you thought this is something I'm going to spend a lot of time with? Yeah, so a couple of interesting elements that question. One is they actually didn't show me the full set of financials intentionally. I think because it was early and then we joke about this now. I got a very limited set. I think if I would have seen the actual financials at the time, I may not be here right now, right? But Anthony and I met for lunch and it actually was kind of happenstance. We were introduced by someone who now works at hyper ice, one of our EVPs. But at the time, I had accepted another role as a chief marketing role. I was going to go to Silicon Valley and work for this sensor tech company. And someone said, hey, you should have this meeting with me. Like a wearable? Yeah, it was kind of a wearable technology that connected into sports. Interesting. There were some Apple people involved in the company. It was early stage. So Joe Cannon works with us now introduced Anthony and I just said, you guys should have lunch. There's no reason Jim has a business experience, has a lot of business experience. Anthony has a really cool idea and it's getting out there on the brand side.  So just had a lunch, no intention behind it. And I had been working in the concussion space prior in the sports technology sector for seven or eight years and had been interacting with a lot of athletes. So I was hearing a lot about recovery and training and this is going to be the next wave of what happens in the sports space. And so when we met, we really aligned on, can we make this a technology company? There are a lot of sporting goods companies in the space and we said, can we make this more of like an Apple, Tesla combination with Nike? And we committed at that time to be inspired by developing one to two really innovative products every year that could change the physiology of the body. So I think the vision around the space and the idea that recovery could become mainstream was something that we aligned on really early on and one of the reasons that I joined. That's amazing. And how many products of the company have at that time? One product. One product. One product. The hypervolt. It was actually the ice compression device. Wow. So there's no electronics in that device yet. Okay. And so you came on and then what are the next two products you guys work on? So the first product that I came on, there were six employees at the time. Wow. It was very small. We were doing around 400,000 in revenue. Do you miss those days in some way? I'll tell you, I'll give you an insight. Why? I had a technology company and there was three of us working on it alone for probably a year and a half. And we had like, we were in one bedroom apartment, whiteboards everywhere. And I was like, you know, this is going to be really cool one day. Like this is going to be the moment. Because the three of you, when you have a small team, you can all be honest with each other, very honest with each other. As the team grows, you have to be a little more professional, you know? And so it changes a little bit. Yeah. Do you miss that? I think that financially, no. I like where we're at more now, but I do think that at the time, there really was nothing in this space. And it was just blank space, open opportunities. So we really were forging new paths. And we're doing that now, but the recovery category is getting bigger and stronger. And people understand at the time it was, how do we get the everyday consumer to even grasp what we're trying to communicate here? Right. And there was so much creativity needed in the really early stages on just not only developing great products, but how do we build a sustainable category? So I miss that. And there's a lot of people. But what's interesting is of the first 15 employees that we had, you know, in 2014, I think we ended the year somewhere between 12 and 15, we still have like nine of them. So there's a lot of people that have been here since the very early stages that still have that knowledge. And so we get to work with them every day. And they contribute to the, you know, to the success of the company. When it comes to the early days of any business, especially in your, I guess, in the recovery space, there's so many things that seem like the right answer, seem like the right way, seem like, oh, let's just have this athlete promote it. Let's do this. Let's do retail. How did you guys decide on what to do? Like, and what worked? Actually, a big move for us, and this was the positioning of the company, because I mentioned there were sporting goods companies that were kind of doing something in recovery, right? You had like braces and things like that. We wanted to transition into technology. So we went on Kickstarter really early with our first consumer electronics product. There's a throwback. It is. And it was intentional, not necessarily because we needed to go on there and crowdfund, but it was more around positioning the company into technology and electronics and away from sporting goods. And it worked. We got covered by Gizmodo, Wired Magazine, and it started to lay the groundwork for this is going to be an innovation company and not, you know, kind of a sporting goods predecessor, so to speak. So I think that piece really helped separate us and also grab the interest of retailers, distribution partners like Equinox, Lifetime Fitness, places like that where we could then deliver our product and experiences to new user groups outside of sports performance. What were the next few years? What were the next few products after that that you guys developed? So we launched the Venom, which the product after the Viper, which was our high-intensity vibration roller, was the Hypersphere. So that's the product we have right here showcased beautifully. Thank you. Everybody loves this product, by the way. It's just off air.  Oh, really? They carry it in their tennis bag and they're all like, yeah, you got to get one of these. And so thank you for mailing one over. But for people who don't know, tell them what it is. Yeah. So this product is a high-intensity vibration roller. So it really helps with circulation, myofascial release. And it's a popular product. It's actually not one of our top three or four products, but it's still, you know, it's an important product in performance and fitness. But this product followed the Viper and it was a similar modality, delivering vibration, combination of vibration and pressure. But one of the big changers for us was the Venom that we launched in 2016, which was a heat and vibration device for the lower back. And we actually got a lot of feedback from our athletes around heat. And that product, you know, was really innovative at the time and started to get into the general consumer because people have lower back pain. And this was something that could relieve lower back pain and create more movement for people. When you guys are obviously big with leagues, the NBA, the NFL, how difficult is that to maneuver? For example, these are big brands and so they might be cognizant or they might have some apprehension as it relates to partnering or seemingly what could appear to be a partnership. What are these transactions actually like? They're a combination. So for us, we had a variety of the leagues that invested in the business. So we had a Series A round and the NFL participated in that. And then we had Major League Baseball and the NBA also participate in, you know, financial rounds. That's totally legal. That's huge. Wow. Yeah. And that's good because there's a natural incentive there.  You leverage their platforms to help get the branding and the products on field, on court, on the sidelines. So that was big for us specifically during the first partnership we did was in the NBA during the bubble. And it was actually one of my top five favorite things we ever did. We built the hypervolt into the chairs courtside for all the players. And during the bubble where the NBA kind of owned the facility, it was built. And so every player during the game was just using the hypervolt, LeBron, Steph Curry, everybody. And it really garnered a lot of attention. And so for the most part, I guess if they're investing, it's a no brainer. It seems, yeah, everybody wins on that front. Yeah. For us, it was really about maximizing TV exposure, right? Because we are a unique product that can actually be integrated into the game. When you think about like Beats by Dre, they did a great job in pro sports, but you can't wear headphones on the sidelines during a game. You wear pre and post. Our products, because they're performance products, you can use them in game. So very unique proposition there to say, how do we, how do we very innovatively bring these products into the game to elevate performance? And then the win for the leagues is we want to keep our multimillion-dollar assets on the field. So this is good for the sport. If Mahomes is playing every Sunday. Don't go in the locker room and do your, yeah, that's true. Do some recovery on the sidelines. Exactly. So there was a natural fit. It was great for the leagues to help their product continue to perform, so to speak. And it was also a unique story between the two brands on how do we, we care about our athletes, we care about our players and we want to provide the best tools and technologies to optimize longevity. How difficult was it arriving at your price point? A lot of consumer testing, some guessing candidly, because there's nothing like it. Totally. Yeah. So you're investing a category. You're hoping there's a margin, but what are people willing to pay? Exactly. Yeah. And the big product for us that really took the company into the next kind of stratosphere was the launch of the Hypervolt in 2018. We had built the ground kind of the framework of distribution, connection with elite athletes, but that product, which was the, you know, the world's first percussion device that was powerful, quiet, had all the elements around it, took the company essentially from 10 million to 142 million in a 24 month period. Wow. So we went 14X in 24 months off the launch of that product. The hero product. Yep. That's incredible. Do you see any signals of that with any of the other products you have? Normatech. And that was an acquisition for us, but that was a product line that we acquired, we acquired that company. That's the compression, pants, sleeves, compression boots. Compression boots. Yeah. I've actually used them. I play a lot of tennis and I've used them. We had a physio come over and he was giving everyone a, like a free demo of it. Nice. Yeah. It was pretty solid. Yeah. That's one that is starting to get into the mainstream now. It started out as sports performance and medical product and was really strong in endurance categories. And we've tripled the revenue on that line over the last three and a half years. And it's starting to, to your point, spill over into the masses and become more of a wellness product. When you think about just the innovation from your company's perspective, who do you partner with? Are you partnering with like, so you mentioned before the concussion, the NFL is actually amazing in terms of like cutting edge stuff. They'll try anything, every little advantage works. And so how do you sort of create these products today? Is it scientists? Is it athletes? What is the, how do you do it? Yeah. So a couple, a couple elements here. And this is a big differentiator. I'm glad he asked this question. One, we have a really good product development team internally, very creative in the acquisitions that we had of Normatech and Hyper-IceX. We brought those full teams in-house. So we have, you know, former CEOs and advanced product developers that are now on the Hyper-Ice team developing innovations.  That's pretty cool. Yeah. And so you have like the, the melding of both of these. Exactly. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So that was big. And then I think the early roots of the company and the DNA really is sports performance, right? And the relationships we had with the teams and athletes is instrumental in product development because if you think about it, if you're a professional sports franchise, you need to keep your multimillion dollar assets on the field. So you're going to have the best performance experts, the best physios, the best trainers, the best technology to keep LeBron on the court, to keep Mahomes on the field, right? So if we could use that as a proving ground, we not only knew that the products would be great for the everyday consumer, but we created relationships where they could help us see around the corner. So a lot of our advisory board is made up of performance experts in the pro sports channels who are constantly working with us on product development, giving us insight into new modalities and things that we can do to help the human body. Yeah. Right. When you think about the future, and so we, sometimes we have these conversations on the podcast with like mental, everything's about mental, right? And so it's like the elite athletes have a mental coach, somebody helping them get their breathing under control, understand the pressure of the moment, but helping them like perform. Obviously you have this product here. I think it's called core. Clearly you're moving in a direction. This feels like it might be it. How much of this, do you spend your time thinking about the mental side of sport? Yeah. It's really important. We always knew we wanted to be in mental wellness in some capacity. We didn't know. We had to make sure that it was something that was on brand for us. Like we didn't just want to do an app. So this is actually a product that has sensors built in that tracks your meditation and breath training and provides insight using data analytics around how your body's responding physiologically. But for us, we had athletes like Roy McElroy and Naomi Osaka, who have been very outspoken about mental wellness, right? And the importance of it. And they're both shareholders and investors in the company. So we listened to them, you know, heard about how important it was in the pro sports world. And we required this company in 2021. So we do believe that there's, you know, a unique connection there between the physical and the mental. Of course, you got to be in the right state to be able to recover properly.  So how does it work? Give people a window into this product? Yes. You hold the device. It has biosensors built in that measures your body's response to meditation and breath training. And you'd go through kind of an app experience. And it tracks your behavior over time and coaches you on how to have more effective breath training and meditation. And then it uses haptics to guide you lights and vibrations. Yep. When it comes to how you view the future of your business in terms of like, so here you are 14x, super successful in terms of growth. You clearly have a couple of others that, you know, work for you.  How do you try to recreate that growth? Is it like partnering with the Olympics? Like what is, how do you, like what keeps you up at night in terms of how do you continue to sustain? And obviously you go back to the core of the company. I get that. But what levers do you see for growth for your business? Yeah. So I think what we've learned now, and we did a lot of partnerships and athlete relationships and league relationships early on. And I think it was really instrumental and helpful at the time. But it's not necessarily, necessarily the lever for our next wave of growth, right? Now we've developed this reputation of, you know, humbly of innovation, performance. And the company's done a good job seeing around the corner. So I think what keeps us up at night is we got to continue to keep that reputation. To build the brand. Product development and making sure that we're thinking about new modalities, advancing the science around the space, constantly being cutting edge, not only next year, but we need to now start thinking five, six years out if we want to lead this category. So it's, you know, it's a constant, constant kind of groupthink within the organization on what is the next modality? Like let's vet that. Do we buy this company? Do we put more resources into this certain technology and try to advance this? Is this in our wheelhouse or not? We got to pass. We have to be very selective on what really fits into the DNA of the company. Where do you think most of the consumers meet you? I think it's a combination right now of sports and endurance and wellness and fitness, right? So if you're going into an equinox, an orange theory, a lifetime fitness, an LA fitness, a berries, you're our core consumer. If you're participating in an Ironman, if you're going and doing, you know, writing as a cyclist or whatever it is, you're a core consumer. We're also moving into hospitality a bit more. So if you go into the Weston, any Weston in the U.S., you can actually rent our products to your room.  So there's a big shift there. Obviously retail, the best buys and REIs are places where our consumer shop. So those are key channels for us. The wellness in general is just people are getting more educated on the importance of longevity. That's longevity is a huge trend right now. I would say recovery was the buzzword four years ago and longevity is now becoming a pretty big buzzword. Yeah, here I am with the cold plunge out there. It's like the craziest thing. People ask me, why do you have it? I'm like, I don't know. I'm like Instagram convinced me. And then I did it and I loved it. And now there's all these places popping up where you can do hot and cold immersion therapy and there's even different ways they attack the market in that way. And so I look at that sometimes and I go, okay, there must be a, there's definitely going to be an equinox of hot and cold. Then there's going to be a planet fitness of hot and cold also where it's like, no fuss.  And obviously partnerships for you guys exist or can exist in that space also. Do you have any fun athlete stories? Like your favorite story on maybe converting an athlete into an investor, maybe something that you learned from an athlete that really changed the game? Yeah, we have a bunch. Just a real funny one though. This is the early stages. So we were raising money in 2014. I just started. It was six months, maybe four months into the job and the company needed cash, right? It was early stage startup mode. I just started and part of the role was we got to raise some money and capitalize this correctly. And so we were out there talking to athletes and different groups and such and we had one athlete who was UFC fighter. His name was Jake Ellenberger at the time and he was looking to invest and it was a Friday. I walked into the office. We had a controller at the time and she was kind of looking at me like, hey, we're getting short on payroll here, right? Like it's going to be really tight. Like you got a solution. I'm like called Jake up and like, hey, are you investing? He said, I really need you to come through on this one. He's like, yeah, man, I'm going to do it. I'm like, all right, if you got to do it, you got to do it now, right? So he came into the office, wrote a check. I took that check. We literally, I ran like three red lights to get to the bank to catch the check on a Friday. So we'd make Monday payroll. So that was like an athlete story. But I think that Christian McCaffrey, Patrick Mahomes, Lindsey Vaughn, Naomi Osaka and Rory have all in Erling Haaland have all been really involved in product development. That's awesome. They're like, hey, send me the latest stuff. We want, we want to give you feedback on it early on. Like, hey, do you have anything you can send me? Right? They want it early and they want to provide feedback. They're really into the science. And we actually, during last year's Super Bowl, when, you know, Patrick Mahomes hurt his ankle, we had a version of one of our products that isn't even out yet that he was using to help recover. So what's really cool and unique and one of the fun parts of the job, there's a lot of fun parts, but one of them is just this relationship that the company has with athletes and how much they want to contribute to the movement. Because it's not really a sponsorship for them. Right? It's more of a partnership because these things they're using every day organically. Right? And if they can contribute to the next device or the next modality, like they bring pride in that. They, you know, they feel like they're part of it, which is really important. That's how I feel about my sports barn some way that I told you about. It's like, it's not the money that I'm after. We can find plenty of money to facilitate this whole deal. It's more about I want your involvement in a way that it's different when it comes to a physical asset, you know? And I think, I mean, I shared a lot of it with you, but I think it hits. Like, I think people get it. Like, oh, this is extremely different. And so they want to be a part of it. And what I want is really their time, you know? And for them to really sort of enjoy that. And your guys' idea is really cool on the sports bar. I appreciate that. The world doesn't know yet, but they will soon. I will be a customer. What's on deck for 2024? 2024. So we have some big announcements coming in the middle of the year around the Olympics. So we have a couple of really unique things coming there that are going to be big. Like for example, the event at our sports bar at the Olympics. That's a big announcement. Here we are teasing it. Yep. I love it. I love it. So that's going to be big. I think that our innovation roadmap, I've been with the company 10 years. I think my 10 year date is February 1st. So happy anniversary. Almost there. Yeah. Wow. I've never felt so strongly about the innovation roadmap. Like some of the technologies coming over the next 24 to 36 months are groundbreaking, right? There are things you may not expect from us, right? But that's because they're very innovative and can be very disruptive. So I think it's going to be, it's going to be really fun. And I think also the international side of the business is really interesting, right? Some of the things that are going on in the UK and Canada and Japan, right? And the opportunities there because we're not as far as we are there as in the U.S. because the wellness trend, you know, I'd say it's trailing a little bit in some of those territories. And so there's a lot of white space there for us. When you think about just your position. So being a CEO is difficult in general.  I would imagine. And so do you personally feel any pressure in terms of the company's a different company? You've basically brought it, let's say 10X to 14X, 20X that already. And so do you feel any pressure? Do you feel like it might be time to let someone else in? Or are you good? Are you in like a good spot? I'm in a good spot. I love what I do. I have a passion for this. I think that, you know, for me, the intersection of sport, business and technology is like what jacks me up. So Sunday night comes and I'm like, I'm fired up. I'm ready to go Monday morning. And it's also, and I say this to our employees all the time, like this is because the culture of the company, I believe is really good. Like we have a lot of pro athletes, former pro athletes, college athletes, so people get the team aspect and the collaboration aspect. But I always say to our team like, Hey, look, if you ever wake up in the morning and you're not passionate about this, or there's something else you love, or your passion, your heart just isn't here, your mind's not here or whatever, like that's okay. Go do what you love. Like I'll be the first one to support you in that role if you want to transition. So that's the same way I feel about it myself. Like if I wake up one day and I'm like, look, this isn't me anymore. Like I'm not as passionate about it as I was the first day I started. Then, you know, I'd make that decision. But right now I feel like I'm probably more fired up than I ever been. That's awesome. Yeah. There's something for me that I've learned about that just being involved in the sports bar concept that I think like I wrote off sports for a while and how fun they actually are. But via this project, I'm just like falling in love with it. And I'm realizing how much of it's going to sound silly, but how much of sport and culture are really intertwined. And it's amazing. You know, it's like really, really actually amazing. And in some way when I was back in tech, I felt like when I was in tech, I had the pulse of it. I had the pulse of what was going to change people's lives. And I was in it. And then today, it just feels like I have a different pulse, but it's similar where these things do change people's lives. They feel antiquated, but they're very much not, they're very much a part of the everyday, everybody's reality. And so it's like it's making me fall in love with sport in a whole another way that I didn't know existed. And then, and then that's driving more creativity. Like, well, what else can we do here? Right? Like the memorabilia stuff, what else can we do that feels really interesting and innovative despite it feeling like an antiquated thing? Totally. Yeah. And that's something that fires. It's fun. It is. And you know what it is too? Like hearing the concept you have, which I love and, you know, can't wait to be a part of it in any capacity, whether it's high price, doing events or whatever it is, but sport in general evokes a lot of emotion, right? And so because of that, if you play that emotion right in business ventures, right, you get a lot of people wanting to contribute because it's exciting. It's fun. There's an emotion to it. People love sport, whether it's a team or a league or whatever it is. And so it's easy to rally people together and build communities. And I mean, that's why a lot of, you know, sports technologies and companies around it scale fast. Yeah. I remember there's one lawyer, I was talking to, he's like reviewing the documents. And he's like, this is so risky. What are you doing? And he'd call me like once a week just to kind of yell at me about like reminding me how risky this holding was. And I was like, Jesse, like, you don't have to, I don't, we don't need your money. Like, you know, I appreciate the calls, but like you, you don't need to invest. And then on the third call, he says to me, but you don't understand, it's just always been my childhood dream to own a sports car. I love it. And I'm like, it's that simple. I love it. I'm like, here you are adding so much sophistication. I'm like, just feed the kid inside of you. Totally. You know? And he's like, all right, fine. And I just, I'll never forget that.  I'm like, but we're going to be fine. And obviously it's been de-risk since, but I just remember that. When you think about sports in general today, like pickleball or any of these sort of emerging sports are, you know, I play a lot of tennis. So I view tennis as sort of a, it's still a growing sport. I sort of view it as a young, it's got a long way to go still in my opinion. And I think it's coming on the more you get like the personalities of whether it's Osaka or Cocoa golf today. Like there's more personalities emerging in the sport. Do you see any sports in particular, maybe it's pickleball, I don't know, as like a lane for you guys to reach a new audience? Yeah, we do. And I was up late watching Cocoa last night too. And then Alcoraz is on tonight. So I'm excited about that. But, but yes. So we actually partnered with the PPA, which is the professional pickleball association recently. And it's interesting to me as I step back and just look at all the partnerships we've done in the past with the NFL and Major League Baseball and all those. And then we come to pickleball. And the reason for doing it is very different, right? You think about the NBA for us there, it was, I mean, that is a global league, tons of exposure. It's really where the company was like Kobe Bryant NBA player, right? So there's a lot of authenticity there. And that was really about, can we change the game, but also really create exposure in the game and increase performance and longevity for PPA, right? We know that it's not just about those athletes. It's really the sport is, it's a craze now among, you know, people like you and I, people that aren't pro athletes. And it's got so big. So how do we reach those communities of people whose bodies are breaking down, who are in their fifties and sixties, right? And love the sport, but do it in a hyper ice way and pickleball is a great way to do that for us. It's connected to sport. It feels really authentic, but it also has an audience that is very wide. It's a little bit outside our normal wheelhouse. That's good for us. That's how you grow. Totally. So what is the partnership entail? Yes, it's a combination of education. So we're doing a lot of education around how to prevent injury and enhance longevity. We actually partnered with Select Medical, which is one of the biggest physical therapy companies in the US. So they have, you know, 1500 locations and hyper ice, Select and PPA all partnered together, us being the tools and technology and innovation, Select being, you know, the physical services that can also use the PTs and the Kairos that can use our technology to deliver better performance and reduce injury. And then the PPA, which is the world's most prominent, you know, pickleball league. And so far, so good. You've seen some traction. Yeah, I've been with a lot of learning, a lot of learning because it's a different demo. It's a whole new game. A whole new game. People are moving different. They are different injuries, different age group. And that think about the age group, though, like when you, when people think about hyper ice, they think, okay, you sell the products to LeBron James. You sell the, we do, they buy stuff, right? Steph spot stuff off our site. So it's Tom Brady. It's pretty cool when those come through, right? But the core consumer is us. Yeah. You and I in this room are like right in the wheelhouse of our core consumer. Yeah. So you could argue that the PPA is a very important partnership for us. Because if you're 18, you're probably using our products for performance. If you're 55, you're using our products for longevity, prevent injury, performance, general health, right? You might have some chronic back pain, your knees might be in bad shape, right? So there's a lot of use cases for that demo. Yeah. Do you guys work on any science? Yes. Yes. Tell me. Yeah, we do. So we, we just actually did this really cool video that we use what's called a thermal imaging camera that measures the body's change in circulation from using percussion. So you use our massage device and it shows how your circulation changes. So this, this part of your body just lights up red. So it improves its massive body. Yeah. Okay. So that's cool. We've done a bunch of studies around range of motion, circulation benefits. We have a couple really innovative scientific advisors. Lenny Pericino is one of them. He's actually head of performance or leading performance for LA Clippers. He's on our advisory board. So we're constantly saying, Hey, look, let's, let's test this. Let's see if we can do a study around this to see what kind of impact we can have. And in a lot of cases it comes back, you know, very substantial. I have to ask this question because it, we had a momentous on the founder momentous. And so he came on basically, he was in the NFL and he realized how many supplements they were taking. And he wanted to bring it to the masses because he felt like, wow, like we're so far ahead in terms of whether it's cognitive function or just recovery. Do you ever think about making an acquisition in that space? We've looked at it. Yeah. We've looked hard and actually know those, the momentous kind of investors in that group. Sure. Great company. You know, we've thought about that like nutrition as an extension. Right. For sure. And one of the challenges or balances and it comes back to your question about being a CEO too is there's so many things that you can do. So many things. You know, and you have a brand and you have to make sure that you understand your bandwidth, your resources and really know what you do really well. And sometimes something may be a shining object and maybe it would work, but you're better spending your resources on something that is in your wheelhouse at this moment. So it's all timing sequencing. We made four acquisitions. Three of them worked really well. Right. One of them didn't work that well, but the ones that did, it wasn't just taking the product and doubling or tripling it. It was the people that we acquired and their contributions to the company, HyperSX. We bought that company, the world's most advanced heating, it was heating and cooling all electronically contrast therapy. I don't know if you've tried the device, but it's groundbreaking contrast.  And that product is doing really well for us, but some of the future innovations that are coming in 24, 25 and 26 from that team of product developers, the impact there is going to far surmount the technology that we currently have. Right. It's a good business tip too. I always think of Rolex. They don't adapt any technology unless it's been around for 10 years. That's kind of like, and so they wouldn't even make a decision. And so when it came to these examples, when Web 3 NFT market came out, obviously there's a play for a Rolex to insert something and then that way they can track these items on a secondary market, but their world view is if it's here in 10 years, we'll consider it essentially. And I just love that approach, where it just reminds you, you always go back to what you're good at and because they've been around for 100 years or so, they can stay in the test of time in some pun. Any Super Bowl commercial planned? Not this year. No. Okay. Maybe next year. And maybe we did. We did a lot of commercials in 2021. And we did a few in 2022 specifically around the NBA. I don't know if we'd do a Super Bowl commercial. We had some creative ideas for them. We definitely, there was no shortage of ideas if we were going to run one, but probably not our medium this year. So this year, you can tell people, they can look out for new products. New products this year. New things coming. We have some new things coming this year, some pretty big announcements in the middle of the year. Some new territories. I think 2025 is going to be loaded with innovation. Yeah. And you have the Olympics right soon. Yep. See the Olympics coming up soon. Anything for the World Cup? We do have some products that are being tested in the World Cup. Okay. Yep. Some new stuff. Well, look, thanks for coming on the podcast. This was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, share with your friends, your family, or anyone you might think might benefit from the conversation we've had today. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'd greatly appreciate it. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more people who can benefit from our discussions. The best way to stay connected with us and get the latest updates on future episodes is through our social media channels. You can find us at Startup Storefront. We'll be back next Tuesday with another great episode. See you then.


And some of that is another fault. Some of that is the system they're in and the sheer limitations of being incredibly busy seeing all the patients they have to. But I think this metaphor of your life and your health as a web is one of the most useful metaphors I described to my patients to help them understand how all the parts of their life, the material and the immaterial, may be affecting their health and their illness. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hine, Chinese Medicine Doctor, acupuncturist and author of the health book, Master of the Day, and I've included two very important links below this video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine, there's a link to my clinic below the video. And the second is a free download which is four daily rituals that can help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. Check that out right below this video. So I like to use this analogy of everything in your life being like a web, right? You have this health problem you may come in to see me with, for example. Maybe you're struggling with anxiety or depression. Maybe it's something related to your digestion, something related to your menstrual cycle, whatever it is. But we can become so myopic and so focused on the problem that we forget that it's related to everything else. So imagine like there's a spider web and it's your life, right? And you are somewhere in the middle here, right? Alex is in the center. And we can forget that this main problem, whatever it is, let's say it's my digestion, also has other parts of the web that are immaterial. Like do I love my job?  Is this a great relationship or is it something that every time I walk into the house, I am already walking on eggshells? That's the immaterial side. As well as if you feel like your life is meaningful and purposeful. Now on the material side, that can be all the things we typically think of, right?  But the problem is that because they are all a web, they all tug on each other. So you may adjust your diet and it affects something about your psychology or your emotional state on a daily basis. You may adjust your diet and you sleep better or you sleep worse. Whereas it's easy to think that the material things just affect the material aspects of your life. Or that the immaterial aspects just affect the immaterial aspects. But because they're all related, they're literally all connected. You tug over here, something tugs over here. And you tug over here, pull it up, something tugs over here. And it's the job of not only the skilled physician or the skilled healer, whatever term you want to use, but also you yourself as the patient or the person going through something to observe, if I tug here, what happens over here? So the reason this is so essential is that you can't change just one thing and expect just one thing to change. You know, let's say for example we talk about your job and you go from working 30 hours a week to more than 70 hours a week. Now that's a material change, right? It's you're physically working or you're intellectually, mentally working. But what does that do to your diet? Maybe your diet has gotten incredibly sloppy because now you're super busy, you're super stressed. Or maybe on the other side, maybe you have a lot more money and so you can afford to eat out a lot more food. Or maybe you're a business person and so you're going out every night and getting three glasses of wine with a huge plate of pasta. But that's just the material side. Now what is working those long hours do to your psychology? Maybe it turned you from a light-hearted easy-going guy or girl into someone that's pretty high-strung and who doesn't sleep well all the time. And those were historically never problems for you. What about what it does to your digestion? Even if you still eat healthy, working long hours for a lot of people ends up resulting in them ultimately having lots of bloating or miss bowel movements or even just having food sensitivities that they never had prior in their life. So these are all very common clinical symptoms that I see. Just taking that job, it pulls on all these different parts of the web but you don't always know right at the moment. Sometimes it takes a couple of years to see that. So for me the big lesson here that I often share with my patients is that we often fool ourselves into thinking that we just do one thing and it only affects one part of the web. My diet just affects my belly right.  Or you just take those antidepressants and it just affects your brain right. Not at all. It affects all the other parts of you.  So I think just as a general thinking point and reflection point just remember that every action is tugging on the web in a different spot. And a lot like if you've ever actually played with the spider's web you may pull here but it also pulls there. And if you pull up here it also pulls down here. And if you operate behavioral change and habit change and even the medications you take with this perspective it can help you understand how everything is really all related. So that's what I have for today. Again if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or via telemedicine check out the link below the video which is a link to my clinic. And there's also a free guide which is four daily rituals to help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. Then before you go I have two related videos for you here.


Good day everybody. Welcome to our next episode of the section of the human brain. Today I'll talk about two things. I'll talk about the components of what is known as the basal forebrain and then I'm going to talk about the so-called mesolymic and mesocortical structures or the mesocortical tracts with two clinical correlations. Before that, my name is Dr. Sanjay Sanyal. I'm the professor and course director of neuroscience and the camera person is Mr. Mark Lesser. So coming to the first topic, the basal forebrain. What is this basal forebrain and what are the components? So in this we have a section of the brain here, a sagittal section. Many of these structures are visible here but some structures will not be visible but I'll mention them and I'll tell them where they are located. The first component of the basal forebrain is this structure that we see here. This is the OFPFC, the orbital frontal PFC, one which rests on the cribid form plate of ethmoid bone in the anterior cranial fossa. The second component of the basal forebrain is what is known as the septal area. The septal area itself is a composite area and includes two things. One is called the cortical areas and the other is called the sub-cortical nuclei of the septal area. So let's take a look at the cortical areas. The cortical areas are the ones which are located in this region. One portion of the cortical area is located under the corpus callosum and that is known as the sub-cortical area. It's sub-callosal area and there's another one which is located just adjacent to the lamina terminalis, this portion of the cortex. This is known as the paraterminal. So the sub-callosal and the paraterminal, these are the cortical areas of the septal area. What about the septal nuclei, the sub-cortical nuclei? This is the septum pellucidum and this is the anterior commissure. Between the septum pellucidum and the anterior commissure are a collection of nuclei which are collectively referred to as a sub-cortical septal nuclei. They are further subdivided into a medial group, a lateral group and a posterior group but we shall not go into the specifics of that. So this is the second major component of the basal forebrain, namely the septal area. The third and the fourth components are not visible because they are on either side of the midline. One of them is what is known as the ventral striatum. The ventral striatum is situated deep inside this location. It is located just ventral to the corpus striatum, namely the caudate nucleus and the putamen and this ventral striatum includes most important for us here what is known as the nucleus accumbens and I shall talk quite a bit about the nucleus accumbens in the subsequent part of my discussion and the other component of the ventral striatum is what is known as the olfactory tubercle which we shall not refer to any further. The fourth component of the basal forebrain is known as the ventral pallidum which is located just behind the anterior commissure but it is also located deep inside and therefore we cannot see in this dissection. The ventral pallidum is located just ventral to the globus pallidus and it includes what is known as the substantia inominata. In the earlier days it was not very clear what was the function that's why it was called inominata but now we know it includes a very important nucleus known as the nucleus basalis of Maynard which is rich in cholinergic neurons and is one of those prime structures which is degenerated in Alzheimer's disease but we shall not go into that any further. And the final component, the fifth component of the basal forebrain is the anterior hypothalamus which is just adjacent to the laminaterm analysis in this location here and that includes the pre-optic nucleus. We shall not mention that anymore. So the structure which we shall focus on predominantly will be the PFC, the septal area and the ventral striatum more specifically the nucleus accumbens. Okay so that's about the components of the basal forebrain. Now let's come to something else before I talk about the meso olympic and the mesocortical structures. Now if you take a look at the specimen here what we see here, this portion here, this is the hypothalamus and the upper portion this is the thalamus therefore this is the cavity of the third ventricle. Now this hypothalamus is divided into a medial portion which we can see here and a lateral portion which is further down which we cannot see and the dividing structure between these two is the hippocampus mammillary tract and the mammillothalamic tract which divides the thalamus into a medial and a lateral portion. Why am I mentioning this is because running through the lateral hypothalamus is a tract which is referred to as the medial forebrain bundle. This medial forebrain bundle gives passage to the meso olympic and the mesocortical tract. Having said that now let's come to the meso olympic and the mesocortical tract proper. Where does this tract start from? If you take a look at this specimen here this is the midbrain, this is the pons and this is the medula. So let's focus on the midbrain. This portion of the midbrain is the tegmentum of the midbrain. This whole thing is the tegmentum of the midbrain and if you look very closely here this is the region of the tegment of the midbrain which contains several nuclei clusters. They are called the reticular nuclei of the midbrain and some of these nuclei are one the ventral tegmental area VTA, the dorsal tegmental area DTA, the lateral tegmental area superior central nucleus. There are several such nuclei in this location here. So these are the reticular nuclei in the reticular formation of the midbrain. Let's focus on the ventral tegmental area the VTA which is going to be the main crux of our discussion right now. Projections start from the ventral tegmental area and they go to wide areas of the limbic system and the wide areas of the cortex and they are respectively referred to as the meso olympic and the mesocortical areas. So let's take a look at the meso olympic projections. Where does this meso olympic projection go? The meso olympic projection starts from the ventral tegmental area and it projects to at least four well-known locations. Through the medial forebrain bundle which I mentioned earlier some of the fibers they go to the region here. This is the entorhinal area, the secondary olfactory cortex. It is also part of the limbic system. This is the entorhinal area. This is blood man area 28. Another component of the meso olympic circuit goes from the ventral tegmental area also goes through the medial forebrain bundle and it goes to the amygdala which is located deep inside where my probe is. It is located on the roof on the tip of the inferior horn of the lateral ventricle. It is located deep. It is not visible here. A third component of the meso olympic tract it goes to the septal nuclei which I mentioned earlier to the septal nuclei and the fourth component of the meso olympic tract goes to the nucleus accumbens which I mentioned earlier which is located in the ventral striatum. So these are some of the important components of the meso olympic tract. Now let us take a look at the mesocortical tract. It is actually basically a continuation but it is considered separately because of its pathophysiological implications. The mesocortical tract also starts from the ventral tegmental area. It goes through the medial forebrain bundle and it goes to the prefrontal cortex. This is the medial prefrontal cortex. This is the orbital frontal prefrontal cortex. It goes to the PFC and some of the fibers they go to the anterior part of the cingulate gyrus. So this is the mesocortical tract. So in a nutshell we have the meso olympic tract going from the VTA to the amygdala to the entorhinal cortex to the septal area and to the nucleus accumbens and we have the mesocortical tract going from here to the PFC and to the cingulate gyrus. Having mentioned all these now let us come to the clinical implications of this. Let us start with the mesocortical tract. The mesocortical tract which goes from here if there is a failure of this mesocortical tract then we get what is known as the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. The failure of the mesocortical tract produces negative symptoms of schizophrenia. One thing I forgot to mention but which I am going to mention now is the ventral tegmental area the projections from the ventral tegmental area to all these structures are all dopaminergic projections. The ventral tegmental area is rich in dopamine and all its projections are dopaminergic projections. So to come back to where I was failure of dopaminergic projections from the VTA to the cortex mesocortical tract produces the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and therefore the mechanism of treating this negative symptom of schizophrenia is either to block the 5HT2 receptors if we block the 5HT2 receptors in the mesocortical tract then we allow the dopaminergic projections to continue on to the mesocortical system and alleviate the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. So that is the significance of the mesocortical tract. Now let us come to the significance of the mesolimbic tract. In the mesolimbic tract we will focus on that component of the tract which we had mentioned starts from the ventral tegmental area and goes to the nucleus accumbens. Now the nucleus accumbens has got rich number of D2 receptors dopamine 2 receptors and it needs dopaminergic projections from here and that has got plenty of clinical significance clinical implications. The first one of that is the so called pleasure reward circuit or the NAC pathway or the pleasure or the drug addiction pathway. How does this work? Normally the ventral tegmental area is under an inhibitory influence from the substantia nigra pars reticulator which is located in the anterior part of the midbrain. The substantia nigra pars reticulator releases GABA and inhibits the ventral tegmental area and therefore it prevents this from stimulating the nucleus accumbens with dopamine. However if we indulge any pleasurable activity like for example taking drugs of recreational abuse or any pleasurable activity for that matter then what happens this inhibition is disinhibited and the ventral tegmental area becomes active enough to start stimulating the nucleus accumbens with rich dopaminergic projections. Once the nucleus accumbens receives dopamine it wants it craves more and more and a vicious cycle of pleasure reward cycle is set into motion and that's what produces the drug addiction. Therefore it has been found clinically as well as experimentally that if an experimental or a clinical lesion is produced in the nucleus accumbens it goes a long way towards reducing this drug seeking behavior because the more dopamine nucleus accumbens receives the more it wants and the more it craves and that's what produces this drug dependency and the drug addiction. So this pathway from the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens this specific push component of the mesolimbic tract is also referred to as the NAC pathway NAC NAC being the short form for nucleus accumbens it is also known as the pleasure reward circuit. Now let's come to another aspect of this circuit this mesolimbic pathway from the nucleus accumbens from the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens it is normally inhibited this pathway is normally inhibited by yet one more projection and that is from the PFC this PFC normally keeps this under inhibition. So what happens is if there's a lesion of the PFC prefrontal cortex due to any any reason this prefrontal cortex cannot inhibit the mesolimbic pathway and therefore the mesolimbic pathway gets what is known as disinhibited and this disinhibition results in what is known as the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. So here we see a different situation disinhibition of the mesolimbic pathway produces positive symptoms of schizophrenia while inhibition of the mesocortical pathway which we had mentioned earlier had produced negative symptoms of schizophrenia. So let's come back to this positive symptoms of schizophrenia disinhibition of the mesolimbic tract by a lesion of the PFC produces positive symptoms schizophrenia and therefore one of the methods of treatment of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia is to stimulate is to prevent dopamine release from the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens by giving dopamine D2 blockers. So therefore that is another method of treatment of positive symptoms of schizophrenia and that is to block the nucleus accumbens dopamine D2 receptors by means of D2 blockers so that the positive symptoms of schizophrenia are relieved. So in a nutshell what we have described is we have described the basal forebrain components we have described the mesolimbic and the mesocortical tract which travels to the medial forebrain bundle we have mentioned the negative symptoms of schizophrenia caused by failure of the mesocortical pathway and we have mentioned the positive symptoms of schizophrenia caused by disinhibition of the mesolimbic pathway and the principles of treatment of each of these. Okay thank you for watching ladies and gentlemen if you have any comments or questions please put them in the comment section below have a nice day